I thought it was an absolutely amazing movie. The portrait it paints of Oppenheimer is a complicated man. The flim goes to great lengths to make the viewer understand Oppenheimer while not letting him off the hook. There’s much similarities between the themes used in the Batman movies and in Oppenheimer. They’ll use him when they need him but discard him once they don’t. This is a common theme present in Nolans work. Humans are fickle and two faced in Nolan movies. Nolan seems to have to cynical view of people.

Thanks for this post. This is one of the things that I missed the most about reddit, getting to the main post after seeing a movie. Unfortunately it seems that the number of comments is not the same (expected) and still quite low so I’ll do my part and contribute my opinion.

I’ll go a bit against the grain here and say that for me this film is not a 10/10 at all, like people are making it to be. It’s good and it has definitely it’s moments, but I found the timeline and so many arcs confusing and unnecessary. Sometimes everything is dished out at once, when it doesn’t require so, and it makes it hard to keep up.

I’ll concede that I usually watch movies at home where I can have English subtitles on which usually help with some of the more baffled dialogue (and Nolan suffers this the most) but I don’t think it was because of that, that I felt this way.

Once again it feels like Nolan is getting in his own way with all the time jumps and multiple timelines, and while for some movies that “feature” is THE movie, like in TENET or Inception, here it is not needed at all like in both of these movies, and it is not executed well (like it is done amazingly in inception where a 5 layered story is perfectly displayed and understood).

In the end Oppie’s character also comes out as suprisingly bland, and while I appreciate that they didn’t make him neither a saviour or a villain, they also somehow managed to make him rather boring.

In the end I would rate this movie around 8/10 or 7.5/10 because technically and artistically it has its moments but I feel like if this wasn’t a Nolan film it wouldn’t have this much hype behind it.

Updoot for much nicer formatting than reddit.
Will check back on Friday once I’ve seen it.

I didn’t love it.

I respect the technical mastery on display here. But this is my problem with a lot of Christopher Nolan movies: it’s devoid of any emotional connection. I just felt empty and hollow at the end of it. Didn’t help that the first 30 minutes felt so disjointed and the pacing really struggled. I’ve never been a fan of his sound editing/mixing and same applied here. It was loud and bombastic but half the time I couldn’t hear the damn dialogue. The movie was way overscored and I rolled my eyes at some unnecessary inserts and on-the-nose exposition.

I also hated the way female characters were handled in the movie, just like most of Nolan’s previous work. I’m very iffy about the screenplay and editing too. The movie didn’t need the typical Nolan-esque non-linear format; it actually took a lot away from it.

On the other hand, it was a god damn tour de force from Cillian Murphy and equally excellent work from Robert Downey Jr. Emily Blunt was also stellar in a very limited role and she made a meal out of what she could. Should be easy Oscar nominations for Murphy and Downey.

Oh but that lead up to the final Los Alamos test was thrilling and expertly executed. Downey also crushed the last act of the film.

Definitely some good stuff here but I’m underwhelmed by the overall product. But I say that about every Nolan movie, save for I guess The Prestige and Memento, and to a lesser extent, Dunkirk.