The movie Oppenheimer is getting early buzz that it’s so disturbing people are leaving the theater scared and unnerved. At least that is what its director Christopher Nolan is saying according to Variety. And it kind of makes sense given the subject matter.
“Some people leave the movie absolutely devastated,” Nolan said to Variety. “They can’t speak. I mean, there’s an element of fear that’s there in the history and there in the underpinnings. But the love of the characters, the love of the relationships, is as strong as I’ve ever done.”
Nolan also added, “It is an intense experience, because it’s an intense story. I showed it to a filmmaker recently who said it’s kind of a horror movie. I don’t disagree.”
Oppenheimer was the scientist who helped create the deadliest weapon on Earth. Some might think a bio-pic about a scientist would be tiring, in ‘A Beautiful Mind’ type of way, however considering that Oppenheimer’s creation could actually end the world is terrifying, and there are currently over 12, 500 of his inventions scattered around the globe.
Biographer Kai Bird wrote the book on which Oppenheimer is based, and even he was shaken, “I am, at the moment, stunned and emotionally recovering from having seen it,” he said.
Oppenheimer opens in theaters nationwide July 21 from Universal Pictures.
The Nuclear Fear Is Real
It’s called a nuclear bomb and it’s used for “Global Thermonuclear War.” If that sounds familiar it’s because it was the video game Matthew Broderick was playing against WOPR, a virtually self-aware computer using the real world as its game board, in the 1983 movie War Games.
For all of you new-generation horror fans, War Games was a movie released at a time in the 80s when the threat of a real-life disaster film was not only possible but plausible.
You see, in 1983, the Soviet Union was accidentally — to use a phrase in current terms — trolled by the United States when that country’s early warning systems triggered an alarm alerting them that America had launched four nuclear missiles in their direction.
Turns out a malfunctioning satellite computer created a false alarm and if Russia hadn’t waited to confirm the launch, and retaliated instantaneously it would have triggered World War III.
If you don’t think that’s scary consider it takes just one nuclear bomb to wipe out an entire city, killing millions. The after-effects would continue to be destructive for many years afterward.
Remember, there are 12,500 warheads at the ready with a push of a button right now; imagine what that many could do to the planet.
The nuclear scare of the 80s was a real thing. Disaster films were made on the subject and even horror films used the effects of nuclear weapons as a plot point. Movies like The Day After, The Manhattan Project, Red Dawn, and Mad Max were heavy hitters. Wes Craven also weighed in with The Hills Have Eyes in 1977 with a remake in 2006.
