Ryan Schnozling 🎇’s review published on Letterboxd:
Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds.
I’m kinda obsessed with this idea that Christopher Nolan carries existential guilt over making the greatest superhero movie of all time, and how it uncontrollably changed the film business forever So, naturally, he made a movie about the father of the atomic bomb as a metaphor.
A brilliant mind is picked by the powers that be to helm a massive project, and its earth-shattering success leads to him being named one of the most important men in history, while the rest of the world pours all its resources into matching its power, even if it destroys us all.
One can draw parallels to the last 15 years of cinema, including Hollywood’s shift to an IP-over-everything model, the steady decline of original blockbusters, and loads of bright new filmmakers and talent getting sucked into the machine, only to spend years making broad CGI fare – built to be mass-consumed, then quickly expended to make room for the next scheduled release.
And on top of it all, he cast Iron Man as the main antagonist Lewis Strauss – the man who pushed aggressively for nuclear proliferation, and clipped Oppy’s wings for his idealogical opposition, and lost massively in the end for it, cemented as a villain to both science and history.
Anyway, this was awesome, epic, profoundly reflective, and brutally nuanced on the legacy of the Atomic Era and those who built it. See this on the biggest screen you can. Hug someone you love. And try not to have too many trysts at the Communist Party mixers, if you can.
⚛️💣💥🚬
