I Literally Can't Stop Thinking About How Good 'Oppenheimer' Was

Robbie Fox7/26/2023 6:10 PM

Last week on the Rundown, Clem and I bullied Eddie into agreeing to do the Barbenheimer double feature by himself (spending 6 1/2 hours in the movie theater for Oppenheimer AND Barbie back to back) and he was a man of his word, and did it all the way out there in Chicago while Clem, KFC, and I did it in New York....

We all had a lot of thoughts on both movies to get out, so we hopped in the Basement afterwards and recorded this podcast - enjoy!

Random Thoughts On Oppenheimer….

(SPOILERS)

-Opening with Oppie injecting cyanide into his teacher's apple was one hell of a way to hook the audience immediately. Also, I don't know about everyone else, but I totally bought 47 year old Cillian Murphy playing a college-aged kid.

-Nobody loved fucking communists like Oppenheimer, huh? Dude could not stop fucking communists. That being said, Florence Pugh? Sup.

-Josh Peck and Jack Quaid (aka Hughie from The Boys) both got the Leo pointing reaction outta me.

-The Trinity Test is obviously the most talked-about sequence in the movie, and that's for good reason. My heart was literally racing as I watched them test a bomb in the dessert that I already knew was successful, and the use of sound/visuals was just incredible. When Nolan says his movies are intended for the biggest screen possible, this is what he's talking about, and I truly get it. Josh being the one to flip the switch was hilarious tho.

-I know some people are complaining about this, but I thought following Robert Oppenheimer's personal story/experience and not getting to see the actual bombs drop was a BRILLIANT choice. We had the bomb stripped away from the story just as it was stripped from Oppie's hands after Los Alamos. Watching him find out with the rest of the world was awesome.

-There's elements of this movie that felt very horror-inspired that I LOVED, like the pair of black gloves suggesting Oppenheimer's first wife was possibly murdered, and the panic-attack-inducing speech he gives to the class after the bombs drop where he sees a student's cheek begin to peel off. I'd love to see Nolan lean into that horror shit hardcore one day.

-Robert Downey Jr should absolutely get the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor this year - his transformation into Lewis Strauss was so cool to watch. I didn't think of Tony Stark at all while watching him.

-There's a couple scenes I later found out were taken nearly verbatim from real life, like Emily Blunt's AMAZING final questioning session, Truman's preposterously mean shutdown of Oppenheimer, and US Secretary of War Henry Stimson sparing Kyoto from the bombings simply because he honeymooned there. Pretty insane.

-Speaking of Truman, add him to the list of insanely eclectic and nearly unrecognizable roles Gary Oldman has played. Nobody has more range than him in my eyes.

-Young Han Solo was also lowkey great in this movie, and his: "Maybe they were talking about something more important?” line at the end was an absolute DAGGER.

-Josh Hartnett was so good in this I want him to play Bruce Wayne/Batman in James Gunn's DCU, but I guess Harvey Dent/Two-Face in Matt Reeves' Gothamverse works as well….

-Nolan just couldn't help but drop "John F. Kennedy" at the end like he drops "Robin" in 'The Dark Knight Rises'. Tremendous.

-The way that the final scene with Einstein was set up to be a reveal was masterful, and the payoff was very worthy of it. Oppenheimer staring off into the pond as the rain makes endless ripples in the water, which symbolized the nukes earlier? Chef's kiss.