I’m not the best at constructing my thoughts, so usually when I try to talk about something and get all deep, poetic, and philosophical about stuff I always fumble what I’m trying to say. That being said, Im going to try my best to describe what I took away from this movie. 

Oppenheimer is my new favorite movie, but not simply because of how visually spectacular this movie is, incredible sound design, and soundtrack to pair with amazing acting from everyone, but how this movie serves as a warning of innovation and invention, how black and white this country continuously sees issues of upmost importance when it comes to lives of everyone on this planet and reduces such importances to mere politics. 

The movie really was about Oppenheimer, and the majority of the movie was focused on how mistreated this man was from being named the “American Prometheus” to a political ideal that people conjured up to be poisonous. You can walk away from this movie thinking it was just saying “yeah nukes are bad”, but that’s simply missing the point. This weapon was originally designed to serve as a warning to every country the destructive capability when war and science mix, yet governments looked at this as an opportunity to simply increase their arsenal. Nobody wanted to listen to Oppenheimer or the rest of the scientists that warned the future of atomic research, and now countries will not stop developing these weapons let alone research even deadlier ones. 

Everyone is also ignoring the fact how this weapon and the treatment of it completely destroyed Oppenheimer, as the line “I believe we did” induced the fact that he has created a new future, a future of atomic war and counter intelligence. A future originally banked on the fact that Oppenheimer’s optimistic view on human kind would see these weapons and think “we shouldn’t do this”. Even Albert Einstein suggested the Nazis would come together with the rest of the world to usher in a new world peace. 

The scary part about this story was how wrong they both were.

The black and white views of Lewis Strauss (I would argue it was also representing the US government) of how a weapon capable of completely wiping out entire countries and continuously lay waste to more people for years due to the effects of radiation, was somehow less important than a scientist not responding to him, was somehow less important than a job on the board, was somehow less important than the pronunciation of his name. Lewis Strauss was so caught up with this idea that Oppenheimer was out to get him and painted him as a Soviet spy because of his opposition of nuclear weapons, and sadly his views echoed with a majority of the US. 

The colorful view of Oppenheimer showed that his opinions and ideals were not simply bounded to political parties or insignificant titles, as he believed what was right. He knew the fact that the Nazis, a group dedicated to incredible amounts of destruction and hate, would not be trusted with a weapon of this capacity, so he urged the creation of the A-bomb. He discouraged the creation of the H-bomb because he knew the A-bomb was all that was needed to demonstrate the destructive capability of nuclear fission. He wanted to be open with the rest of the world to show the dangers of this creation and usher the world to work together and avoid an arms race. He wanted to help people, and he did it the best way he could.

Sadly, people choose to ignore that fact and simply focus on this idea of “nukes are bad” when really this movie isn’t about nukes, but how humans continue to choose ignorance over knowledge.