re: Oppenheimer | Official Reaction Thread | Spoilers

Went and saw it last night. Quite the theater experience. All of Nolan’s traits, both good and bad, rolled into one. Murphy was great as always and will steamroll during awards season, as should RDJ, who turned in probably the strongest performance he’s ever done. The cast was all-around really solid. Even Matt Damon, who is typically terrible, turned in a good performance (save for his “most important thing that ever happened in the history of the world!!” line – all-time bad delivery there). Affleck was fricking awesome in his small role, honestly wish we got to see more of him.



Overall, it felt like 3 different movies. The first hour is Nolan at his worst. The second hour is Nolan at his best. The third hour was a complete tonal and perspective shift but, as Totes said earlier, the most engaging.

The first hour was very, very bad. You know those terrible exposition dump scenes that Nolan does where he has the characters talking and it’s cutting in rapid succession to all kinds of settings while a noisy score drums on in the background? Imagine that, but stretched out to 60 minutes. Complete agony to sit through. An hourlong montage like this neuters any sense of immersion or engagement because it offers no contrast and gives zero time for the audience to ruminate or reflect on anything. Incredibly bad pacing, editing, and sound design. It’s like you’re watching an hourlong trailer.

The second hour was Good Nolan. Tension is upped, a pseudo countdown is introduced with the marbles, and a palpable atmosphere is established. The pace slows down to a much more palatable level and it’s much easier to feel engrossed as the setting primarily shifts to Los Alamos. Nolan does his best work when there is a singular focus on procedural elements like in this act. The buildup to the Trinity Test was sublime – I made sure to look around the theater and you could just FEEL everyone squirming in their seats as detonation time approached. All of the tension and buildup yields a worthy payoff.

The third hour was the most well shot and the most interesting. They do a good job of making you feel the weight of Opp’s inner turmoil, the bureaucratic material was fun (Social Network 2 lol), and RDJ really got to shine here. It got a little goofy towards the end when RDJ had his moustache-twirling rants but I enjoyed it for the most part. The ending was fantastic in every respect – very well done.





General thoughts:

There is no need to see this in IMAX whatsoever

Everyone who said Nolan’s sound mixing was fixed for this movie – completely wrong. It’s as horrible as ever, more so in the first act. While the score itself is quite good from a musical composition perspective, it’s omnipresent, it’s overbearing, and it’s obnoxious. Perfect example of how not to implement a film score. Seriously, in 180 minutes of runtime, there are probably 10 minutes where it’s quiet or not there at all. Deprives any sense of gravitas and invokes that “movie trailer” feel I mentioned earlier.

I would’ve liked to see more in-depth internal discussions that the scientists had at Los Alamos. So many geniuses and egos working together for 3 years, there had to be some great material. All of their discussions in the movie are surface level and very simple.

Dialogue was all over the place, and a lot of stuff was hilariously zipped through in classic Nolan fashion. He has to be doing this on purpose - he knows that writing isn’t his strong suit, so he just bombards you with breakneck pacing or other stimuli as a sleight of hand so you don’t really get to process anything. There’s a scene where the early team works together in a room and someone barges in with Teller’s discovery regarding the potential of an atmospheric-level chain reaction. Each guy solemnly glances at the formulas and equations and shite for 2 seconds before passing them to the next guy. Yeah, I’m sure they can just comprehend this unfathomably complex discovery with a quick glance as if they’re reading a post-it note. Opp takes a quick look and is like “oh shite, gotta go see Einstein lol” Get real.

The female leads were horribly written, as they are in all Nolan’s movies. Complete waste of Florence Pugh.

Disagree with FairhopeTide on the PTA comparison. This movie was very Nolan, for better and for worse

Again, the ending was awesome



3 out of 5

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I think we bombed them to send a message to the rest of the world. We didn't need to, we wanted to.

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Haven’t seen the movie yet, but they also took the terrain into consideration. What the bomb would do to a city built on the plains as opposed to one built in hill country. Even in dropping the bombs they were bolstering multiple areas of research.

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Even Matt Damon, who is typically terrible, turned in a good performance (save for his “most important thing that ever happened in the history of the world!!” line – all-time bad delivery there).

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I agree with this. It almost felt like a line meant exclusively for the trailer.

Yeah, I thought he was really good. The trailers made him look bad, but he was ended up being one of the better characters in the film.

People don't understand the perspective on Communism and how wildly different it was after WW2.

After WW1, there was a real pro-communist sentiment, especially in Britain, as a direct result of the horrors of WW1 and many of the social conditions. It was never very popular, but it was definitely out there.

That really spread to intellectual circles in America. When it became clear that our real enemy was the Soviet Union after ww2, that sentiment became much, much more unpopular to say the least.

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ego played a huge role in this film, nolan prsented that perfectly

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I fell in love with the juxtaposition between Strauss and Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer embarrassed, attempted to kill his professor. Strauss embarrassed, attempted to metaphorically kill Oppenheimer. The difference between the 2:

1. Oppenheimer legitimately tried to kill his teacher, then thought better.

2. Strauss went through with murdering Oppenheimer’s reputation, and it hit him squarely in the arse.

Neither of these amazing men are flawless. Both are pretty great and pretty fricking awful. Nolan was perfectly okay with that and laid it out beautifully.

I really likes the “we’re not convicting just denying” line coming back after Strauss’s hearing

idk the movie made it seem like denying Oppenheimers security clearance killed or ruined him.

he did a ton of speaking tours and eventually just hung out at his 2 acre beach front property i. St. john.

he died of throat cancer because he was a chain smoker.

sometimes I wonder what it was like in the hay day of smoking. had to have been wild.

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Went and saw it last night. Quite the theater experience. All of Nolan’s traits, both good and bad, rolled into one. Murphy was great as always and will steamroll during awards season, as should RDJ, who turned in probably the strongest performance he’s ever done. The cast was all-around really solid. Even Matt Damon, who is typically terrible, turned in a good performance (save for his “most important thing that ever happened in the history of the world!!” line – all-time bad delivery there). Affleck was fricking awesome in his small role, honestly wish we got to see more of him.



Overall, it felt like 3 different movies. The first hour is Nolan at his worst. The second hour is Nolan at his best. The third hour was a complete tonal and perspective shift but, as Totes said earlier, the most engaging.

The first hour was very, very bad. You know those terrible exposition dump scenes that Nolan does where he has the characters talking and it’s cutting in rapid succession to all kinds of settings while a noisy score drums on in the background? Imagine that, but stretched out to 60 minutes. Complete agony to sit through. An hourlong montage like this neuters any sense of immersion or engagement because it offers no contrast and gives zero time for the audience to ruminate or reflect on anything. Incredibly bad pacing, editing, and sound design. It’s like you’re watching an hourlong trailer.

The second hour was Good Nolan. Tension is upped, a pseudo countdown is introduced with the marbles, and a palpable atmosphere is established. The pace slows down to a much more palatable level and it’s much easier to feel engrossed as the setting primarily shifts to Los Alamos. Nolan does his best work when there is a singular focus on procedural elements like in this act. The buildup to the Trinity Test was sublime – I made sure to look around the theater and you could just FEEL everyone squirming in their seats as detonation time approached. All of the tension and buildup yields a worthy payoff.

The third hour was the most well shot and the most interesting. They do a good job of making you feel the weight of Opp’s inner turmoil, the bureaucratic material was fun (Social Network 2 lol), and RDJ really got to shine here. It got a little goofy towards the end when RDJ had his moustache-twirling rants but I enjoyed it for the most part. The ending was fantastic in every respect – very well done.





General thoughts:

There is no need to see this in IMAX whatsoever

Everyone who said Nolan’s sound mixing was fixed for this movie – completely wrong. It’s as horrible as ever, more so in the first act. While the score itself is quite good from a musical composition perspective, it’s omnipresent, it’s overbearing, and it’s obnoxious. Perfect example of how not to implement a film score. Seriously, in 180 minutes of runtime, there are probably 10 minutes where it’s quiet or not there at all. Deprives any sense of gravitas and invokes that “movie trailer” feel I mentioned earlier.

I would’ve liked to see more in-depth internal discussions that the scientists had at Los Alamos. So many geniuses and egos working together for 3 years, there had to be some great material. All of their discussions in the movie are surface level and very simple.

Dialogue was all over the place, and a lot of stuff was hilariously zipped through in classic Nolan fashion. He has to be doing this on purpose - he knows that writing isn’t his strong suit, so he just bombards you with breakneck pacing or other stimuli as a sleight of hand so you don’t really get to process anything. There’s a scene where the early team works together in a room and someone barges in with Teller’s discovery regarding the potential of an atmospheric-level chain reaction. Each guy solemnly glances at the formulas and equations and shite for 2 seconds before passing them to the next guy. Yeah, I’m sure they can just comprehend this unfathomably complex discovery with a quick glance as if they’re reading a post-it note. Opp takes a quick look and is like “oh shite, gotta go see Einstein lol” Get real.

The female leads were horribly written, as they are in all Nolan’s movies. Complete waste of Florence Pugh.

Disagree with FairhopeTide on the PTA comparison. This movie was very Nolan, for better and for worse

Again, the ending was awesome



3 out of 5

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I haven't seen this many fancy words used since I watched The Kings Speech

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Which is what the purpose of the sex scenes were. It showed how casual he was about adultery, he really didn't give a frick.

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I thought it was gratuitous until someone pointed it out, maybe you. As much as kitty was a soldier for him, as much as she loved him, and I believe he loved her, he didn’t truly care for her.

He was so self absorbed with his greatness, that his greatest invention, and the love and companionship of a decent, if not drunken woman, crumbles with guilt and the loss of his reputation.

She was by his side, taking bullets, and truly fighting more than he was, and he was playing with some nice arse commie titties.