‘Oppenheimer’ Remakes Dread Into Thrills — And Back Again
Christopher Nolan approaches a crucial moment in world history with fresh eyes and a thirst for understanding.
It was odd, going into this film. I’m automatically down for any Christopher Nolan feature, but settling into the theater for this one was like shoring up for the season finale of some of my favorite tv series: I knew I was there to get emotionally wrecked; that’s what I signed up for.
Oppenheimer, being the story of the man whose invention begot a terrible real-life occurrence, hits differently. Reexamining our past collective behaviors is a new (and overall positive, I think) trend in our current media landscape — so it’s only fitting that one of our finest filmmakers is the one to lay out the history of the invention of the worst creations humanity has ever produced.
In the late 1920s, J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) had been earning his PhD in England when he realized that America was sorely lacking a curriculum in quantum physics. Back in…