Your thoughts on the movie Oppenheimer (only if you’ve seen it.)

[cerving]

The virtual script for the movie was the definitive biography of Oppenheimer, “American Prometheus”, and every event in the movie comes from the biography. I don’t think the movie is at all typical and hardly any of it was fictionalized. For example, all of the testimony from the security clearance hearings come from the transcripts of the actual hearings that were documented in the biography. Even the “poisoned apple” incident allegedly happened and nearly got Oppenheimer expelled from Cambridge, but the details were fictionalized for the movie.

Yeah, I probably shouldn't have used the word "fictionalized"... although there were things that were "enhanced" to give the movie a little better story line. The bio-pic that I usually compare movies to is Patton... and there was plenty of enhancement in that movie.

 

[Dan Griffing]

Yeah, I probably shouldn't have used the word "fictionalized"... although there were things that were "enhanced" to give the movie a little better story line. The bio-pic that I usually compare movies to is Patton... and there was plenty of enhancement in that movie.

Patton was quite “Hollywood-ized”.

But Oppenheimer did tell quite a story, for example, the nonlinear presentation of the events of the story, the flashbacks in black and white, the showing of the psychological effects of the bomb from Oppenheimer’s perspective, the effects on Kitty Oppenheimer of having to hear her husband’s testimony on his affair, and of Strauss’s paranoia over the meeting between Oppenheimer and Einstein.

But these are less “fictionalizations” than just the elements of genius in the making of a great movie that separate it from being a pure documentary.

 

[proflaser]

I liked it because I understood the physics discussions and I have a degree in physics. There really were scientists who thought the bomb explosion would ignite the atmosphere and burn up the earth and were really bothered. That was a theory, ultimately disproven by testing. The dialog saying, 'there's a chance, but its small', is funny now but not so much then.

 

[ewomack]

I really enjoyed the movie. All 3 hours of it. I had not sat in a movie theater since 2018 to watch "BlacKkKlansman." My mind had apparently become spoiled by home viewing, as it kept worrying that I would have to leave to use the restroom and miss something good. At home I could just hit "pause." Thankfully, my bladder behaved and I missed nothing. Does the scene where Oppenheimer reads the Bhagavad Gita to his topless lover appear in the book in any way? If not, that scene felt a little unnecessary and just an attempt to insert some hoochie into the film. I was hoping his reading of that passage would have a different context, more related to the detonation of the atomic bomb. Also, Oppenheimer famously read what some called "his own idiosyncratic translation" of the original Sanskrit. It's a small point and it didn't ruin the movie for me, but that was the only time the movie felt a little off for me.

Some early reviews I read said that the film did show graphic footage of actual Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims. But none appeared in the version that I saw. If they originally appeared in an earlier cut and were then removed, I think that was the right decision, mostly out of respect for the victims themselves. Though some have argued that showing such things would have really driven home the horror of what Los Alamos had created. It's hard to say. Good arguments seem to exist on both sides of that question. The film did delve into that territory somewhat during the pep rally scene. That worked fairly well.

A now deceased relative of mine served on the Manhattan Project. He was stationed on Tinian Island, where the Enola Gay departed from with the bomb. He said absolutely nothing about his involvement until just before his death. My family history contains a lot of false lore, so I was skeptical until I actually found him listed on the Manhattan Project website. His daughter has since unearthed a lot of packed away materials relating to his involvement.

 

[Dan Griffing]

But no physicists can explain UAP motion, or at least the ones who can publicly speak about them.

Science is under no obligation to provide explanations for arbitrary assertions, and neither are any scientists required to hold specific personal beliefs.

The scientific process works whether individual scientists personally believe in it or not. The results of a valid observation don’t change based on personal belief.

 

[Dan Griffing]

I really enjoyed the movie. All 3 hours of it. I had not sat in a movie theater since 2018 to watch "BlacKkKlansman." My mind had apparently become spoiled by home viewing, as it kept worrying that I would have to leave to use the restroom and miss something good. At home I could just hit "pause." Thankfully, my bladder behaved and I missed nothing. Does the scene where Oppenheimer reads the Bhagavad Gita to his topless lover appear in the book in any way? If not, that scene felt a little unnecessary and just an attempt to insert some hoochie into the film. I was hoping his reading of that passage would have a different context, more related to the detonation of the atomic bomb. Also, Oppenheimer famously read what some called "his own idiosyncratic translation" of the original Sanskrit. It's a small point and it didn't ruin the movie for me, but that was the only time the movie felt a little off for me.

Some early reviews I read said that the film did show graphic footage of actual Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims. But none appeared in the version that I saw. If they originally appeared in an earlier cut and were then removed, I think that was the right decision, mostly out of respect for the victims themselves. Though some have argued that showing such things would have really driven home the horror of what Los Alamos had created. It's hard to say. Good arguments seem to exist on both sides of that question. The film did delve into that territory somewhat during the pep rally scene. That worked fairly well.

A now deceased relative of mine served on the Manhattan Project. He was stationed on Tinian Island, where the Enola Gay departed from with the bomb. He said absolutely nothing about his involvement until just before his death. My family history contains a lot of false lore, so I was skeptical until I actually found him listed on the Manhattan Project website. His daughter has since unearthed a lot of packed away materials relating to his involvement.

This was such a great movie that I’ve got to see it for a third time while it’s still playing in theaters, the way it was meant to be seen.

It simply won’t be the same experience on a home screen. The whole movie was designed around Cillian Murphy — he is Oppenheimer.

 

[loopy]

I really enjoyed the movie. All 3 hours of it. I had not sat in a movie theater since 2018 to watch "BlacKkKlansman." My mind had apparently become spoiled by home viewing, as it kept worrying that I would have to leave to use the restroom and miss something good. At home I could just hit "pause." Thankfully, my bladder behaved and I missed nothing. Does the scene where Oppenheimer reads the Bhagavad Gita to his topless lover appear in the book in any way? If not, that scene felt a little unnecessary and just an attempt to insert some hoochie into the film. I was hoping his reading of that passage would have a different context, more related to the detonation of the atomic bomb. Also, Oppenheimer famously read what some called "his own idiosyncratic translation" of the original Sanskrit. It's a small point and it didn't ruin the movie for me, but that was the only time the movie felt a little off for me.

Some early reviews I read said that the film did show graphic footage of actual Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims. But none appeared in the version that I saw. If they originally appeared in an earlier cut and were then removed, I think that was the right decision, mostly out of respect for the victims themselves. Though some have argued that showing such things would have really driven home the horror of what Los Alamos had created. It's hard to say. Good arguments seem to exist on both sides of that question. The film did delve into that territory somewhat during the pep rally scene. That worked fairly well.

A now deceased relative of mine served on the Manhattan Project. He was stationed on Tinian Island, where the Enola Gay departed from with the bomb. He said absolutely nothing about his involvement until just before his death. My family history contains a lot of false lore, so I was skeptical until I actually found him listed on the Manhattan Project website. His daughter has since unearthed a lot of packed away materials relating to his involvement.

According to interviews I've seen/heard with Oppenheimer, the part with the Bhagavad Gita was his thoughts upon seeing the Trinity test. I think the placement in the movie was a way to get that in the film without detracting from the action high point of the detonation at the trinity site. It was important to get that in there, but I do wish they would have put it in a better spot, so show how it impacted him after the detonation. That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and thought it was very well done overall.