"The power you're about to reveal will forever outlive the Nazis… and the world is not prepared."
Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man.
For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity.
For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity.
— Opening Card
Oppenheimer is a film about the eponymous scientist behind a weapon that isn't just more than deadly, but world-defining. By the time the film is done, you'd be sharing his colossal feeling of "My God, What Have I Done?".
Unmarked spoilers below.
- Both of the film's posters are fittingly hellish: the primary one depicts the infamous bomb as an absolutely hellish sphere of wires and detonators while Oppenheimer stares directly at the viewer with a hollow gaze, while the secondary one (as seen on the main page) is a hauntingly simplistic shot of him walking through the active detonation, flames swirling around him like he's wandering through Armageddon.
- The film opens with, among other seemingly disconnected images, the fireball of Trinity milliseconds after detonation. The sight is downright otherworldly: a sphere of light like a miniature sun, bulging and writhing as it expands. Tendrils shoot from the bottom as the support cables from the tower vaporize into plasma. It is as if man opened a gateway to the flaming depths of Hell itself and left all of Earth at the mercy of its infernal horrors.
- And as the flames move, they reveal the opening text card (see above) from the dark points of the explosion, as if revealing a terrible prophecy to an oracle.
- At one point during the Oppenheimer hearing in Fission, the camera pans behind Roger Robb's head, and the previously fully-dressed Oppenheimer is made naked. One camera cut later, and an equally-naked Jean Tatlock is on the man's lap... And as she wraps herself around Oppenheimer, Jean glares directly at Kitty, who seems to stare back. The fact that nobody seems to notice this is hint enough that this is basically a look at the Oppenheimers' mental states, him being uncomfortably exposed in the worst way possible and her being forcibly confronted with her husband's infidelity in public and on record, averting Naked People Are Funny and going right into Fan Disservice.
- The utterly callous way the Secretary of War "selects" cities to be bombed-noting how Tokyo has been nearly wiped off the Earth with incendiaries, and how he can’t bomb Kyoto because of its cultural significance and that he honeymooned there, and Truman’s similarly callous reaction to the guilt Oppenheimer feels might be more horrifying than the more in-your-face horror in the film.
- This was apparently an ad Lib by James Remar who knew that not only Henry Stimson, but many military officers, did not want to bomb Kyoto due to having been there themselves when Japan was still an ally of the United States.
- One thing the movie does not mention is that Kyoto was removed as a target since it was, and still is, the cultural capital of Japan and has tremendous historical significance. Since the entire point of dropping the atomic bomb was to convince Japan to surrender, the fear was that destroying the city would effectively leave the people with an attitude that they no longer had anything to lose.
- Another chilling fact that the movie does not mention is that the target cities were deliberately left untouched, save for a few strategic targets, so that the full effect of the bomb would have much more impact. As pointed out Tokyo had already effectively been destroyed so the bomb really wouldn’t have made much difference at that point.
- The movie does briefly discuss the effects of a full scale conventional invasion of Japan. However the details of what would be expected from that are largely ignored. Operation Downfall
was expected to take at least two years. The allies already knew that Japanese forces couldn’t care less about the Geneva Conventions and fought to the last man for every malaria infested island in the Pacific. Just imagine how they were going to defend their home islands! Casualty estimates for American soldiers ranged from 200,000 to 2,000,000. Japanese Casualty estimates ranged from 10 to 50 million!!!
- The execution of the Trinity test. The detonator timer goes off, a flash of light suddenly engulfs everyone present, and a massive column of fire rises from the tower... where it used to be. And for what feels like an eternity, the explosion forms into a mushroom-like cloud that fades into the darkness. Finally, we hear Oppenheimer's voice—his memory of "I am become Death, the great destroyer of worlds." Then, just as it seems to be over—BOOM! The shockwave breaks the silent spectacle of the test, startling everyone and even sending George Kistiakowsky sprawling.
- The lead-up to that scene. Even though we know the bomb obviously won't burn the atmosphere, we've been through almost two hours of dissecting its components and carefully analyzing just how dangerous it is. We've seen every single step of the creation of it, but we don't know just how monstrous the explosion will be. From the way the bomb has been framed and presented, it almost makes it look like a Mechanical Abomination waking up.
- Oppenheimer's memory of the test haunts him from that point onward, affecting how the audience sees from his perspective. In the basketball gym, as he gives his speech, the cheers of the assembled become an overwhelming roar as even the wall behind him seem to shake from a shockwave — and then they are suddenly cut silent by a scream. The light from the test bomb washes over them as they continue to cheer. Oppenheimer sees one of the women, the skin from her face peeling off in the atomic blast. Then, the bleachers are suddenly empty. And then another loud Boom! as the camera cuts to Oppenheimer, his speech over, walking through the crowd as if realizing the gravity of his invention's destructive capabilities.
- This scene also gives us the answer to the subtle question posed by the trailers: what is that rhythmic, increasingly louder pounding sound? It's not from the bomb's development, test detonation, or eventual usage — it's the sound of hundreds of people stomping their feet in celebration. THAT is more horrifying and damning for patriotism than anything else in the entire movie.
- As he walks through the gym, we see people mourning ashen bodies, and other hallucinations, before they suddenly disappear. At one point, he looks down to see his foot inside the chest cavity of an ashen body.
- Listen closely to the crowd after the abrupt cut from silence to the crowd roar. It's a mixture of cheers, cries of joy, and horrified cries and screams. At this point it's become extremely clear the unintended consequences his creations had.
- After Oppenheimer tells Pash about the Chevalier incident, Groves, horrified, points out that Pash had once referenced "interrogating" a person of interest "in the Russian manner." The person in question? A grad student (Ross Lomanitz) whose only crime was trying to start a union among the workers in the radiation lab at Berkeley. And when reminded that that was illegal, Pash reportedly replied that he had no intentions of leaving him alive to complain about it.
- Pash's demeanor through the entire scene is chilling, giving the sense of something off about him. It's intercut with Groves telling Oppenheimer about Pash's cruelty, so we slowly realize how much danger Oppie is in as the scene goes on, but are unable to do anything.
- During Oppenheimer's vision of Jean's suicide, there's a brief but terrifying shot of a gloved hand forcing her head underwater, referencing the theories that she was murdered by intelligence officers working for the Manhattan Project — or, more soberly, Oppenheimer's own feeling of responsibility and guilt at contributing to her suicide.
- There's something chilling about the scene when Oppenheimer and Teller watch the two big wooden boxes carrying the infamous atomic bombs "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" leaving Los Alamos, as the audience would know fully well where those two bombs are going and where they're going to be used soon after. Oppenheimer initially believes that the threat of the atomic bomb's power would be enough to create a deterrence between the world nations to finally achieve a lasting peace, until Teller utterly debunks him with one line: "Until someone builds a bigger bomb". (i.e., Teller himself, the creator of the hydrogen bomb)
- Shortly after the bombings, Oppenheimer and the other scientists are watching a presentation on the destruction and effects on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The audience doesn't see the images, but the visceral reactions of the scientists speak volumes about how bad the destruction is. Google at your own risk.
- The visual manifestations of Oppenheimer's mental turmoil during his hearing are harrowing; as he's grilled harder and harder about when he changed his mind about nuclear warfare, he starts going up in smoke, seeing ripples of water on the table, hearing the pounding of feet, and eventually the room explodes into an uncanny saturation of light as the shouting of the prosecution reaches a crest, recreating the effect of the light during the Trinity test.
- And later, guided by the vindictiveness of Strauss, Roger Robb makes him relive his trauma with his aggressive questions, until he snaps.
- THE ENDING. Dear God, the ending. We hear, from Oppenheimer's subjective point of view, the conversation that he and Einstein had at the pond, where they agree that they "set off a chain reaction that could destroy the world". As Einstein leaves, Oppenheimer then ponders what those events could be. Cue a row of ICBMs, now carrying warheads exponentially more destructive than Fat Man and Little Boy, ready to be launched. Cue a shot of trails from missile launches rising up into the clouds. Cue his flashback where he imagines being in the passenger seat of a B-29 bomber like the one that struck Hiroshima, swarms of ICBMs ascending past him. Cue a vision of nuclear fire slowly but surely spreading over the entire world. And Oppenheimer's face in the final shot sums up this burden of being responsible for this future, both real and theoretical, depressingly well. He has created The Cold War. He has created Mutually Assured Destruction. Humanity has been given the means to destroy itself and everything else on Earth. And he knows it, and will continue to know and live with it for the rest of his life, knowing he is most certainly going to eternally suffer like the millions of people who will suffer because of him. He shuts his eyes, almost as if to unsuccessfully attempt to wake up from the horrible nightmare of the reality he's just unleashed. Smash to Black.Oppenheimer: Albert. When I came to you with those calculations, we thought we might start a chain reaction that would destroy the entire world.
Einstein: I remember it well. What of it?
Oppenheimer: I believe we did.- Remember when the scientists were discussing the theory about atmospheric ignition back when they were building the bomb? That is exactly what is happening here in the vision. So many nukes were blown up at once that the atmosphere was unable to withstand their heat and wound up combusting on itself, exposing Earth to the complete wrath of the sun. In other words, Earth is becoming as dead as the moon, Mars and the rest of the Solar System without a second chance to rebuild itself ever again. All this because of a bunch of humans. It makes one consider if the Martians had a similar instance and killed off their planet as well. You could also consider this Hell on Earth where, if the firestorm means anything, the Devil successfully lured humanity into opening the gates of Hell for him and is now reaping all life on Earth for eternal torment.
- And the worst part? This film isn't just a fictional piece like everything else Nolan has done. This DID happen in Real Life. Oppenheimer and Einstein DID exist. The bomb WAS made. We HAD the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1983 and many other near misses throughout the 20th century, the 2000s and the 2010s, and there is bound to be more in the future, near and far. The nukes are still here on Earth, and though they have been severely decreased over the years, there is still the raw knowledge that they can destroy us if they are used. While Oppenheimer's vision thankfully never was a reality back then, it could still be a possibility to this very day.
