this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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Viewers are divided over whether the film should have shown Japanese victims of the weapon created by physicist Robert Oppenheimer. Experts say it's complicated.

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[–] [email protected] 126 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Clickbait outrage. The movie showed what the bomb does to people without feeling like it was exploiting the suffering of innocent victims for the sake of a summer blockbuster.

The article even explains how: "In another scene, Oppenheimer gives a speech and, while looking into the crowd, visualizes some of the predominantly white audience as the victims of his bomb."

It's an effective scene. Sometimes what you don't show (negative space) is as powerful as what you do show.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, there is a fucking burnt child on the movie.

[–] [email protected] 75 points 1 year ago (22 children)

The story is not about bombing Japan.

Yes, that was a war crime. Yes, that was terrible.

But if you know the story of Oppenheimer, or seen the movie, he did not decide anything. The military took over at that moment in time.

So if it was a movie about the military, this had to be shown. But it is about him. So a suggestion (as is clearly in the movie for about the last hour or so) is more than enough of you ask me.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

You're totally right and the discussion (as so many these days) is completely bollocks.

Since when should the public have the right to demand what an artist ought to put in his work or must not omit. I don't get it...

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago (45 children)

Being so far removed from the use of his discovery and put of the loop now the army was done with him is a crucial character moment in the film, and we as the audience are following his story. Having scenes of the bombing, the aftermath of the victims would have undermined that.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I really don't think so. They literally had a scene where they were debriefing the scientists of the effect of the bomb and the types of wounds and deaths it caused. They could of just showed the slides they were going over there.

Still think it's a good movie, and for me this is a minor critique, but still something they could have done.

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have not seen the film yet, but it seems like this is a biopic about Oppenheimer, not a WWII movie.

Also, do directors need to infantilize their audience by directly showing "this was bad. Here is why this was bad"? Like, obviously the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were devastating. If you have basic history knowledge you should already know that, and know that those bombings were a direct consequence from what was depicted in the movie with out it being spelled out for you.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

The movie is more about the political witchhunt after the fact than it is directly about the bomb itself

[–] HobbitFoot 46 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The movie doesn't show away from the affects of a nuclear explosion, but it does show the distance that the gadget creators had to the gadget's victims. There is no mistaking the destructive power of a nuclear weapon. It just happens to be that the destruction isn't a direct response that the inventor deals with.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Film is told from Oppenheimer's perspective, I see no problem with it. Especially as it is shown that he had trouble with moral questions over creating a bomb and using it. And there is a really powerful scene with him being troubled with the Japan bombing and imagines bomb being detonated while he gives speech.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Heh, first it was criticism of the credits, now is what should and shouldn't be in the movie. If you know better, why don't you make your own movie that will put Nolan to shame?

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