Viewers are divided over whether the film should have shown Japanese victims of the weapon created by physicist Robert Oppenheimer. Experts say it’s complicated.

  • The story is not about bombing Japan.

    Yes, that was a war crime. Yes, that was terrible.

    But if you know the story of Oppenheimer, or seen the movie, he did not decide anything. The military took over at that moment in time.

    So if it was a movie about the military, this had to be shown. But it is about him. So a suggestion (as is clearly in the movie for about the last hour or so) is more than enough of you ask me.

            • ormr ( runblack@reddthat.com ) 
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              3 years ago

              Typical aggressive online SJW behaviour. Preaching absolute truths and spitting condemnations as if no one had thought about it before. Obviously, the world can be best explained without any nuance or shades of grey ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

          • kayjay ( kayjay@kbin.social ) 
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            3 years ago

            His reasoning was if the US didn’t make it, the Nazis would, and that would be even worse. He never wanted to make the bomb, it was just the lesser of two evils.

              • Ants is a pretty apt comparison to Japanese culture at the time. All expected to become soldiers and die for the hive. Seriously, shit was crazy. They were not going to surrender otherwise.

                Firebombings were daily killing more than the bombs did as well.

                  • I mean… That’s what the culture was at the time. No need to name call over it. It is well documented and any attempt to obfuscate it is revisionism.

                    Our discussion is prompting me to look more into the history here, though. Your comment on modern generals’ statements is intriguing. That lead me to learn about Soviet entry into the war, defeating Japan in Manchuria, which may have promoted talk of surrender among Japanese leadership.

                    I’ll certainly keep researching and I’m open to changing my view. Feel free to present me with some material to consider rather than calling me racist.

      • NuPNuA ( NuPNuA@lemm.ee ) 
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        3 years ago

        Yes, but part of the story of the film is that he’s so caught up in the joy of science and discovery he isn’t thinking that far ahead and it suddenly becomes real after he’s in the meeting deciding on targets (note how that’s one of the few scenes without a score). Then the distance he’s kept at from the use of the weapons inspires his outlook in later scenes.

    • ormr ( runblack@reddthat.com ) 
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      3 years ago

      You’re totally right and the discussion (as so many these days) is completely bollocks.

      Since when should the public have the right to demand what an artist ought to put in his work or must not omit. I don’t get it…