To be uncomfortable with the film Oppenheimer?

[LKM23]

I haven't seen the film, I'm sure it's a brilliant thriller and will be a Blockbuster hit. I don't think I'll watch it though, it makes my feel really uncomfortable.

It feels like a man who at the end of the day killed thousands of people and damaged millions is being celebrated and turned into a hero.

I lived in Japan for 10 years in my twenties. I visited both Hiroshima and Nagasaki and spent a lot of time with people both directly and indirectly affected by the dropping of the bombs. Those scars are real and still there and will be for a very very long time. It changed Japan and the people who live there forever and at the end of the day I think he was an awful person.

AIBU?

Is that what the film’s about though?

Is it a “war movie” or is it a biopic of a conflicted scientist who’s work happened to be key in the development of nuclear weapons?

have I misread and it’s actually a film about the weapons and their role in the war, and not a film about Oppenheimer?

This is just racism.

Is it ok to dislike Germans? Americans? Brits?

Displaying extreme ignorance there. FYI there was not a choice between "drop a bomb on Japan or Germany drops a bomb on us". Dropping a bomb on Japan occurred after Germany had surrendered and the Russians had taken Berlin and Hitler was dead. Dropping the bomb therefore did not affect whether the Germans made the bomb first. In addition, one side making a bomb does not preclude the other side making one shortly afterwards.

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/12947

Define 'about'. The Emperor was only interested in continuation of the imperial line. He didn't give a damn about the suffering of his subjects.

Wow, what an aggressive OP, are you drunk, maybe?

Definitely uninformed if you thought the film was a "brilliant thriller" I don't need to say anything else because I'm sure you know by now how UR you were being.

My father (now deceased) the kindest man you could ever meet hated the Japanese with such a passion, he berated my friend when we were 17 for buying a second hand Datsun car (Nissan). Maybe it was racism, maybe he had good reason i.e. mates who suffered their concentration camps. I'm not judging because I wasn't there, I wasn't even born. Just saying.

YABU.

You haven’t seen the film. Having read the plot I don’t think it glorifies Oppenheimer at all, but I can’t say that because I haven’t seen the film.

Did you complain about Churchill the film being made? The man who murdered thousands and hoped to murder more? How about the film Ghandi? The man who was a staunch racist and sleep naked with his teenage niece to test himself? All such films glorified people who did terrible things.

You haven’t seen Oppenheimer, you’ve no idea what it’s like. Don’t get why you’re getting really aggressive towards people as well.

Yes, as I said, it was inexplicable to me previously, because he is not racist and has lived and worked all over the world, including Germany and south-east Asia. His RAF pilot brother in law was a prisoner of war after being shot down over Germany and always said he was grateful and lucky to have been a Nazi POW rather than a Japanese POW.

Love @MsAmerica 's response, which really made me think.

But why start a thread when you haven't watched the film?

You have no idea what message the film will give, or the questions it will raise. For all you know, the film may be designed to bring people's attention to exactly the issues you raise.

But hey, why waste a last chance to parade ignorance and bring even more publicity to a film you think you will hate.....

Or maybe you are one of those who still believes Life of Brian is blasphemous, out of never having watched it?

There no good reason to be racist.

I'm looking forward to Barbie movie. I don't like serious films but others are free to enjoy them.

uncomfortable because you think it may not portray the story in a way that you find palatable?

That's My big beef with The Imitation Game. Turing was not a social misfit cruelly treated by people around him, especially as a child. All that is false. He was sociable if hard-working & quite respected. Anyway, Imitation Game is good flick but it is fiction. I can't watch it now, it's become unpalatable for me.

I can't get my head around Cillian Murphy as lead with American accent.

Thanks for this, I was always surprised by my Dad’s dislike as he really isn’t prejudiced against anything or anyone else. War babies grow up on real-life war stories, I suppose.

Lots of people are quite fine with people openly disliking Germans, Americans and British people.

The USA had intelligence that Japan were intending to surrender BEFORE the first bomb was dropped, and that Japan’s concern was reinstating their emperor post surrender.

The USA didn’t need to drop ANY bombs.

They hadn't surrendered when the bombs were dropped though, had they?

Just on the positive things that may have come out of the film OP.

Just found the following link:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/oppenheimer-biographer-supports-us-bill-to-bar-use-of-ai-in-nuclear-launches/ar-AA1eaWWv?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=5786fcd003394f6fa6dd1711b8bb4768&ei=11

I have watched it this afternoon.
It is brilliantly acted and does not glamorise story. Really well done.
Three hours long but every minute of film I was gripped and learnt more about the history of it all although I had read about it before film.
It was one of the best films I have seen for a while. Overall it felt they showed more about him as a person than the making of the bomb. He was not portrayed as a hero in the film.
Well worth watching and felt sad many times throughout.

My DGM's brother was captured when SIngapore fell. He was being taken with a whole shipful of POWs to Japan when the ship was torpedoed by a US submarine. The Japanese crew battened the hatches and left the ship to sink and the prisoners to drown - which took two days. If my DGM saw that as a good reason to hate the Japanese - which she did - I wasn't going to argue with her. Knock it off with this bleating of 'that's no reason to be racist.' I can assure you that post 1945 a lot of people had a lot of reason to hate the Japanese for what they did - a few examples of which are upthread if you can be bothered to read them.

A biographer whose Pulitzer prize-winning book inspired the new movie Oppenheimer has expressed support for a US senator’s attempt to bar the use of artificial intelligence in nuclear weapons launches.

“Humans must always maintain sole control over nuclear weapons,” Kai Bird, author of American Prometheus, said in a statement reported by Politico.

Related: Christopher Nolan: ‘Very strong parallels’ between Oppenheimer and scientists worried about AI

“This technology is too dangerous to gamble with. This bill will send a powerful signal to the world that the United States will never take the reckless step of automating our nuclear command and control.”

In Washington on Thursday, Bird met Ed Markey, the Democratic Massachusetts senator who is attempting to add the AI-nuclear provision to a major defense spending bill.

Markey, Politico said, was a friend of Bird’s co-author, the late Tufts University professor Martin J Sherwin.

A spokesperson for the senator told Politico Markey and Bird “shared their mutual concerns over the proliferation of artificial intelligence in national security and defense without guardrails, and the risks of using nuclear weapons in south Asia and elsewhere.

Related video: The True Story Behind the Bombs From Oppenheimer (Dailymotion)

“They also discussed ways to increase awareness of nuclear issues among the younger set.”

J Robert Oppenheimer was the driving force behind US development of the atomic bomb, at the end of the second world war...

The USA never needed to drop those bombs, the war was effectively over. They just wanted to play with their toys.

I’m not sure there is any really reliable evidence that Japan and its army was willing to immediately surrender. The nation was absolutely crazed, as witnessed by the hideous war crimes it committed. It was beaten, but it would have taken 10s or 100s of thousands of lives with it on the way down.

All that being said, I generally dislike all war films that don’t have as their main focus the horror of war, as that above all is what war is. Though I guess the odd character study related to war is ok. But generally speaking if you want to know the details of this or that situation read a book/watch a documentary instead. I certainly won’t be watching as “Dunkirk” by same director was a load of shite - failing both to enlighten and entertain in equal measure.

He wasn't a racist. That's my point, sorry if it was a bit subtle for you. My Dad was there. I wasn't. You weren't. Your opinion is not informed. How dare you judge anyone from that generation that fought for our freedom.

Well it sounds as if you make value judgements about films without researching them... have you rwad much about the Barbie film. Guessing you get the underlying themes at least🤷‍♀️
As for Oppenheimer yabvu because you know nothing about the film, just somehow think it glorifies the topic, and not much, it seems, about this momentous part of our shared history

Feeling uncomfortable about this topic don't go and see it, but don't condemn the film makers for telling an important, true story... getting close to censorship

I’ve just seen it. It didn’t glorify him really, it showed a man that got carried away with the science but then realised what he did after the bomb was actually made. There was one scene where they cheer him but it’s clear he’s not enjoying it.