The movie is depicting him as like an enlightened centrist sexpot genius who is also a sadboy. He's flawed, but even his flaws are compared to that of Prometheus lol. He's got zingers and he's put on the cross. He's absolutely romanticized.

The scene at the rally where he's spewing xenophobia is basically reframed to show inside his head to garner sympathy. You could totally reframe his treatment of women. He absolutely did wrong by Teller. They put all the critiques of him into Strauss and nobody likes that guy at all.

This is what happens when you base your movie on one best seller named after the man. See: Hamilton

its literally from his perspective

It's not autobiographical

I didn't see any of this on-screen

to me the explosion was very lackluster esp coming from Nolan and all the amazing shots he gave us in Interstellar.

It just seemed smaller than I imagined, like what it was a fireball for 10 seconds and he lingered on the fire ball a lil?..delayed the sound of the bomb and..that's it?

nah it was def missing something cmon Nolan

Well yeah of course not but a biography written about someone who lived nearly a century ago isn't going to have all the dirt or realistic details about them. I knew that going in. It wasn't overly worship of him like all the presentation of him wasn't meant to be literal.

Again much of what you are asking for is more what a documentary is for.

I think critique of him could have and should have come from more characters than strauss . The critiques of him should have been more than "he is a commie"

But

Imagining some of you watching the movie and wanting to walk out when the explosion wasn't big enough is taking me out

it's not a reason to walk out but it was literally the only gimmick of the movie for some people and it WAS incredibly lackluster

i praise nolan alott, and Interstellar my fav movie of all time

but..he should've went harder with the detonation, it seemed like a regular ass controlled explosion that they would do on a Mission Impossible set except even less impressive cuz they spend 2 hours and months of a whole marketing campaign hyping it up

I mean Roger Robb also lays out a completely valid critique and it's treated like Oppenheimer on the cross once again. Another unlikable demon character the mouthpiece for these things. You obviously don't want to be on Robb or Strauss's side do you?

You don't have access to like a quiet conversation Oppenheimer had with his brother about his guilt and the victims or w/e. We can't invent that. I'm sure we have the transcripts from Oppenheimer's countryside tent chats though. We def have his girlfriend calling her unionizer and Spanish fascist fighting husband a loser who stopped a bullet from hitting a mudbank. We can take liberties for that.

This is all just so carefully massaged in the most boring way.

if someone went in primarily wondering how big of a explosion, sound or cool looking the bomb would be in a 3 hour biography imma pray for them.

I didn't follow much of the marketing campaign but watched the 5 minute trailer. I always felt like marketing of this movie was focused on a lot more than the explosion. If you feel lied to or slighted I understand but its silly to me

If people were going in to this movie expecting a “gimmick”, then that’s their fault tbh.
This was always advertised as a very character focused film

I do agree that the movie does not paint Oppenheimer as a heroic figure at all. But I too think Nolan did a disservice by not depicting the true brutal and cruel nature of the bombs.

After I saw the movie, I kept thinking of the Chernobyl TV show. It had some terrifying scenes of what I would describe as implicit horror. Oppenheimer has those too. But Chernobyl had a particular scene of explicit horror that was so effective because of how disarmingly real it was. To the point that it made me physically ill. And that scene was when we saw how the radiation had affected some of the rescuers.

It made palpable the true horror of such technology. And this movie did its audience a disservice by not subjecting it to the same experience as those affected by the bomb at that time.

Strauss side no because Strauss is very pro nuke. But Oppenheimer is far from infallible. HIs wife literally says something along the lines of you think this tar and feathering will lead to the world forgiving you.

Why would I be on oppenheimer side for playing this like a politician?

Do I even fully think he is anti nuke? no.

I think if the situation arose again he would argue for another nuke. He just seems to be anti building them up and fears mass nukes going off or nukes going off on america for karma.

If another world war arose no part of me gets the feeling he is anti nuke.

but you went into the movie really not wanting to like it and not liking historical films . lol I respect that but no constructive discussion can be had of something you wanted to dislike and disliked. I can't be surprised you didn't like it. I understand all the reasons why. Its far from perfect

Did you know about the brutal effects of the bombings before you watched the film ?

yeah I feel like me knowing so much of the horror of hiroshima and nagasaki going in that I genuinely didn't want to see it recreated with practical effects, pretty actors and actresses running for their lives and the horror. It would have turned it into a straight horror movie where nothing they said after would register in my brain.

There is a level of trauma p*** that would come from the depiction of it . Especially in imax, 70mm or dolby digital good lord

Yes, I did. But many members of the audience certainly didn't.

And anti-nuclear sentiments delivered in a effective way are always welcomed.

The fact you're considering his pro or anti nuke stance when he led the Manhattan project Movie def worked. I'll give it that much.

Yeah his wife who still comes to his defense, his only ride or die really, despite him neglecting her and trapping her in a domestic life she can't bear without a bottle while he cheats on her regularly. Even she can't hate him. She's sympathetic towards him and if anything is telling him to be unrepentant! His only positive character trait is feeling bad!

Again, the movie could frame this differently. Movies can do literally anything they want. When it starts and we're getting more of his emotional state cut with cosmic vibrations and atomic energy I thought that was really compelling. The rally scene is one of the better scenes as well. It randomly deciding when it wants to be that stylized or surreal then reverting to Wikipedia checklist biography also felt incoherent. The black and white time jump is also played out af.

Honestly when the movie just let Oldman be a comic book villain for 3 minutes you remember what Nolan is actually good at.

I wanted to like Evil Dead Rise and hated it. Everyone has expectations. Not a rebuff of anything I'm saying.

Your last sentence is a truly impossible concept

Which is another rzn why it probably wasn’t done. It all sounds good in your head but it’s gonna be impossible to show that s*** in a way that doesn’t come off as a disservice

"Affected" can encompass many aspects. Obviously, I didn't mean to say the audience seeing the result of an atomic blast is a comparable experience to being hit by one. Be for real.

There’s no similar experience you could offer is all I’m saying. Ppl just vaguely gesturing towards this idea with no real sense of how to accomplish it and then are like “why didn’t Nolan just do this thing that I can’t even actually articulate in words much less film”

Yeah to show the japan nukes would have been a massive change to the movie. Its focused on Oppenheimer, whether you like it or not. Personally i dont think the movie was incredible, but to show the actual effects would have been trite imo

Many such atrocities have been depicted in media in a hard-hitting way. In fact, there is a Japanese animated movie that features a bombing scene that is extremely effective in evoking the horror of its nature.

The problem with this argument is that Nolan actually did show a glimpse of it via the rally scene. He simply did not accomplish capturing such horror as effectively as he could have, imo.