YMMV / Oppenheimer

• Accidental Aesop:
  • Don't be petty; no matter what, thinking "It's All About Me" can have self-destructive consequences. Strauss' attempt to end Oppenheimer's career, based on the notion that he thought Oppenheimer and Einstein were talking shit about him behind his back, only ends in his own career being derailed.
  • Understanding how to communicate with powerful people will get you far. Oppenheimer flubbed when talking with Truman and made himself look like a crybaby, thus robbing him of any chance of getting his message across to perhaps the only person who could actually do something about it.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • In their confrontation, is Truman being needlessly cruel to Oppenheimer by dismissing his guilt, or annoyed that Oppenheimer is only feeling bad about the people killed by his own invention, and not the thousands of people who died in more conventional bombing (like the Tokyo firebombing raids, which killed more people than either atom bomb; official figures are about 100,000 deaths and that might be lowballing it) and various military campaigns like the invasion of Okinawa (~241,000 casualties from both sides, more than both atomic bombings combined)? Does he feel the guilt even more keenly than Oppenheimer since it was ultimately his decision to actually drop the bomb and the buck stopped with him, but is more committed to the pragmatic I Did What I Had to Do bit and is annoyed by Oppenheimer's useless self-flagellation? Does he, like Strauss, think that Oppenheimer is being a hypocrite since he knew from the beginning that they were developing an incredibly powerful weapon with the full intent to use it, but is only complaining after the war had ended?
  • Likewise, is Oppenheimer acting like It's All About Me and overestimating the effect of the bombs in the war while giving a mixed message about whether they were justified or properly addressing that they're a bigger issue than any other wartime weapon by magnitudes? Within the film, it is referenced that more people died in the fire-bombing of Tokyo than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. To what extent are his objections principled opposition to Cold War escalation and arms racing, and to what extent are his critics right that he wants to have his cake and eat it too, getting all the credit for the scientific achievement the bomb represents but none of the responsibility for the destruction it caused? The two aren't even mutually exclusive, and not all of his critics are antagonists whose opinions are tainted with ulterior motives.
  • In addition to Oppenheimer's mixed feelings on the bomb, how right is he to object to Cold War paranoia given that his repeated justification throughout the Manhattan Project was that the bomb had to be completed before Nazi Germany had completed their own atomic bomb? The paranoia that the enemy is far worse than the Americans having the atomic bomb is pretty much repeated by others when describing the Russians whose history and reputation are only marginally better than Nazi Germany. Are Oppenheimer's former communist friendships swaying him to be more open to the communists compared to the fascists? Or is this a genuine sign of character development and believing this Slippery Slope Fallacy has gone too far since this arsenal is being developed for peacetime rather than wartime?
  • Did Oppenheimer tell the military about the Chevalier incident because he was genuinely worried about a potential threat to the project's security, or because he was trying to prove that he would be willing to come forward about such contacts in an effort to boost his own shaky trustworthiness?
• Americans Hate Tingle: The film rather understandably received mixed reviews when it finally premiered in Japan, given Japan's personal experience with the topic, which to this day remains a very touchy subject. Some felt that it overly glorified the bomb and should've paid more attention to the horrific aftereffects suffered by the citizens of Hiroshima, while others appreciated the story of how Oppenheimer was also in a sense a victim of his own creation and applaud the nuanced portrayal of Oppenheimer's personal history.
• Award Snub: While the film received 13 Academy Award nominations and seven wins in total (the most for any film that year, including Best Picture), Best Visual Effects was not one of them, despite the acclaim Nolan and the effects team received for successfully recreating the Trinity Test and accurately depicting complex physical and chemical reactions in Oppenheimer's imagination using only practical effects. Not only that, but it didn't even make the preliminary longlist released in early December 2023. Some have suggested that the film was snubbed due to the emphasis Nolan placed on the film's use of practical and in-camera effects rather than CGI — a dramatic reversal from the situation in 1983, when TRON was excluded from contention because it used CGI.
• Awesome Music: The Oscar-winning soundtrack by Ludwig Göransson has a few standouts:
  • "Can You Hear The Music" accelerates from an entrancing violin piece to a vortex of beauty, conveying Oppenheimer's fascination with the quantum world and the passion of his work.
  • "Destroyer of Worlds", a contemplative piano and violin piece that builds into a haunting, synth-heavy track as Oppenheimer envisions the nightmare he has created: the world now perpetually at the brink of annihilation from the power he unleashed.
  • "What Have We Done," which plays under the scene where the Manhattan scientists learn the bomb has been used, sounds very similar to the first movement of Mozart's Requiem, "Lacrimosa." Day of wrath, day of ruin, indeed.
  • "Oppenheimer", which plays over the closing credits, is a haunting combination of piano and strings that allows you to breathe after the film and think about the horrifying implications that are bound to follow the events.
  • "Colonel Pash" is an absolutely chilling Leitmotif consisting of atonal sinister electric strings and pounding rhythms that recalls Slasher Movie theme music, fitting for a character with a brutal reputation and truly cementing Pash's status as The Dreaded.
  • "Trinity" is eight minutes of frenzied tension that builds up to an absolutely phenomenal climax.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The fact that Lewis Strauss despises Oppenheimer and is working to undermine the man at every opportunity is supposed to come across as a huge twist near the end of the film. However, Strauss' constant passive-aggressive dialogue towards Oppenheimer after their first meeting, along with him often coldly staring at the man and claiming that he "turned the scientists against [him]" makes him seem rather suspicious right from the start, and thus makes his Villainous Breakdown over his hatred for Oppenheimer seem almost telegraphed in its depiction rather than the surprise it's supposed to be.
• Catharsis Factor: Strauss being exposed by Hill for his actions that were working to undermine Oppenheimer, that the scientists all saw through it without Oppenheimer having to say anything to Einstein—which he didn't—and Strauss being denied the Senate seat he was seeking is a pretty satisfying Humiliation Conga—especially with ultimately being Hoist by His Own Petard rather than it actually being that someone planned the same kind of underhanded tactics against him.
• Crossover Ship: Due to the "Barbenheimer" meme, many people have legitimately started shipping Barbie and J. Robert Oppenheimer together, including writing fanfics and drawing fan art of the characters in a romantic relationship. AO3 has an increasing amount of Oppenheimer/Ken fics as well.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Quite a few characters, due to the movie being set in the first half of the 20th century when mental health was less understood.
  • For Oppenheimer himself, the real man, during graduate school, was diagnosed with what at the time was called a form of "schizophrenia" that we today recognize as bipolar disorder. It is implied in the film that he was severely depressed at Cambridge, and he is described by Teller as behaving erratically more than once. It is downplayed in the film compared to American Prometheus, which describes Oppenheimer acting in a manic way at times and at one point even trying to throttle a friend after learning of the friend's engagement. In the film, he is still shown throwing a glass against a wall repeatedly for no reason, trying to poison a teacher apparently on impulse, and making bad decisions involving relationships and sex, hinting at either some sort of personality or mood disorder (though, again, the movie drastically tones this down from the biography upon which it is based). It is not possible to posthumously "diagnose" Oppenheimer with a DSM diagnosis, but he had some mental issues that the film hints at in the first 30 minutes in particular.
  • For Jean, her erratic behavior around Oppenheimer in which she simultaneously fears being abandoned by him to the point his final "abandonment" may play a factor in her suicide yet pushes him away, the fact she suffers from rapidly changing mood swings, and her impulsiveness and seeming lack of sense of identity hint at a personality disorder — possibly BPD — rather than merely depression.
  • Also Kitty. Is her alcoholism her only mental illness or is there an underlying cause via postpartum depression (her depression seems to spike after her son is born) or because she is depressed as a housewife when she is also Dr. Oppenheimer due to her PhD in biology yet referred to as Mrs. Oppenheimer and stuck in the role of a housewife?
• Ending Fatigue: After the atomic bomb test and subsequent use of the bombs, some viewers think the final act of the film slows to a crawl, with seemingly endless hearings and witness testimony. Then again, plenty of other viewers found the hearings and testimonies just as gripping as the development of the bomb.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Einstein has maybe 10 total minutes of screentime in this 3-hour movie, but due to a mixture of being the most instantly recognizable figure in the movie as far as pop culture is concerned and Tom Conti looking almost exactly like the real man, his scenes have become a great source of Memetic Mutation.
  • Isidor Isaac Rabi has also been praised as a standout, thanks to his warm and jovial presence and the popularity of his actor David Krumholtz.
• Fandom Rivalry: Along with Barbie, the two films have started to grow one with fans of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, which was released just over a week before and has since suffered from the worst domestic box office drop in the entire Mission: Impossible movie franchise, which is in no small part thanks to going up against the "Barbenheimer" hype of its two biggest competitors and Oppenheimer leaving only a single week of IMAX screens to Dead Reckoning (the Mission: Impossible film series has thrived at the box office in part due to that format) before monopolizing said screens.
• Fandom-Specific Plot:
  • A very common Barbenheimer crossover fic plot is Barbie being hired as a secretary at Los Alamos and getting her potential noticed by Oppenheimer, which leads to him getting her a job that allows her to work on the bomb directly (especially since one of Barbie's many careers is that of a scientist). Her upbeat, cheery personality will usually rub off on Oppenheimer and cause him to be a bit less brooding.
  • If Ken appears in a Barbenheimer fic, expect him and Oppenheimer to develop an unexpected bond over their shared love of horses.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: The titular Oppenheimer is canonically paired with his wife Kitty, but online his ship with Ernest Lawrence is more popular due to their close friendship and the chemistry between Cillian Murphy and Josh Hartnett. Those who don't ship Oppenheimer with Lawrence tend to ship him with Barbie from the film of the same name over any of the canon options, due to the Barbenheimer memes and the fact that the two fandoms get along very well.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Oppenheimer built up massive pre-release excitement alongside, of all things, Greta Gerwig's Barbie, due to the fact both hotly-anticipated films ended up sharing a release date. Due to just how tonally opposite they were from one another — Oppenheimer, the heavy epic biographical drama about the creation of the nuclear bomb vs. Barbie, the colorful and wacky fantasy comedy about the self-aware life of a fashion doll — led to many people jokingly expressing intent to see both on the same day, and considering the record-smashing box office numbers of both films, it's very likely some people meant it with sincerity. There is some degree of Fandom Rivalry based on some fans from both sides viewing each other as genuine competition (Nolan himself expressed some bitterness over Warner Bros. scheduling Barbie for the sake weekend as Oppenheimer, which he saw as an attempt to get back at him for taking the film to Universal), but for the most part, the "Barbenheimer" phenomenon is largely seen with mutual fondness and appreciation that likely boosted the reputations and profits of both projects, and the creators of each work have had nothing but praise for the other film.
  • While overlaps with Fandom Rivalry, it's common to see fans also recommending The Wind Rises for their similar subject matter as seen below.
  • With Godzilla Minus One, a Kaiju film released in November 3rd, 2023. Because Godzilla is traditionally personified as an embodiment of nuclear weapons, fans of both movies will splice together the movies into fanmade trailers, and showing the consequences of Oppenheimer's invention of the atom bomb and showing Godzilla's rampage and charge his atomic breath. Takashi Yamazaki, the director of Minus One, even met Cillian Murphy, and they took a photo together.
• He Really Can Act: Although no-one ever doubted the acting abilities of Cillian Murphy or Robert Downey Jr., their Academy Award-winning performances in Oppenheimer showcase just how talented they are.
  • Robert Downey Jr. had received criticism over the '10s for simply doing repeated variations on Iron Man when he wasn't simply playing that role and relying too much on humor rather than challenging himself as an actor. His performance here reminded everyone of his versatility, as he plays a role totally unlike Tony Stark and makes the revelation that Strauss was working against Oppenheimer and secretly despises him genuinely surprising. It also brilliantly portrays Strauss' inflated ego, vindictiveness, and petulance while still giving him a certain kind of charisma and some sympathetic qualities and being dead on in his assessment that Oppenheimer wants credit for creating the bomb but not responsibility for its effects.
  • Cillian Murphy had never really gotten much chance to showcase his skills in a big hit outside of a leading turn in 28 Days Later and the TV show Peaky Blinders and supporting roles in Red Eye and several other Nolan films. Here, he finally gets a leading role that lets him demonstrate his full range as an actor. And he completely knocks it out of the park with a beautifully internalized performance that highlights Oppenheimer's arrogance, charisma, brilliant mind, self-loathing, and all the contradictions that made him the paradoxical figure he was. Even some of his fans wouldn't have guessed he had this kind of performance in him.
• The Inverse Law of Fandom Levity: The film is just as grim of a biopic as you would expect a film about the man who spearheaded the development of the atomic bomb to be and features many a complex, nuanced character who makes decisions which can be immediately concluded to be good or bad. It also had the providence of not only being released in the age of the internet, but also was caught up in the "Barbenheimer" meme fad, which resulted in fans of the film spawning a ton of ludicrous jokes (such as the "Oppenheimer style" trailer) and the word "Oppenheimer" entering into the internet's greater lexicon of Inherently Funny Words.
• Jerkass Woobie: While Kitty is not the world's most pleasant person or a model parent by any means, a lot of her bitterness stems from her utter misery at essentially being forced to become a housewife despite being far more capable and intelligent than that, and she's married to a man who barely provides her with emotional support and constantly cheats on her, something that makes her very hard not to sympathize with.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Manhattan Project nerds and science nerds will have to sit through the drama about the Strauss hearing for the last hour.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Unsurprisingly, the entire AO3 page for the movie is someone shipping Cillian Murphy's version of Oppenheimer with someone else because he is that damn magnetic and blue-eyed. The top ships seem to be Oppenheimer/Lawrence, Oppenheimer/Groves, and some Oppenheimer/Strauss. Still, all of these are eclipsed by all the Oppenheimer/Barbie and Oppenheimer/Ken fics.
• Memetic Loser: Due to Oppenposting it became popular to depict Oppenheimer as either a naïve idiot who's totally clueless about his own invention (and everything else), a perpetual sad sack who broods and complains over obviously correct actions, or both.
• Memetic Mutation: See here.
• Narm:
  • Oppenheimer's first time saying his infamous quote "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" is... during a lull while having sex with Jean, while she's still topless and re-mounting him, holding the book out for him to read to her. It's seemingly intended to be dramatic foreshadowing, but it comes off as pretty silly and out-of-nowhere in this context.
  • The Senate aide's revealing that John F. Kennedy led the swing votes in the Senate to defeat Strauss' confirmation in a manner that has been likened to a teaser in a superhero film. By 1959, Kennedy was a decorated war hero and Pulitzer Prize-winning author from an already wealthy and prominent family who had been in Congress for over a decade and come second in balloting for the 1956 Democratic vice presidential nomination, so the idea of Strauss being unfamiliar with him comes across as just plain silly.
• Older Than They Think:
  • While much has been made of this film and Barbie (2023) being released on the same day given their vast differences in tones, it's far from the first time that something like this has happened; one notable example is Christopher Nolan's own The Dark Knight releasing on the same day as Mamma Mia!. The reason boils down to simple business logic; films with vastly different tones and themes are unlikely to compete for the same audience, and thus studios are unlikely to feel much apprehension about releasing them around the same time.
  • This isn't the first film depicting the story of the Manhattan Project, but it's the first major film on the subject to focus on Oppenheimer. The two previous examples, The Beginning Or The End (1947) and Fat Man and Little Boy (1989), centered on Gen. Leslie Groves, with Oppenheimer in a supporting role (played by Hume Cronyn in the former and Dwight Schultz in the latter). However, on the television side, there was the 1980 BBC Mini Series Oppenheimer, where he was played by Sam Waterston.
• One-Scene Wonder: Almost inevitable due to the massive All-Star Cast, but even then some truly stand out:
  • Gary Oldman, disappearing into his role as ever, only gets one scene as President Truman, but his presence looms large over the film before and after it, and his dismissively cutting but brutally fair criticism of Oppenheimer's hand-wringing makes it one of the most memorable parts of the film.
  • Similarly, James Remar as Secretary of War Henry Stimson. He only appears during one scene where the top brass is discussing potential targets for the bombs, and his main contribution to the discussion is to rule out Kyoto as a target for its "cultural significance", but really just for the simple reason that he honeymooned there with his wife and has a personal fondness for the city.^*This is a popular urban legend that Remar researched and added to the scene himself; it has no basis in any historical text. Stimson also opposed conventional firebombing of the city, and as a result, it still has more historical structures standing than any other major Japanese city. The sheepish little smile Remar does as he delivers this line says more about the casual way in which powerful men can write off the lives of thousands for arbitrary reasons than an entire monologue could, while also making clear that the men in charge of such devices are normal human beings who are capable of humanity and love, which arguably makes the sheer power they wield even more terrifying.
  • Casey Affleck gets barely more than one scene as Colonel Boris Pash, yet completely steals the show while interrogating Oppenheimer about the Chevalier affair with an expression of barely concealed menace.
  • Rami Malek as Dr. David L. Hill, only speaking near the end of the film in a glorious scene that very subduedly spells out for Strauss why the American scientific community believes he threw Oppenheimer under the bus.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: In the Friendly Fandoms between this and Barbie, on top of being a portmanteau title for the film, many fans also use "Barbenheimer" for the Crossover Ship between Barbie and Oppenheimer.
• Signature Scene: Undoubtedly the Trinity test itself. Practically all the film's marketing focuses on it (and the fact that Nolan recreated the explosion exclusively through practical effects and camera tricks ^note No nuclear bombs were used, however.), the first two hours of the movie are spent gradually building up to it, and when it finally hits it does not disappoint visually. It's easily the most talked about single scene in the film.
• Special Effect Failure: The "gore" Oppenheimer hallucinates during his Japanese bombing speech looks less like a woman being flayed alive by a bomb and more like a half-removed face mask.
• Spiritual Successor: The film is often seen as a live-action companion piece to Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises. Both are biopics about the men who ended up creating two of the most infamous weapons of World War II while following their passions, making them feel regret for their creations being used for atrocities. Both films received criticisms for not addressing the human cost of making such weapons, and also have Emily Blunt as the love interests of the main characters.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Many people were disappointed that John von Neumann, who was one of the main contributors to the Manhattan Project and regarded as one of the greatest scientists in history wasn't included in the movie.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Practical effects were used not just for the Trinity Test but also for the shots showing the interactions of atoms and energy waves and depictions of supernovas.
• The Woobie: Jean, who suffers from severe clinical depression and is clearly a very mentally unstable person. Oppenheimer serves as the one comfort in her life and she latches onto him as her Living Emotional Crutch and sole source of happiness, eventually killing herself after he breaks off their relationship because she couldn't live without him.

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