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Lmao
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Aug 15, 2023 22:52
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me: imagining a slightly different version of the trinity test scene. the movie police: put your hands up and get on the floor! your under arrest for stealing the property of Christopher Nolan.
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Aug 15, 2023 23:03
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Who is directing this scene and who plays lead movie cop? Do they beat you? And is it slow mo?
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Aug 16, 2023 02:29
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I think the hypothesizing how a film could be is fine. I think Terminator should never have shown Kyle Reese in the future. That said, I think your premise of ending the film with the Trinity test leaves little room to explore the vital theme of "fallout."
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Aug 16, 2023 02:43
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MeinPanzer posted:me: imagining a slightly different version of the trinity test scene. And these "movie police" as you call them, are they in the thread with us now?
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Aug 16, 2023 02:47
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Imagining a different version of a movie is a good thing because you are imagining a much better version that would be made if the clowns in Hollywood were as smart as I am. But they aren't so what we got was pretty great.
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Aug 16, 2023 04:27
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I’m the movie police You are sentenced to 2 years in the iso cubes
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Aug 16, 2023 04:34
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It's not really interesting to shift the discussion to hypothetical alternate films, but it's understandable because Oppenheimer's hella boring. Bad mistake namedropping Ridley Scott's Prometheus in the first couple minutes.
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Aug 16, 2023 04:39
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:because Oppenheimer's hella boring. 
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Aug 16, 2023 05:28
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It's a solid Kaiju film, down to it being 90% discourse between scientists and politicians.
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Aug 16, 2023 05:49
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I will admit, I teach science so seeing big names like Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg (boo!), and Fermi onscreen was very much up my alley.
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Aug 16, 2023 05:53
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Bogus Adventure posted:Heisenberg (boo!) That's not fair, guy was just a huge Breaking Bad fan.
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Aug 16, 2023 06:31
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There's a brief exchange in the movie where characters directly question whether Freud or Jung can best explicate the characters' own behavior, obviously inviting speculation in the audience. But the characters aren't so developed that even such a basic-rear end choice is suitable. What's left is just that banal self-awareness. Pugh's character, Tatlock, seemingly has foreknowledge that the relationship will kill her, and wants Oppenheimer to feel preemptively bad about it. People have misread the scene as her choosing a random passage from a random book, when the actual point is that this is of course a deliberate message on her part: she's inviting him to become the destroyer of her world - get it??? - so that he will be forced to remain forever beholden to her. And then that's it. The scene's just plopped in there, early on, and goes unaddressed until the new wife Kitty tells Oppenheimer to get over it. Which he does. We're told that Oppenheimer has this intense fascination with Tatlock that parallels his pursuit of the weapon, but it's never illustrated as compellingly as with the character of Mal in Nolan's significantly better Inception - a literal indestructible ghost who shows up in the mind and controls the protagonist's actions from within. And that's the entire movie. Like, there's really not much else going on. People are correct that the movie's not really about the bomb, so there's just some limited interest in how Oppenheimer ditches Tatlock and uses his unlimited resources to build a wholly artificial small town lifestyle for himself, populated by all his work-friends. For an actually-good version of Oppenheimer, watch Wally Pfister's Transcendence.
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Aug 16, 2023 18:05
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“Oppenheimer ditches Tatlock and uses his unlimited resources to build a wholly artificial small town lifestyle for himself, populated by all his work-friends.” Seems like people find this part and it’s consequences interesting. But I don’t think Transcendence has sexy Sanskrit so can’t be as good.
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Aug 16, 2023 18:29
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trying to chase SMG out of this thread with a broom like he's a stray dog that wandered into the house
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Aug 16, 2023 18:33
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checkplease posted:“Oppenheimer ditches Tatlock and uses his unlimited resources to build a wholly artificial small town lifestyle for himself, populated by all his work-friends.” Ok, so what's interesting about it? It just boils down to Oppenheimer choosing the 'normal life' with Kitty - but, again, in a very schematic way. We aren't shown much of any day-to-day life in Los Alamos, and instead have to work against the film by noting what isn't shown (i.e. anything about 'the outside world' at all). This is where the temptation to redo the film kicks in, because it's easy to imagine a version of the film where it's shown that this isolation was not just a practical measure to maintain secrecy but a psychological precondition to the bomb's creation.
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Aug 16, 2023 19:21
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Ok, so what's interesting about it? It just boils down to Oppenheimer choosing the 'normal life' with Kitty - but, again, in a very schematic way. We aren't shown much of any day-to-day life in Los Alamos, and instead have to work against the film by noting what isn't shown (i.e. anything about 'the outside world' at all). We may just find different things interesting here, but I do find the history and character all intriguing. Yeah you can just watch a documentary, but here you get better production value here with fancier editing, cinematography, score, dramatic dialogue and such. That’s entertainment. There’s a whole putting a team together montage like a heist film. And the actual bomb test is filled with tension even though we know what’s going to happen. But for bigger concepts, I don’t think the any psychological pressure was needed to make the bomb. The intellectual drive for knowledge was enough once you got the scientists together in Los Alamos. This I do think the film shows. We see them happily discussing trigger methods or eagerly sharing progress with each other. There’s some doubt yes after Germany is defeated, but they are easily persuaded by Oppy to continue and we get huge celebrations post testing. As an engineer this is something I relate to. Some of the biggest and best projects you can work on. with all the resources are connected to the govt who will use them for purposes you may not like.
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Aug 16, 2023 19:59
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:There's a brief exchange in the movie where characters directly question whether Freud or Jung can best explicate the characters' own behavior, obviously inviting speculation in the audience. But the characters aren't so developed that even such a basic-rear end choice is suitable. What's left is just that banal self-awareness. I just contest your blanket assertion that the movie is "hella boring." Art is subjective, so something that is boring to one may not be boring to another. I'm with checkplease in that I find the movie very interesting because I work in science, and can relate to some of what happens in the film. If you've ever been in a college lab class and had everything go wrong (mixture exploding in fume hood, artificial heme group not capturing oxygen, stuck there for 5 hours with no break), then that Oxford scene is VERY relatable. That being said, I can understand why others might be bored by it. However, I'll offer my own take on the scene you mentioned. If we take Nolan's explanations at face value, then scenes in color are meant to show Oppenheimer's perspective. Perspective does not mean truth, just the interpretation of reality one sees through the various lenses coloring their point of view. That also raises the question of whether we are seeing Oppenheimer's perspective as events occurred, or if they are from memory. I believe we are seeing the latter, as that would explain the time-jumping as Oppenheimer revisiting memories during his security clearance revocation meeting. As the government presents its case to him, he is thinking back to what brought him to this point in time. I mentioned in an above post that I see the movie's overarching theme as intentions versus outcomes, often framed by the contrast of scientific theory versus scientific experimentation. Theory represents intentions, what we expect the world to be like or what we think will happen if we take a particular action. Experimentation represents outcomes, putting theory to the test or what actually happens once we act. Oppenheimer is great at theory, but absolute garbage at experimentation---basically, he has the best of intentions but brings about the worst outcomes. This is emphasized throughout the movie (his failure in Oxford's lab classes, his ability to write theory as to why we SHOULDN'T be able to split the atom despite Lawrence's buddy proving it possible right next door, his dalliance with Kitty because she was a frustrated housewife resulting in a pregnancy and his lovely decision to LEAVE HER ALONE TO RAISE MULTIPLE CHILDREN). If we look at the Tatlock scene through those lenses (Oppenheimer's perspective of is memory and through intentions vs outcomes), then the scene reads as Oppenheimer revisiting his first encounter with Tatlock with the benefit of hindsight. It was the start of a complicated and destructive relationship between two people with different expectations. Oppenheimer loved her, but wanted something serious. Tatlock loved him as well, but was unwilling to give up her freedom. When Oppenheimer got Kitty pregnant and married her, he realized he could no longer continue his relationship with Tatlock so he did the most reasonable thing---cheat on Kitty with Tatlock one last time and then write a letter telling her he could no longer make good on his promise to be there whenever she called*. By doing so, he sees that letter as pushing her over the edge and committing suicide. The sanskrit passage she picks while they are having sex is his hindsight reminding him of that impending outcome. I go with that interpretation because it fits the intentions vs outcomes theme, but it also fits the recurring theme of guilt. It's movie about a guilty scientist who feels bad about what he did. A poster above mentioned the poisoned apple from the Oxford scene. It highlights how intentions can have bad outcomes. In a fit of rage, Oppenheimer poisons his professor's apple before going to Bohr's lecture. He goes to sleep, then wakes up and realizes what he did---he realizes what he did was wrong and races to the lab. He sees the apple still on the desk before Bohr grabs it. He manages to grab the apple from Bohr before his action can have consequences, and it's also the last time in the movie where he can prevent unintended consequences from his actions. Maybe you agree with that, maybe you don't. However, it's still a beautiful film mostly set at a place called Hot Dog Ranch (Perro Caliente, lol, that's literally his brother's property's name in Spanish) that I'd think is hard for anyone to call boring. *Sarcasm alert for people who can't determine sarcasm from posting: I'm being sarcastic, Oppie is a piece of poo poo for treating both Tatlock and Kitty so shittily
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Aug 17, 2023 01:51
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Definitely see the movie in 70mm imax if you're lucky enough to live close to one of the theaters capable. I saw it initially in a normal theater and liked it, but 70mm imax was loving great. My theater was still packed even after 4 weeks.
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Aug 17, 2023 03:44
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One thing I can’t really get over is how lenient they were with Oppenheimer. Like it was almost laughable at how not top secret the whole thing was.
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Aug 17, 2023 04:34
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Live At Five! posted:Definitely see the movie in 70mm imax if you're lucky enough to live close to one of the theaters capable. I saw it initially in a normal theater and liked it, but 70mm imax was loving great. My theater was still packed even after 4 weeks. I really need to see it in 70mm imax.
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Aug 17, 2023 04:50
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Bogus Adventure posted:I really need to see it in 70mm imax. I live in Dallas, the only 70mm imax theater here was doing 12am, 3am, and 6 am showing until recently and even the 3 am showing only had a few seats available.
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Aug 17, 2023 04:56
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Bogus Adventure posted:I just contest your blanket assertion that the movie is "hella boring." Art is subjective, so something that is boring to one may not be boring to another. I'm with checkplease in that I find the movie very interesting because I work in science, and can relate to some of what happens in the film. If you've ever been in a college lab class and had everything go wrong (mixture exploding in fume hood, artificial heme group not capturing oxygen, stuck there for 5 hours with no break), then that Oxford scene is VERY relatable. That being said, I can understand why others might be bored by it. I actually reckon that you could hook the Oppenheimer audience up to a machine and watch interest slow in real-time, but that’s besides the point. It’s a just film that rather strongly avoids taking an angle on the material. Like, in the example of them building a small town in the middle of the desert, they could really play up the surrealism of that experience. But, as checkplease notes, they didn’t. Oppenheimer has the town built for him, then he lives there. He pursues knowledge. At some point in the achronological structure, he stops living there. They briefly mention that the builders forgot to install a kitchen, I guess. Not to be too dismissive, but just about every narrative film is ‘about’ intentions versus outcomes. Like, John Hammond in Jurassic Park intends to build a dinosaur park. Dutch in Predator intends to rescue some people from a helicopter crash, etc. Likewise, every narrative film depicts characters’ subjective experiences. Just having these things in your film is not interesting! For a movie to be more specifically about intentions versus outcomes, you would need to actually take a stance on what actions could or should have been taken. Like, you’re saying that Oppy’s bad at predicting the outcomes of his actions. What would the alternative be? How could he be less “garbage at experimentation?” Those are kind-of rhetorical questions, because I don’t believe those are themes of the film at all, or even that the way you describe them is internally coherent. There’s no scene in the film where a character fails to experiment ‘enough’ to prevent a ‘bad’ outcome. The entire Trinity test thing, after all, was a test - a test that some characters even hope might scare Truman into never using the bomb. This highlights that ‘experimentation’ and ‘outcomes’ really have nothing to do with each-other. Nor do ‘theory’ and ‘intentions’.
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Aug 17, 2023 06:09
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What is it about the IMAX that is so amazing? I wasn't all that impressed with the explosion and I don't see how seeing it but bigger in size would be worth it.
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Aug 17, 2023 06:11
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:I actually reckon that you could hook the Oppenheimer audience up to a machine and watch interest slow in real-time, but that’s besides the point. It’s a just film that rather strongly avoids taking an angle on the material. If the above hypothesis is true, then I doubt the movie would have the legs it does or continue to sell out IMAX. I get that what some people find interesting is boring to others (don't get me started on how I don't understand why people like Avatar for its story). And I apologize in advance if this is all muddled (it has been a long day). My last post kind of flubbed on the link between theory and intentions, and experiments and outcomes. Let me try to do better. Theory takes place in the mind, it's what you can write on paper. That's the pure part of science, where math and equations are used to model predicted outcomes. Oppenheimer is shown to be very good at understanding theory. He asks good questions about what might happen when at Bohr's lecture. He posits a viable theory as to what happens when stars die. He writes out why, according to the best known models, the atom cannot be split. Lawrence and his team prove Oppenheimer and theory wrong. And they do it by actually trying the experiment---taking an affirmative action. Oppenheimer goes back to the familiar model, that theory that says what the Germans have done isn't possible. It's his pairing with Lawrence which is why I connect theory versus experimentation with intentions and outcomes. Experiments are all about outcomes, and you have to deal with the data and results they give you. They may match up with what you predicted, like what the best scientific modeling has to say on the subject. But sometimes they don't, and this is a movie about how the key outcomes flout the predictions. Oppenheimer believes that he can convince the government on how to use the bomb, the same way he has been able to charismatically steer the scientists (which has allowed him to build a theory on how to interact with others in positions of power). But he can't. Once the bombs are made, Groves leaves him in the lurch. When Oppenheimer meets with Truman in hopes of speaking with him about the bomb, Truman kicks him out for being a crybaby. When he publicly crosses Strauss regarding sharing of isotopes, Strauss puts in motion the plan to remove Oppenheimer's security clearance. When he has his hearing to contest the revocation, nothing he does alters the outcome. It's the Oxford lab all over again. He's stuck, powerless and ashamed. Strauss' POV is an interesting foil to Oppenheimer's. Like the latter, Strauss is very good at predicting outcomes. He knows the political game, and how to get rid of people who cross him in government. He leaks Oppenheimer's file to Borden, letting him serve as a cat's paw to put the hearing in motion. The movie plays up the conversation between Oppenheimer and Einstein as Strauss' motive, where the former said something to the latter that swayed Albert so strongly he wouldn't even look at Strauss. He is looking at the scenario the same way he does with political skullduggery. However, his prediction is wrong. It's just a conversation between two tired scientists who have seen their work get twisted into weapons of mass destruction. And the book closes on Strauss with him failing to get confirmed for his cabinet position because the game he played, putting his previously reliable model of how to eliminate enemies and get ahead in government, didn't work with scientists. The outcome is different because they spoke out against a potential attack on them, and scientists aren't necessarily as beholden to a single politician as political aides might be. It's possible that I'm putting too much emphasis on intentions vs outcomes, theory vs experiments. However, I work as a science teacher, and theory and experiments big parts of it. So I see it as a movie that looks at intentions versus outcomes using the characters and concepts referenced in science. That's the lens through how I see the movie, and it is what I see through that lens that makes the story compelling to me. As for an angle or an intended message, I think it's a familiar story told in a creative way: the best of intentions don't necessarily lead to the outcome you want. 
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Aug 17, 2023 07:30
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Decided to read the thread to see what others thought of it. It was interesting to see more places in the black and white sequences where it doesn't trust the audience. I obviously noticed the JFK one because it was loving massively glaring. Do people outside New England not know Kennedy was from MA or something? I feel like if you just said "Kennedy" that would have sufficed. But I hadn't really picked up how they were recapping poo poo on the way back like it was serialized or something. Totally missed that in the theater. As for minor points I didn't see mentioned: I did occasionally have trouble keeping some of the characters separate. Two of the men looked very similar, or at least I think they did? It's hard to explain by memory with such a large cast especially since I can't recall who I was mixing up. I could only keep the names and actors I recognized apart; I know who Edward Teller was so I didn't mix him up and I know who Jack Quaid and Jason Clarke are so I didn't mix them up despite not knowing who they were specifically during the movie. (I only learned Quaid was Feynman later.) This has some exceptionally tightly cut dialog like Tenet but for whatever reason it's much more tolerable here. Overall, it took a little while for me to get on board with the film; I'm a pretty big Nolan fan, but for the first 20 minutes or so I was hesitant. I liked it a lot. I've been thinking about it a lot since seeing it. I don't know if it was as purely effective as Dunkirk for much of its runtime but it also is almost certainly better than it, if that makes sense.
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Aug 17, 2023 08:48
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I find the science vs politics aspect interesting here. We start with Oppy the scientist who travels around to learn and tame his neurosis. But once in California he dabbles in organized labor and communism and tries to keep this from interfering with his science. But as soon as the opportunity to join the cool new atomic project comes up, he readily drops these political interests to be the scientists purely again. Of course as soon as he decides to lead, he becomes fully a politician and less a scientist. Teller even accuses of him of this: “you’re a politician, you’ve stopped being a scientist long ago.” This is the personal conflict for Oppy and one that the film depicts with the last hour and it’s debates on the future of nuclear weapons and who controls them. It is an aspect that many heroic sci fi movies don’t get into really. Take The Core for example, they develop these cool drill vehicles to go restart the core and save the world. But what happens after? Does the military use these drill vehicles to invade other countries like shredder and krang? Independence Day 2 goes down this road some with showing the new world order based on alien tech, but the movie is pretty bad.
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Aug 17, 2023 13:08
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:There's a brief exchange in the movie where characters directly question whether Freud or Jung can best explicate the characters' own behavior, obviously inviting speculation in the audience. But the characters aren't so developed that even such a basic-rear end choice is suitable. What's left is just that banal self-awareness. I'm not going to do that
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Aug 17, 2023 13:14
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Invalid Validation posted:One thing I can’t really get over is how lenient they were with Oppenheimer. Like it was almost laughable at how not top secret the whole thing was. Being successful buys a lot of leeway.
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Aug 17, 2023 14:51
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Cojawfee posted:What is it about the IMAX that is so amazing? I wasn't all that impressed with the explosion and I don't see how seeing it but bigger in size would be worth it. The selling point is the surround sound. The score and effects sounded epic; though, the trade-off was barely hearing most of the dialogue. Dune suffered from that, too. The shift from wide- to full-screen during certain scenes was pretty distracting.
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Aug 17, 2023 16:26
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:For a movie to be more specifically about intentions versus outcomes, you would need to actually take a stance on what actions could or should have been taken. Like, you’re saying that Oppy’s bad at predicting the outcomes of his actions. What would the alternative be? How could he be less “garbage at experimentation?” Oppy poisons an apple and, unable to un-poison it, throws it away because he supposedly saw a "wormhole" in it (physics humor!). He supervises the invention of a bomb and, unable to un-invent it, must bear witness to its influence (Destruction? Peace?) on the whole world. The movie is a reminder that we're still in the experiment, for better or worse. Not sure if the third-act politicking counts as deliberate, "good" poisoning of a professional enemy's career, but I wanted to bring the apple into this incoherence.
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Aug 17, 2023 16:55
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Cojawfee posted:What is it about the IMAX that is so amazing? I wasn't all that impressed with the explosion and I don't see how seeing it but bigger in size would be worth it. New Mexican landscapes.
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Aug 17, 2023 18:13
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Ok, so what's interesting about it? It just boils down to Oppenheimer choosing the 'normal life' with Kitty - but, again, in a very schematic way. We aren't shown much of any day-to-day life in Los Alamos, and instead have to work against the film by noting what isn't shown (i.e. anything about 'the outside world' at all). I think the film is successful at portraying oppenheimer's own mental isolation as a precondition to the creation of the bomb. You're right that we do not get a lot of details focusing on the larger scale and strangeness of the events, but I think this is so because the character we are riding with is uninterested in the details so long as he gets to work, and not necessarily as interested in his social connections as he should be. He ignores his kids, he is interested in communism but not to the point where he stick his neck out for people in his community raising those kids, ignores the moral qualms of his father figure scientist who sticks around still and offers him an orange because hes not eating enough, conspicuously only notices the emotions of his fellow scientists regarding the experiment after it is too late, and so on. Everything in the color segments, including the music, needs to be read in the context of young Oppenheimer sitting alone in his room imagining abstract phenomena. It's tunnel vision, everything is building up to something great and anxious and important. The music only stops when he is confronted by the harsher external reality, a physical phenomenon he created that he could never control, and a man yelling at him about all the people he killed. The film cheats a little with the music, weaving it into the Strauss segments, but the presentation of a sober hearing vs the inside of a troubled mind is an interesting way to depict the elephant.
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Aug 17, 2023 18:49
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Cojawfee posted:What is it about the IMAX that is so amazing? I wasn't all that impressed with the explosion and I don't see how seeing it but bigger in size would be worth it. Seeing Cillian Murphy's face but it's 65ft tall.
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Aug 17, 2023 19:16
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Invalid Validation posted:One thing I can’t really get over is how lenient they were with Oppenheimer. Like it was almost laughable at how not top secret the whole thing was.
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Aug 17, 2023 20:03
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The bomb was pretty much the logical next step of the work on splitting the atom, which wasn't a secret. What ended up happening is that scientific progress in physics reached a point in the freely available literature and then just stayed there for a while, while all the big names got hoovered up to work on Manhatten. For the scientists the secrecy must have felt bizarre - what they were discovering were just facts about the world (how can you own that?) that anyone with sufficient resources could establish themselves, with the only caveat being how quickly they locked onto a workable approaches.
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Aug 17, 2023 23:58
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Some really cool details on the effects shots: https://beforesandafters.com/2023/08/17/spinning-beads-cloud-tanks-and-crucibles-of-molten-thermite/quote:In fact, several of the elements made use of a water tank, which necessitated filming ‘underwater’. The production made a bespoke probe lens for the IMAX camera for this purpose that was waterproof, and so could go into the tank for filming. “We were pushing the lens right in through a waterproof membrane into the tank so that it really felt like you were in and amongst this big universe of stars,” says Jackson.
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Aug 18, 2023 13:20
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Jewish Currents magazine has a podcast called On the Nose which had a really interesting episode on Oppenheimer with David Klion and Jeet Heer. Highly recommended for a slightly more thoughtful discussion than your standard "liked it / loved it" type of critiques.
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Aug 18, 2023 13:43
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What are some of their insights?
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Aug 18, 2023 15:21
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| # ? May 3, 2024 11:06 |
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There's also some points about how the military has to make compromises for their preferred level of security, like Oppenheimer insisting they need to build facilities for entire families, because scientists are not soldiers and they aren't willing nor required to leave everything behind for their duty. Kinda points out how hard it is to actually have a secret science project when modern science absolutely relies on open sharing and testing of information. Also General Brad Pitt admitting he wouldn't have given Oppenheimer his clearance under McCarthy-era conditions, but the same could be said for over half the Manhattan Project both because of said standards and because they needed those people regardless of other issues.
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Aug 18, 2023 15:48
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