Oppenheimer Review: It's Disappointing & Frustrating
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ส.ค. 2024
- Sadly I found Oppenheimer mostly disappointing & frustrating. Fight me.
Forum: www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/op...
00:00 - Oppenheimer was NOT what I expected from the trailer.
06:22 - Plot arc spoiler. What the movie is really about.
08:10 - OMG the sound, just STOP IT!
10:38 - The story arc
11:20 - Wasted opportunity
12:53 - Conclusion and rating
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#oppenheimer #Review #Movie - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
For those who think I'm confusing a character drama with a documentary, tell me, what does the trailer showcase?
The development of the bomb, or the red scare panic and infidelity of Oppenheimer through the lens of the Oppenheimer security hearing of 1954?
If you think it's the later then you must be psychic.
never trust trailers ;-)
look how most movies (the movie industries) work.
Even most "technical" documentations that a produced for tv, streaming and DVD (to make money) are more show, drama and effect and always simplify things (to much).
What not only you're looking for (there are a lot of interested amateur, "Nerds" and simply curious for the details) you will find here at youtube - but you have to search - few clicks and likes , long runtimes no teaser photos (not the exploding a- bomb or burnt bodys in the topic of the movie) are a good notice.
The more "boring" the YT video is "advertised" the higher the chance you got good technical and educating info...
What does the title showcase? Lol
i think the core issue here is that people, you, *anybody* are continuing to watch movie trailers in 2023! ... but so many movie trailers totally 100% suck now and the problem isn't limited purely to just this 1 oppenheimer movie. i have clicked online official movie trailers that totally spoilers the whole movie. now clearly that's a different type of issue but the fact remains... simply cannot watch movie trailers (anymore) in the year (2023). probably i stopped watching them myself during covid times. anyhow these days it seems sufficient data to simply check the cast, and the movie synopsis on imdb, the rating on imdb plus maybe what people are saying online about it. but i always avoid the trailers now. every single time - sorry to say but it's the only way for me now. and am never looking back.
now i could get all aggro at the studios or whoever is doing this. but i just prefer to abstain from that since clearly they have some very conflicting set of goals to promote the movie and so on. but not 'too much', so whatever the balance is between hyping it up and being honest... naturally they will have some biases (for their own jobs, incomes). and on some subjective level(s) can be difficult to get a trailer 'right' for literally every different style of viewer out there. i myself know its bloody annoying and will just ruin my day. so i just avoid watching all of them now... simplez! and my overall enjoyment is better, more fun. and the other thing i try to avoid is the looking forwards to / participating in the emotional investment before a movie comes out (since it may very well be a dud).
but movie critics have said that oppenheimer is a good movie. and they rated it about the barbie one. so i appear to be getting 2 good movies there. since barbie isn't too bad either. and no spoilers!
@mhead1117 And I said I fully expected it to be mainly a character piece on Oppenheimer. But to have almost nothing of what's implied in the trailer is completely disengenuous and very disappointing.
@@dreamcat4 Is it too much to ask to expect just some of what's implied in the trailer?
I'll just say that anybody walking out of this movie not saying that the nuclear blast scene was a massive disappointment is lying to themselves.
That was my issue too, as a nuclear bomb nerd, I was hoping to see some of the colors (blues, greens, purples) mentioned by the true eye witnesses finally show up in the explosion.
Cameron did it better in T2. Also practical, because he didn’t have a choice.
just saw it. The movie is basically a soap opera. 3 HOURS of 'Oppie' dealing with his wives, friends, allies and children. Dialogue after dialogue of melodramatic concepts. No action, no science, no REAL drama, no cliffhangers or twists. just boring dialogues about private affairs
Nolan's knack for not using CGI hurt him on this one. The entire movie is Oppenheimer makes the bomb and then regrets it afterwards. A scene of the bomb hitting Hiroshima was SORELY needed. The movie was anti-nukes but left out a scene of a nuke going off. What a waste.
Holy shit, i finally found someone who’s normal.
The bomb " blast " is Nolan detonating a can of gasoline in a field...upsetting at least
I thought exactly the same thing. Looked nothing like an atomic blast.
To be fair, this movie is based/inspired by the book American Prometheus, which has a bigger focus on Oppenheimer's life after the Manhattan Project. Whilst I would also have preferred a movie centered more on the development of the atomic bomb, lets just be thankful that a big budget historical film about a physicist is being made in 2023.
Yes, small mercies.
i think it was amazing. Even physicist like Brian Cox loved it. Not everyone wants to be too in depth with engineering. I had read the background was familiar with most scientists and their works, the visuals reminded ohh this what they are doing… I don’t understand why would you have expected otherwise. The movie was 3hours already and it missed soo much soo I mean for a movie there is only soo much you can fit in 3hour
or maybe was inspired by cartoons from Dismey?!
@@Ms123killit missed so much because it was commie commie commie talk for like 2 hours. Could have shown his childhood or hell, just shown more of the relationship stuff and at least it’s about his emotional life and decision making process.
@@jeffk1722 xddd commie? lmfao...okay. Sure
As an engineer I’m willing to forego technical details, but was more interested in understanding Oppenheimer’s struggles in making the bomb.
As an engineer, I couldn't care less about his feelings - I want to know _how he did it_
You know, they can do both, right? Its not like they have to pick and choose, but I assume they were afraid of legal issue showing the process of making a nuclear bomb even though the schematics are widely distributed on the internet, if ISIS failed to make an a-bomb using pretty highly trained personnel and pretty extensive labs to do it which were very well equipped for the job, and yet they still failed because they did not have reactors big enough to produce enough material.
@@SMGJohn I get what you mean but I was more interested in knowing how he got different people to work together as a team.
@@mikeissweetit was also too long
This is the humble approach, to trade use of intellect for use of muse when interpreting a piece of art. A humility which is tragically absent from this critique.
It's not even that much about Oppenheimer given how skewed towards Strauss the story becomes.
Trailer was very misleading. It indicated that the entire movie is about the planning and execution of the Manhattan project right from recruitment, to team building, to development to testing to execution (implosion) to guilt and regret. But there’s nothing about that especially not in that order. It’s all over the place. Disappointing
worst movie.. am so angry that i got robbed of my money i paid in cinema, robbed of my time, its so ugly and after you watched the movie, you want to kill someone out of frustrations that i just wasted my time to this garbage
Derek Muller"s 30 minutes movie about Oppenheimer was really good!
I wish the movie was like Derek's video
Dave, perhaps you will enjoy 2014 TV series called "Manhattan". As far as remember, it has everything you're looking for - engineering stuff, lifestyle in Los Alamos etc. It has two seasons. The only drawback is that they changed main character name because of some legal issues or something. But the main character there is Richard Feynman.
I'd rather listen to the audio books like "surely you're joking mr. Feynman" or "the pleasure of finding things out"
@@CookingWithCows yes those are good, but heavily based on Feynman's lectures, and were not written by Feynman himself. So perhaps it's even better to listen lecture recordings instead?
Will check it out, thanks.
@arthurvin2937 yes those are awesome too. The feynman lectures are available on youtube even, I saw them before. But I'm sure there are so many more anecdotes, lectures and stuff from los alamos that are not as readily available. I really loved the part where feynman was playing with the censorship bureau at los alamos when writing letters to his wife "in code"
The Manhattan series was great and definitely should have been renewed for more than two seasons but it was HEAVILY fictionalized. Definitely doesn’t give any real engineering history
As far as films go, I’ve learned to just go watch the movie with no expectations. I remember being excited for TENET, though a sci-fi movie, watched it and ended up being a little bit disappointed because of certain aspects that I was looking forward to. For Oppenheimer, it wasn’t right until the last few weeks that I started watching the trailers but nothing in particular to look forward. I ended up being truly amazed after watching it.
It was called Oppenheimer and described as a biopic:- A film dramatising the life of a particular person, typically a public or historical figure.
However, the trailers were put together by the marketing/advertising department. That's where the mis-match between the expectation set by the trailer, and what the film actually delivers arises.
In saying that, the film remains a masterpiece of cinematography, just not what the trailers lead you to expect.
Thank you for helping me to understand my own experience!
I think this guy went in mainly for the technology aspects but should’ve looked into what Christopher Nolan said it was gonna be… A movie about Oppenheimer
Ya dude thought he was getting the remake to fat man and little boy 😂...lol moron dude probably also saw it in Liemax and not in 70mm imax like Nolan intended
Signature Nolan, important dialogue obscured by ridiculously loud incidental music - absurd! Thanks for the heads-up Dave.
Hans Zimmer: "zis time ve vanted to go all out vit the music so ve used literal fucking atomic bombs in ze studio"
@@StevenOBrien it wasn't Hans Zimmer this time
I love Nolan's visual style but his wonky audio mixing is basically a meme at this point.
I would not expect a movie for the public to go into various technical details so that would not surprise me at all. My understanding is the bomb project took a lot of resources and was almost abandoned at times because they thought it could not be done
You think technical details are too complex but 3 hours sitting around talking about historic politics isn't?
@@jordanhenshawlol....the movie was too focused on his trustworthiness then what the audience really wanted to know. The flashbacks were too oversaturated
It’s a movie about Oppenheimer, not a documentary about the bomb lmao.
Which he's known for having helped create....the bomb is kind of important.
You didn't even watch the video lmao. 5:00
How much of what they were up to at the time is still classified?
As an engineer myself, I was satisfied with the angle. I can't imagine if you had most of the movie focus on technical details about the bomb, it would go over most of the people's head and the entertaining value would go down tremendously. If you wanted it to be more technical, it really then needed to be in a series format, otherwise it would really bomb.
Nice pun.
Well put and I agree.
Tell that to the people who did the last episode of Chernobyl. They explained how a nuclear reactor works in a way a child could understand it.
@@brandonf3865 Of course they would. You just need a good enough writer.
Sorry to recomment, but this is just really dumb. This is a really dumb limitation. You can ABSOLUTELY go into technical details with a film. You just need to figure out how to simplify your communication.
I agree. Going in with a decent amount of knowledge about the timeframe, i felt like something/s was missing. I'm still trying to find reasons to justify 3hrs, all the hype, and so many characters without any backstory... to no avail.
T R U E
Your thesis: The trailer lied to me. I wanted a 28 hour film.
Dave if you havent already try looking for the film Fat Man and Little Boy (or Shadow Makers as it was in the UK where im from). I think that had a lot more to do with the engineering of the Manhatten Project, from what I remember, its been 25 years or so since I watched it last.
It's more drama and politics, it's just not that gripping imo. It won't be looked back on as a classic and isn't very re-watchable.
The movie is called Oppenheimer, not The Bomb or The Manhattan Project. I saw the trailer and still really enjoyed the movie as I knew it was about him, as the title suggests.
The Manhattan Project is the only reason people care about J. Robert Oppenheimer. Being disappointing that that part of the story was short-changed for an hour of Red Scare dialogue is pretty valid. It’s like if I go see that upcoming Bob Marley movie, I’m going to be expecting to hear some Wailers songs.
Oppenheimer without the bomb is nothing really! It was the bomb and how he was the leader of the Manhattan Project that made him an interesting person. No one cares how about whether or not his security clearance would be revoked which was the entire focus of the movie.
I haven't seen the trailer before I went to see it and I really wanted to go just to see the 70mm IMAX projection so in that regard I was very satisfied. But you're right, it was way less technical than I would like it to be, but well that's to be expected from movie for general public I guess. And the audio seemed fine in the cinema I was in, loud yes but pretty similar to any other movie I've seen in the last decade or so.
Dave's got a lot of roles going on: Dave the Electrical Engineer, Dave the Financial Advisor, Dave the Gullible Seagull, now Dave the Movie Critic...What next, Dave the Barbarian?! 😉
He has to finance his family and his upscale lifestyle (house, technic gadgets like the big solar system sport bikes and so on , a (or even two - ?) e-car, travelling and all he speaks not about) only with his TH-cam and "online" work (if he tells the full truth...)
Also, i think he is really excited about all that themes - for sure there will be a bit (a bit more) "show for the subscribers" to sell his "stuff" and his online services - but most, i think it is his real honest interest and sincere enthusiasm for the things.
Dave is indispensable. If only we could convince him to do a weekly podcast to blabber on about whatever day to day stuff he'd like
There is only one barbarian. GET TOO DE CHAAAPPPPAAAAHH
I guess you all too young or too old to understand the Barbarian - reference: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_the_Barbarian
I left the room after about one hour, it felt continuos like a boing waste of time
Same happened with Dunkirk, so most probably is me
Perhaps... ;-) (not...)
Glad to hear I wasn't the only one who found Dunkirk a "Did I just waste my life?" movie.
same here even though I had no guts to leave (I wasn't alone) - Maybe Nolan has to stop doing historical movies - when it comes to scifi he's nailing every time
What did you expect Dave??? It's a movie not a documentary
"I wasn't expecting an interpretive story by an artistic filmmaker, I was expecting a historical documentary showing what really happened at Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project, and the engineering science applied to weaponize nuclear power" uhhh dude, a lot of it is still classified. How could he depict extended sequences of events there are no official record of? As for the science that is available despite being classified information, do you really suggest he should've demonstrated the actual science for developing nukes? Are you serious? It would have been even more contrived in order to show things that nobody actually knows about. And it would've been super boring because most people aren't engineers in physics, who want a film about engineering in physics that shows nothing but actual engineering in actual physics. What you need is to realize how not to load your mind full of misguided expectations because that's what ruined it for you. The trailer didn't misrepresent anything. Rather, the narrative played out in your head after the trailer is what misrepresented it. Of you went to the movie with no expectations, but rather the desire to be taken into someone's cinematic vision, then you'd have totally enjoyed it. You can watch endless documentaries and videos of actual physicists and engineers, but you want to see it in fictionalized retelling of history where the story is all on the physics and engineering. What's the visual tone and texture of such a story? What kind of soundtrack would have to accompany the epic moments of a quantity being reached on a chalkboard as if we've never seen such a scene before... might as well write and direct your own whole movie and call it "Physics and engineering during the time of the Manhattan project" and I'm sure just about every uninteresting nerd out there with no taste for cinema will be running to the theaters with notebooks and pens in hand.
Seriously...
after Dünnpfiff ähm Dunkirk you should not expect too much from Nolan movie anyway
I saw it this weekend. Couldn't agree with Dave's opinion more. I'm sure the marketing team looked at the film and then decided that it's not exactly what most people would be excited for and angled the trailer towards the science/engineering/development of the bomb. Literally false advertising.
Can you compare the movie to Veritasiums latest video about Oppenheimer ? Its only 30 minutes but i feel it has enough science as well as facts about the person to make it better than the movie ? I have not seen the movie yet, and due to this review here i am now hesitant to see it. Edit: did they even include the Demon Core in the movie ?
The movie has about everything in regards to science as is included in the veritasium video. after seeing both it's almost like they're based on eachother. And why would they include the Demon Core? lmao "did they even", wouldn't really make sense to include it. The movie is about the creation of the atomic bomb and the trinity test is the big thing. while developing the bomb the movie focuses on the uranium and plutonium core. They have a bowl and a glass which represents the cores which they fill with balls representing the uranium and plutonium they have mined and as the science progresses they also fill up these representations. They also talk a lot about the function of the core and focus on fission. The Demon Core however was simply a leftover plutonium core which wasn't used in the test bomb or in actual bombs in japan. As the bomb is dropped on hiroshima the movie goes into the moral problems oppenheimer had with the bomb and other stuff (won't spoil), so it wouldn't make sense to extend the story to include some random tests on a leftover core which wasn't used for anything. Especially since they by then had made 3 bombs so why would they start over and include something about the demon core?
The general public wouldn’t be able to tell you if 50 MicroSieverts was nothing or a lethal dose, let alone the relative pros and cons of gun type vs implosion type weapons. This film was doomed.
Someone’s a little obsessed with the trailer.
Kinda felt the same way. I lived next to the Hanford site for a few years and was disappointed to see it represented by only marbles.
I mean it isnt about the manhattan project so there is no way they would have been able to fit that in without making it feel irrelevant
It's a biopic about Oppenheimer and it was shouted from the rooftops that it was based on American Prometheus...
Well, it still could have been a good movie 😂
what was with the drone noise at the test site lmao, 3 mins of just buzzing
I can’t imagine someone actually complaining about the “migraine” like scenes. The speech moment after the trinity test and the interrogation where everything goes white like an atomic bomb flash are among the best of the film, and some of the most devastating scenes I’ve ever witnessed. I understand feeling misled by the trailer, but by that point it feels like he’s just criticizing great scenes for the sake of criticizing
Some people just don’t get the meanings and purpose of the movie which is okay but it’s definitely an invalid critic
Sometimes a "misleading" trailer is a good thing, 'cause then you can be surprised with an impressive film.
@@Telonious_Terp 100% agree. I was completely unaware how much time we’d spend learning who Oppenheimer was before, during, and after the Manhattan project. And it made me appreciate the film even more. Without that context, what reason would I have to care for him as a character
@@Dawg476 it’s just disappointing seeing people critique things like that rather than appreciate the film for what it is. I found it to be devastating and one of the best theater experiences of my life.
You can't blame him. He's a shallow viewer.
well, it's based on a book, American Prometheus, and it is pretty loyal to that book. So I don't know why a reviewer wouldn't know this
You're right in that this was more about the history of science (and a very nice political intrigue story) without ever dealing with the actual science but I'm skeptical they could've done very much even in the 3 hour runtime? I enjoy both sides of the coin so I wasn't uniquely disappointed but I'd love to know what other movies etc have done the science justice?
Just a couple of deeper technical scenes would have been enough.
Oppenheimer talked a lot, but it said nothing.
Former chemist here, and I thought the movie was disappointing and felt realy disjointed, I completely agree with you on every point!!
Way TOO much overpowering audio. The audio music often over powers the actors voices to the point that it was confusing and hard to follow. Massive let down
Overall, I got exactly what I expected after reading/struggling through 'American Prometheus'. However totally with the background noise/sound being really intrusive. Bizarrely I accidentally went to a subtitled showing and I glad I did as I am sure I wouldn't have caught some of the dialogue.
That is my main complaint. The soundtrack is way, WAY overdone. Not that it was composed wrong, just OVER used. I really did not like how the music ran right over the dialogue. I wanted to hear some of the tech talk exchanged during the montage of recruiting. I agree with this channel's review. All I got was a test pattern tone 3 hour headache.
No disrespect but I think that basing how you feel ab a movie bc of a trailer is shallow, this movie was a masterful biopic, it wasn’t about the bomb, it was about Oppenheimer, the only movies that are faithful to their trailers are plotless action movies, because if they showed what the movie was truly about, it would completely spoil the entire thing.
Did you see it in 15/70? Sounds like I would like what's in there on the right day but my huge inner nerd would be as disappointed as my inner dreamer watching Inception. I bet there's no demon core scene, at least we have the 89 movie for that. Also I remember seeing nixie tubes in the teaser, don't think they had those in the 40s.
Yes, the Nixie counter was a glaring anachronism. Nixie tubes were not invented until 1955, ten years after the Manhattan Project. I understand that they were thrown in a shorthand for retro-sciencey stuff that would read with 99% of the viewing audience, but it really broke my focus during the film.
Hi Dave, I was planning to go and see this at the flicks but now I've watched this vid I will wait till it's streaming. Yeah I was excited by the trailer too as it seems that they knew what the audience wanted to see from this movie but didn't deliver it, what a joke. hope you are well mate, best regards from the UK👍👍👍
Can't wait for you to see it and come back to tell this guy how wrong he was and that you wished you saw it in Imax. Time will tell, of course... indeed the time will tell.
Thanks for this Dave - I was going to see it but I'll wait until it is on TV.
It's worth going to see in the cinema/theatre
I just saw it in theaters. I love Nolan and heavy dialogue movies. This was overhyped for some reason. It was ok. Not a masterpiece
I can totally understand your point of view and i too would have loved to see more of the technology explained. I enjoyed the movie and i recommend any body seeing it to do some research into the whole story to help follow the time lines.
The more I research the more angry I get, they left out so much information about his life 😅
Just out of intrest how much of the Manhattan Project is still considered classifide? I mean its almost like your disappointed that Nolan never shot a TH-cam HOWTO, for Iran, and North Korea, or something.
I agree 100% and also a history buff that was looking forward to a good movie about the development of the bomb and the scientist that made it. We walked out half way through totally disappointed and concluded Oppenheimer is a confusing noisy flashy annoying bore.
The BBC here in the UK did a drama series in 1980 with the same name..... way better 😁
Google it
I COMPLETELY AGREE!!! I totally agreed with everything you said. It’s like you got in my head and said everything I thought!
C'mon Dave, it's Hollywood not an MIT course. Your quick uptake failed you on this one. If they made "your" movie, it woulda failed at the box office.
I was disappointed but for different reasons. Can't put my finger on it but I feel pretty empty after it, though I did feel emotionally burdened after watching it. But overall it just felt bloated, too complicated and overpacked with dialogue. It's unlikely I'll watch it again tbh
Anyone please feel free to chime in and answer this question that's been bothering me. Dave frequently refers to the name "Muriel," and I am curious what the source of this is. The only "Muriel" that I can recall is a character on an old American sitcom called "Too Close For Comfort." I doubt this is the source, so can anyone help me answer this question that has plagued me for a long time?
From a scene in the aussie film Muriel's Wedding.
1. A trailer is by design to get you into the movie lol
2. Surprise…the biopic is a biopic.
Yeah, there's a word for that ya know.
It was more so a focus on the life of Oppenheimer. The trinity test and nuclear bomb development was a small subset of his life. There is a bigger picture displayed during the movie and how he was painted to be a villian for trying to push for regulation of nuclear weapons internationally.
his life was not interesting enough to carry this movie.
@@XshopahollicsX A Feynman biopic would be great because he was quite a character, from the Manhattan project to the Challenger investigation to his time at Thinking Machines...picking up chicks, cracking safes, and playing the bongos along the way.
@@treelineresearch3387 makes sense, sounds fun!
Even the way Nolan filmed the trinity test was much more focused on the team's reaction to the bomb rather than the bomb itself.
Yeah, sure, the invention of the most destructive, mass annihilating weapon in the history of mankind was just a "small subset" of its creator's life, simply incomparable to reading Sanskrit on top of some commie's bооbs, LMAO
Does Einstein get much screen time?
Like 2-3 minutes at most
I went into the movie without expectations since I don't watch movie trailers and had a nice experience. Watching trailers often ruins movies, setting wrong expectations or spoiling things. That's why I stopped doing it.
The back and forth flashbacks would annoy and confuse me as well. Thanks for the honest review.
They aren't back and forth flashbacks. This dude apparently doesn't understand cinema, he's more of a scientist than a cinephilez therefore should not be trusted in that regard.
The story sways on two threads that are being told simultaneously. Yes, the two threads are two different points of time, but it's not the same as saying it's flashback jumping. It's really no different than the technique he uses in all his other movies where he shows swings back and forth between separate events as if they're happening at the same time, a concept around which Tenet was centered, a concept which probably flew right over this dudes head because he was probably too busy "debunking" the concept of reverse entropy. Honestly, this is the most annoying film review I've ever witnessed in my life, because his sense of cinema is too disingenuous to be a true critic, much less a viewer.
Stick to marvel! Cheers 🥂
@@sid_c2136 pfffft, right. This guy would have to spend a decade on a series dedicated to debunking all the flawed physics and engineering in the marvel movies. Every machine bursting rays of energy, the Pym cells, the quantumverse, spidermans web cartridges, whiplashes whip, exposure to gamma radiation, the fragmentation of photons for traveling light on the Bifrost, and don't even get him started on Stark tech; every suit's propulsion systems, energy weapons, robotics and artillery, his girl Friday's interface with the suit and sunglasses, discovery of time travel with the inverted mobius strip and its subsequent evocation of physics that he'll spend 2 hours debunking the engineering of. This dude trying the marvel movies would be an exercise in cinephilistic futility, and that's me being nice.
@@Telonious_Terpwhat the heck are you talking about. This movie was a mess. I love all other Nolan movies, but this just wasn't put together well. Too many jumps and holes in the storytelling.
The movie jumped through the years like it was nothing. It created too much holes in the story.
The big twist of the movie:
The character of Dr.Hill (played by Rami Malek) gets introduced into the movie besides Oppenheimers professor collegue tries to collect signatures for a petition against the A-Bomb. He seeminly looks like an assistant of that professor.
Later in the movie during hearing for the security clearance of Oppenheimer things really go south for Oppenheimer and Strauss seems to "win" the hearing.... then the plot twist.... Dr.Hill suddenly turns up and exposes Strauss' "evil" real intentions.
Like what?? How does Dr.Hill know all this? Whats his relation to Strauss? For giving Dr.Hill the scene of the plot twist and being the most important person to "save" Oppenheimers hearing, we were given no information about him.
Its just a mess of a movie. It has a feeling of "This happened, then this happened, then this happened, then this happened"... just speedrunning through Oppenheimers career without having a focus on either his scientific, emotional or political struggles. It feels like a everything was thrown in a box and then chronologically narrated without knowing what you actuall want to tell.
movie's called oppenheimer, not manhatten project
He wanted Physics classroom for 3 hrs
And yet no one would give a toss about who Oppenheimer was if it were not for the Manhattan project
I believe you, and I am looking forward to see this movie myself, but having a few nuclear geeks tell me how disappointed they were, my hopes plummet down the drain, frankly I always said that Hollywood stopped being interesting in early 2000s and got a lot of flak for it, but I was hoping I was being wrong, sadly I was not.
This is typical Holyweird stuff as we call it, there is always a s*x scene in there, there always some drama bullshit between characters that exist purely to draw in people too ignorant to understand anything else, and I find that really sad because movies of the olden days, while lacking in visual effects and whatever else, I find them far more interesting, there far more focus on the plot rather than the characters, there was a Soviet movie about some children going to space and we get this entire scenes where scientists are working on various machinery and the kids are training, to me as a child it was exciting, was fascinating, it really got me hyped about science and technology, and there was a really old american movie from the 50s about making a super sub, so much technical aspects put into these its mind boggling, but now its all replaced with one dimensional characters and pointless drama, the plot is written so infantile its essentially treating its viewers like idiots, there is nothing more insulting than going to watch something and the movie essentially telling you are a f*cking moron for 2 hours straight.
And the fact Christopher Nolan is directing this, makes my day even more ruined, I expected more. If I wanted "epic" visuals, I go play video games, not sit through 2 hours of boredom.
Walked out of the theatre disappointed 😞. Not enough substance material to make a film about Robert Oppenheimer also overacting ruined certain parts of the film
I agree with every single thing except the audio. Maybe the theater you watched didn't have a great setup or wasn't tuned right for the film. I watched in imax 70mm and while it DEFINITELY had the rumble you described, it wasn't swamping the dialogue. It added tension and stress as was intended. Was actually one of the things I liked the most was the audio.
During the 3rd act the dialogue faded into just noise and I couldn't hear it either.
I watched it in one of the better IMAX theeaters. The sound design was flat out obnoxious. I could hear the dialog, but the score was so annoying , I got angry at the movie. If you are going to make a movie about this guy more than the actual mission, how about some more subtle mmusic and more moments of silence? Why do I need that idiotic score blaring in scenes where all Cillian does is stare straight ahead like some catatonic patient.
@@apexmax5944 Like I said, I did not have any trouble hearing the dialogue. The music was almost like a very deep rumbling that I felt more than heard. I am the type to watch everything with subtitles too because I struggle hearing the words. But I heard everything just fine. Seems more like the fault of the theater you were at. There was literally like 360° of speakers throughout the the entire theater. I didn't really care for the movie but I still don't agree with the complaints about the audio.
Books exist. Read one.
Project less
FAT MAN AND LITTLE BOY is the best technical film made, Dwight Schultz as Oppenheimer, fantastic.
Thanks for preventing me from wasting my time and money... was going to see it next week, doesn't sound like I would enjoy it at all.
a lot of Kurbick movies weren't received well when they came out. In fact, a lot of them were bombs or misunderstood. And yet he's seen as the goat. We're living in a time where it's all about the adrenaline rush. The here and now, and everyone has to like it. It's all about what's current, what's hip. The fact that most people responded to Oppenheimer with great appeal, but with 10% feeling iffy about it I think shows to how Nolan delivers in every film he does.
These days I don't expect any good docu type movies anymore in cinemas or other platforms.
There are plenty of extremely good YT channels who do a FAR better job of explaining all the details to a remarkable high professional level.
All the Nolan fanboys get super upset when you ask them any actual questions about the people featured in the film. They haven't got a clue!
you got trailer baited my friend. saw the film with zero expectations except it being about Oppenheimer and really enjoyed it however, I would have liked more scenes about the science and engineering behind the project but I'm fine with it not being in the film since it's a Biopic and not a Docu-series.
Nearly every film trailer shows the best parts of the movie it’s how they get people into the theatre
Sure, but in this case you don't get ANY other parts like that.
The best parts of the movie were absolutely not shown in the trailer. The victory speech scene spliced with Oppenheimer’s imagination of what the bombings were like was excellently done
It's a 3 hours long piece of garbage. No one with any brains can say anything good about this movie.
The thing is, is even when the movie is doing all the legal stuff it isn’t historically accurate. Like most of his life was dedicated to grappling with the effects of the bomb and resisting the use of the atomic bomb. But they decided to focus on the communist stuff.
Yeah, for a movie about the "father of the atomic bomb" I too was disappointed with the lack of actual science and engineering in this film, which is probably due to Nolan knowing little to nothing about it unfortunately. Still, I recommend the film for atomic awareness, Oppenheimer's cultural importance, and Murphy's excellent performance as the man.
I think youve found a niche mate, 'Dave reviews movies Dave hates but reviewers love'. This is legit the most honest, considered review i've seen in a long time.
I await your review of "The English Patient" with baited breath XD
He should sum up the squares and, do The Barbie Movie next. 😂
It's been a tendency in movies lately for the audio guys wanting to be front and center in the movie. Their noise must come before dialogue. The folly noise or music gets louder and the voices get drowned out. Can't even turn up the audio and replay it 4 times to tell what they are saying. So many movies the audio guys have done this.
You seem like a smart guy. Don’t base your expectations for a 3 hour film on a 2.5 minute trailer
The visuals were not even spectacular tbh - it was lazy even though it didn’t have CGI, that’s not always a good thing. The bomb scene was lacklustre you barely saw the whole thing. You barely even saw anything about the 0.1 ktn TNT test.
I think this movie could use more details. For example, I was always curious about the camp life of the Manhattan Project, the interactions of scientists and engineers, and how they influenced Oppenheimer in his thinking. Somehow the movie felt sloppy with the historical details. I was trying to figure out if I should believe the story and the characters. I was not disappointed because the 3 hours went quick. I usually don’t expect much from Hollywood anyway. But to call this a masterpiece is an overstatement.
Only so much screentime. You ask for more but what would you have cut?
@@badgasaurus4211The director chose to tell the story about how Oppenheimer being unfairly treated by the system. He let this took the center stage of the movie and sacrificed the opportunity to create the atmosphere around the Manhattan Project. It was his choice to make, so I am not going to complain about that. But to spend three hours making one point makes the movie one dimensional.
@@omgname You didn’t answer my question
@@badgasaurus4211 It is not about cutting. It is about what he emphasized. He made a choice.
Masterpiece i loved every minute.
Christopher Nolan messed up the sound for Interstellar too. He override the sound engineers and changed the mix so the theaters all had to raise the volume to make the dialogue audible but it was ear piercingly loud until a new mix was made.
This guy obviously went into the theater expecting "Nukes: The Movie."
"I enjoyed the ending" is a good summary. 😂
I'm not sure if he's saying he enjoyed how it ended or if he enjoyed that it ended.
Finally! Someone that shares my views on the movie. I wanted to see more of the visuals from Oppenheimer's mind being brought into reality through the engineering process. It was pure eye candy until it just stopped.
It was more a biopic and a character study, not some tv show from Discovert channel
Oppenheimer wasn't the main engineering brilliance behind the bomb, he simply understand all the mechanics involved in production from the physics, to the chemistry, to the mathematics. The fact is he brought a inspirational driving force that was simply needed to get hundreds of scientists on the same goal and to see it through. We have to be careful attributing Oppenheimer with the key scientific premise of the bomb, because like most things in science it was really a team effort based on the work of decades of studies and endeavors. What you describe is something more akin to the Theory of Everything or Einsteins theory of relativity. Oppenheimer didn't invent or really first envision the nuclear bomb, he was the person that organized great minds and manifested it.
Its a biopic dumbass not some special effects crap hollywood puts out all the time, and its for smart people, so you might not get it
@@lucasfalco7655but the character in question was very intelligent and that was largely skipped over by useless past info we didnt need or care about.
I wish this movie focused more on making the bomb and los alomos, because the movie was boring as hell
@@lucasfalco7655but it wasn't though, there wasn't any depth or sitting with the characters for any meaningful amoun of time.
It was just "The Big Short" for the first nuke.
you really expected for all the information you wanted to be in a 3 hour movie, simply because a 2 and half minute trailer gave you that impression ?
lol
They should've let Ron Howard direct the movie. He did a great job on Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind which were also science/math flicks with just the right balance of science and story development that focused on all the emotional/physical struggles the protagonists went through.
I have to publicly disagree. It is meant to be a biographical story. I greatly enjoyed it. And I'm glad I picked that to be the first movie I go see at the theatre in a long time.
I just went to watch it, I didn't have any set expectations. And I really liked it. It opened my eyes on so many of the other things going on besides and around just the engineering.
As for being confusing, I didn't find it annoying or frustrating.
The only thing that annoyed my was that the projector has a half dead pixel 😂
Granted, I didn't watch the trailer.
People pissed off this movie is about Oppenheimers mentality and decision making and not a how to make an atomic bombs movie.
@@petermj1098 They would need to go watch a film called Manhattan Project or something for that lol
Thanks Dave. I'm also a fan of Richard Rhodes and have a pretty extensive collection of what's been written about nuclear weapons.
I've been indecisive about seeing the movie and probably won't spend any money to see it now.
If a person can dictate whether or not you should watch a film then I can’t imagine who else you listen to just go watch the film just because one TH-camr says he didn’t like it don’t mean you’re not gonna like it either .
Pretty sure gonna repent not watching it. Mark my words!
Won't see it now, why, because you let a cinematically uninformed and misguided opinion influence you into disposition? This guy's not a real movie critic, but a projection of narrow and biased expectations. You really want Chris Nolan to spend the required studies on nuclear physics to spend screen time on presenting that science? What, endless dramatic representation of nuclear physics? Is it just 3 hours of cilian Murphy arguing with physicists while standing at a chalkboard? Let's just remove the soundtrack and have no music while we're at it. Oh, there isn't enough screen time for character development or themes, so we'll have to cut all that out in order to explain the Dirac equation. So, no Albert einstien in the film cause he wasn't even really in the project right? No lewis strauss, as he wasn't a physicist or an engineer. No hearings on the communist past, no early days of interest in quantum mechanics and attempt to poison his professor. None of the good stuff that makes a story a good story, no, we need to make sure that the audience knows what the arrangement and composition of an atomic nucleus is, and then we'll have our movie!
Seriously...
@@Telonious_Terp Wow.
@@mikebarushok5361 to be clear, I'm not saying that's what *I* wanted the movie to be. I'm speaking from the point of view of this "critic", and lambasting it. Oppenheimer is an exemplary showcase of masterful storytelling and filmmaking.
You are the very few I share my thoughts with in this case. I was equally disappointed with the movie, and among many other issues, one of them was the stakes of the movie. The movie is supposed to be about the nuclear bomb and the problems that come with it, but shows as much more important in the movie is Oppenheimer's security clearance. Like, am I supposed to care about that?
I will summarize other issues with the movie:
1. Non-linear format. Why does a biopic need to have that? Interstellar, which was a scifi about time travel benefitted from that, but in Oppenheimer it serves as nothing but confusing.
2. Bad sound mixing.
3. Too long, and very very very crappy editing. Nolan just tried to do too much, all at the same time and kind of failed
4. The characters don't feel real. It's hard to connect with any of them.
5. Also, too many characters, with barely any proper focus on any of them.
6. The gotcha moment or the big reveal barely has any value and seems contrived and gimmicky.
Overall, very disappointing and underwhelming. Don't think I'll ever watch it again.
I fully agree with your comment and those six points. Oppenheimer is one of the biggest disappointments I've had regarding movies about important historical events/people.
This is why I stayed away from the trailer - I didn't want any specific expectations. Because of this, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, even as a nerd, and wouldn't change anything abou tit.
I completely agree with your description of the difference between what the trailers present, and what the movie presents, and I also found that jarring. I thought the drama and excitement was going to come from the Manhattan project, but it didn't. Interestingly, the very few and brief scenes where it does do that carry quite a lot of emotional impact. The original "marbles in a jar" scene was an "oh my" moment. The occasional shots of the implosion core partially surrounded by explosives were appropriately menacing. These were great scenes, but they were few and far between.
Once the movie was over I reflected on what the point of basing so much of the plot on Lewis Strauss was, and in the end I decided that it was the way of giving Oppenheimer (the man) a "win" to end the movie.
My frustrations peaked in the scenes where they described both Einstein and Oppenheimer as mathematically sub-par. This is a horrible fiction - particularly in the case of Einstein - that seems to be fed to children who aren't strong at mathematics to prevent them from feeling discouraged. But at this point is has become "received wisdom" and seems to be accepted generally as a historical fact. The national geographic series "Genius" promoted the same egregious fiction (amongst its many other rewritings of history, but let's not go there).
Artistically, the film was technically fantastic, but challenging. For the first couple of minutes I thought we were being treated with a montage of events to put the audience into the context, and then the movie would start for real. But the scenes just kept getting machine-gunned at me all right up to the actual trinity explosion, and the score was written in the same way. Artistically, I get it. it's a deliberate choice to make the trinity test an inflection point, not just in the plot, but in the very construction of the movie. I personally felt it didn't quite work as well as might have been intended, but I got the idea.
Part of what spoiled that punctuated moment for me was the jarringly underwhelming explosion from the test. Going into the movie I wondered whether they might take historical footage and touch it up. I expected the initial jellyfish-like fireball, so intense and massive that its barely translucent surface looks almost uniform, and a sense of scale provided by the surrounding terrain. But no, what we got was a close-up of a rolling fireball with some spark. The kind movies often produce by setting off a detonator inside a bag of gasoline. To make matters worse, when the shockwave hit the prone observers it looked like some prop handler just out of camera view threw half a bucket of dirt into the scene from the left.
All that said, I still enjoyed the movie for what it was even if I felt misled by the trailer, and I did appreciate the artistry of the direction even if it didn't work 100% for me personally. All of the acting was fautless, even though the amazing cast was barely given a chance to act for the first half of the movie because of the brevity of each scene. The moment when Raimi Malek says "thank you" when offered a chance to speak (after merely 3 scenes for this A-list actor - almost a cameo role - during which he was very conspicuously given no lines) was a clever and subtle 4th wall breaker. And I was chuffed by a few historical easter eggs (Feynman on his bogo drums, for example).
An excellent movie, despite being unsatisfying.
Well said
hahaha sounds like the conversation my wife and I just had after leaving the movie. Great comment.
This review is a breath of fresh air from someone who got something they didn't expect, was disappointed but not entirely. You mark its flaws with fair judgment, as a critic coming from the technical > artistic side of things, EEVBlog2 could take a hint from you.
I went into it with no expectations. It was more so filled with dialogue but I personally enjoyed it. Also for a 3 hour movie it was so fast paced.
Same here. I didn't see the trailer, so had no expectations. It did drag a bit in the middle but, as for you, the three hours did pass quickly. I enjoyed it. Didn't know Truman was such an asshole.
I thought the movie was terrible. I’m not an engineer but was interested to learn more about Los Alamos. Yet it’s all a façade, just like the recreation homes they built for sets.
What an odd complaint. Everything you saw in the trailer was in the film. There was enough physics talk about how a nuclear bomb works. It’s not a documentary- it has to be palatable for an audience who doesn’t understand what you do
yeah, it's literally about oppenheimer, that's probly why they didn't title the movie "the manhattan project" or something similar.
How to tell me you didn't watch the video...
@@EEVblog2 I did watch it... I hear people comparing it to barbie, but i think a better comparison would be something like that cleopatra netflix show... from that context, oppenheimer is really good...when it comes to the nuke, I just assumed from the beginning it was going to be like one of those monster movies from the 70's or 80's where they only show the monster for like 5 minutes... in this case it was just gonna be the first nuke going off instead of a monster... or maybe titanic.... certainly not saving private ryan.
Didn't Oppenheimer design the atomic bomb?
@Account-kx5vr no, he hired the team of people that designed the bomb though... saying he designed the bomb would be like saying one person designed the titanic... it took a team.
@AKATenn aww, would've been nice to see him and the team working on the bomb.
+1 I had the same feelings about it. If they wanted to do a movie like this one, Oppenheimer may not have been the person to focus on. "Dark Sun" has multiple story and plot threads that would have been fantastic movies of this type - and more relevant for today. With all the questions about intellectual property theft and industrial espionage that cycle around in the media, "Dark Sun" would be a much more interesting and relevant story than the life of Oppenheimer.
@erikheidt4949 what is dark sun and what is your take on it?
No, the movie did it’s job very well.
The tire trial was about Oppenheimers security clearance. Well, call me whatever you want, but I was not invested.
what about Indiana J ?