Christopher Nolan’s long-awaited Oppenheimer opened in theaters this past weekend, bringing the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the development of the world’s first atomic bomb to the big screen in spectacular fashion. The film is bringing in strong numbers at the box office — along with Barbie, the film is giving the box office its best opening weekend receipts of the pandemic era — and earning critical praise with some calling the film Nolan’s best work yet. However, some eagle-eyed fans have noticed an error of historical accuracy in the film.
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On Twitter, user Andy Craig noticed that in a scene set in 1945 following the successful use of the first atomic weapons on Japan, the crowd is waving American flags that bear 50 stars. While that would be the correct number of stars for the current 50 states in the United States — in 1945 it wasn’t accurate. In 1948, the flag only had 48 stars because neither Alaska nor Hawaii were states at that time. It would be another 15 years before the United States flew a 50-star flag. What makes the flag situation all the more interesting is that in another scene set in the same year, a flag with the correct number of stars (48) is shown before Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy).
While a close examination of the scene in question does reveal that the flags being waved by the crowd do have the incorrect number of stars, on social media some fans are divided on whether they think it’s actually an error or something more deliberate on the part of Nolan. One of the artistic aspects of the film is that the story is told from two perspectives, Oppenheimer’s memories, which are presented in color, and outside perspectives, which are in black and white. As the scene in question is in color, some fans have speculated that the reason for the “mistake” with the flag is that it is an error in Oppenheimer’s memory — that he’s superimposing a flag from his “present” onto his past. While that is possible, it’s also equally as possible that it’s just a random error, one that has fans further exploring the story behind Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer‘s Script Was Written in First-Person
For Oppenheimer, Nolan did something a little unusual in terms of writing the film’s script. Instead of writing it in third person and thus, an objective point of view, he wrote it in a subjective first-person point of view as though written by the real-life Oppenheimer himself, something that Damon and co-star Emily Blunt said made a major difference in how emotional it was.
“I felt like when I read the script, I remember finding it just really pulse racing and emotional and immersive, and that’s clearly his intention. When [Christopher Nolan] wrote it, that it is within the traumatic brain of this one man. That’s why it feels like you’re left kind of destroyed by it because it plays like a horror movie,” Blunt told ComicBook.com.
She continues, “It’s so internal, the internal storm of this man the whole way through it. You kind of felt that when you read the script. Then I think because Oppenheimer was so enigmatic and ambiguous and it kept you leaning in. Chris wanted these quite, and they were, big personalities in his life that the characters were very colorful. [Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty] was a real fireball, such an extraordinary person, really, not an easy person, but so exciting to play her.”
Damon agreed, saying that the film hinged on Cillian Murphy‘s Oppenheimer from the start and thus, that role needed to be as dynamic as possible.
“Chris was so clear that with the way that it was written in that subjective voice and that the whole movie lived or died hinged on that performance,” Damon adds. “The book it’s based on won the Pulitzer Prize. It’s called American Prometheus, but Chris said, ‘I’m not calling the movie that. I’m calling it Oppenheimer because that’s our way in.’”
Who Stars in Oppenheimer?
Oppenheimer stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as Leslie Groves, Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, Benny Safdie as Edward Teller, Michael Angarano as Robert Serber, Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence, Dylan Arnold as Frank Oppenheimer, David Krumholtz as Isidor Isaac Rabi, Matthew Modine as Vannevar Bush, Josh Peck as Kenneth Bainbridge, Devon Bostick as Seth Neddermeyer, Matthias Schweighöfer as Werner Heisenberg, Christopher Denham as Klaus Fuchs, Guy Burnet as George Eltenton, Danny Deferrari as Enrico Fermi, Emma Dumont as Jackie Oppenheimer, Gustaf Skarsgård as Hans Bethe, Trond Fausa Aurvåg as George Kistiakowsky, and Gary Oldman as Harry S. Truman.
Oppenheimer is in theaters now.
