Oppenheimer The Review

[Woodznutz]

It could have been a decent movie if they had just told the story straight through. One or two flashbacks can be important to a plot, but they had so much of that that the editing gymnastics destroyed the flow of the whole thing. It was chopped up to the point it became confusing to those who didn't know the history.

As far as the editing goes, there is a whole bunch of it that nobody would have missed if it had wound up on the cutting room floor. The movie did not have have sufficient interesting or necessary content to be as long as it was.

I am not sorry I watched but it is one I probably would not choose to watch again.

I might rent it, so I can pause it for bathroom breaks.

 

[koshergrl]

Good review.

I was planning on seeing it at the theater but got an inkling that it was Leftest garbage from the reviews. I'm glad I didn't go. I won't rent or buy it but will probably watch it once it it is free on one of my streaming services.

The atom bomb - the ultimate "fuck around and find out" response to the goddamn Japs being assholes.

I spent two years in Los Alamos as a girl..my brother and I watched it together to see some familiar spots.
It was a closed city until just a few years before we moved there. They drove a tank through town at 2 am every Tuesday, to keep the battery charged.

I had a horse and that area has the most amazing horseback rides in the world. The canyons are full of petroglyphs and ancient cliff dwellings. The mountains have towns founded by Spanish priests long before there was a United States.

The movie was fun for us. Oppenheimer was considered crackpot and his wife a drunk but they were gone before we got there. Well maybe she was still around. I don't know, I was a high school girl learning to drink and smoke weed. But we did enjoy the movie.

 

[Foxfyre]

I might rent it, so I can pause it for bathroom breaks.

Yes, I don't mean to discourage anyone from seeing it. I just don't appreciate what to me was poor direction and editing of what could have been a much better movie. But it is still worth seeing once.

 

[mudwhistle]

It could have been a decent movie if they had just told the story straight through. One or two flashbacks can be important to a plot, but they had so much of that that the editing gymnastics destroyed the flow of the whole thing. It was chopped up to the point it became confusing to those who didn't know the history.

As far as the editing goes, there is a whole bunch of it that nobody would have missed if it had wound up on the cutting room floor. The movie did not have have sufficient interesting or necessary content to be as long as it was.

I am not sorry I watched but it is one I probably would not choose to watch again.

I was curious about why the critics said it was a great film......then by the end I knew why they said it was.
The critics all seem to hate America or have communist leanings.
Right now Putin is gloating about the downfall of America and the fact that our president is illegitimate.
He openly says that Biden lost and simply stole the vote tallies and changed them.

 

[Failzero]

Which Power will be the Second to use the Bomb ?

 

[Foxfyre]

I was curious about why the critics said it was a great film......then by the end I knew why they said it was.
The critics all seem to hate America or have communist leanings.
Right now Putin is gloating about the downfall of America and the fact that our president is illegitimate.
He openly says that Biden lost and simply stole the vote tallies and changed them.

Well I sort of cringe when Putin takes our side in something, but oh well.
But you're probably right. The government treated Oppenheimer abysmally so that part of the history was spot on however irritating. McCarthyism produced some terrible injustices and Oppenheimer got caught up in that. I have no problem with that being illustrated however much I love America and however much I am absolutely not a communist sympathizer.

My criticism of the film is not so much the content but that they used unnecessary editing acrobatics in the presentation that destroyed the flow of the story that could have been so much more compelling. And as I said, there just wasn't enough necessary and important content in it for it to be as long as it was. It would have benefitted from some editing there.

 

[Foxfyre]

I was curious about why the critics said it was a great film......then by the end I knew why they said it was.
The critics all seem to hate America or have communist leanings.
Right now Putin is gloating about the downfall of America and the fact that our president is illegitimate.
He openly says that Biden lost and simply stole the vote tallies and changed them.

A bit of unrelated trivia:
In our final working career, Hombre and I ran a small business providing various insurance services for insurance companies, i.e. safety inspections, condition reports, value appraisals, premium audits and such. And in the course of that I was assigned a home inspection on what turned out to be the home Oppenheimer lived in here in Albuquerque which was during the Manhattan Project in the 1940's. The owner of the property, a very old but mentally sharp man, lived next door and knew Oppenheimer during that time and expressed what an interesting and fun guy he was. Funny how little events like that resurface from time to time.

(The house was definitely an old home, quite modest in size and appearance, in a somewhat declining neighborhood. Even in that earlier time, it was obvious Oppenheimer was not living a lavish lifestyle.)

 

[Unkotare]

We won , get over it .

"Get over" what?

 

[Leo123]

The starving, demoralized public that had long since grown tired of a war they were obviously going to lose? Predominantly comprised of women, children, and the elderly? It's just about 2024 and you are still swallowing WW2 era propaganda meant for another country's civilian population? Ridiculous.

When Hirohito approved Tojo's plans to attack Pearl Harbor he sealed the fate of his country. The U.S. is not morally responsible for the outcome, that rests solely with Hirohito in his grave.

 

[Foxfyre]

Despite everything, we watched it last night.
It looks like a movie produced to impress Hollywood than the rest of us.
Top actors, lots of melodrama, and a script that makes America look like a monster.

They did go to considerable lengths to make the movie appear to be accurate. Used actual statements made during Senate hearings, portrayed Oppenheimer going to places and visiting people as it was recorded by FBI investigators. If you delve no deeper than than that - then you surely believe it was accurate.
But beneath keeping to actual events, the movie assumes that all conversations and discussions made by everyone was against the bomb, and assumes the opinion that Japan was about to surrender. Indeed, one of the last words spoken in the movie was that - "we dropped a bomb on an enemy that was ready to surrender".
Even though, the facts and what we know from the Japanese leaders themselves - they would have continued to fight for sometime to come.
In the end the portrayal of the story was everyone who was against the bomb and was open to the idea of socialism - were wise and wonderful. And the people who were for the bomb and against communism were liars and maniacs.

If Japan was ready to surrender they would have done so after the bomb devastated Hiroshima. But three days later we were dropping the bomb on Nagasaki. Assuming the third bomb (they didn't know we didn't have a third bomb) would be on Tokyo and the Emperor's palace, they finally surrendered. I think history is pretty definite that the proud Japanese would have fought on as long as they could otherwise.

It also is significant that both Germany and Japan were brought to unconditional surrender and were totally at the mercy of the victors. But because we did not exercise revenge or cruelty both Germany and Japan are no longer aggressors or military threats to anybody and are American allies and trading partners.

In all the wars we have fought since that we did not win but instead chose to just stop fighting them, we have left enemies in our wake.

Oppenheimer did not approve of the use of the weapon he was instrumental in developing and I don't think he ever understood the concept of overwhelming strength and unconditional surrender being preferable to war fought politically correct. He was right however that there was great danger in nuclear proliferation though the most terrible of weapons was so terrible it has never been used again by anybody.

 

[koshergrl]

Yes, I don't mean to discourage anyone from seeing it. I just don't appreciate what to me was poor direction and editing of what could have been a much better movie. But it is still worth seeing once.

Yeah that was the way I felt. I think it was a pretty accurate representation of a smart person who really could have used Jesus in his life.

 

[Insaneworld]

I'm surprised that others haven't mentioned the plans of the USSR to invade the north of Japan on the 24th of August 1945, just a few days after the first bomb was used. That coming invasion by the Soviets, more than anything in my opinion, motivated the use of the bomb, as show to BOTH the Japanese AND the Soviets.

Had the Soviets invaded the northern Japanese islands, it would've meant much more bloodshed, and a divided country, like Germany or North/South Korea. Japan WOULD have surrendered eventually, but again at greater cost to everyone. The casualties of conventional bombing alone regularly made it to five or six digits, in Germany AND in Japan.

Had the bombs not been used, hundreds of thousands or more would have still died, and the Soviets would've had much greater say in the fate of Japan after the war, giving them greater access to the pacific and so much more. It would've changed history altogether, had the Soviets had a say in Japan the way they did in Europe.

 

[Flash]

I spent two years in Los Alamos as a girl..my brother and I watched it together to see some familiar spots.
It was a closed city until just a few years before we moved there. They drove a tank through town at 2 am every Tuesday, to keep the battery charged.

I had a horse and that area has the most amazing horseback rides in the world. The canyons are full of petroglyphs and ancient cliff dwellings. The mountains have towns founded by Spanish priests long before there was a United States.

The movie was fun for us. Oppenheimer was considered crackpot and his wife a drunk but they were gone before we got there. Well maybe she was still around. I don't know, I was a high school girl learning to drink and smoke weed. But we did enjoy the movie.

From 1996-2003 I worked at Hanford in Washington State, a Manhattan Project site. That is where the developed of the plutonium bomb used on Nagasaki was made. It was on the desert side of the Cascades along the Columbia River.

Like Los Alamos there was a lot of very interesting history in the area. There were still many people around that remembered the Army coming into the old Hanford town and telling everybody they had two weeks to pack up and leave. They tore down every building in town but the the city streets are still visible.

Lots of stories about what it was like to live at the facility as they were building and working at the site. Probably very similar to what you heard at Los Alamos.

The thing that was interesting is that the public schools in the area were some of the best in the country. That is because the government put tons of money into the schools in order to attract the scientists and engineers with families.

 

[Woodznutz]

Which Power will be the Second to use the Bomb ?

Based on the destruction caused by the powerful new conventional weapons, especially guided smart bombs nukes are hardly needed.

 

[HeyNorm]

That's why I can't watch it in a theatre. I need those breaks.

I’m old enough to remember going to movies and having an intermission during them.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Which Power will be the Second to use the Bomb ?

The only threat of any nuke strike would be N. Korea... which is the fault of Russia for greatly helping them and supplying goods. China for understating and ignoring the problem.
And then the U.S. for it's weak negotiations throughout the 90s and 2000s. By 2006, their first somewhat successful test, it was inexcusable that Bush didn't do a damn thing and then of course Obama did absolutely nothing either, and they now possess intercontinental missiles.

 

[Woodznutz]

I’m old enough to remember going to movies and having an intermission during them.

Me too, for exceptionally long movies. Most are 90 minutes long, however.

 

[Flash]

Admiral Nimitz and General Eisenhower agreed that they would surrender in the fall.
Why would we invade when their navy and air force no longer existed and they were no longer a threat.

The time to have surrendered was before the nukes were used. But they didn't do that.

The Japs still had several thousand aircraft on the mainland and what they could recall from China and had proven that they would not be hesitant to use them in Kamikaze attacks.

The nuke attacks were actually more humane than the fire bombing like were done on Tokyo. Fewer casualties.

Fuck around and find out should be the national motto of the Japs.

 

[koshergrl]

From 1996-2003 I worked at Hanford in Washington State, a Manhattan Project site. That is where the developed of the plutonium bomb used on Nagasaki was made. It was on the desert side of the Cascades along the Columbia River.

Like Los Alamos there was a lot of very interesting history in the area. There were still many people around that remembered the Army coming into the old Hanford town and telling everybody they had two weeks to pack up and leave. They tore down every building in town but the the city streets are still visible.

Lots of stories about what it was like to live at the facility as they were building and working at the site. Probably very similar to what you heard at Los Alamos.

The thing that was interesting is that the public schools in the area were some of the best in the country. That is because the government put tons of money into the schools in order to attract the scientists and engineers with families.

Yes the school was otherworldly...everybody was either employed by the lab, the hospital or the county. These were smart ppl, and so were their kids. And we had kids from all over the world...but primarily Germany, Finland, Sweden. Don't ask me why lol.

That's interesting you lived around Hanford. I lived in Umatilla County for many years which isn't Hanford but is not too far away.

Los Alamos at 7500 feet altitude is higher than Santa Fe. And there was no town, and I don't think there was a county, before they built it. Hanford has been dismantled, I think. Los Alamos is still

From 1996-2003 I worked at Hanford in Washington State, a Manhattan Project site. That is where the developed of the plutonium bomb used on Nagasaki was made. It was on the desert side of the Cascades along the Columbia River.

Like Los Alamos there was a lot of very interesting history in the area. There were still many people around that remembered the Army coming into the old Hanford town and telling everybody they had two weeks to pack up and leave. They tore down every building in town but the the city streets are still visible.

Lots of stories about what it was like to live at the facility as they were building and working at the site. Probably very similar to what you heard at Los Alamos.

The thing that was interesting is that the public schools in the area were some of the best in the country. That is because the government put tons of money into the schools in order to attract the scientists and engineers with families.

Yes the school was otherworldly...everyone was either employed by the lab, the hospital or the county. These were smart ppl, and so were their kids. And we had kids from all over the world...but primarily Germany, Finland, Sweden. Don't ask me why lol.

They still had the quansat (sp?) hut housing and lots of radiation signs and fenced off land with un-detonated explosives. We all ignored the fences and signs.

 

[Flash]

. Hanford has been dismantled, I think.

The nuclear reactors at Hanford have been shut down but there is a substantial cleanup effort underway.

I was involved in the remediation of the Tank Farms when I worked there 20 years ago. The project is still going on. We could have cleaned up that place 25 years ago. However, the "work" is government welfare for the union workers that support the Democrats.