Young D

8mo

Mans looked like he was 90, so he was probs alive actually during the time of Lenin — why would it not be believable for him to speak poetically about Lenin and want to coverup any potential problem the Soviets were having if he didn’t understand the full implications of the accident?

Block Muteson

8mo

Great casting in both and strong source material. Chernobyl has scenes where a guy will stand up and be like "as we all know this is the LENIN POWER PLANT and WE MUST KILL ALL THE WORKERS". Laughable lib

Elric

8mo

Ngl the scene I remember best is when the government dude tries to go strong arm the miners into going to the disaster site and they laugh at him and his armed guards "this is our mine"

Oscar Winner

8mo

Oh word? Damn

Jonboi

8mo

Yeah, that’s the way he made it sound on the pod

Scriptnotes
The screenwriting podcast

Oscar Winner

8mo

He was speaking facts huh?

Block Muteson

8mo

It's not the content of the message. I love cop movies. It's the delivery. The guy was so hamfisted that it was hard to take seriously. Nobody even likes Gorbachev lol

The show is night and day with Oppenheimer. The Manhattan project stole the remains of babies and poisoned people and used slave mined uranium from Africa. Didn't include any of that. Resulted in a bomb dropped on civilians on purpose.

Chernobyl was a tragedy and many people gave their lives to provide relief and they just showed puppy shooting lol. It's so obvious what both are doing and why. At least Oppenheimer is dramatically urgent. Chernobyl made me groan when they talked.

They both even have a third act of blame sharing and legal thrills. Sister projects tbh.

Young D

8mo

I don’t think you understood the point of the pet shooting scene?

The point was not for the viewer to feel bad for the dogs. The point was for the viewer to feel bad for the workers that sacrificed what will be a permanent scar on their mental health for the rest of their lives in order to clean up the disaster and prevent the contamination from spreading beyond the exclusion zone.

No earthly idea how you could interpret that scene as just an opportunity to show “puppy’s getting shot” lmao

Block Muteson

8mo

Historical adaptations are fictions. You can show what you want, leave out what you want, and color anything you include however you want.

Again, Oppenheimer didn't focus on stealing baby corpses and poisoning people and annihilating civilians. It chose a convenient book and perspective to justify its blinkered worldview. Nolan is at least doing something much more elegant and difficult. He's reclaiming a villain of history.

Chernobyl is hitting a paper target. Like Oppenheimer, it's a blinkered worldview with source material justification. It's not done anywhere as subtly. Chernobyl was an accident, and many workers did a lot of harrowing things for the good of man. It's never portrayed that way.

These are basically first responders, and they'd be treated like tragic heroes if the story were American. Not like victimized fodder. Watch any war movie. This plays like if Osama Bin Laden made a movie about Deepwater Horizon or something.

I found the show pretty cartoonish in parts. Just so obvious and blunt to the point of stupid in its motivation.

Young D

8mo

You come off as a Soviet sympathizer, am I right?

Block Muteson

8mo

Even Soviet sympathizers don't like Gorbachev

Young D

8mo

Ok

Well in response to you saying the first responders weren’t portrayed as heroic, idk I guess we just have different interpretations, because I viewed all of them as coming off as some of the most realistic displays I’ve ever seen of heroism on film or TV

Block Muteson

8mo

A faceless helicopter crashing into a building while the beauracracy goes "humans are machines throw more at the problem"

Young D

8mo

I mean, would you prefer that they turn a blind eye to the Soviets choosing to risk their civilians lives over turning to the international community for help and putting their pride aside?

They can do both. Just because that scene focused on the villains rather than the heroes, doesn't mean there weren't a lot of scenes focusing on the heroes.

Block Muteson

8mo

They didn't do both lol. You can shoot that scene by humanizing the pilots and showing their daring, selfless task up close and personal. The filmmaker is omnipotent. They invent and color reality. A historical basis is not a ball and chain. It's a canvas to paint on.

And the only heros in the show are the technocrats who are the good bureaucrats but the bureaucracy itself is bad. It's very muddled

Young D

8mo

They didn’t do both in that one single scene yes. I was trying to say that there were many other different scenes that showed people doing heroic acts. It was constant. I don’t see how you didn’t see that, and I think you’re in a very tiny minority given the feedback this show has received. So I think I’m done discussing this lol.