Viewers are divided over whether the film should have shown Japanese victims of the weapon created by physicist Robert Oppenheimer. Experts say it’s complicated.
Clickbait outrage. The movie showed what the bomb does to people without feeling like it was exploiting the suffering of innocent victims for the sake of a summer blockbuster.
The article even explains how: “In another scene, Oppenheimer gives a speech and, while looking into the crowd, visualizes some of the predominantly white audience as the victims of his bomb.”
It’s an effective scene. Sometimes what you don’t show (negative space) is as powerful as what you do show.
Yeah, there is a fucking burnt child on the movie.
The story is not about bombing Japan.
Yes, that was a war crime. Yes, that was terrible.
But if you know the story of Oppenheimer, or seen the movie, he did not decide anything. The military took over at that moment in time.
So if it was a movie about the military, this had to be shown. But it is about him. So a suggestion (as is clearly in the movie for about the last hour or so) is more than enough of you ask me.
You’re totally right and the discussion (as so many these days) is completely bollocks.
Since when should the public have the right to demand what an artist ought to put in his work or must not omit. I don’t get it…
He decided to make the bomb. He knew what bombs are used for.
Agreed, but that is not what the movie is about.
He did say (no one knows what he believed) that just having the bomb would mean world peace…
Then he was a fool who’s actions contributed to the murder of hundreds of thousands.
Literally part of the film is him realising this, did you leave after the bomb went off in testing or what?
Typical aggressive online SJW behaviour. Preaching absolute truths and spitting condemnations as if no one had thought about it before. Obviously, the world can be best explained without any nuance or shades of grey ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
His reasoning was if the US didn’t make it, the Nazis would, and that would be even worse. He never wanted to make the bomb, it was just the lesser of two evils.
And exactly that is the struggle he had. He even informed the president (who told him to fuck off in a polite way)
Look up projected casualties for Operation Downfall
Look up most of the contemporary US pacific command saying the bombings were unnecessary. I know Asian people are just ants to people like you but Jesus, the pathetic rationalizations.
Ants is a pretty apt comparison to Japanese culture at the time. All expected to become soldiers and die for the hive. Seriously, shit was crazy. They were not going to surrender otherwise.
Firebombings were daily killing more than the bombs did as well.
Ants is a pretty apt comparison to Japanese culture at the time.
Okay, thank you for proving my point and admitting you’re a virulent racist so publicly.
Yes, but part of the story of the film is that he’s so caught up in the joy of science and discovery he isn’t thinking that far ahead and it suddenly becomes real after he’s in the meeting deciding on targets (note how that’s one of the few scenes without a score). Then the distance he’s kept at from the use of the weapons inspires his outlook in later scenes.
Being so far removed from the use of his discovery and put of the loop now the army was done with him is a crucial character moment in the film, and we as the audience are following his story. Having scenes of the bombing, the aftermath of the victims would have undermined that.
I have not seen the film yet, but it seems like this is a biopic about Oppenheimer, not a WWII movie.
Also, do directors need to infantilize their audience by directly showing “this was bad. Here is why this was bad”? Like, obviously the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were devastating. If you have basic history knowledge you should already know that, and know that those bombings were a direct consequence from what was depicted in the movie with out it being spelled out for you.
The movie is more about the political witchhunt after the fact than it is directly about the bomb itself
Film is told from Oppenheimer’s perspective, I see no problem with it. Especially as it is shown that he had trouble with moral questions over creating a bomb and using it. And there is a really powerful scene with him being troubled with the Japan bombing and imagines bomb being detonated while he gives speech.
The movie doesn’t show away from the affects of a nuclear explosion, but it does show the distance that the gadget creators had to the gadget’s victims. There is no mistaking the destructive power of a nuclear weapon. It just happens to be that the destruction isn’t a direct response that the inventor deals with.
I think the movie did a pretty good job of showing that he wasn’t the inventor of the atomic bomb. The moniker has always been “father” of the atomic bomb, since he was more of a supervisor and manager than a deep researcher at that point
True. He was instrumental, but more in leading the effort of different researchers.
Heh, first it was criticism of the credits, now is what should and shouldn’t be in the movie. If you know better, why don’t you make your own movie that will put Nolan to shame?
What was with the credits?
That it didn’t include all people responsible for VFX.
The 70mm IMAX version basically hit the limit of the length the equipment can handle, and even treaties special extensions: https://youtu.be/d5XqqylBW7M?t=592
Is quite cool to watch the whole video, which they show how the movie is prepared before it can be projected.
hit the limit of the length
Thanks for the reminder that it’s 3 hours long, the thread was making me want to go and see it.
It was among the fastest 3 hours of my life friend, I definitely recommend it. Masterpiece.
For what it’s worth, it doesn’t feel like three hours. It’s dense and moves at a nice clip.
Saw it last night in IMAX. There were no parts that dragged. It did not feel like 3 hours and was very engaging the whole time. I’m still reflecting on it. Go see it if you can in IMAX
Nolan pushed the limit of IMAX projectors with Interstellar run time in 2014, he went out of his way to find out what the maximum that could be done with platter modifications, an extra 20 minutes.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/d5XqqylBW7M?t=592
https://piped.video/d5XqqylBW7M?t=592
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Sure show the Japanese victims, but then you need to show why they were victims in the first place. So you need to show Japanese Imperialism that committed atrocities in Nanking and the attack on Pearl Harbour.
Maybe we could go further and show that Japanese Imperialism was driven by the existential threat of Western Imperialism, which does not in any way lessen the horrors committed by Imperial Japan.
Sometimes the whole story can’t be told in a single film. Not all of it is important to the message or topic the author, director and producers wish to send or examine.
The Japanese had decades of atrocities under their belt by the closing of world war II. There was the Bataan Death March, Siam, occupation of Manchuria, invasion of Singapore, Guam, Philippines, attack on Pearl harbor, and many many other Acts of War that the empire of Japan engaged in. Unlike others mentioned, unit 731 and the rape of Nanjing. They were utterly ruthless.
Hell, there was that one Japanese imperial soldier who was still murdering foreigners like 30 years after the war freaking ended!
So to say that Japan didn’t deserve having atomic bombs dropped on it I believe is disingenuous. The people of Japan supported the war and were very militant, unlike the Japanese of today. They believe that they could conquer all of Asia and they try their hardest to do so. They were also prepared to fight to the death to defend their home island. During the preparation and bombing of Japan, the Russians were also preparing in amphibious invasion of Japan. This would have split the Japanese islands into Russian and American administered Islands, like what happened to Germany in the post-war.
The two nuclear bombs dropped on Japan killed roughly 150,000 people. That is less people than died at the siege of Stalingrad in Russia. That is less people than died in a few weeks at the Battle of the Somme during world War I.
The fact is that War sucks, and it’s not just the soldiers who suffer and die - it’s the civilians as well. We should never forget that, and that there’s one thing that the Japanese will tell you today is that we should avoid war at all cost. Whether you agree with that or not, is for you to decide.
Do you think that the pro meddling in the middle east voters in the world trade centre that day deserved to die like that?
Genuinely, I don’t. I don’t think average citizens, even really fucking shitty and ignorant ones, deserve capital punishment for the crimes of those that claim dominion over them.
One thing I would add is that the aftermath of the Japanese bombings have been extensively covered in various movies, anime and other media including the traveling Hiroshima atomic bomb museum. It is very important for people to understand what the tragedy that the bombings lead to. But that’s an entire movie in and of itself.
Go watch Grave of the Fireflies or Barefoot Gen if you would like to know more.
Edit
This is a great quote that I agree with:
“I don’t think we should depend on Hollywood to tell our stories with the nuance and the depth and the care that they really deserve,” Nina Wallace
Her point is that it’s not Nolan’s fault that he didn’t make the movie about the victims, it’s that he wasn’t the right person for it. It’s a systemic issue that Hollywood hires predominantly white male directors to make movies. They would need a different director who is conscientious about the subject matter to go make the movie about the victims. Of course, there are already movies about the victims that have been made in Japan…
Exactly this. “Properly” covering the topic would require 18 movies covering several hundred years of history and containing both World Wars. Sometimes it’s just out of scope for the project you’re trying to make. It would be great for a podcast series or for a long series of documentaries, not so much for a single movie with a 180 minute runtime.
I’m no expert but I enjoyed Dan Carlin’s Supernova in the East podcast series on the background, lead up, and involvement of Japan in World War II - https://open.spotify.com/episode/2lqNevhLx08QPmvCLjhS4g
They were victims. The nukes were war crimes. Show the victims.
Ultimately though a lot of Nolan’s films are coded for a Conservative viewpoint going back to the Batman trilogy. There’s still quite a bit of it here, even if this movie is intended to depict the honesty of nuclear weapons.
Ultimately though a lot of Nolan’s films are coded for a Conservative viewpoint
Wat
Literally half the point of the character development in the film is his realisation of the distance he has from the use and effects of his discovery. Showing them would undermine the whole thing.
Also the given his second to last film was literally about the allies fighting Nazis in WW2 I don’t know what you mean about conservative coding.
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At the end of the day, Japan and the US owe various parts of the world a lot of apologizing for shit done during WW2 and this is not me playing both sides. I am very familiar with Nanjing, Unit 731, and the comfort women thing.
As someone from Europe I think we owe America thanks for WW2.
I agree with you that the Japanese military committed horrific atrocities, but from my pov, showing the direct devastation the bomb had demonstrates (among other things) the significance, impact, and importance of the creation of the bomb. That demonstration bears relevance in a story about the creator’s life and legacy in a way that Japanese atrocities don’t.
Yeah, those Japanese civilians and Korean slaves sure deserved it /s
Yeah, thousands of victims were Korean slaves. Chew on that.
I think no one deserves war crimes.
How many of Unit 731 did your nukes kill?
Well of course it’s not, the us government wants to remind everyone that the bombings were a ‘nessicary evil’ that bs is still taught in schools. Not being a conspiracy guy but I cant imagine a high budget highly publicized movie would rock the boat like that. If you want to hear about sloughing go listen to the last podcast on the lefts 6 part magnum opus on the Manhattan project.
Well of course it’s not, the us government wants to
The movie does a decent job portraying why nuclear bomb development was so much more complex than simply a necessary evil, a good, or an unnecessary evil. It’s just not a simple topic with easy answers.
The left is not in agreement about the usage or development of the bombs.
Quite frankly if the U.S. didn’t develop it, Germany would have. And they would have used it just like the United States did.
Germany was already defeated and occupied, so I have a hard time following your logic.
When the bombs were ultimately dropped, yes, but the Manhattan Project (actual development of the bomb) took place coinciding with the Nazi nuclear program before the defeat of Nazi Germany.
The Nazis actually started ahead of the Americans in 1939, and had the scientist who discovered nuclear fission as part of the program. The Nazis by all accounts had a head start and better scientists.
It wasn’t until it was clear the Nazis were using heavy water (i.e focusing on nuclear reactors) in 1942 that the US got the first clue that the Nazis had abandoned the idea of nuclear bombs in the war effort, but the project was still funded in Nazi Germany until the end of the war in 1945.Not great logic saying that Germany would have. But he does have a small point. A lot of our reason for developing it was because we thought Germany had been working on it. Our development started before Germany had been defeated and we had reason to believe (via espionage) that they at least had collected the materials needed, and had scientists familiar with the physics. After the war, we discovered that their program was no where close to actually making a bomb. We probably could have, and maybe should have stopped once Germany fell.
At the end of the day, humans don’t need weapons to display cruelty. We have popped many eyes with our thumbs over the eons.
will Japanese directors show the camps of sex slaves they have in China or Korea? of course not
so there is your answer
