Ah, no, I didn’t see it in IMAX at all. So the one in Lafayette isn’t a “proper” IMAX?
FWIW my wife and kid both get motion sick when in an IMAX.
Didn’t work for my wife! But it was pretty fucking loud.
That said, I loved it. The one thing I wasn’t prepared for was the communism angle. It was a too light on the science-y part of it, IMHO, but I did get to learn about a part of his life I knew nothing about.
Still, it must have been pretty awe inspiring to be there at the time.
The small theater screen we saw it on was just fine - I’m not sure it would have been enhanced by an IMAX experience.
Yes, I noticed it. It was pretty obvious to me. I don’t know what a plutonium explosion should look like in detail but given its scale (bigness) I assume it would not have those. I put it down to and artifact of the practical set.
I haven’t seen too many films in IMAX, but I generally find the screen “too big” to fully enjoy the experience.
Apparently not. I mean, that theater is impressive - it’s a giant wall of movie, and the sound is an assault on your senses. I doubt I’ll see Oppenheimer again in a different IMAX theater to compare the two, but I don’t think I’m as critical of a movie-goer to tell the difference. I do think the transitions that Nolan makes from the wide aspect ratio to the full IMAX ratio is impressive - but like Procrustus, I find it’s impossible to take in the whole image at once.
IMAX just gives you an aspect ratio of the old 4:3 TV screens. More like a square or slight rectangle. I’m not sure how much you really need to at the top and the bottom of the screen as opposed to the left and right. IMAX is not really all that spectacular if you’re looking for more of a panoramic experience, if you ask me. Plus the seats in the theatre we went to (not IMAX) were recliners, and there was still enough room for someone to walk by in front of you. Can’t argue with recliners.
In some theaters near me, they offer “Premium Large Format” as well as IMAX (not the large format.) Anyone know the (practical) difference?
Didn’t work for mine either LOL. At one point she started snoring and I had to give her a nudge!
There was an article in the Atlantic the other day in which Rhodes said his book had been optioned multiple times, but nothing ever came of it. Maybe now someone will make a good mini-series from it.
I will probably watch it but with some trepidation. I grew up in Los Alamos and so was steeped in the narrative and history of the Manhattan project. My 5th grade teacher taught Enrico Fermi’s children. Movies of this sort always seem to over dramatize the situation. So I don’t know whether I’ll be watching it saying, yes they got that right, or screaming at the screen “No they didn’t really think there was a chance the atmosphere would blow up!”
Go see the movie.
Given the amount of “Oppenheimer was not a hero! How dare they not show the destruction he wrought!” takes I’ve seen, perhaps no amount of this would have been enough. Granted, I suspect most of the people who take this as pro-bomb propaganda haven’t seen it and have no intention of seeing it.
IMO the script and Murphy’s acting made it obvious that the destruction weighed on Oppenheimer without the over-the-top visions. And the last line in the movie couldn’t make it any clearer.
I thought it was a very good moviefilm, but very long and I{m not sure it needed to be quite that long. A lot of characters to keep track of. We did a lot of actor identification—hey, isn’t that the guy from the Black Mirror episode with Jesse Pinkman? And hey, is that Kenneth Branagh? And whoa, no way that was Gary Oldman as President Truman! Not sure why the Florence Pugh character had to…do what she was doing…during the hearing. Weirdly comical. I really feel like they should have shown more of the terrible effects of the atomic bomb in Japan rather than just talking about it. I mean there are shadows permanently burned into the walls from the people who were vaporized. I can understand why Japanese viewers might be upset with the lack of empathy shown toward them. Overall, a powerful film in my eyes, but far from perfect. I’d give it an 8/10.
I’m going to quote you a little out order. The film is titled “Oppenheimer” not “The Atomic Bomb” or “Atomic Weapons are Terrible”. The focus was, and should be, on the main character - it wasn’t about the Japanese people, or the Truman decision, or the bomber pilots, or the GIs who would have died invading the Japanese main islands. It was about Oppenheimer.
This was also about Oppenheimer (and his wife). While it seems to me that he loved Kitty, Jean was the passion of his life. That scene was meant to show the passion and to show that his wife both knew about and resented his relationship. It was the ghost of Jean telling Kitty that Jean would forever have a piece of Oppenheimer’s soul that Kitty could never have. Graphically shown, yes. But, IMHO, not less effective because of it.
Fair points, but I’m also looking at what makes for a compelling cinematic experience. Audiences (and readers) usually connect more with a protagonist who undergoes some kind of growth over the story, and a very long story in this case. I’m not sure Oppenheimer really changed that much. Clearly he was troubled by the number of deaths the atomic bombs caused in his conversation with Truman, but the audience I think needs to see the destructive power as well. I know it’s a biopic and the focus was on the title character, but I’m not sure people are completely appreciating the death and destruction that was caused. The “Barbenheimer” angle has been heavily criticized in Japan for example because the fun times with Barbie is sometimes paired with the atomic bomb blast in the background. Not a good luck there, America. There were hundreds of thousands people who lost their lives or suffered the after effects of radiation poisoning. All I’m saying is that some acknowledgement of these effects would not have taken anything away from Oppenheimer’s story and would have had a bigger impact. There are still shadows on the wall from people who were vaporized.
Every scene in this film was from the perspective of Oppenheimer or Strauss. They weren’t at Japan and it would have made no sense to suddenly show scenes happening on the other side of the world not from their POV. They showed his imagination of it happening in front of him, which is plenty. I don’t know how people can say the effects were not acknowledged. They spoke about them and he imagined stepping on dead bodies. That scene in the gym was chilling.
I’ve not seen it yet, so my opinion may change, but I’m also of a mind to consider this a film about Oppenheimer and not about the destruction that his creation wrought.
There are other films out there that do deal with those other issues and that’s absolutely fine but I think it should be judged on the story that it wants to tell, not the one that it doesn’t.
Notably “Downfall” does not dwell on the horrors of the Nazi regime and its millions of victims and I’d argue that it is a better film for making that choice.
This describes exactly why I found myself disappointed.
I never felt like I cared about Oppenheimer, and definitely not Strauss.
This is absolutely true for Oppenheimer. A scene of dialogue in a railway car does not need to have backround “music” of screeching metal wheels, with the volume as loud as exploding artillery shells in a war movie combat scene.
I didn’t care too much about Oppenheimer. But I wanted Stauss to suffer.