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MenopauseIt
Oppenheimer
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A series by UnpauseIt | SPOILERS AHEAD, PROCEED WITH CAUTION
Buckle up for this new movie review series by UnpauseIt! This episode kicks off a new kind of discussion that's perfect for playing after you leave the theater. From film credits to front door, Miah & Rachel chat about the latest movie releases for as long as traffic permits.
This first episode reviews Oppenheimer, a Christopher Nolan bio pic about "the father of the atomic bomb," J. Robert Oppenheimer played by Cillian Murphy.
For more podcasts by the But Wait, There's Moore podcast network, or to learn more about the podcast and Rachel Moore, visit us online at ButWaitTheresMoore.com.
What did you just say that I told you to hold your tongue about?
SPEAKER_01Well I can talk because we're about to get going. I'm actually gonna clip this to my seatbelt. Anyway, we're trying it. Uh this is the car ride home. From from, we're at the Alamo Draft House or parking garage near it uh in Westminster, Colorado. And uh my husband Jeremiah goes by Maya. We're driving in the topolis Ford Bronco. This is interesting. And what did we just see?
SPEAKER_00Not Barbie.
SPEAKER_01We did see a bunch of Barbie goers.
SPEAKER_00But I can see the appeal. Because now I need something.
SPEAKER_01I know, maybe we need to watch some comedy later or something. After giving some adequate thought to all this. It's uh it was intense, y'all. Um would you know? No spoilers, but you probably know this movie's about the atomic bomb.
SPEAKER_00It's a historical biotech, so you know, full spoilers going forward. Anybody actually listens to this? Good on you. Thank you. Support me, I'll give you my venue and you just give me a million dollars.
SPEAKER_01Um dollar at a time.
SPEAKER_00A million at a time. Inflation has drive. There's a film, there's a Barbie poser.
SPEAKER_01Oh, she's filming herself too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, just filming yourself. Posing as Barbie.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so if you go see Oppenheimer, particularly in the theater that is also just airing Barbie, you're probably gonna be walking through a sea of pink, people clad in pink, people dressed like Barbies, which is not bad. You know. Just watch out for the selfie patrol.
SPEAKER_00So don't worry about it. So I can be doing the camera behind it. Whatever. Right. Um you had just said, I'm probably gonna see this again.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, with our daughter, because she wants to see it. Um yeah, I I uh I'm a little jealous because I saw the movie today, obviously kind of reacting to it firsthand. Now I want to go back and see it, which you will be able to with a more of a film crit eye. Um for decisions and you know, tactics and stuff.
SPEAKER_00And I'll know when to pee, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00That's a big one. It's three hours long. Uh a little less than three hours, 180 minutes or something like that. Um credits are quite extensive.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, it would be without that. It's a big, obviously huge movie. And y'all, everybody's in it.
SPEAKER_00Like, you're don't even worry about that. Like see it and be surprised that like, oh, he's in it. Oh, she's in it. Oh he's in it.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's what I'm saying. You're gonna be like, all like, oh, oh, and then you'll don't, but don't spend time like, where did I see that person? Do that later with IMDB. Just wait because there's a lot to take in. Except for me. Um I did find that tracking all the different character names of the guy was a little that was a little challenging.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. Well, that was on purpose. Some of the character names were intentionally unsaid until they were like, it's the typical Nolan, nonlinear. Yeah, he does a good job, but he doesn't do it as well as Tarantino does it. I think Tarantino's more uh affectatious because it's not every five minutes.
SPEAKER_01Well, and I mean gosh, if you're holding Pulp Fiction up as a standard, that's gonna be a hard one to meet anyway. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um it does come around together. I don't think I've seen a better film this year.
SPEAKER_01You know? Yeah. So this is better than Mission Impossible 6?
SPEAKER_00This year, yes. Yes, Mission Impossible 6 actually made me think it was a little too long. Yeah. That was super long. This one never did. And they're about the same length. Roughly. So to get into it a little bit, Jay Robert Oppenheimer, father of the nuclear bomb, that was a Time magazine cover. In an era not too far from removed when Time magazine put Hitler on the cover as their man of the year. That's right. Um, let's not discount the fact that the United States at that time was at war with Germany, not because it really wanted to or really disagreed with them all that much, but just because they had to be.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Don't get into the specifics of that. It's like it was a big deal, still a big deal. Um, but he was head of the Manhattan Project of Los Alamos. It was his He was director. Uh brainchild to put it in New Mexico.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Why though? Because he and I read some history on Up and Hyber too. He loves New Mexico. Yeah. Or loved, I think.
SPEAKER_00I think he died in New Mexico.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. He he had a and they they I thought they did a good job translating the movie is like, and he makes a statement about really, and I won't say exactly what that is, but he really uh says, I just want to work in New Mexico, you know, doing what he loves.
SPEAKER_00Physics and being in New Mexico is a line from the movie. We've just spoiled that. Oh this is all spoilers. That's true.
SPEAKER_01Apparently.
SPEAKER_00As well. But hopefully the wind isn't too bad. We got the top off, got the windows up though.
SPEAKER_01Well, that was our first uh episode of this, so there'll probably be more.
SPEAKER_00Uh might be a Barbie one with me and my daughter if I can get her to speak. Um because I don't know if you want to see Barbie.
SPEAKER_01I'll see it. I it depends on if we I mean, we do have an Alamo Path, so we could go see it. You certainly could go see us. I do want to see it. I mean, and again, this we're not talking about Barbie necessarily in this one, but I've heard good things. I've heard I should see it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it is studying the uh history of war a little bit. A little background on me. I do have a degree in history, and weapons of mass destruction was one of my uh classes that I had. And like the first class was like beginning of recorded time to like um the bomb, basically. That's putting it a little simply, but it was spent a lot of time on nuclear weapons, and uh it was basically early 20th century when they had gas, warfare, something like that. So the nuclear bomb was just some people would say an extension of the warfare that was new to the world in World War I, where that gave us tanks, that gave us, you know, radio communications, aerial combat. It was escalating exponentially, is basically what was happening. So Oppenheimer was a physicist influenced by Einstein and a bunch of other older physicists who theorized about the atomic energies and things like that, and uranium and plutonium were being developed, were all around the same time. Um there was a lot of people who didn't think it could actually be done.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, including them, I think, until like in the movie they talk about how it was done, and then they're like, well, let's go try it next door in the lab, and they they did it in ten minutes. Yeah. Um separating an atom, I think, right? Sustained fission. Yeah, sustained fission.
SPEAKER_00So sustained fission, if you you know listening to this or whatever, for you, my co-driver here, uh, it's the continually uh breaking down of atoms. So your fission means to you know spread apart, right? Causing a fissure, if you will. So you're taking an electron out of an atom, you know, in its own elemental state, not in a compound or in a molecule, but out of its atomic state. That's why I call it atom. So taking it an electron that orbits the nucleus of an atom or proton, one of these nuclear, or no, it's a neutron. So you have electrons, protons, neutrons. Neutrons is what gets expelled in the atomic blast. Neutrons are what causes radiation. So if you get burned by the UV, that's neutron radiation. The radiation that if you pick up a piece of plutonium and die of cancer, that's the neutron radiation causing that.
SPEAKER_01I think neutrons are also causing us to hit every red light.
SPEAKER_00Which is fine, it gives us a break in the uh in the wind shears.
SPEAKER_01Can I pause there for a second too and point something out? I thought I thought they did a really good job in the movie of explaining conceptually what they were trying to do. For people who are like me, I'm like, mm, what? I you know, sort of. You're explaining it now, but I thought the movie did a good job.
SPEAKER_00You know, and I've read some things and um a lot of the specifics are still classified on how to make a nuclear weapon.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's not a YouTube how-to video or anything.
SPEAKER_00No, you'll get flagged almost immediately. Yeah. It's obviously something that's in the world. Um, and if you wanted to become a nuclear physicist, you have to go through a process of vetting uh like a whole security background to even get into the programs that would give you the basic knowledge to actually how to do it. Jeez. It's pretty crazy. I looked into it, and not that I was wanting to do it, but I was looking at the history of like, well then who maintains these, who builds these new ones, who is doing all this other stuff. It was more research on that one, and it's like you have to go through a huge process to do this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So they touch on the Los Alamos, they touch on his infidelities. Uh Alpi is that they call him in the uh movie, we'll call him here. Was a philanderer.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Extreme philanderer, basically. Uh had affairs all the way until almost till he died, I think.
SPEAKER_01Um, you know, women like hot, uh women like smart men, it's hot. Uh me, case in point, I I like your brain, I think it's awesome. So I'm just saying there's something, there's something there.
SPEAKER_00But as far as the movie goes, it does a good job of that. It does a good job of saying the right words. And they probably had access to, I mean, there's Los Alamos stuff, not everything's been declassified, but there's been books written about it. Uh there's been physicists who wrote their accounts about it, that it's been, you know, stuff that they can talk about. That's you know, all declassified stuff there. The fact that Los Alamos is even known is a declassified situation. Yeah. At one point it was classified, right? And this lady's about to hit me, like she's all the way over my land.
SPEAKER_01Don't do that. Neutrons, we're not trying to make a fission reaction going on here. Right.
SPEAKER_00Yes. But um, they do a good job of that, and they're actually using the real terms. That's a Christopher Nobling thing, right? He wants to be as rounded and real as possible. Uh I would definitely say I don't think Killian Murphy is gonna get a he might get an Oscar nomination for this, as far as like all that goes. I don't think you can get Oscar is worth a Philippines, frankly, in determining what the good film is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00They've jumped that shark uh a long time ago. And with all the writer strikes and everything on there, it's like the whole Hollywood is just a piece of crap, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But for awards, the actor who did the best job in this one. Oh, that's a bust. He's getting part of the bust. It's loud. Is our buddy Iron Man himself.
SPEAKER_01Uh Robert Dane Jr. is in this movie, and yeah, he's not Tony's he's not Tony Stark uh in this role.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he nails this role, like he does with most of his roles now. Dude. And it's pretty much hit it out of the park. And I think Emily Blunt also nailed it. Above Killian Murphy, who's the star.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, she plays his, she plays Offie's wife. Yeah, I can't remember her name. Kitty or something like that. Kitty, yeah. Um yeah, deals with like alcohol, you know, alcohol, postpartum, I think.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, all kinds of issues, lived on in Los Alamos.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and dealing with him cheating and knew about all that.
SPEAKER_00Uh well documented that she knew. Um, I think Kelly Murphy does a thing-up job. I'm just saying these other three were just phenomenal. Um I've still gotta look up a couple of the actresses and actors that are the boilers in it from Lower Dex. That's right. Uh Jack Plade. So getting I'm not getting out all of that stuff.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we don't have IMDB open before in front of us, y'all, so we can definitely we'll link to the IMDB of this movie on the show notes.
SPEAKER_00There you go.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00A couple of criticisms I have of it is I didn't appreciate the cuts between time as much as I think other ones that he's done. Um, that didn't work for me on this one. But it it also pays off in the end. So I'm like, uh we'll see. I'm gonna see it again and I might have a better opinion about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think.
SPEAKER_00But also, I really would have liked to have seen uh the re not because they have spoilers, here's a spoiler for you the United States of America is the only sovereign nation to use nuclear weapons against another sovereign nation in the history of nuclear weapons.
SPEAKER_01Um, that's right, nobody else did it. They might have been thinking about it, but we were the only ones.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, somebody who's a historian, you know, or reads newspapers might quibble with that saying, well, nuclear weapons were used in the Iraq war. Yes, tactical nuclear weapons, because we're blowing up tanks, they're tiny, they're really, really tiny. Surgical strikes. Yeah. And not necessarily causing a bunch of radioactive fallout and a thousand-mile mushroom. So I would have liked to have seen the moment that they do drop the bomb, they do it in this movie, um, I would have liked to have seen the reaction when the aftermath was shown to the scientists at Lostama House. They were shown classified aerial photography, and because they all had clearance, and they were part of it, and they needed to just have that information for their scientific research. It ended up being like a 20-megaton bomb or something like that. I think uh the Heroxuma one was 20 and Nagasaki was like 15 or something like that. Um it's kind of weird, but the showing actual maybe news footage of that, or even you know, doing a scene of makeup and stuff could have added to that moment. I was waiting for it and they didn't show it.
SPEAKER_01Well, um they I think they replicated it though. There's a moment when you I I really liked we're gonna have some emergency vehicles go by here, so I might pause what I'm saying, depending on where they go. Hey, this is why we're doing it on the ride home, we never know. Um but uh they show what like they the way they show the aftermath, like the immediate reaction of the scientists. There's triumph in what they accomplished, but immediately you get faced with the wait a second, what did we just do? And I'm gonna stop talking there because we do have a big old fire truck coming through here. Okay, then this guy.
SPEAKER_00Oh. I did the right thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we just didn't really.
SPEAKER_00Just get it out of the way. Don't ever if some if there's a fire truck behind you, do not stop.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You keep going so you can get out of the way. That's right. A little PSA for you young ladies and girls out there, you know.
SPEAKER_01Young ladies and girls and boys and men. I don't know. Anyone who drives basically.
SPEAKER_00Only women can't drive alright.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm gonna leave that in and let people react to that. Um that's gonna get crazy. I certainly do. Um, no, I but I so were any more negative or what you would have hoped for?
SPEAKER_00They showed the elation, they showed that, and they showed the fervor of uh American patriotism, even though they were, you know, hundreds of thousands of people were dead and people died for decades after that from the poisoning. It poisoned that whole area for a long time. More so than they could even realize at that time. Um they knew there was gonna be fallout, they didn't realize how much it would be almost instantaneous death.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh because it was so scattered in the air, you breathed it in and you were dead, you were dead. There was no cure, there was no treatment. There is no treatment still. Like if this happened now, you would not survive. Um like if you survived the blast and came out and you were near it, you would You were gonna die because of radiation.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you would just die in radiation.
SPEAKER_00That is absolutely what would happen. Um and you can YouTube this, you can find this on Google searches of just actual footage of the aftermath.
SPEAKER_01And you should. I think that it's important people do. I mean And it should have been in this movie. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And not at the part where he's having, you know, he's having this, you know, like congratulatory speech or whatever. It was when the top, you know, department heads were given the information.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Before, you know, the entire thing, you know, was like dissected for the you know scientific.
SPEAKER_01So I'm gonna counter it a little bit. So the movie is called Oppenheimer, it's about Oppenheimer, and you very much, I mean, you it is you see the whole movie from his perspective. He's in every scene. And yeah, he is in every scene. And so And he was shown this stuff.
SPEAKER_00That's why I say we can that's when we can.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. But you do see, I think you are given his thought processes and reactions and how he deliberates um and you know, his perspectives after you know they do take it and drop it on um Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and you see that from his perspective. So you get some of that, which I think was really good because you know, again, it's the father of the atomic bomb, and he was a huge part of why it was even possible. And so seeing his responses to it and like, wow, what does this mean? What have I contributed?
SPEAKER_00We got a motorcyclist, we do.
SPEAKER_01Yes, but what kind of motorcycle? It's a har is it a Harley? You're not a Harley fan. I do not like Harley's. Nay. I don't and not just because that one was loud, he does not like Harley's.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I like loud bikes. I don't like that loud bike.
SPEAKER_01Ah, he went through. Yay, go through the light.
SPEAKER_00But anyway, but yeah, so to counter that, yeah, he was on it. He could have seen it when he saw it. Because that affected his decisions going forward in his life. So that was pivotal and they needed to show it. I feel like that was intentional.
SPEAKER_01I don't agree. I'm gonna disagree with you there because I think I think Nolan made an intentional choice to not show us what he was seeing and how he looked down in that scene where it's like he's taking it in, and it's like, nope, this is about him. Y'all are gonna go look this up later, I hope. Or you've already seen footage and you will have your own reaction. This is about Obviously.
SPEAKER_00Uh position, and he missed a spot there. He could have taken out five to ten minutes of their gratuitous sex that did not need to be in there. He's a philanderer with more than just one woman. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Is it behind us?
SPEAKER_00Another emergency vehicle. I don't know. I don't see it.
SPEAKER_01It sounds like a fire truck too, but I can't tell where they are. We're gonna fix them to find out, I think. I feel like it's behind us.
SPEAKER_00We did not need to see that. Like at all. You know, in the way that it was shown. Yeah. It was gratuitous for I don't know. Gratuitous gratuitous sake. I mean, it it didn't feel like it served any purpose.
SPEAKER_01I agree with that. I think that was Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Having nudity and gratuitous sex are not the same thing. There is a scene, spoilers, where there's two nude actors sitting. That didn't feel gratuitous. There's a bunch of other stuff in here that really did that could have been either more tastefully done or cut out entirely, frankly. It didn't add to the movie at all, um, in my opinion. Yeah, and that could have been replaced with that footage, but that is like I gotta tell my daughter that that's what we're gonna see. Yeah, she's gonna be able to do it. She's gonna make a choice if she wants to see it or not. She does not like gratuity in that way.
SPEAKER_01It was so I know before we saw the movie, um, I can't remember what we were watching. I uh I uh oh, we do a lot of cool YouTube quizzes. And so if any of you have ever seen the movie Hunt for Red October, there's a moment in it where um Captain Raimi is played by Sean Connery. He's in his captain's quarters with uh KGB agent, winds up dying. That's not spoiling anything, this movie's been out for a whole hell of a long time. Um, but the man, he's kind of like trying to get a gotcha on Captain Ramius. You know, again, this is in Russian KGB, but he's like, you know, what is this um quote here in your in a Bible here that you've got? He's like, I am become death. Uh what is the whole quote?
SPEAKER_00From it's uh a Hindu text. Uh now I have become death destroyer of worlds.
SPEAKER_01Of worlds. And uh I remembered that line from the movie Hunter Rod October, and he he uh Captain Ramius or Sean Connery in that movie says um it's from a Hindu text uh quoted by an American, but he built an atomic bomb, and that brought me full circle. I'm like, well, this is Oppenheimer, that's who that was. So any of y'all who are old, like us, we are Gen X, um could appreciate that.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, but getting back to the thing is a lot of this stuff is based on fact, but it is dramatized a lot. Like I said, he had way more mistresses than we're showing here.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Um you get the idea, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00You need to see the graphic sex because you got the idea already, going back to that critique. Um, other than that, it's a supremely well-crafted film. Yes. Um is it an important film as far as say things of you know nuclear proliferation, things like that? No, it will have absolutely zero effects on Generation X's and youngers zeitgeist on what nuclear proliferation should be or means. It's just it has zero effect on it. I don't think there's gonna have any it's not powerfully enough to spark a debate. What it is, it's a really good film about a dude who wasn't as conflicted as he said he was and then became that conflicted.
SPEAKER_01I I'm gonna disagree with you there. Um, and I'd love to hear from any listeners who want to opine on this too, after you've seen it, whatever your generation is. I think it does, I mean, it it not only highlights the act the making and what went into the Manhattan Project to create the bomb, it also highlights that era of American politics, uh, McCarthyism, and you know, President Truman, um, or uh yeah, Truman. And they mentioned J. Edgar Hoover. I mean, you talk about an era of great fear about communism. That is certainly a big feature, a big underlying um line in this movie, and the fear of traitors, of espionage, and then of course, you know, turning people against each other to turn them in, to accuse them, sometimes very groundlessly, but with just enough to be like, like, I loved how at that one point, so there there definitely is for those of you who like kind of law and order-y kind of stuff, there's some of that in here. And I loved how one's like um may quite possibly, was that the phrase? He may quite possibly be uh a KGB agent. He may may quite possibly or quite probably or something. That was the statement this man is accusing him, and they're taking it like, oh, well, there you go. That's the evidence, and it's like, what? This is a statement, may quite probably be an agent, may quite probably be a traitor, and you're like, okay.
SPEAKER_00Well, that was just a political maneuver, and that was using just surveillance that the FBI had for a certain person's political gain, not for anything other than that, and had access to that. So the law and uh McCarthyism, if you will, um would not have succeeded against Oppenheimer, and that's why he was never brought before those boards and everything, because he was bigger than McCarthy or Hoover. And the McCarthyism didn't last as long as it's been romanticized, but it definitely cut deep.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But it cut deep in things that were really famous, so that's why it's lasted in our minds. Yeah. But actors and things like that.
SPEAKER_01The con the fear of communism is is absolutely a big part of this movie. I mean, there's it's throughout, it's weaved throughout the entire history that you see.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so so full spoilers. We're not gonna go through a whole plot synopsis on it. No. But the bomb, the Trinity bomb, does go off near Los Alamos in New Mexico, and they do show it, and I do believe it's an accurate representation of uh what happened on that test. Um the storms that came in, when it did it, and the effect on the Potsdam uh accords, and I think Truman is I don't know about recently or how recent it has been, but he was recognized as really not the right guy to end to be in charge at the end of World War II. He was I don't think acting a bit on hubris, United States turned the tide in Europe, and the United States ended the war in the Pacific. Like it just did. Um horrifically and barbarically, probably, but he was riding high as the victor. Yeah. And like I got the biggest gun now. Right. There's a spy, this is you know, in Los Alamos, who defected and gave Russia the ability to build the bomb. And uh his main I don't know, reasoning that he gave for that was the United States can't be the only one to have this, otherwise they'll just bomb everybody. And he's right. Yeah. Because Douglas MacArthur, he wanted to bomb China into the Stone Age during the Korean War. He once they got past the 38th parallel and moved up into where mainland China was, uh, that's what happened. The entire peninsula was overrun with uh UN troops, mostly the United States, but there were UN troops. He wanted to then bomb that entire area so no other troops could they couldn't come back in. Uh and he was voted down for that and then uh taken out of command. So Fuchs was right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00They would have used it if they were the only one that had it, it would have been used again. So the deterrence thing maybe did, did not happen, but the whole Cold War thing happened. Um that's why I think it's not gonna really change a lot of younger generation's view on it. This is a good documentation. Document's not the right word. It's good dramatization, there we go. Yeah. Of uh that era. Yeah. And if nuclear proliferation was when was the last time you saw a nuke an anti-nuclear weapons demonstration?
SPEAKER_01I have never seen that. I if it has, it's been by video only.
SPEAKER_00It was since the Soviet Union fell, you never saw it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, because everyone breathed a sigh of relief, oh, the Soviet Union fell. You know, they're the ones that was gonna bomb us. Um it's true. But now you got China, you got like seven to ten states that have nuclear weapons. Um you know, India, Pakistan, China, United States, Russia. Not Canada. I think they do. Oh. Uh Israel. Israel is never admitted to it, but it is widely accepted and known that they do. Yeah. Um, so that's a thing. This one, this movie ends um on a down note because it ends with basically the Cold War.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, so I'm gonna call that out too. Uh we listen to a podcast, Steve Dangle podcast.
SPEAKER_00We'll just call that because Steve Dagleblasy SDPN, listen to them. They're if they're Canadian, so they have beady little eyes and flapping heads.
SPEAKER_01Oh my lord.
SPEAKER_00You know.
SPEAKER_01Um, but we listen to them for hockey, but yeah, yeah. They do, yeah, eh, eh. They say that a lot on the thing too. Um producer Drew is uh Avs fan, so I I have he has a close place in my heart. But um they made because they I think they're a breakup for summer right now, and they made a statement like, oh well, it's got a happy ending. And I remember thinking, I'm like, no, there is no happy ending to this. No. And it's not like, oh, well, we won the war. I mean, oh, but look what the outcome was. I mean, I oh, and by the way, I am gonna spoil this. Kenneth Renaughn is in this, which is just one of the many reasons and people I wanted to see it for, but he was into a promotional picture. Yeah. Um, and by the way, so one I'm gonna circle back to this too. Um, I thought they did an exceptional job. And so if you do go see it at Alamo Draft House, um, they always do a great thing of like well, they'll weave in relevant things to the movie you're about to see. It's you do see previews, but you see this whole pre-show that usually is like they weave together some stuff that's like, hey, this is however way it's relevant to what you're about to see. And um they talk about Nolan and the things he typically does in his movies. Motorcycles going by, tripods really. Trikes. Trikes. Big ones. And um how he will create suspense through usually cutting back and forth between time. I thought they did a re I was feeling my gut was quenching, and I was kind of like, I actually had my hand on my mouth in case I because you know I get startled. But um, in case I made a noise when they're doing you see them doing the test, or you know, the first test, the first time they're trying this out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And it was the suspense was everything I think I think he did a great job.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and uh so I would give this a rating. I'm gonna rate it now. Unit of measurement, remember, we gotta do something there too. Uh atom bombs. Out of 10 out of 10 atom bombs.
SPEAKER_01Give me a 10.
SPEAKER_00A full 10. Nice. Even with those critiques, uh I think it could have been better without gratuitous sex. Nudity is not what I'm talking about. So it's really borderline, not, you know, like porn, basically. It's not quite there, but it's like, okay. It's not Game of Thrones, yeah. It's not Game of Thrones, but it's close. And it's not nearly as uh prevalent as it was in Game of Thrones, where I don't watch Game of Thrones, really. Um but 10 out of 10, atom bombs, because it does a good job of capturing the scientific community. Because I've read a few books about you know the Los Angeles Project and you know, from physicists that wrote books and wrote about Oppenheimer and just what everyone was feeling. And it was, you know, during the war, a to say it was a poorly kept secret that there was an atom bomb project is not really true. They didn't know where it was, they didn't know it was Los Alamous, they didn't really know the extent of what an atom bomb can do until after it was done. Once they dropped the bomb, the public demanded knowledge of what was going on. That's when it really kind of came out. Um, most of the American public didn't know about um concentration camps until the end of the war.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Until the very end of the war. So that wasn't really a reason, you know, for anti-German sentiment at that point. You know, it became that for sure.
SPEAKER_01Well, and let's not forget too, then the United States thereafter.
SPEAKER_00Um yeah. We're not going in that. Okay, it definitely captured the sentiment and it was accurately done. If you're doing a movie in the United States from 19, it kind of spans several years, but it goes the majority of it is from 1942 to 1945, plus a few hearings after that in 1953. Um, so there was some definite, you know, spending of time. Uh, they capture really the essence of the what can man accomplish in the in the mid-40s. Like that real scientific community of we can do this. This is this is theoretically possible. Um did a really good job of capturing that, did a good job of capturing the fear, did a good job of showing fallout, pun intended, yeah, um, from the decision. And it never felt bored. I didn't feel like the movie was too long. Uh, and we saw it, like I said, at the big show at Alamo, which has Dolby Atmos uh and an IMAX screen basically. Um phenomenal sound. Yeah, I mean the sound is used great, barely any soundtrack. I think Hansimmer did there was some some music in there, but it is so subtle. You barely hear it. It's there, but it's like it definitely doesn't intrude.
SPEAKER_01It's not like other ones in there.
SPEAKER_00It's definitely the sound design. It's top notch. So what is your rating?
SPEAKER_01So uh I'm gonna give it a nine out of ten uh fishbowl marbles.
SPEAKER_00You gotta see it.
SPEAKER_01Yep, you gotta see it. Um I agree. There were a couple of disjointed things. They start the movie out, and you'll see it's like you kind of you do some time travel, you do back and forth. So I'll let you all see that, but they made like they had like um some captions appear on the screen that I'm like, okay, that doesn't make any sense to me. It still doesn't, and I that's why it said number one fission, number two fusion.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you're talking about the fission.
SPEAKER_01But it was highlighting people and not actual science of these are like.
SPEAKER_00Okay, well it was a cut to the company.
SPEAKER_01Okay, see so you explained that to me. I I did not get that. That was that was over my head.
SPEAKER_00Again, I had to take a college course and I don't understand.
SPEAKER_01So I'm gonna call that out as like a huh. Um because that later I obviously later I was wondering what that was. Um again, the sex scene not necessary. They could they certainly could have painted the picture just fine. I'm not really sure what that was about. Um so yeah, nine out of ten. I thought it was well put together. I thought that they spared no expense, in my opinion, of making a period piece um, you know, and representing it just like you would have seen it. Uh, y'all, I I don't even think I saw anyone who's not white on that screen. Um that's another thing.
SPEAKER_00You gotta be don't be looking for representation.
SPEAKER_01It's not representation.
SPEAKER_00Okay, there wasn't.
SPEAKER_01And even then, most of the characters were men. There were very few women. And if they were, they were in a wife role, a lover role, or a child.
SPEAKER_00There were a few women scientists that Oppenheimer brought in as secretaries that actually ended up working on the project.
SPEAKER_01And they point out they call that out. Um, so nine out of ten, um, and I'm gonna go back to what you said about the music. There is a point where in toward the in the third act, I of 19 acts, it is five hours long. I believe Nolan was really trying trying to go very intense with the sensory overload so that you felt what Oppenheimer felt in the moment. The music was overbearing, and I remember thinking, I'm like, I'm almost having trouble hearing the dialogue, but it made sense to me.
SPEAKER_00Why? Yeah. I would say that's less Hans Zimmer. I think Hans Zimmer didn't. That's a Nolan choice. And more the sound designers and editors, Nolan choice. Yeah. That's why I'm saying sound design, not soundtrack. It was like that. We're gonna get busted for this guy's music that's on here. And it's really awful wheels. Ugh.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, nine out of ten. It was, I and I do ten, I'll I'll admit some bias. I love Christopher Nolan. I think many, if not most of his movies, I really do tend to favor. I know you and I were talking a little bit before, you know, Memento. I think you had said you're like, eh, maybe not as great. Yeah. Um I want to see Inception again, actually, because I only did see that once. Inception holds up fairly well.
SPEAKER_00Um I haven't seen Tenet. I haven't even looked interesting.
SPEAKER_01I and I, of course, we still love the Dark I think the Dark Knight series by Nolan is the best Bat. Oh, yeah, I know you don't agree. You like Burton, but um, I I think it's the best Batman movie.
SPEAKER_00Well, the Dark Knight itself is probably the best superhero movie. So good. You know, at least it's up there in the conversation about superheroes. But we're not talking about that. Yeah, yeah. Um about to you on the highway, so we might end this pretty soon. Yeah, we'll see.
SPEAKER_01We can keep talking, and if it's bad, I'll just cut it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna definitely IMDB the actors list. Uh many much. The one mistress, first wife, whatever. Um Florence. Whatever her name is. I can't place the actress's name. Florence Pew. Ah, it's Florence Pew.
SPEAKER_01And I had to think about that for a minute, but yeah, satisfying. Like, ah! So, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, not wearing a blonde wig, wearing a red wig. Uh, or red with friends.
SPEAKER_01She did not do a superhero landing, but she did everything else. Pretty much.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, um. And then a bunch of the other actors that you can see that were scientists were all, geez, accident happened there.
SPEAKER_01Oof.
SPEAKER_00Uh well-known actors.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you'll you'll see a lot of well-known, you'll also see ones you're like, wait a minute, like uh for those Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans, you will see a uh little cameo from a well-known character in that show. Um, not uh not a full tri he wasn't in the whole series, but enough to be recognizable. And uh, but yeah, just those little bits were good.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, uh, I'm gonna talk about the bomb right now. The actual bomb itself. Uh you can see pictures of it, you can see pictures of it being built. That's a bit declassified. Um with an implosion device. And they talk about if you I think there's a lot of noise here, if you can still hear me. Let's see. There's a difference between a fission bomb and a fusion bomb. That's what the your subtitles were uh alluding to. A fission bomb is what happened, is what was dropped on Japan. What how it does is it has a uranium-235 core, which is enriched uranium, meaning that it's been put through a milling process and uh taken from raw uranium, a lot of it mining in Colorado where we at. And then another one was a plutonium core, which is a derivative of uranium. Well, both radioactive, super heavy metal. And the idea is it has it emits so many neutrons already, that's why it's radioactive, and the neutrons split the atoms of its neighboring atom. To get this to happen in nature, you have to be inside a stunk or a star. That's where fusion happens. Constantly, for billions of years. Uh and that's kind of where the fusion ideas begin. You know, physics and astronomy and how these stunts work, what happens, and the stunt goes, you know, supernova, black holes, all that stuff. That theory led to atomic work.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uranium and stuff has been known. Mary Curry is a name you would know. Discovered, I think, plutonium, or uranium, was handling it, died of cancer, horrible death. Yeah. Um that not withstanding. I have a little beside the point. The bomb itself looks like the bomb. You can see pictures of Fat Man and Little Boy, which are the two bombs dropped on Japan right now, if you just Google it. Dropped out of the Inola Gay, uh the B-29, B-26, the B bomb, the bomber, uh, which is at the Smithsonian Institute, I think. Yeah. Um, uh without, you know, not without controversy. It's like this killed 100,000 people. I'm like, yeah, people should know this. Uh but the bomb itself, how it was detonated, that stuff is, it takes up a bit of the movie in the middle. It's right in the middle. And then it gets more tense after that. But that tension of the bomb going off, they didn't know it was gonna go off. They did not know that the bombs in Japan were going off either. Yeah, they had a good idea, but they were like, we don't know. Um, if we announce this and it doesn't happen, yeah, they are going to double down.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And Japan uh definitely would have doubled down. That's been it's kind of lying in the decade sense. The people that wanted for peace that wanted peace were um outnumbered by the people in control of the army. And we're going to really try to tell the last man standing type thing.
SPEAKER_01Um sorry, all we just passed a car that seemed to be like backing to the ball.
SPEAKER_02Having issues or something?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, not sure. Um not stranding or anything, just in a weird spot in a parking lot. Um so dropping the bombs did end the war precipitously.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Did they need to invade Japan? Those are the questions and what-ifs that you don't really ever will ever know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It is possible that without dropping a bomb on a city, if they would have dropped it on a place of Japan that was incredibly sparsely uh populated, uh, so they could see it.
SPEAKER_01That's what he referenced. Uh he references like just the the sight of the bomb going off that gigantic mushroom cloud.
SPEAKER_00It would have, it would have ended the war.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it would have an impact.
SPEAKER_00Be like, whoa. And in the movie, they were saying we're gonna drop two bombs. That was the plan. Yeah. However, had they surrendered, had Japan surrendered on the first bomb, they would not have dropped the second bomb. It took the second bomb for the ruling parties in the emperor of Japan to say, hey, uh, we surrender. Yep. And part of the surrender, they say it was unconditional surrender, it was the emperor gets to be emperor still a fool. That was part that was the condition. Um, and the emperor was a pro-surrender guy. Toto was like the one that was not. Uh correct me if I'm wrong, I think that's the way it was, but they were not 100% on like keeping the war going. They were losing uh tremendously. But the bomb going off, the sound of it, the sight of it, the uh what happened with the scientists who were observing it seems very accurately reproduced.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um things I've read about how the uh scientists, you know, what they were wearing, what the military observers were doing, how far away they needed to be. They found out that they weren't quite far enough away.
SPEAKER_01That was very, yeah, where they're like, okay, well theoretically this should be far enough in the black from the blast zone, and they're like, yes, but we don't know. We're making our best guess. Yeah, um oh, and that was that they point that out too. I I think that they do a good job of saying as well, look, this is all based on people's minds working out the problem and making their theories. Yeah. Like that's he's like, well, you did the math on the blast radius, so we're trusting you.
SPEAKER_00I'm going off your math.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god. I'm like, okay.
SPEAKER_00So I mean, pretty high stakes, obviously. Yeah. Really high stakes. Um stakes, I could use a stake. Uh more than four dollars, so more than a four dollar stake. Yeah. Uh technically, this seemed to really represent what Los Alamos was at the time, what the scientists were working with, how they were working. Um they did have computers, and basically you were a punch card system, and the computers were size of giant rooms, and all they were doing was just calculus that would take all day to like do a calculation. It was pretty intense, if you will.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh did a good job. We're home now. I think that's what we should do. It's like however long it takes to get home, is however long.
SPEAKER_01That's why this is called the ride the car ride home, y'all. Just like y'all probably talk about movies when you're on the car ride with whoever you went to see it with, that's what this is. We just happen to record it. So highly recommend it.
SPEAKER_00Uh do not take it lightly. It is not an easy film to watch at all. Yeah. If you have any understanding of geopolitical uh realities stemming from uh the Manhattan Project, um which is you know where Los Alamos was, that was the code name, all that good stuff there. Reading some history books on it would help with some of the technological technological terms. That's right. But uh highly recommend.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's the same. Um, and again, you're gonna see it again, so I'm excited to hear more about it. But uh hope y'all see it. Uh follow us here on the podcast. I'm literally not doing any more uh open or intro to the outro of this. This is it. Uh follow the podcast. Um I think you'll have show notes too, and you can let us know what you think of the movie in the comments. And uh see you next time. What movie are we seeing next time? Do we know? Are we maybe Barbie? Maybe Barbie. So next time we see a movie together, it's just the adults here. We'll uh give you the next review of On the Car Ride Home.
