Do you have any questions about screenwriting? Hit reply or comment and I’ll do my best to answer them in future episodes. :-) Thanks for sharing, subscribing, and following Get Reel With Richard Walter, available for free on Substack, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts
OPP was badly edited (why that dinner table scene over and over?) and avoided the big question, as you indicate. I saw IN THE MATTER OF J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER as a teenager (at the Mark Taper Forum with known actors) and still recall the interrogation. As for this year's Oscars, the show was better because it avoided those out-of-context clips and the deserving writers won. ANATOMY OF A FALL was the best edited--precise editing was crucial! So glad it won best original screenplay. I agree that AMERICAN FICTION was the best and deserved its best adapted script Oscar. However, POOR THINGS was the true stinker. Lily Gladstone and Sandra Huller deserved the best actress award much more than Emma.
I speak only for myself. When I see a film, it may or may not touch me. An obvious reflection on life itself. A heroine addict may well know Train Spotting?? as I do not. What I got from Oppenheimer wasn't the moral dilemma of the bomb, but the life of one man, in one situation over a lifetime. Comments (for me) about the over-length... I endure that / forgive the film for that/ can understand the complexity, the need for length. I liked Oppy. Well acted and a character.... I found relatable. Please don't ask this failed writer to do better. It's easy to criticise, find fault.... But compare this one to Barbie???
I agree. Oppenheimer was like watching a book report. I too liked American Fiction. Extremely well done. I have to say my favorite was Killers of the Flower Moon, a film shot about an hour and a half from where I live. Scorsese shot that film for a year, in the Oklahoma heat, etc. The film was accurate and the story needed to be told. And Lily...what can I say?
Richard it feels like your primary criticism is that this movie is not historically balanced enough - a criticism I find odd coming from a screenwriting professor. I get your take that it's too talky (Oscar winners are often talky) and of course it's too long, but the movies have always been bigger than the script alone. I would have liked to hear more "I wish Nolan had written it this way or that way" - not "I wish Nolan had explained the counter-argument to the bomb and featured Ike and Macarthur." After all, the movie is called OPPENHEIMER (not ATOMB BOMB).
All that needed to be said about Oppenheimer had already been said in a 1960s theater play by the German Heinar Kipphardt "In Sachen J Robert Oppenheimer" (The Case of J. Robert Oppenheimer). In the Wikipedia article about the play they write:
"Many physicists, like Oppenheimer, realize far too late that they have become tools for the competing states. Their research, which was intended for the benefit of humanity, is now directed against humanity in the form of weapons.
This is for Oppenheimer the real betrayal, not the betrayal by espionage against a state which he is accused of. Oppenheimer says that he pledged too much loyalty to the United States and betrayed the ideals of science by completely submitting to the military."
Unfortunately Mr. Nolan missed the point, and with this, he missed a great opportunity to make audiences aware of a complex problem that persists to this day and which humanity has to deal with, rather sooner than later.
I agree that Oppenheimer was too long. Movies longer than two hours are too long.
I also agree they should or could have added McArthur and Eisenhower's objections, but did you. Prof. Walter, yourself not say that if we want real history, we should not look for it in the movies? That a screenwriter owes nothing to the real history? That we can write whatever we want?
Barbie? No. I am not their target demographic. Not at all. No sirree. Uh-uh. No way.
Apart from that, I ignore the Oscars because of all the restrictions they are imposing on creative people who should have none.
All in all, I think it has been a bad year for movies. Hopefully the next one will be much better.
Couldn’t agree more about Oppenheimer. Snoozefest.
OPP was badly edited (why that dinner table scene over and over?) and avoided the big question, as you indicate. I saw IN THE MATTER OF J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER as a teenager (at the Mark Taper Forum with known actors) and still recall the interrogation. As for this year's Oscars, the show was better because it avoided those out-of-context clips and the deserving writers won. ANATOMY OF A FALL was the best edited--precise editing was crucial! So glad it won best original screenplay. I agree that AMERICAN FICTION was the best and deserved its best adapted script Oscar. However, POOR THINGS was the true stinker. Lily Gladstone and Sandra Huller deserved the best actress award much more than Emma.
I speak only for myself. When I see a film, it may or may not touch me. An obvious reflection on life itself. A heroine addict may well know Train Spotting?? as I do not. What I got from Oppenheimer wasn't the moral dilemma of the bomb, but the life of one man, in one situation over a lifetime. Comments (for me) about the over-length... I endure that / forgive the film for that/ can understand the complexity, the need for length. I liked Oppy. Well acted and a character.... I found relatable. Please don't ask this failed writer to do better. It's easy to criticise, find fault.... But compare this one to Barbie???
Well, I suppose people's opinion about the nuclear bombing of Japan is split.
I loved American Fiction too, 10/10 for that one I wreckon!
Is that a story though?
A debate on the ethics of the use of nuclear weapons in Nagasaki and Hiroshima?
Perhaps it is interesting side-fare but is it essential to the story of an American Prometheus?
I agree. Oppenheimer was like watching a book report. I too liked American Fiction. Extremely well done. I have to say my favorite was Killers of the Flower Moon, a film shot about an hour and a half from where I live. Scorsese shot that film for a year, in the Oklahoma heat, etc. The film was accurate and the story needed to be told. And Lily...what can I say?
Richard it feels like your primary criticism is that this movie is not historically balanced enough - a criticism I find odd coming from a screenwriting professor. I get your take that it's too talky (Oscar winners are often talky) and of course it's too long, but the movies have always been bigger than the script alone. I would have liked to hear more "I wish Nolan had written it this way or that way" - not "I wish Nolan had explained the counter-argument to the bomb and featured Ike and Macarthur." After all, the movie is called OPPENHEIMER (not ATOMB BOMB).
All that needed to be said about Oppenheimer had already been said in a 1960s theater play by the German Heinar Kipphardt "In Sachen J Robert Oppenheimer" (The Case of J. Robert Oppenheimer). In the Wikipedia article about the play they write:
"Many physicists, like Oppenheimer, realize far too late that they have become tools for the competing states. Their research, which was intended for the benefit of humanity, is now directed against humanity in the form of weapons.
This is for Oppenheimer the real betrayal, not the betrayal by espionage against a state which he is accused of. Oppenheimer says that he pledged too much loyalty to the United States and betrayed the ideals of science by completely submitting to the military."
Unfortunately Mr. Nolan missed the point, and with this, he missed a great opportunity to make audiences aware of a complex problem that persists to this day and which humanity has to deal with, rather sooner than later.
I agree that Oppenheimer was too long. Movies longer than two hours are too long.
I also agree they should or could have added McArthur and Eisenhower's objections, but did you. Prof. Walter, yourself not say that if we want real history, we should not look for it in the movies? That a screenwriter owes nothing to the real history? That we can write whatever we want?
Barbie? No. I am not their target demographic. Not at all. No sirree. Uh-uh. No way.
Apart from that, I ignore the Oscars because of all the restrictions they are imposing on creative people who should have none.
All in all, I think it has been a bad year for movies. Hopefully the next one will be much better.
The southernmost main island of Japan —where Nagasaki is located—is Kyushu, not Okinawa.