Oppenheimer is Nolan's worst film

Love it....hate it.....Sick of Nolan.....Nolan's the greatest ever. My guess is that the worst thing a movie can be is middle-whelming, un-noticed and bland and forgettable.

Oppenheimer is none of that. If I had not seen it and knew nothing about Oppenheimer and The Bomb, all this would make me curious enough to see it. A bad movie is the one where it's Sunday, somebody asks me what I did on Friday and all I can come up with is that I saw a movie. What movie? Something with popcorn. I think it had a guy with a hat, or something.

For better or worse, I do remember it. That's probably a good thing.

That's between Dunkirk or Tenet imo.

It would be Tenet, which is like every bad Nolan stereotype thrown together for the antithesis of fun.

I wonder when these Oppenheimer threads will finally die out.

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Probably when there's another interesting movie, whenever the heck that is. Oppenheimer was a great mix of actual history, personalities and momentous events. The closest I've come for a while was Twisters, which was fun but hardly momentous. As "important" movies go, that's not enough to dethrone Oppenheimer and Nolan.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that Oppenheimer is a good, but not great movie. It's bloated, repeats nearly identical scenes, and assumes we care about whether the main character's security clearance is revoked. Not exactly high stakes, in my opinion. But it has great performances, and amazing visuals and sound. Best Picture Oscar worthy? Not really. But the other Oscar wins were deserved.

Nolan's only made one straight up BAD movie, and it's Dark Knight Rises. If we're done with Oppenheimer, I will gladly discuss everything wrong with DKR.

That whole security clearance thing is a big deal in history and subsequent events like McCarthyism, communist paranoia, etc.

I still haven't seen it. It looks depressing. Everything I've heard about it sounds depressing, but they say it's a MASTERPIECE! meh. The Mona Lisa is a masterpiece, but it looks plain as hell, boring. If this is his worst film I wouldn't be surprised. Just hope this isnt the direction he stays on going forward, and he be so stuck on himself he forgets who the movies are made for.

I agree with the title. However, to me it still means it's pretty good. It's just a tad overlong.

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I get what you're saying. It's just that compared to the Nazis making the bomb first, and the possibility of accidentally ending the world, it doesn't have the same level of stakes.

The stakes were extremely high. The Soviet Union stole a lot of nuclear tech from the US.

Ironically, the Nazis were not really very close. They were so blinded by ideology that the science of nukes was a long way off for them. They were trying to make a bomb from "heavy water", which skipped some big steps.

What happened to Oppenheimer was a very big deal for him, but there are plenty of discussions to be had about whether the portrayal of the character Oppenheimer in the film was presented compellingly enough to be moved by his outcome. That it occurred in real life doesn't automatically give the film a pass. Otherwise, every biopic about a complex character would be excellent by default. I love the movie (for all those just coming across this thread, it was intended as a joke), but other people might be left cold by the character Oppenheimer for different reasons.

I haven't seen Tenet but I would say Memento or Insomnia might be his least best movies. Not that that they are bad movies at all, just his least best.

Having seen some of the documentary footage on Oppenheimer and his troubles with the √and read some of the commentary, I think it's worth noting something that most subsequent Americans forget, which is that in WW II, the US had a military alliance with the USSR. In spite of all of the suspicions and mistrust, everybody gritted their teeth for a while in pursuit of beating the nazis.

"Oppenheimer wrote on his personal security questionnaire that he had been "a member of just about every Communist Front organization on the West Coast." Nothing about Oppie's associations was a secret. It became a sin after the fact, wasn't even close to being a crime when it happened.

That is the problem with bomb movies.....its a long and tangled history, partially obscured by ideology and the raging self interest of guys like McCarthy. The movie version tried to keep it simple but there are so many sub-stories behind the Bomb that you'd need a 15 hour movie to be comprehensive. Most people have never heard of other participants in the project, like Leo Szilard or John VonNewman.

That's all interesting context. That said, a great deal of the criticism I've read from people who found the film cold was due to cinema technique, as opposed to how historically comprehensive it was. I've seen some people criticize the frequent close–up shots and loud noises being relied on to carry the emotional core of the film, for instance. While I find that criticism misguided, my point was that the film being based on true events or being historically accurate doesn't automatically make it excellent.

There's no way to make an easy movie about the Bomb. Between political and ideological intrigues, spying, secrecy and a lot of subsequent re-writing of the story, it's the proverbial mystery wrapped in an enigma. Some parts of the project were a secret for many years after. The movie doesn't even get to the question of isotope separation and the difference between a uranium and a plutonium bomb, not to mention the physics of how to initiate an explosion, which is quite different for those two types of bombs.

There was a lot of drama about the project, much of which centered around Oppenheimer, since he was the guy that got blamed in the communist witch hunt purges. Revoking his security clearance seems trivial, but for a guy who was at the center of the project, it essentially made him into a non-person, not to mention how, for those who were so paranoid, he was labelled as a communist. Robert's brother, Frank, also a physicist, was painted with the "communist" label. He eventually retired from science to raise cattle, but some way-back family members of mine had contact with him when he was teaching at Hopkins in Baltimore. They apparently were afraid of being tainted too, even though they just knew him as a neighbor.

I still don't think you're understanding my point. Again, I'm fully aware that Oppenheimer losing his security clearance is a big deal for the reasons you mentioned in the second paragraph. It was undoubtedly a serious blow to him in real life and I'm not doubting that at all.

The point I'm making is that there's a difference between the suffering which Oppenheimer himself went through in real life vs. being able to sympathize with the portrayal of the character Oppenheimer in the movie. As I said up above, I've seen some criticism towards the frequent close‐up shots and the overbearing score/sound effects which some people were left cold by. The movie heavily utilizes both at putting you in Oppenheimer's headspace, so if someone didn't like that approach, they could still be left cold by the film. Of course, this doesn't change the consequences the real life Oppenheimer faced, but it would mean that they'd be left cold by the portrayal of the character Oppenheimer in the film.

And again, I love the film, so I'm not one of those people, but they do exist.

Oppenheimer succeeds mainly because it had a heart. It shows us a flawed human, gifted intelligence and all, who failed to heed Einstein’s warning and plowed ahead ignoring the mora ramifications until it was too late. The fact is, he didn’t help to create the bomb out of any real patriotic obligation, but because it was a challenge. He ignored the possible leaks just to make sure his work would be uninterrupted.
When the bomb was detonated successfully, the movie left out a quote that one of the other scientists had said, which itself would have been a grave warning as well: “Now we’re all sons of b*tches…”.
After, we see how the bombing effected Oppenheimer; “I have blood on my hands…”

Heavy stuff indeed, on the human side of the story.

On the technical side, o didn’t find the closeups all that bad. At time, they’re even necessary.

I liked the close-ups. Wearing my history hat, I've seen a lot of period photos of Oppenheimer. The hat, the bug-eyes, lean physique, baggy suit, etc are what makes the character credible. If I had any problems with a character, it was Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves. Groves was fatter, grouchier and more directly involved than in the movie. One of the books I recall reading was one called Fat Man and Little Boy, allusions to both the names on the first two bombs and the Groves-Oppenheimer pairing. It was also the title of a previous nuke history movie. I recall that one where Paul Newman was Groves and a guy local to me that I've seen in live theater, Dwight Schultz, as Oppenheimer. I'm not sure who would be the best Groves but Newman didn't seem right either. I also recall another way-back 1947 movie, The Beginning or The End that presented the story as a docudrama.

What is Nolan's best film. Please don't say Batman. Once you have to start making movies, like 3D rendered the Simpsons or Tom and Jerry or about Historical figures what does that say. I tried watching Taras Bulba the other day but I couldn't make it past five minutes. I mean once you see one person's hand get chopped off in a movie that pretty much fulfills my quota for having to see that. I know Taras Bulba is historical and it is a good movie. But I am not watching it. Hollywood's weapons for battle are not the same as Gods.

Pretty soon it is going to be, let's make a movie for the Carnegies and the Rockefellers. Because those are the only people who are going to be watching them.