Film Christopher Nolan's 'Oppenheimer'

Why do people these days always complain about runtimes. Cut this movie to 2 hours and it'll incoherent. You need to build on certain things, even the slow buildup adds value to the whole movie.

If the movie is good and every minute is justified why complain?

It's like going to a restaurant and complain they give you too much side dish

I even think Nolan cuts like 30 minutes of the runtime. Kitty and RDJ transformation seems to be too quick as if certain things are missing.

From a wife who dont give too much feck to his personal strategist who knew everything.

Too little screentime on the isotop hearing to understand what a humiliation strauss got and the motive between their fallout and Oppie reasoning for humiliating him. In the movie they got along professionally at worst
 
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Sky1981 said:
Why do people these days always complain about runtimes. Cut this movie to 2 hours and it'll incoherent. You need to build on certain things, even the slow buildup adds value to the whole movie.

If the movie is good and every minute is justified why complain?

It's like going to a restaurant and complain they give you too much side dish

I even think Nolan cuts like 30 minutes of the runtime. Kitty and RDJ transformation seems to be too quick as if certain things are missing.

From a wife who dont give too much feck to his personal strategist who knew everything.

Too little screentime on the isotop hearing to understand what a humiliation strauss got and the motive between their fallout and Oppie reasoning for humiliating him. In the movie they got along professionally at worst
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I’m with Sour Circle on this one (although I’m not talking about Oppenheimer here, I haven’t seen it yet and also I’ve always thought Nolan films are easy to sit through)

Like you said if the movie is good and the running time contributes to the film then of course that’s great, a lot of my favourite films tend to be longer (Godfather 2 was mentioned above and it’s 3 and a half hours worth of flawless brilliance :drool:) but the problem is when you get a film which actively suffers due to its runtime. So instead of “going to a restaurant and complain they give you too much side dish” it’s more you go to a restaurant and they serve 10 consecutive small dishes. Dishes 1 to 6 and dish 10 are beautiful works of art, but dishes 7, 8 and 9 are terrible (maybe they have a lot of beetroot in them:(). So the experience would have been better off by omitting them.

Even from directors I love, I can think of quite a few films I liked that would still have been improved if it’d gone through a tighter edit. Some of the ones I’m thinking of were about 3 hours and 2 and a half hours long. Tightening things up by about 30 min would have benefitted the piece not just in terms of pacing but also helped with focus and centering the themes of the film (and ass numbness).

Equally I can think of some films that I felt were limited by a short running time. Either because the scope of the story was too much to convey with the minutes they had, or that it led to them not being able to build up to some scenes or give enough breathing room to certain events
 
Sky1981 said:
Why do people these days always complain about runtimes. Cut this movie to 2 hours and it'll incoherent. You need to build on certain things, even the slow buildup adds value to the whole movie.

If the movie is good and every minute is justified why complain?
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You’ve answered your own question. Those people feel that usually every minute is not justified. Simple.

When it comes to gaming I definitely agree on this point. They’re usually 20 per cent too long with filler/ forced content due to gamers often equating value for money with length of the playthrough.
 
Cascarino said:
I’m with Sour Circle on this one (although I’m not talking about Oppenheimer here, I haven’t seen it yet and also I’ve always thought Nolan films are easy to sit through)

Like you said if the movie is good and the running time contributes to the film then of course that’s great, a lot of my favourite films tend to be longer (Godfather 2 was mentioned above and it’s 3 and a half hours worth of flawless brilliance :drool:) but the problem is when you get a film which actively suffers due to its runtime. So instead of “going to a restaurant and complain they give you too much side dish” it’s more you go to a restaurant and they serve 10 consecutive small dishes. Dishes 1 to 6 and dish 10 are beautiful works of art, but dishes 7, 8 and 9 are terrible (maybe they have a lot of beetroot in them:(). So the experience would have been better off by omitting them.

Even from directors I love, I can think of quite a few films I liked that would still have been improved if it’d gone through a tighter edit. Some of the ones I’m thinking of were about 3 hours and 2 and a half hours long. Tightening things up by about 30 min would have benefitted the piece not just in terms of pacing but also helped with focus and centering the themes of the film (and ass numbness).

Equally I can think of some films that I felt were limited by a short running time. Either because the scope of the story was too much to convey with the minutes they had, or that it led to them not being able to build up to some scenes or give enough breathing room to certain events
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Sure, off course there are extreme cases where movies goes beyond 3 hours like 7 Samurai which goes for 4.5 hours.

But most of the one complaining are 2 hours , 2.5 hours movies which is already considerably standard.

amolbhatia50k said:
You’ve answered your own question. Those people feel that usually every minute is not justified. Simple.

When it comes to gaming I definitely agree on this point. They’re usually 20 per cent too long with filler/ forced content due to gamers often equating value for money with length of the playthrough.
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Except that most of the times what makes a good movies is a careful and delicate show not tell. We cant expect every minute of a movie to be filled with brilliance, seldom movie does that but to cut chunks of movies would not make the movie better, things would seems to be rushed and a 1.5 hours movies usually just can't cut the mustard, it's made for kids with little patience
 
Sky1981 said:
Why do people these days always complain about runtimes. Cut this movie to 2 hours and it'll incoherent. You need to build on certain things, even the slow buildup adds value to the whole movie.

If the movie is good and every minute is justified why complain?

It's like going to a restaurant and complain they give you too much side dish

I even think Nolan cuts like 30 minutes of the runtime. Kitty and RDJ transformation seems to be too quick as if certain things are missing.

From a wife who dont give too much feck to his personal strategist who knew everything.

Too little screentime on the isotop hearing to understand what a humiliation strauss got and the motive between their fallout and Oppie reasoning for humiliating him. In the movie they got along professionally at worst
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Oppenheimer felt nothing like 3hrs which is a great sign that the film was an appropriate length. However, many modern movies seem to suffer from an unnecessarily long run time. So many times you are left thinking a 2 hr+ film would have been better done in 90mins.
 
I don't mind a long runtime. I watched Oliver Stone's JFK the other night which also was 3 hours. But that's a better movie than Oppenheimer.
 
macheda14 said:
You’re welcome. Sometimes go into things with certain expectations and they become true. You should have more of an open mind next time xoxo
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Why the presumption? I had no expectations. It was objectively difficult to understand.
 
Sky1981 said:
Why do people these days always complain about runtimes. Cut this movie to 2 hours and it'll incoherent. You need to build on certain things, even the slow buildup adds value to the whole movie.

If the movie is good and every minute is justified why complain?

It's like going to a restaurant and complain they give you too much side dish

I even think Nolan cuts like 30 minutes of the runtime. Kitty and RDJ transformation seems to be too quick as if certain things are missing.

From a wife who dont give too much feck to his personal strategist who knew everything.

Too little screentime on the isotop hearing to understand what a humiliation strauss got and the motive between their fallout and Oppie reasoning for humiliating him. In the movie they got along professionally at worst
Click to expand...

I tend to think that, if a movie is 3 hours long, it's not been written properly. To keep proper pacing and audience attention for that long is seriously difficult. Not a lie, half the people I watched Once Upon A Time In Hollywood with left after 2 hours. You could sense the boredom in the room.

I think Oppenheimer generally got away with it, because there was zero fat on it, but to use your analogy, do you really want to be served a 40oz steak? Are you actually going to eat it all?

I think it was the wrong movie to make.
 
Sky1981 said:
Why do people these days always complain about runtimes. Cut this movie to 2 hours and it'll incoherent. You need to build on certain things, even the slow buildup adds value to the whole movie.

If the movie is good and every minute is justified why complain?

It's like going to a restaurant and complain they give you too much side dish

I even think Nolan cuts like 30 minutes of the runtime. Kitty and RDJ transformation seems to be too quick as if certain things are missing.

From a wife who dont give too much feck to his personal strategist who knew everything.

Too little screentime on the isotop hearing to understand what a humiliation strauss got and the motive between their fallout and Oppie reasoning for humiliating him. In the movie they got along professionally at worst
Click to expand...

I don't care what the movie is, 3hrs is just too long. Oppenheimer was very good but I still get uncomfortable. I watched it last nightand my concentration started to drift a bit at times. I'm not sure what he could have cut out really but 3hrs is just too damn long to sit in a Cinema seat.
 
Withnail said:
I don't care what the movie is, 3hrs is just too long. Oppenheimer was very good but I still get uncomfortable. I watched it last nightand my concentration started to drift a bit at times. I'm not sure what he could have cut out really but 3hrs is just too damn long to sit in a Cinema seat.
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That was the fastest a 3 hours have passed by for me in my recent memory.

I actually got to know it was 3 hours long after reading about it online after I was back from watching it.
 
Moby said:
That was the fastest a 3 hours have passed by for me in my recent memory.

I actually got to know it was 3 hours long after reading about it online after I was back from watching it.
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Someone told me in advance so I had a bit of trepidation which may have played into it for me.
 
Side note. They CGI ed her boobs here. So we dont get to see the niples. Far from it. Just like 10% of her cleavage. Just saying cinema these days.

In the theatre she's wearing some black clothing that covers parts of her body
 
Just came back from the movies, awesome film, writing and acting.
 
I really enjoyed it too. Everything was well directed and well acted.

As much as we know that the bomb would explode, I was swept by the secrecy required by the project, the fears of something going wrong, fears of Soviet espionage infiltrating the project, the disagreements between the scientists, and the resulting tensions. Oppenheimer's life was fascinating enough to cover most of the 3 hours to me; I have no problem with the runtime at all. People were also not wrong in mentioning the similarities in dynamics between Oppenheimer/Strauss and Mozart/Salieri; it felt like revisiting a part from Amadeus.

Rami Malek didn't play much of a role, but he made the most of it by delivering quite the punch just as the real-life David L. Hill did in testifying against Strauss.

I also had a little smile when Strauss's aide mentioned that a young US Senator from Massachusetts swayed Senate votes against Strauss after Hill's testimony.
 
Everything IMAX booked for this weekend as well
Fecking fuming
 
Heading to watch this after work today. All positive reviews so far that I’ve heard so looking forward to seeing it.
 
Saw 6.50 am show and there was loud clapping at the end. Safe to say that 3 hours flew by. No shows available till next Tuesday as shows are all full( even the early morning ones). Will probably watch it again next week
 
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pratyush_utd said:
Saw 6.50 am show and there was loud clapping at the end. Safe to say that 3 hours flew by. No shows available till next Tuesday as shows are all full( even the early morning ones). Will probably watch it again next week
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Say what?!
 
pratyush_utd said:
Saw 6.50 am show and there was loud clapping at the end. Safe to say that 3 hours flew by. No shows available till next Tuesday as shows are all full( even the early morning ones). Will probably watch it again next week
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Love the commitment.
 
Just seen it and really enjoyed it. Thought the 3 hours flew by as was really engrossed in the story so didn’t take much notice of the time or felt agitated by the length and the non-stop talking which sent my Mrs to sleep :lol:

Pretty much expected that as you know fine well that Christopher Nolan films are going to be lengthy and with the this way film was advertised, there was certainly going to be a lot of talking so pretty much knew what to expect before the tickets were bought earlier this afternoon.
 
Just got back home from seeing it for the first time, went to the IMAX as standard fare for a Christopher Nolan film (side-note: I only ever see Nolan's films in IMAX and have never had any issue with audio. Is it perhaps that the audio is mixed with IMAX in mind?) and I was absolutely blown away by it if you'll forgive the pun.

Points:
  • the acting was superb all around and I'll be surprised if Murphy & Downey Jr aren't at least nominated for Oscars. RDJ especially was a revelation in a non-MCU role
  • the movie is just gorgeous
  • whilst I thought the movie flew by I did think there was a definite loss of pacing / tension once the test was completed
  • saying that, the tension of the middle hour was one of the most tense, powerful and uncomfortable viewing experience I've had in the cinema!
    • we know (and the movie knows we know) exactly what happens after & I often found myself tearful at the blissful ignorance that the military / political leaders showed during test & development
    • I felt it was like watching a nightmare unfold, and being unable to stop it
  • because of this I don't think I'll be racing out to see it again, it was a very difficult watch for me
  • really liked the split between colour & b&w to show the differing viewpoints / slants on events
  • I think some of the posters on here are looking too simply when describing the message as 'all bombs are bad' - I think this is about more than bombs, and more about the innocent inception of ideas & how they're corrupted by the fatal combination of ambition & ignorance
  • I also really loved the sound design, giving the clear representation of Oppenheimer's state at various points

Overall I can definitely see why people will say it's Nolan's best, due to the middle points I can't put it above The Prestige / Inception as my favourite Nolan films.
 
Saw it today and really enjoyed it. It didn't feel overlong or padded. If anything my thoughts would be about what got left out rather than what got included.

I went in wondering about the sound because of the complaints from some on here - but the dialogue was clear and the background sound and music worked well. I don't know if that was because I was in an IMAX.

Does it need to be watched in an IMAX? I honestly don't know - a lot of it is talking heads, it's not an action movie in the normal sense. With Dunkirk, it never crossed my mind that I'd watch it or recommend it when it showed up on TV, despite the fact I enjoyed watching it. With this, I probably will watch again.

Worst thing about going to an IMAX - string of overloud and instantly forgettable trailers before the show that seemed to have "make the seats shudder" as their primary sales pitch.
 
Well that guy who said it was an important film was right and whoever wants to argue deserves ignoring. What a film. 10/10.
 
The last 40 minutes after the bomb test could've easily been cut. Myself and a few others were dying for it end, it seems like the panel and politics stuff just kept going on and on and on..

I'd give it a 6.5. The production, acting and the sound were very good, as was the science and the bomb. But the plot and the dogma to sticking to Oppenheimer's life stops it from being a great film, as a lot of biopics do when they focus solely on one person and not the wider context of the world they live in. The scope is too tedious for focusing solely on Oppenheimer - all the communist and investigations into Oppenheimer occured but it was incredibly dour to watch. You could trim an hour and a half by cutting that out alone.

My sister suggested what would've been interesting is seeing the Jewish scientists working under the Nazis - Heisenberg etc. A suggestion like that would've made the film much more - show the parralels between the sides, introduce important historical figures, show more science and why the Germans lost out on the atomic race. It doesn't have to be the Nazis - the Russians, the travails of other scientists, other events occurring during the war etc. Rather than some guy played by RDJ trying to backstab Oppenheimer for 40 minutes for reasons no one really gives a feck about. The script writer for this really let the film down.
 
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I saw it on Sunday and loved it. Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt and RDJ are great. Josh Hartnett and Matt Damon were also really good.

Moby said:
That was the fastest a 3 hours have passed by for me in my recent memory.

I actually got to know it was 3 hours long after reading about it online after I was back from watching it.
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I thought the same. The whole movie moved pretty quickly. I read that it's basically the biography of Oppenheimer crammed into a movie so it's 3 hours but still goes pretty fast. If anything I thought some of it needed more context.

Nolan being Nolan it also doesn't go chronologically which would confuse some people but I liked Tenet and this movie was simple by comparison :lol:

VorZakone said:
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If they seriously think a naked Florence Pugh is an attack on their religious beliefs then they should immediately convert and find a religion that's naked-Florence-Pugh compatible.

Ekkie Thump said:
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Everything RLM does is great.
 
marktan said:
The last 40 minutes after the bomb test could've easily been cut. Myself and a few others were dying for it end, it seems like the panel and politics stuff just kept going on and on and on..

I'd give it a 6.5. The production, acting and the sound were very good, as was the science and the bomb. But the plot and the dogma to sticking to Oppenheimer's life stops it from being a great film, as a lot of biopics do when they focus solely on one person and not the wider context of the world they live in. The scope is too narrow - all the communist and investigations into Oppenheimer occured but it was incredibly dour to watch. You could trim an hour and a half by cutting that out alone.

My sister suggested what would've been interesting is seeing the Jewish scientists working under the Nazis - Heisenberg etc. A suggestion like that would've made the film much more - show the parralels between the sides, introduce important historical figures, show more science and why the Germans lost out on the atomic race. Rather than some guy played by RDJ trying to backstab Oppenheimer for 40 minutes for reasons no one really gives a feck about. The script writer for this really let the film down.
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I also found myself asking why I should care about certain parts of the film. Then I remembered I was the one who bought a ticket to see a film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, so I just ignored that little voice. Nice to know it wasn’t just me that found almost all of the stuff with Strauss a bit…unnecessary?
 
marktan said:
The last 40 minutes after the bomb test could've easily been cut. Myself and a few others were dying for it end, it seems like the panel and politics stuff just kept going on and on and on..
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That was just as good as the first half of the film. Even my son (24) loved that part as much as the rest of the film. Cut that bit out and the film would have been far less interesting and informative.

2 man midfield said:
I also found myself asking why I should care about certain parts of the film. Then I remembered I was the one who bought a ticket to see a film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, so I just ignored that little voice. Nice to know it wasn’t just me that found almost all of the stuff with Strauss a bit…unnecessary?
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The story of his life after the war is just as interesting and perhaps even more informative than what went before.
 
2 man midfield said:
I also found myself asking why I should care about certain parts of the film. Then I remembered I was the one who bought a ticket to see a film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, so I just ignored that little voice. Nice to know it wasn’t just me that found almost all of the stuff with Strauss a bit…unnecessary?
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Strauss was Oppenheimer primary antagonist after the war & was the catalyst for getting his security clearance revoked which, in effect, neutered Oppenheimer’s work life. Odd that many on here can’t grasp the importance of Strauss in Oppenheimer’s post-Manhattan Project world…

https://dmtalkies.com/lewis-strauss-in-oppenheimer-explained-2023-christopher-nolan-film/
 
Straws...uh, I mean Strauss, was essential to the story Nolan was telling. If he had went in a different direction with Oppie and the bomb then yeah, it might have been pointless to spend so much time on Strauss.

But as constructed the last act was absolutely necessary.
 
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