Oppenheimer: Anti-Nuclear Groups Review Christopher Nolan's Film, Say It 'Fails To Depict True Horrors Of Bombing'

Oppenheimer Reviewed By Anti-Nuclear Groups: Christopher Nolan’s 'Oppenheimer' hit the theatres on July 21, 2023. The film was declared a hit soon after it was released worldwide. The movie stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, a theoretical physicist who is known as the "father of the atomic bomb" for his work on the Manhattan Project, which produced the first nuclear weapons during World War II.

According to a report in The Guardian, 'Oppenheimer' received plaudits for accurately portraying the scientists ethical concerns about his creation and the US government's subsequent prosecution of him, but the movie fell short in capturing the horrible, graphic details of the victims' deaths. 

A scene in 'Oppenheimer' featured a woman's face being torn off by translucent, flesh-colored material. She stood in for the skin-burned victims of the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but according to anti-nuclear groups, it was not presented accurately.

"Overall Impact Of Oppenheimer Is Unbalanced"

Carol Turner, a co-chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’s London branch, said, “The overall impact of the film is unbalanced – people leave the theatre thinking how exciting a process it was, not thinking ‘God, this was a terrible weapon of mass destruction and look what’s happened today.”

“The effect of the [Hiroshima and Nagasaki] blasts was to remove the skin in a much more gory and horrible way – in the film, it was tastefully, artfully presented. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you look at photographs of actual survivors and read accounts of what happened to them, it was a very horrifying, gory death,” said Carol.

Sebastian Brixey-Williams, the executive director of the Basic research tank, said, “The universe is calling for people to start doing this kind of film. In some ways, it’s quite elegant because it’s not looking at some of these issues directly but asking more reflective questions about nuclear weapons – and that internal struggle Oppenheimer faced really plays out at a societal level. They are difficult trade-offs to make.” “Nuclear weapons are becoming part of the international conversation again, and that’s a double-edged sword. I’m glad they are, but this is because nuclear risks are rising,” he further noted.