Oppenheimer (2023) (2 Viewers)

[Carl David]

It will be interesting to see how this huge story in the history of mankind is told through the medium of cinema.

One hopes it will deal with the compartmentalization involved that prevented many who worked on that project from knowing the finer details of what was going on and how it came to fruition.

From my observations Mr. Oppenheimer was one of very few people who knew and oversaw the whole project and its intricacies.

Depending on how this turns out it might be tempting to watch it on the big screen.

This is probably Mr. Nolan's biggest challenge to date as this material is more profound than any other movie he has directed previously in my opinion. Despite him having a big following I have never taken his work seriously based on what movies I have seen of his.

This movie will be the true acid test for me of how talented he is as a director.

The best of luck to him and sincerely hope he can surprise all with this project and make an intelligent, original and entertaining movie.

By the look of things the foundation is there as the cast looks pretty good.

 

[Carl David]

The trailer definitely piques my interest, even though the take on Oppenheimer annoys me.

He and Teller were the ones who pushed for the continued development of the bomb. He let the Genie out of the bottle and then spent the rest of his life piously telling everyone how it should be put be put back into it.

Teller was a creep, but at least he was honest enough to own that he didn't care about the morality of the bomb. He just wanted to take it to its ultimate conclusion in the form of the fusion bomb.

Oppenheimer was nothing more than a hypocrite in my book; however, maybe this movie will change my mind in that regard.

Most of them who had leadership roles on that project were "creeps".

Hopefully, this side of the story gets told even if in a more subtle manner. The project involved psychopaths & megalomaniacs along with ordinary scientists who believed they were doing their bit to help mankind. Hopefully, these complexities are all explored in the movie.

My guess is this film could have a long running time as the many themes of the story get told.

Although it was a long time ago since the events this movie could ruffle some feathers if told truthfully or close to what the recorded events of that time were.

When dealing with real life events and characters it is always a difficult balancing act for many reasons.

This is probably why Stanley Kubrick created fictional characters in Dr. Strangelove.

You can get away with more when the story is fictionalized and deal with psychopathic personalities without having to deal with the fallout from using characters based on real people.

 

[Alex...]

 

[SamT]

Saw a video. Please clear this for me. They actually detonated a nuclear bomb for this movie?!

 

[benbess]

Saw a video. Please clear this for me. They actually detonated a nuclear bomb for this movie?!

No.

Nolan just said they used conventional explosives to create most of the effect he wanted, rather than CGI.

Christopher Nolan Recreated a Nuclear Weapon Explosion Without CGI, Developed New IMAX Film for ‘Oppenheimer’: ‘A Huge Challenge’

Christopher Nolan invented new IMAX film stock in order to film his atomic bomb drama "Oppenheimer."

variety.com

 

[Robert Crawford]

Oppenheimer was nothing more than a hypocrite in my book; however, maybe this movie will change my mind in that regard.

Hell, we're all hypocrites. With that said, I think your assessment is rather unfair to this complicated man. Furthermore, the crap he went through leading the Manhattan Project and the stuff that members of the United States Government did to him afterwards was grossly unjust to Oppenheimer. He went through "hell" during one of the darkest periods in United States history.

Anyhow, I'm going to revisit the following 1980 docu-drama miniseries that ran on PBS. It's about seven hours long, but I found it riveting when it first aired not long after I graduated college back in the late 1970s. I've watched it a couple more times over the last 40+ years and will do so again before this film is released as my last viewing was over a decade ago.

 

[Alex...]

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I wish they’d do that in New York. I’d love to revisit some earlier Nolan films in their original IMAX presentations.

 

[Alex...]

‘Oppenheimer’ is 3 Hours — Longest Film of Christopher Nolan’s Career — World of Reel

Puck’s Matt Belloni is saying that, unless there is a last minute edit, Nolan’s film will be 3-hours in length. The longest film of his career.

www.worldofreel.com

 

[Malcolm R]

Of course it is. That seems to be the new standard length of movies these days.

Editing is a lost art.

 

[Joe Wong]

‘Oppenheimer’ is 3 Hours — Longest Film of Christopher Nolan’s Career — World of Reel

Puck’s Matt Belloni is saying that, unless there is a last minute edit, Nolan’s film will be 3-hours in length. The longest film of his career.

www.worldofreel.com

Confirmed by Damon:

 

[TravisR]

I'm quite excited to see this movie but how in the hell does Universal plan to make money with it? This movie is clearly tremendously expensive and the marketing budget is already gigantic but when the average audience member watches a movie that is three hours of "just" talking and a couple of explosions, it will drop like a stone in its second week and it'll probably need to make hundreds of millions to turn a profit. I guess Universal is willing to take the financial hit just to have the next hopefully more commercial Christopher Nolan movie.

(Feel free to bring this post back and laugh at it if the movie is a hit in three months)

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

I'm quite excited to see this movie but how in the hell does Universal plan to make money with it? This movie is clearly tremendously expensive and the marketing budget is already gigantic but when the average audience member watches a movie that is three hours of "just" talking and a couple of explosions, it will drop like a stone in its second week and it'll probably need to make hundreds of millions to turn a profit. I guess Universal is willing to take the financial hit just to have the next hopefully more commercial Christopher Nolan movie.

(Feel free to bring this post back and laugh at it if the movie is a hit in three months)

Well, the gamble is that some films are just giant event movies. That would be the hope here, that a lot of people want to see it because they view it as an event. The idea of the bomb is a bug enough story that it can have worldwide appeal...which is what you need if you are going to rake in giant sums of cash with your picture. It needs to play well in the United States and Europe, but really, for the huge money to come in, it has to play well in China. So, most of the gamble here is on if the Chinese will turn out in large numbers to see this.

I think in English speaking countries and Europe, this could do quite well. The issue with it making money in a Chinese market essentially comes down to the dialogue and if it is easily translatable to other languages. In big blockbusters, the dialogue tends to be simplified down to very basic and generic sentences. The problem with a picture like this, this won't have simplified dialogue. So, the translation becomes more complex. Combine that with the fact that Nolan does not have a track record of simplifying anything in his pictures and this may be too difficult a film to take into those markets.

The one aspect of it that may make it popular in foreign markets is if the United States is portrayed as the bad guy. This is something a lot of people outside the US enjoy. Since the United States developed the bomb and used it this is something generally used to hold up the country as bad or evil. So, on that front, it could appeal to a market like China.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Hell, we're all hypocrites. With that said, I think your assessment is rather unfair to this complicated man. Furthermore, the crap he went through leading the Manhattan Project and the stuff that members of the United States Government did to him afterwards was grossly unjust to Oppenheimer. He went through "hell" during one of the darkest periods in United States history.

Anyhow, I'm going to revisit the following 1980 docu-drama miniseries that ran on PBS. It's about seven hours long, but I found it riveting when it first aired not long after I graduated college back in the late 1970s. I've watched it a couple more times over the last 40+ years and will do so again before this film is released as my last viewing was over a decade ago.

View attachment 169031

That would be interesting to watch. I did revisit Fat Man and Little Boy last month. It plays a bit like a TV movie now, but the story is still a good story.

 

[benbess]

I'm quite excited to see this movie but how in the hell does Universal plan to make money with it? This movie is clearly tremendously expensive and the marketing budget is already gigantic but when the average audience member watches a movie that is three hours of "just" talking and a couple of explosions, it will drop like a stone in its second week and it'll probably need to make hundreds of millions to turn a profit. I guess Universal is willing to take the financial hit just to have the next hopefully more commercial Christopher Nolan movie.

(Feel free to bring this post back and laugh at it if the movie is a hit in three months)

My guess is that you're more than halfway right about the box office prospects for Oppenheimer. But the Nolan name and style will bring in a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't see an epic based on history like this. Dunkirk had much more action than this movie seems likely to have, but it grossed $527 million. But Tenet, admittedly released in the depths of the pandemic, made only $365 million, which almost certainly meant that it lost a lot of money, because of its $205 million production budget. Oppenheimer was apparently made for for around $100 million, which makes it responsibly budgeted by current standards. But then again Nolan gets 20% of first dollar gross, which means that he gets a big paycheck even when his movies lose money. So apparently Nolan still got a check for $72 million for Tenet, even though it probably lost well over $100 million for Warner Bros.

Only a few remember at this point that in 1989 a big budget movie was made on this same topic, with Paul Newman as General Groves and Dwight Schultz doing a good job as Oppenheimer. The movie cost $30 million, which back in 1989 was a lot of money. But Fat Man and Little Boy was a box office disaster that brought in only $4 million.

I don't think Oppenheimer will be a disaster like that, but I think it will struggle to break even, esp. with Nolan getting 20% of first dollar gross. If Oppenheimer makes $300 million worldwide, which seems optimistic, the real cost of the movie will be $160 million, because Nolan's 20% contract will give him a check for $60 million. Since only about half of the box office actually makes it back to the studio, plus you have to add probably another $60 million or so spent on advertising, the real negative cost for Oppenheimer will probably be something around $220 million, which would mean it would need to earn something like $400 million worldwide to break even. Might happen, but at this point I doubt it.

I'll definitely be seeing Oppenheimer, but I agree that Universal is doing this movie in the hope that Nolan will do something more commercial in the future.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Fat Man and Little Boy didn't help as a film title.

 

[SamT]

(Feel free to bring this post back and laugh at it if the movie is a hit in three months)

Oh I will.... And what if it bombed?!

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

“They won’t fear it until they understand it. And they won’t understand it until they’ve used it.”

That’s one hell of a pull quote. I’m presold given that it’s Nolan but even if I wasn’t and it weren’t, that line would have done it for me.

Should watch this movie back to back with Part 8 of the Twin Peaks revival.

That quote is important because it is all about the power of the bomb. It was not just about the destructive power of the weapon, it was about the ability to terrify everybody on the planet at the same time, and in a way, through that terror...bring them together. Essentially, human existence is broken into two halves, the time before the bomb and the time after.

It was inevitable that humankind would achieve this ability. During WWII, it was a rather huge deal who did it first. Creating it was the first part, then demonstrating the power of what they had created was the second half. If you created it and did not use it, the power of what had happened would only be vaguely understood by many. By using the bomb, people the world over understood in one moment the point humanity had arrived at.

In this way, through the bomb, we were in that moment united as people. We understood the destructive power we held in our hands. Yes, the United States had it first, but as we knew, others would follow. Up to this point the single demonstration has been enough. It made an impact on us for decades. However, we are once again watching a war in Europe and one side is threatening use of this power.

I think while people grasp the power of the bomb, they don't really grasp why it was used. Why we had to have the demonstration. Everyone involved with creating the bomb understood the horror of what they had created and that the world then had to also understand this horror, completely. There was only one way for that to have happened. Had the Nazis come up with the bomb first, that demonstration may have been far different than the one the world saw.

Probably one of the more terrifying conversations that I have listened to was between scientists that discussed the idea that the power of the bomb, of that demonstration in Japan, the power to unite the world and make us see ourselves in a more serious light, has worn off. I hope that is not true, but we are at a strange crossroads.

Born in the 1960s, living through the Cold War and space race, my generation felt the wonder and terror of what mankind was capable of. We are in different times now and to hear scientists say, seriously, that the world may be on the verge of needing another demonstration of what we are capable of to bring us all back together is...well...more than a little unpleasant.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

I should add, because I ended on a scary note there, that neither I nor the scientists I was discussing meant that the demonstration has to be unleashing another bomb on humanity. It can be something else, but something that shows the world the power that we, as human beings, have in our hands. To do good, or to be destructive. We are capable of great and sudden change, and we can, in certain moments, see ourselves as one people, united. We do seem to have lost this vision but I would hope we don't need to do something terrible to regain it.

 

[Alex...]

Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ Will Have 70mm IMAX Showings — World of Reel

It’s not a Christopher Nolan movie without some special 70mm IMAX showings.

www.worldofreel.com