EOLB wrote: ↑April 30th, 2022, 9:41 pm
DylanHoang wrote: ↑April 30th, 2022, 8:56 pm
One has to assume that they guy who gave us Inception + Interstellar (not your average sci-fi) and Dunkirk (not your average war film) is also going to subvert expectations with a biopic, in the best way possible.
He'll probably rattle the wartime paranoia and secrecy up too to keep it spicy. That television show 'Manhattan' did it too.
But I agree with radewart. Unless he includes something from Pearl Harbor or World War II, this film should only have three action sequences at best: Trinity, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And it's very possible these sequences are the ones in black and white. All the existent footage is in black and white too, right?
The film should really only have one (Trinity). Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be mentioned, debated, and brooded over, but never directly seen. This is called Oppenheimer, after all, not The Bomb.
A Borges man wrote: ↑April 30th, 2022, 11:46 pm
radewart wrote: ↑April 30th, 2022, 8:15 pm
A Borges man wrote: ↑April 30th, 2022, 8:01 pm
Like Dunkirk, I think Nolan's and studios' logic is that putting a potential award race contender in summer is counter programming, because as dangerous as the other movies look for Oppie's box office, all those movies are typical summer movies,it might be to Nolan's benefit.
Yes, while a critical and awards player, Dunkirk as a war movie, had an action element to it with the battle scenes to sell it to summer mainstream audiences. Is Oppenheimer going to have enough of that to compete and not be overwhelmed by the big, showy fx-filled pictures being released around it?
Also, to be clear, I'm not criticizing Oppenheimer overall as a project. I think it has potential to be a really great movie and am looking forward to it, I just wonder if that's the best release date.
Right, we'll have to find out about how it will compete with the blockbusters, because as has been pointed out, the "spectacle" if we can call it that, is going to be limited, or contained to those big moments, while the rest of the movie is going to be, once again if Nolan is adapting the book "American Prometheus" a historical epic that spends most of its time in academic, military and political spaces, with a lot of men smoking in rooms talking. I can't imagine this thing as a pure "thriller" especially if it is an adaptation of the book. But, looking at the cast and what we know about the scale of production, this will have a scope that is massive, with many moving pieces.
I'm very curious about the biopic vs. thriller elements here. I'm assuming Nolan is focusing on Oppenhiemer the man, not necessarily just the Manhattan project.
That's what I'm curious about as well.
I mean, the book is your standard, all-encompassing, exhaustive biography, right? I imagine that it didn't win a Pulitzer for Best-Edge-of-Your-Seat-Thrills, but for being meticulously researched and a thoroughly detailed look into everything you could possibly want to know about the man.
So why make the movie an adaptation of this book?
Is the movie a (reasonably) faithful adaptation? 'Cause in that case it ends up being your standard, A-to-Z, unmemorable biopic, of which there are thousands.
Or is it an adaptation in name only, where he decided to tear it all up to make a radical, innovative biopic the likes of which we've never seen before?
In that case, that would only raise the question of why he decided to make an adaptation that bears such little resemblance to the book that it's adapting, when instead he could easily just have written an original screenplay and merely used the book as one of myriad research sources.
I mean, it's not like this is fictional IP to which he absolutely had to acquire the rights in order to use it. No, he didn't have to acquire the rights to this specific book to make a movie about Mr. Oppenheimer. But he did. My question is why.
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And as for the argument that it should move to an awards-friendly release date closer to Oscar season...he's not making this for awards. Awards are a complete non-factor on this.
