Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer (2023)

3 corrected entries

★★★★★

(6 votes)

Corrected entry: When Oppenheimer asks Einstein to review Teller's calculations about a runaway chain reaction, Einstein replies, "If there's one thing you and I share, it is a disdain for mathematics." This is a popular misconception. Einstein was a gifted mathematician, and his research was extremely mathematical in nature.

Correction: He's not saying he can't do mathematics, he's saying he doesn't *like* mathematics. His interest was in physics, which of course involves a lot of maths, but for the sake of a lazy metaphor you wouldn't say a farmer likes cleaning out the cow sheds, it's just something he has to deal with in the course of doing the higher level work he wants to do.

Corrected entry: A truck at Los Alamos has a sign, "Caution: Left Hand Drive", "No signals." This is a marking on the trucks in Britain, as surely it would be normal for trucks to be left-hand driven in the USA.

Septimus21

Correction: Given this was wartime, with countless vehicles going over to be used in Britain and / or Europe, no doubt this truck has either already been there or has returned from there. In fact I think it was standard marking on all vehicles produced at the time, just to cover all bases.

Corrected entry: The bombs destined for Japan were not shipped in crates on trucks. The mechanical parts of the Hiroshima bomb were sent to Tinian Island aboard the U.S.S. Indianapolis, while the Nagasaki bomb, along with its uranium and plutonium, were flown there. The island was the assembly site for both bombs.

Correction: The bomb components still needed to leave Los Alamos by truck. They were then put on trains to Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and only then loaded on USS Indianapolis. You can't get a warship into New Mexico.

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Mistakes

Oppenheimer mistake picture

Factual error: After the successful Trinity test in 1945, people in a crowd are holding small US flags with 50 stars on them (offset rows). At the time there were only 48 states and the flag had 48 stars in even rows. The 50 star flag didn't exist until 1960, after Alaska and Hawaii were made states in 1959.

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Suggested correction: While this is correct, an argument can be made that since the colour scenes are meant to be subjective and the black and white scenes are meant to be objective, Oppenheimer could have been unintentionally mapping the modern US flag onto this scene.

THGhost

That's a ridiculous stretch with zero evidence, not least as 48 star flags are seen in colour in other scenes. Sometimes a mistake is simply a mistake.

There is evidence, though. Nolan said so himself. Look it up. As for the mistake itself, I'm merely repeating what I've read on Twitter, and this correction was merely a suggestion. Seeing the 48 star flags in other colour scenes still doesn't disprove this theory. It is just a theory though, so no need to shoot it down so hard.

THGhost

He's said subjective in terms of the colour scenes being "first person", and maybe not strictly factual in terms of creating moments between characters and conveying emotion, but nowhere does that stretch to "one random scene happens to feature 50 star flags because Oppenheimer is mapping the modern flag onto it, when nothing like that happens anywhere else in the film."

Meh, take it up with Twitter. I just thought it was interesting, so I posted it here for a different point of view/perspective for others to read. It is most likely bull**** though.

THGhost

The fact that a director realized they had made a mistake and retroactively made up a deus ex machina explanation for it in no way invalidates the mistake. Nice try, Mr. Nolan but this posting is absolutely valid.

While Christopher Nolan's talked about the subjective/objective colour/black and white thing, which is entirely fair and no doubt exactly his intention, I don't think he's actually tried to "excuse" this by using that explanation, that's just other people trying to connect the two things. I'm not sure Nolan has commented on the flag issue in interviews at all.

Precisely, and I was in no way trying to invalidate the original mistake. I just found the whole theory interesting and posted it here. It is rather hilarious that a director with such attention to detail like Nolan would have missed something like this. We shall see if he gets it fixed for the streaming/physical release.

THGhost

It's not fixed in the home video version. However, the behind-the-scenes materials provide a reason for the mistake, in that putting a crowd in the scene was apparently a spur-of-the-moment decision. It's like that in their haste to bring in the crowd, the set decorators bought some modern miniature flags and put them into the scene without anyone realizing the 48/50 discrepancy.

Vader47000

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Quotes

Leslie Groves: Are you saying that there's a chance that when we push that button... we destroy the world?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: The chances are near zero.
Leslie Groves: Near zero?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: What do you want from theory alone?
Leslie Groves: Zero would be nice.

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Trivia

Trivia: Robert Downey Jr. declared this was "the best film I've ever been in" at the UK premiere.

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Questions

Question: Were the scientists involved really concerned about igniting the atmosphere?

Answer: The short version is "no, not really". Much like in the film, the possibility was considered, a lot of calculations were done, and it was agreed by everyone privy to them that the chance was basically zero. Also like in the film: "what do you want from theory alone?" - it couldn't be guaranteed to be absolutely zero, but then the chance of almost anything happening is never absolutely zero. A 1946 report by three of the scientists stated: "whatever the temperature to which a section of the atmosphere may be heated, no self-propagating chain of nuclear reactions is likely to be started. The energy losses to radiation always overcompensate the gains due to the reactions."

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