#but it looks like people think /oppenheimer is glorifying the man?

[dingdangit]

ruining the high of seeing both Movies by going online and remembering about media illiteracy. dead dove do not eat i guess.

[bewires]

oppenheimer criticisms I haven't seen but think would be fair:

-choice to have 90% of florence pugh's screentime being "hysterical topless woman"

-movie does not pass bechdel test at all; otoh it is a historical biopic representing the life of a man to whose field of study very few women had access at the time and the movie makes a point to show those women gaining access. like. it's not a movie about women at all, and I doubt I will see nolan make such a movie ever, but beyond florence pugh's character there are some good and nuanced moments in there especially with emily blunt but also with minor characters

-early sequences of tortured baby oppenheimer dreaming the beauty of physics are very overwrought

-choice to not shoot on location in germany (look this one is just for me I have been to all the places oppenheimer studied (I am not a theoretical physics fangirl but I know several) and the only place they chose not to actually film in person is göttingen which I take personal offense at)

-they cast matthias schweighöfer in a hollywood movie. no excuses for that one tbh.

oppenheimer criticisms I have seen and think are unfair

-"nolan can't make a good war movie" bc he will not make an intersectional war movie. potentially accurate in re dunkirk, which I didn't see bc I don't like war movies, but in this case he did not make a war movie, he made a historical biopic. the war is relevant, obviously, but the movie is not at all about the battlefield or the front, it is about the life of a physicist, and yes, it's not very intersectional.

-the effects of the a-bomb on the people of japan are not given due diligence. I understand people disagreeing about this but I have also seen several posts of people going "I won't watch this but I bet it doesn't" and uh. I think it does. I think every moment in this movie after the trinity test is entirely about oppenheimer realizing the impact of his research and it is shown several times, excruciatingly, how aware he is of what the effects of the a-bomb were. we do not see the bomb, nor do we see japan, because again, it is a historical biopic about this one dude and he wasn't there. this is also the first time I have seen a mainstream hollywood movie make repeat and pointed note of the fact that in a military sense the use of a-bombs in japan was not necessary.

-movie is pro-war/glorifies the a-bomb/glorifies oppenheimer. I think the strongest case you can make is that it glorifies the a-bomb because movie splosions are cool. but I also think the movie's biggest strength is its ambiguity. whose fault is it there was an a-bomb? is it oppenheimer's? he sure thinks so! is it einstein's? he sure thinks so at least indirectly! is it the american government's? they sure think so and they're proud of it (all of these according to the various chracters of this movie). is it a good thing they developed the a-bomb? several characters have several differing opinions on this! oppenheimer himself seems very divided and unsure by the end of the movie and cannot make a judgment call. in the end (much like with cillian murphy's other iconic character who wears a hat cough cough) if people walk out of this movie as fans of the character or his actions imo that's on them and not on the authorship of the movie

[colorisbyshe]

Actually, I think it's really interesting that we have two... kinda similar films happening right now.

Like, Sound of Freedom is, on its face, an anti-sex trafficking film. In reality, it's glorifying a shitty dude, misrepresenting what sex trafficking actually looks like, and is largely funded by the christian right to mobilize a group to self arm and be more paranoid.

Rightfully, people point and laugh at it as the Q Anon film and when people go "WHY WOULD YOU HATE AN ANTI TRAFFICKING FILM??" the critics are able to articulate how having a good message on its face doesn't mean something more insidious can't be happening on a deeper level.

And yet... when similar criticisms are thrown at Oppenheimer--that it's critical of the man, the war, the bombing but still leaving out essential information and misrepresenting the cost of what he did, even still--suddenly "WHY WOULD YOU BE AGAINST A FILM THAT DOESN'T SHOW HIM AS HEROIC?" is a sensible defense.

Like, yes, it is a film critical of him. Yes, it does leave essential information out. Yes, it does still humanize a bad person. Yes, it does leave people with an inaccurate understanding of real events.

Why do we know to point and laugh at one film and yet the other is above criticism? In many ways, Oppenheimer is just... Sound of Freedom for liberals.

My dude did Dunkirk... which we know erased people of color and ultimately just served to worship white soldiers and war, even while crying about how bad it is... like... he has a track record of doing exactly this already.

[alwaysahiccupandastrid]

My sister and I saw Oppenheimer on Friday night, and we both came out of the cinema with the most gut-wrenching and overwhelming sense of dread. We could not be more different as people, but we both looked at each other after the film and agreed, "the human race is fUCKED" because of the creation of nuclear weapons, neither of us slept easy that night and we're still on edge. I understand why people are complaining and thinking that the film might glorify Robert Oppenheimer, but overall my takeaway was not "this man was a genius" or "this man was amazing", it was "this man fucking doomed us all", and I like to think that's what Nolan's intention was.

[fandomshatepeopleofcolor]

it still pisses me off that oppenheimer is more beloved than the little mermaid. Like the little mermaid and halle bailey deserve better than having to deal with all the misogynoir towards its casting of ariel

So I know this is going to come as a shock... but I don't exactly agree with everything here. specifically the first part.

like granted I have a whole tag on this blog about oppenheimer

but its really a very complicated issue? mostly because I haven't seen the movie and I don't know know much about Oppenheimer (except now that he's Jewish and what I know from his wiki article). Like I went into the anti oppenheimer tag and found a lot of stuff including how antisemitic it is to blame Oppenheimer for the consequences of the bomb. like I'm not sure "beloved" is the right word.

To me its kinda creepy that a director like nolan who doesn't usually put sex scenes put a universally disliked one in this movie

specifically this scene

lets not forget this is a war propaganda film. and I don't know if you've noticed but hollywood is REALLY GOOD at those. (looking at you top gun and top gun maverick)

I think that's the danger with the publics fascination with war, death and true crime tbh. People have this sick fascination with death and destruction. I'm one to talk I love the mcu but to me that's like comic book stuff. I feel though that because the little mermaid is for young girls of color specifically and white girls are so used to being catered to... this struck a nerve. Its kinda like why Barbie is so big right now. white girls of all ages are being catered to AGAIN. But tlm was explicitly a caribbean kingdom filled with PoC and it didn't have sex or glorify white women. in fact that's one of the things that led to so many white girls saying that the actress who played vanessa should have been Ariel instead. (don't believe me? I'll get you receipts).

Like there's something I can't quite articulate about a Jewish man who got into the arms race to drop a war stopping bomb on nazis but then his bomb wasn't needed anymore and it was dropped on civilians on the other side of the world instead.

idk idk I'm just rambling don't look at me.

mod ali

[cuntstable]

all the oppenheimer shit has been so annoying for so many reasons like truly one of the most ”dont ever mention this shit to me ever again” pop culture moments in a while. AND from multiple angles to boot because like yes there are good reasons to critize the movie, both from the angle of ”why does this movie even exist” and for the actual shit in the film, or rather the lack of mention for things like downwinders or the way the manhattan project that oppenheimer helmed displaced and exploited the local population in Nm.

but like a lot of the criticism is boiled down by its defenders to ”people are upset that there arent scenes of random nameless japanese civilians dying in this BIOPIC about a single guy” when… i dont think anyone is actually saying that. a more honest rebuttal would be something like ”well the effects and aftermath of the bombs has been thoroughly explored in japanese literature and cinema, by the people directly affected by them, and the exclusion of the suffering of japanese civilians in oppenheimer is also a direct reflection on how the man himself did not care nor did the american military leadership at large” which to be fair i have seen people make and thats a fair point!! but it can still co exist with the observation that wide spread acknowledgement of the suffering of the people of NM has never been given main stream time of day even when its something thats causing pain and grief to this day. and people have the right to question if a 3h movie about oppenheimer even needs to exist, and can it even exist with out glorifying the man in one way or another even if looks at oppenheimer the person and his actions critically. in which case its fair to ask ”should this have even been made, was it worth it?”

but then the shit that makes the public discourse actually intolerably annoying and infuriating is the people making jokes about nukes and about people who rightfully point out how devastating they and the manhattan project were (the other day i saw a woman on twitter talking about how her grandmother grew up near the test sites and how most of her peers developed leukimia, and she was met with replies making fun of her grandmother with the fucking coughing baby meme), the wave of sympathy (intentional or not) the movie has generated towards oppenheimer the person (ive seen people treat him like hes a fictional character?? especially with all the barbenheimer shit) and the usual surface level criticisms like ”oh the movie doesnt pass the betchel test :(” that make all criticism of the movie look stupid simply through association. like lets all kill our selfs at this point ok and never speak of this movie ever again. ok.