The Japanese distributor of the Warner Bros. movie "Barbie" has apologized for its U.S. parent company's reaction to social media posts about the "Barbenheimer" blitz that combined images of Barbie and an atomic bomb mushroom cloud. The memes triggered criticisms in Japan for what many described as minimizing nuclear attacks.
Some of the images, which were not created by Warner Bros., showed Margot Robbie, who played Barbie, sitting on the shoulders of Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy, with an orange inferno of an atomic blast in the background.The official Barbie account said in response to the combined Barbenheimer meme: "It's going to be a summer to remember."
"We apologize to those who felt uncomfortable because of these inconsiderable reactions," Warner Bros. Japan said in a statement posted on X, formerly Twitter. The United States dropped the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, destroying the city and killing 140,000 people. It dropped a second bomb three days later on Nagasaki, killing another 70,000. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, ending the Second World War and Japan's nearly half-century of aggression in Asia.