Illustration by Drew Strachan.
By Geoff Daniels
When news broke in September of 2021 that Christopher Nolan had sold his screenplay about the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, movie fans rejoiced at the opportunity to see a true master of the craft tackle the incredible story of Oppenheimer’s life.
Although Nolan had previously held a longstanding relationship with Warner Brothers, the script was sold to Universal Studios after a bidding war and seemingly coincidentally after a very public falling out with WB over the release of their 2021 film slate on HBO MAX.
This small wrinkle may have then seemed like business as usual, but the film Nolan released on July 21 is his most personal yet, deeply criticizing both the filmmaker himself as well as the state of studio filmmaking today.
Now is a critical time in the history of audiovisual art and entertainment, as the Writers Guild of America (WGA), and The Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) are on strike to gain many benefits for their union members. WGA and SAG are fighting for better compensation from streaming residuals as well as protections against AI — two byproducts of corporate greed on behalf of major studios.
The studio system has been the Hollywood norm since the golden era of the late 1920s. Studios such as Warner Brothers, Universal, and Paramount, and have been a positive force in the artistic value and commercial viability of films both domestically and abroad, but over time they have transformed into monetarily prioritized non-artistic corporate entities.
Oppenheimer acts as a unique intersection between the art these creatives make and the real-life struggles many of them face against the now oligarchical studio system. Ironically enough Oppenheimer’s July 14th UK premiere was interrupted by the onset of the SAG strike, with the cast walking out of the premiere in solidarity with SAG-AFTRA.
This action by its cast is representative of the unity that actors share both informally and through their organizations (such as SAG) and in my opinion, sharply reflects the unity that J. Robert Oppenheimer and other atomic scientists felt after the use of the atomic bomb that they had in fact built. Perhaps this choice by the actors was influenced by the story they represented within the film, regardless, the film itself is emblematic of our current times despite being based on the life of a man who died almost sixty years ago.
Oppenheimer reads as Nolan’s manifestation of his displeasure with the theft and exploitation of films and the act of filmmaking by major studios in order to gain more capital. Through Oppenheimer, Nolan articulates his opinion that creatives perform these “miracles” through their filmmaking — and despite their efforts — their accomplishments are immediately taken out of their hands and made to be something they have no control over.
This is a lesson that Robert Oppenheimer himself quickly learned by being forced to watch the American nuclear armament in mass that immediately followed the end of World War Ⅱ. Just as nuclear armament diametrically opposed Oppenheimer and everything he intended for “the gadget,” the reduction of films and their art into one of many films in a studio’s streaming arsenal goes against everything Nolan stands for as a filmmaker.
Nolan readily recognizes this opposition, and it permeates his work on Oppenheimer. Lewis Strauss, Harry S. Truman, and other governmental entities within the film directly translate to the studios of today, with their dependency on nuclear armament — and ignorance of the oppositely-minded scientific community, represented by Oppenheimer — paralleling the increased dependence on streaming services within the entertainment industry, much to the chagrin of Nolan and other filmmakers.
Correspondingly, Strauss represents the conceited and demeaning nature of studios and their figureheads, assuming that creatives and their work pertain directly to them and that they should have the authority over someone else’s achievement — in this case Oppenheimer and Nolan’s.
J. Robert Oppenheimer and the scientific community of Los Alamos created something out of necessity, a horrible weapon of mass destruction, but nonetheless something that they believed in and found purpose in its creation. Their moment of collaborative genius at Los Alamos changed the world and created something that changed the way humans see each other and the world around them.
Nolan may see the act of filmmaking as very similar to this process, with the group at Los Alamos closely resembling the collaborative nature of a film set — with
the same goal of creating something that will alter the viewer and the way they perceive the world around them.
There is a feeling while watching Oppenheimer, that the Oppenheimer within the film is written as a great martyr of his time. Obviously, this is reflective of reality, as the film represents
Oppenheimer’s life very closely — infrequently straying from the letter of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the biography by Martin J.
Sherwin and Kai Bird on which the film is based.
While Nolan is not in any position to be destroyed by such nefarious organizations as the Hoover-led FBI or McCarthyite politics, I believe Nolan sees himself in Oppenheimer as one of the remaining defenders of an idea he holds dear, in Nolan’s case; the beauty of filmmaking and especially viewing those films at the cinema. This is most evident in part due to one interesting fact, which is that in a rare divergence from typical screenwriting practices, the screenplay is written almost entirely in the first person.
By expressing the character of Oppenheimer in a first-person narrative, Nolan tips his hand that he feels so connected with the man that he is comfortable enough to write in Oppenheimer’s own voice. This connection is one that has a multitude of complexities that I have briefly outlined above, but in my opinion, can be acutely seen in one parallel event.
Nolan may view one of his true masterpieces, The Dark Knight (2008) as being akin to Oppenheimer’s construction of the first nuclear bomb. Although this is a rather dramatic statement, there are a few pieces of evidence that can support this claim. The Dark Knight (TDK) acts as a unification of two schools of thought.
While comic book films had been made prior to TDK’s release in 2008, very few of them had a “serious” commitment to cinematic qualities, opting more for authenticity to the source material and general commercial viability. TDK, however, unites the two viewpoints to create one of the true masterpieces of the genre, with the film being a loyal adaptation to the characters it represents while simultaneously having an engaging and highly cinematic presentation.
TDK established that comic book filmmaking is extremely commercially viable, which in turn made comic book films an industry norm. These points establish the most important connections between TDK and the nuclear bomb as represented within Oppenheimer.
The first nuclear bomb changed the way humanity saw science in a fundamental manner as the splitting of the atom altered theoretical physics into physically tangible science which was
then fashioned into “the gadget.” The unification of the conceptual nature of theoretical physics and the physical tangibility of atomic science closely resembles the highly conceptual nature of
filmmaking and its counterpart — commercial viability.
While there will never be a true assessment of a film’s capability of being especially “cinematic” or artistically valuable, there is a feeling a viewer gains when watching exceptional films that could be similar to the “music” Oppenheimer hears within the film. While Oppenheimer and by extension, Nolan are uniquely capable of hearing the music in their respective fields, they are each made famous by their ability to marry these concepts with physically tangible (or commercially viable) projects.
Nolan may equate his own marriage of the comic book genre with artistic filmmaking in TDK and its success at the global box office with Oppenheimer’s marriage of theory and practicality that created the atomic bomb. As Oppenheimer was ultimately destroyed by the weapon he helped create, The Dark Knight may have consequences that could destroy Nolan’s world of cinematic exhibition and filmmaking.
By grossing slightly over a billion dollars globally, TDK established that not only could superhero films be intelligent, well-crafted pieces of art — they could also be immensely
commercially successful. In response, the last two decades of Hollywood filmmaking have been flooded with superhero films, the best example of this being the Marvel Cinematic Universe
(MCU) which has dominated the box office of the 2010s.
Releasing 32 films including the original Iron Man (2008), the MCU’s mass appeal as well as its constant presence in movie theaters and pop culture could be easily likened to the postwar policy of nuclear armament adopted by the American government. With the increase of TV-based MCU content being released directly to Disney+, the allegory between nuclear stockpiling and the stockpiling of comic book-based film and TV seems clear. In Nolan’s eyes, he may see each new release of an MCU film or TV project as another bomb in Disney’s hypothetical arsenal.
By performing these miracles, Nolan gave Warner Brothers and other studios the gift of artistically valued, incredibly successful comic book filmmaking, while Oppenheimer gave the
United States its ultimate weapon, the atomic bomb.
Although these were each independently incredible triumphs — just as Prometheus was punished for bestowing fire upon man — both of
these miracles had drastic consequences.
Both men achieved great feats in their respective fields, and through Oppenheimer, Nolan may be admitting that he shares the same sense of responsibility for the current state of filmmaking as Oppenheimer felt for the nuclear fear that gripped the world following WWⅡ.
Geoff Daniels is a senior from Round Rock, Texas, who majors in Creative Media Industries with minors in Film and Media Studies and English.
About Reece Nations
