Just saw Oppenheimer last night. Very thought provoking.
Have you seen it?
What are your thoughts?

 

I would recommend you see this before the movie. I watched this when it was first aired.

 

 

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Mine opened ok, even went to youtube.

kv

 

As others have mentioned, it is not a movie about the A-bomb, but of someone who, amongst other achievements and historical events, played a very key role in its development.
But as a nerd I would have liked a longer coverage of the Manhattan Project, but that is what Fat Man and Little Boy was.
The bomb detonation sequence is impressive! No CGI!

 

 

4 dollar tickets at some cinema’s today at some theaters.

kv

 

I found the second time of seeing oppenheimer I got even more out of it

 

I would recommend you see this before the movie. I watched this when it was first aired.

Just watched this on your suggestion. Interesting, I didn't know much about Oppenheimer. I guess now I need to watch the movie.

 

 

Just watched this on your suggestion. Interesting, I didn't know much about Oppenheimer. I guess now I need to watch the movie.

The problem is that there's a good chance that, after watching the movie, you may or may not know more actual information about him than you did before -- and there's a good chance that you will "learn" things about him and/or history that are wrong. I have no idea about this movie, but it is a very, very rare movie about historical events or people that isn't littered with things that are wrong or that don't give a misleading impression under the guise of "artistic license".

So, after watching it, I'd recommend that you follow it up with reading reviews that are focused on its historical accuracy. That's about the best you can do since you can't ask Oppy his take on it (and, even if you could, he would be biased and you'd have to take that into account).

I've been fortunate that, on several occasions, I've had the opportunity to get the take of people directly involved in things. For instance, back in the 1982 to 1984 time frame, I got to spend about an hour chatting with Paul Tibbets about the accuracy of both "Above and Beyond" and "Enola Gay".

 

Destruction of the SS John Burke (ammo ship) from a Kamikaze attack. One of the reasons not to do a nuclear bomb warning demonstration was explosions like this, We didn't think they would be impressed unless it was on a city.

 

Excellent article relevant to the discussion on this thread.

 

4 dollar tickets at some cinema’s today at some theaters.

kv

Wow! Very inexpensive. Tickets here are 3-4 times that.

 

I've been fortunate that, on several occasions, I've had the opportunity to get the take of people directly involved in things. For instance, back in the 1982 to 1984 time frame, I got to spend about an hour chatting with Paul Tibbets about the accuracy of both "Above and Beyond" and "Enola Gay".

Wooooow! That is amazing!
And please tell us, did he agree on the movie’s accuracy?

 

Wooooow! That is amazing!
And please tell us, did he agree on the movie’s accuracy?

He said that both movies did a pretty good job on the technical details (not perfect, by any means) and Enola Gay did a pretty good job of the historical details, but took some shortcuts in order to get the gist of some important things into the length of the movie (that's something that even the most historically accurate movies, even Apollo 13, are guilty of). He gave some specific examples that I don't recall off the top of my head, but that usually come to mind whenever I rewatch it. In many cases it is a matter of leaving things out that aren't critical to the story but, by omitting them, the viewer is left with an understanding of events that they think is complete but isn't. In other cases it making subtle changes to the chain of events in order to emphasize a point in limited time, but that again leads to an erroneous understanding of events. I don't recall what he said in that regard about Above and Beyond -- he talked about it, but it's just been too many years ago to remember the details since I've never seen the movie (always intend to, but then forget about it). But I talked with his grandson (then a brigadier general in the Air Force) and I believe he said that it did a pretty good job on the historical stuff, in some ways better than Enola Gay. What both he and his grandson said was that both movies, but particularly Above and Beyond, made a hash of the personal/family story line and went out of their way to make it artificially overblown and dramatic.