Jackson says they didn’t try to make an exact copy of what the explosion would have looked like, nor did they want something too stylized. He says they opted for something in between, “a sort of loose artistic interpretation of the ideas rather than an accurate representation of the physics.”
This is, honestly, maddening. I don't understand how you decide to take this approach with something so ingrained in everyone's mind - the look of an atomic explosion. All the close-up stuff is beautiful, and the movie is so perfect, aside from, say, 2 or 3 shots where the illusion is broken. Saying something is a bigger explosion than in Oppenheimer is a meme now because of it.
What people imagine as a classic nuclear explosion is that of a hydrogen bomb. I bet you that the majority of the people complaining had no idea what the real Trinity explosion looked like, or that it was magnitudes smaller than the famous hydrogen bomb explosions that they watched clips of.
The fact that the Trinity explosion is (accurately?) depicted as being miles away with no easy frame of reference is probably what's throwing people off even more. There aren't any, say, buildings or trees in the vicinity that would allow them to gauge the size of the explosion.
What people imagine as a classic nuclear explosion is that of a hydrogen bomb. I bet you that the majority of the people complaining had no idea what the real Trinity explosion looked like, or that it was magnitudes smaller than the famous hydrogen bomb explosions that they watched clips of.
The fact that the Trinity explosion is (accurately?) depicted as being miles away with no easy frame of reference is probably what's throwing people off even more. There aren't any, say, buildings or trees in the vicinity that would allow them to gauge the size of the explosion.
Plus the test tower is shown as being too close to each of the sites, even if the distances are stated correctly in the dialogue (unless my arithmetic is awful, from the bunker Oppenheimer is at, the tower should look smaller than a full moon, while from the site with Teller, Feynman and the others, it should appear as a star on the horizon), so that could also make the explosion seem smaller than it actually is. Personally, all the shots of the explosion looked fine, except for a single shot showing a pillar of fire rising into the sky, which just looks wrong for a nuclear explosion. But otherwise, I'm guessing the majority of people watching this were assuming we'd get some kind of massive Castle Bravo-like spectacle, and thus weren't having the same gripes I had, haha.
What people imagine as a classic nuclear explosion is that of a hydrogen bomb. I bet you that the majority of the people complaining had no idea what the real Trinity explosion looked like, or that it was magnitudes smaller than the famous hydrogen bomb explosions that they watched clips of.
The fact that the Trinity explosion is (accurately?) depicted as being miles away with no easy frame of reference is probably what's throwing people off even more. There aren't any, say, buildings or trees in the vicinity that would allow them to gauge the size of the explosion.
I won't speak for the majority of people, just myself. I know what the Trinity test looked like. That's what I was expecting. I'm not even talking about frame of reference or scale, just shape and form. This shot is the main culprit...
What people imagine as a classic nuclear explosion is that of a hydrogen bomb. I bet you that the majority of the people complaining had no idea what the real Trinity explosion looked like, or that it was magnitudes smaller than the famous hydrogen bomb explosions that they watched clips of.
The fact that the Trinity explosion is (accurately?) depicted as being miles away with no easy frame of reference is probably what's throwing people off even more. There aren't any, say, buildings or trees in the vicinity that would allow them to gauge the size of the explosion.
I won't speak for the majority of people, just myself. I know what the Trinity test looked like. That's what I was expecting. I'm not even talking about frame of reference or scale, just shape and form. This shot is the main culprit...
Thin and pointy.
Yup, that's the "pillar of fire" shot I had gripes with and mentioned earlier, but at least every other shot looks reasonably fine.
I won't speak for the majority of people, just myself. I know what the Trinity test looked like. That's what I was expecting. I'm not even talking about frame of reference or scale, just shape and form. This shot is the main culprit...
Thin and pointy.
The "thin and pointy" appearance is brief and part of a period of the fire changing shapes. Whether or not it worked for you (or me), that "pillar of fire" is framed as the top of the explosion, not the bottom, then quickly reforms into a more "mushroom" shape in the same shot. Most of the imagery is fairly accurate otherwise.
You're nitpicking not an even entire shot but literally a couple of frames.
If you actually watch the real footage instead of comparing two stills at different points of the explosion, you'll see a vertical pillar of fire too.
The thing about the explosion in the film vs. real footage is that they slowed it way down to give it more scale so that part lingers for a good amount of time but as it was mentioned, it forms a mushroom cloud eventually.
You can go to the very last frame of that shot and it still appears thin because the bottom is consistently wider than the top. You can call it nitpicky, but the reason it stands out so much to me is because the build up and execution of everything else in this scene is so damn good.
"If you actually watch the real footage" That's where I'm getting the stills from. These are both from the formation of the mushroom cloud. Go ahead and look for a spot in the real footage that looks anything like this shot in the film. It's not there.
Read what I wrote again. You're comparing a fully formed mushroom cloud to a shot depicting the earliest moments in the explosion. After the initial blast you’ll see a thin pointy pillar similar to the film version and the shot in question focuses mostly on the upmost part of the explosion.
Was the pointiness exaggerated? Yes. Is it 100% accurate to the real thing? Of course not but it is close enough.
You have those two shots correct, I have no problem with that one. The thin/pointy shot is not the part you circled, it's the whole mushroom cloud. You can tell because at the bottom it's getting darker as it gets sucked up, not brighter as part of a larger cloud below.
That's where I'm getting the stills from. These are both from the formation of the mushroom cloud. Go ahead and look for a spot in the real footage that looks anything like this shot in the film. It's not there.
