James Cameron thinks Nolan’s Oppenhemier is ‘a bit of a moral copout’

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In an interview with Deadline which focuses on Cameron's Ghosts of Hiroshima project, Cameron calls Nolan's Oppenheimer film a moral cop out.

"
DEADLINE: You say this could be your lowest-grossing film because of the subject matter. How surprised were you that Christopher Nolan's movie Oppenheimer grossed almost $1 billion and won seven Oscars? Clearly people are interested in that whole splitting of the atom.

CAMERON: Yeah…it's interesting what he stayed away from. Look, I love the filmmaking, but I did feel that it was a bit of a moral cop out.

Because it's not like Oppenheimer didn't know the effects. He's got one brief scene in the film where we see — and I don't like to criticize another filmmaker's film – but there's only one brief moment where he sees some charred bodies in the audience and then the film goes on to show how it deeply moved him. But I felt that it dodged the subject. I don't know whether the studio or Chris felt that that was a third rail that they didn't want to touch, but I want to go straight at the third rail. I'm just stupid that way.
"
deadline.com

Mike Fleming Jr: Why James Cameron Is Hellbent On Making ‘Ghosts Of Hiroshima’ Japan-Set Movie That Will Bring Nightmare Look At A-Bomb Blasts

Read a Q&A with James Cameron about why he is hellbent on making 'Ghosts Of Hiroshima' movie that will bring nightmarish look at WWII-ending A-bomb blasts.
deadline.com deadline.com

Do you agree?
 
Personally yes, its like James bond films, they are cleaned up for the audience, but that's a different type of movie. If it was a serious movie, should have gone full Paul Verhoeven as a director, especially with such a topic. I don't think Nolan's that kind of director and that's okay.
 
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Zzz Ok GIF by Jim Gaffigan


Hey, Cameron, maybe make an Avatar with a script that is more than barely passable at best before I'm expected to care what you think about others' scripts. Just saying, your Aliens and Terminator 2 days have long passed.

Regardless, it didn't "dodge the subject". Oppenheimer wasn't physically at either location when the bombs dropped. Even when he visited Japan years later, to my understanding he did not go to either site. The film is a biopic about him, we follow him and his personal experiences specifically. What Cameron seems to be asking for (and if he means otherwise, he phrased it poorly) is for the film to be something other than what it is.

So the film didn't "dodge the subject", because Cameron is misunderstanding what the subject even is of the film. If one even reads the full interview, that's basically what Nolan said. "I hope somebody tells that story, but to me, that wasn't this story."
 
The film is from Oppenheimer's perspective. It's a creative choice, not a copout. I thought the scene where he hallucinated his colleagues disintegrating did plenty to evoke a response from the viewer without relying on the obvious route of Hiroshima Museum imagery.
 
I think Oppenheimer was great in that it showed how they made the bomb in a very unique and visual way, but I agree Nolan didn't really touch on how the bomb affected the world and society as a whole. The nuclear bomb and it's devastating effects is a theme that James Cameron has dealt with in a lot of his movies, so I understand his criticism. Ghosts of Hiroshima will most likely be a lot more visceral in this regard, but probably also a lot more preachy than Oppenheimer.
 
Cameron's nuke movie will be better, we all know this, so he can blow his trumpet in advance as much as he likes

Mr1999 said:
Paul Verhoeven's muclear holocaust movie
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I'm not sure many would be able to stomach this. He'd do the subject matter justice though, that's for sure.
 
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Neff said:
Cameron's nuke movie will be better, we all know this, so he can blow his trumpet in advance as much as he likes



I'm not sure many would be able to stomach this. He'd do the subject matter service though, that's for sure.
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I never said anything about Paul Verhoeven but he would definitely do a good nuclear holocaust movie.
 
Doom85 said:
Zzz Ok GIF by Jim Gaffigan


Hey, Cameron, maybe make an Avatar with a script that is more than barely passable at best before I'm expected to care what you think about others' scripts. Just saying, your Aliens and Terminator 2 days have long passed.
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Uncalled for ad hominem.
 
In the movie, after the bomb has been completed Oppenheimer wants to be kept in the loop about what's happening next but they're already in the process of pushing him aside. Us seeing him have to sit and wait for it to happen conveys the story the film is telling far better than us actually seeing the bombing. I don't think it makes the story less sympathetic to the Japanese people who died because we don't see them getting obliterated. I also don't think the movie is trying to minimise that suffering. We see Oppenheimer reacting to footage of the aftermath. The film makes it clear that the effects were horrific.

If Cameron wants to make a movie that's focused on the victims of the bombing then that's totally fair and within that story it obviously makes more sense to directly depict the bombing. But that's a different story than the one Nolan was telling and they don't need to be done in the same way.
 
EviLore said:
The film is from Oppenheimer's perspective. It's a creative choice, not a copout. I thought the scene where he hallucinated his colleagues disintegrating did plenty to evoke a response from the viewer without relying on the obvious route of Hiroshima Museum imagery.
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Wasn't that what Nolan said ?

That the Japanese perspective wasn't the story he was telling, that would be for some else to tell and wasn't his focus or an area he would explore in his movie

He wanted to show how it affected Oppenheimer and changed his stance on nuclear weapon usage. Which is what I took from that that part you mentioned.

Plus the reviews he attended after the war. Where the camera was focusing on barely anything bar Oppenheimer and how he was getting more and more sickened and torn by the consequences on show and reports of the longer term impacts of the bomb
 
near said:
Do you agree?
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I see why Cameron thinks that way, but the movie is mostly from Oppenheimer's first hand experiences, and he wasn't at ground zero (but he did imagine the effects and the movie did portray the haunting dread that it caused him). If Cameron wants to call that a "cop out", so be it, but I don't think Nolan's initial intention was "How can I make a movie about the nuclear bomb but not show the actual bomb being used on civilians". It's more like "I want to make a movie about the Manhattan Project from Oppenheimer's point of view, and how would a story like that naturally unfold".
 
Someone needs to make a movie about a "what if" scenario where the US does NOT drop the bomb, and then hundreds of thousands of US soldiers die invading Japan and MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of japanese citizens perish.

Then at the end of the film Oppenheimer can sit down with Hirohito and discuss which option was best.
 
Doom85 said:
Pretty sure James Cameron doesn't spend his time on forums reading about himself. Although if he is actually doing that instead of working on scripts, well, that explains Avatar 2's script!

50 cent laughing GIF
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TBF, I'm not really a fan of Avatar. Clealry I'm in the minority as the films have made billions.

In regards to his points about Oppenheimer, I kinda see his point or view, but the film was from the POV of Oppenheimer and I personally didn't feel it was a copout. He's entitled to his opinion, but it's not an opinion I share.

However, I think people need to see the impact of the bomb from the Japanese perspective.

I've read Hiroshima by John Hersey, which is a collection of interviews from survivors of the bombs, and it is easily one of the most disturbing historical books I've ever read. If Cameron can capture just a fraction of of what happened to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki then he'll probably make the make the most harrowing historical film since Come and See.
 
kind of interesting cause I thought that scene in particular looked very amateurish and took me out of the movie. went to look up the scene just now to refresh my memory and the American flags had 50 stars instead of the 48 at that time.
 
It's horseshit to show the impact from the Japanese perspective unless you also show all the evil shit they did. Cameron's entire audience is weeb so of course he is full on team weeb, but if anyone deserved to be nuked it was 100% imperial Japan.
 
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Hari Seldon said:
It's horseshit to show the impact from the Japanese perspective unless you also show all the evil shit they did. Cameron's entire audience is weeb so of course he is full on team weeb, but if anyone deserved to be nuked it was 100% imperial Japan.
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Hiroshima and Nagasaki barely qualified as military targets, and both cities suffered massive civilian casualties. And don't even get me started on the utterly absurd myth that these bombs saved American lives. Japan was firebombed to hell and the Russians were invading in the North. They were going down, period.

Just for context:

On March 10, 1945, General Curtis LeMay's XXI Bomber Command sent 334 B-29's to Tokyo, loaded with 1,669 tons of incendiary bombs. The resulting firestorm killed over 100,000 Japanese and injured over a million. A quarter of the industrial production in Tokyo was destroyed.

"It's a good thing we won the war. If we hadn't, I'd be hanged as a war criminal."
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- Gen Curtis LeMay

And Hiroshima and Nagaski were yet to come.

I don't disagree with your assessment of Imperial Japan...the war crimes they committed against China were as bad, if not worse, than what Germany's Third Reich did to anyone they deemed less than perfect; specifically, Jews.

But personally, I think it's horseshit not to show the impact of these weapons from the perspective of those living in those two cities. It must have been indescribable.
 
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Hari Seldon said:
It's horseshit to show the impact from the Japanese perspective unless you also show all the evil shit they did. Cameron's entire audience is weeb so of course he is full on team weeb, but if anyone deserved to be nuked it was 100% imperial Japan.
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Disgusting post.


Ànd saying this with that nickname is double disgusting. No words to describe it, actually.
 
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I've been to the A-bomb Museum and the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima

The decision to drop the bombs were made by then President Truman, who knew an invasion of the Japanese home islands would have caused catastrophic loss of life on both sides as the Japanese were prepared to fight to the last living man, woman, and child in defense of the home islands

The effects of the bombs were horrific but that's why Japan surrendered and World War 2 ended without the need for an invasion

Oppenheimer wasn't the one who had to decide any of this. Had the Nazis gotten the bomb first, the world would have looked more like The Man in the High Castle. In that sense, Oppenheimer did nothing wrong. In fact, he and his team in New Mexico saved the world from Nazi domination. People have literally forgotten the Manhattan Project was a race with the Nazis to get to the bomb first, a race that the US had to win in order to save the world from the Nazis

Trying to revise history to make the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki into war crimes is the worst kind of Hollywood woke propaganda. World War 2 was the bloodiest and most destructive war in human history. Everyone was guilty of the worst imaginable atrocities but pretending it's better to have not won the war and let the Nazis and the Empire of Japan off the hook is absolute moral depravity
 
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Angry_Megalodon said:
Disgusting post.


Ànd saying this with that nickname is double disgusting. No words to describe it, actually.
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He is not really wrong. Atrocities done by Japanese army were for some reason forgotten by history. Of course people killed were civilians and that is terrible but for sure FAR MORE people would be killed in land invasion scenario.
 
Chiggs said:
Hiroshima and Nagasaki barely qualified as military targets, and both cities suffered massive civilian casualties. And don't even get me started on the utterly absurd myth that these bombs saved American lives. Japan was firebombed to hell and the Russians were invading in the North. They were going down, period.

Just for context:

On March 10, 1945, General Curtis LeMay's XXI Bomber Command sent 334 B-29's to Tokyo, loaded with 1,669 tons of incendiary bombs. The resulting firestorm killed over 100,000 Japanese and injured over a million. A quarter of the industrial production in Tokyo was destroyed.



- Gen Curtis LeMay

And Hiroshima and Nagaski were yet to come.

I don't disagree with your assessment of Imperial Japan...the war crimes they committed against China were as bad, if not worse, than what Germany's Third Reich did to anyone they deemed less than perfect; specifically, Jews.

But personally, I think it's horseshit not to show the impact of these weapons from the perspective of those living in those two cities. It must have been indescribable.
Click to expand...
I love the Japanese revisionist arguments that the bombs weren't necessary, how evil they were (dropping the bombs) and Japan was gonna surrender anyway.

The fire bombing of Tokyo was more worse than either A bomb and that didn't flinch their revolve.
 
Cameron's movie has nothing to do with the politics of the bomb. It's meant to be a reminder that the bombs - even the tiny ones dropped on Japan - are monstrously destructive, because after the Cold War ended nukes turned into an abstraction. In the full interview he gives some examples of the nuke perception now vs then.

What's the last time nukes were kinda scary in pop culture, Indiana Jones 4? Terminator 3?
 
SirKicksalot said:
Cameron's movie has nothing to do with the politics of the bomb. It's meant to be a reminder that the bombs - even the tiny ones dropped on Japan - are monstrously destructive, because after the Cold War ended nukes turned into an abstraction. In the full interview he gives some examples of the nuke perception now vs then.

What's the last time nukes were kinda scary in pop culture, Indiana Jones 4? Terminator 3?
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No one cares because the Cold War is over and nobody is looking to nuke anyone else anymore
 
Donald mac Ronald said:
I love the Japanese revisionist arguments that the bombs weren't necessary, how evil they were (dropping the bombs) and Japan was gonna surrender anyway.

The fire bombing of Tokyo was more worse than either A bomb and that didn't flinch their revolve.
Click to expand...
The power of the bomb (of that era) isn't it's raw destructive power, that can be done with flights of bombers.

It's that only ONE plane can deliver it, so no amount of air defense can prevent a strike and you could never be able to attrit the bomber force because almost any ship and any plane could deliver it. So Japan would have no way to resist being wiped off the map by bomb after bomb delivered in just days versus flights of bombers with massive logistics and vulnerable airfields. Of course had they known we couldn't make many maybe things would have been different.
 
Unknown Soldier said:
Trying to revise history to make the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki into war crimes is the worst kind of Hollywood woke propaganda. World War 2 was the bloodiest and most destructive war in human history. Everyone was guilty of the worst imaginable atrocities but pretending it's better to have not won the war and let the Nazis and the Empire of Japan off the hook is absolute moral depravity
Click to expand...
They can be considered as war crimes and a necessity at the same time.

One thing doesn't cancel out the other
 
SirKicksalot said:
Cameron's movie has nothing to do with the politics of the bomb. It's meant to be a reminder that the bombs - even the tiny ones dropped on Japan - are monstrously destructive, because after the Cold War ended nukes turned into an abstraction. In the full interview he gives some examples of the nuke perception now vs then.

What's the last time nukes were kinda scary in pop culture, Indiana Jones 4? Terminator 3?
Click to expand...

Fuck the Indy 4 nukes. We'd just get inside our fridges and we good.

As for the Terminator 3 nukes, we'd just have to eat those so we don't get the shitty sequels that followed.
 
I don't claim to be an expert, but when I studied Japan history, I was so shocked to learn of the man with Cameron in the picture in the article. I don't know if he had amazing luck or really shitty luck, but Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima and Nagasaki for both blasts and lived to tell the tale.
 
Power Pro said:
I don't claim to be an expert, but when I studied Japan history, I was so shocked to learn of the man with Cameron in the picture in the article. I don't know if he had amazing luck or really shitty luck, but Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima and Nagasaki for both blasts and lived to tell the tale.
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That would have to be the most justified use of the term "oh no! Not again!"
 
jason10mm said:
Someone needs to make a movie about a "what if" scenario where the US does NOT drop the bomb, and then hundreds of thousands of US soldiers die invading Japan and MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of japanese citizens perish.

Then at the end of the film Oppenheimer can sit down with Hirohito and discuss which option was best.
Click to expand...
jason10mm said:
Someone needs to make a movie about a "what if" scenario where the US does NOT drop the bomb, and then hundreds of thousands of US soldiers die invading Japan and MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of japanese citizens perish.

Then at the end of the film Oppenheimer can sit down with Hirohito and discuss which option was best.
Click to expand...
Killing innocent people with two nuclear bombs is the work of retarded beings and the most grotesque thing in history.
 
Heimdall_Xtreme said:
Killing innocent people with two nuclear bombs…..the most grotesque thing in history.
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In the same war where a fascist regime led a movement that killed six million innocent Jewish people for no reason other than they didn't like those people and considered them "inferior"…and you're trying to claim the decision to drop the atomic bombs, which killed at most around 225,000 and had a lot of moral dilemmas and discussions around the decision and not just a racist "we don't like these people" mindset, is THE most grotesque thing in history?


2MeEwVjqdVoVxUS8.jpeg
 
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Power Pro said:
I don't claim to be an expert, but when I studied Japan history, I was so shocked to learn of the man with Cameron in the picture in the article. I don't know if he had amazing luck or really shitty luck, but Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima and Nagasaki for both blasts and lived to tell the tale.
Click to expand...
qNzmI9EhrT6rJwbZ.jpg
 
Exclusive preview of James Cameron's upcoming Hiroshima movie:

nuclear explosion bomb GIF
 
Unknown Soldier said:
No one cares because the Cold War is over and nobody is looking to nuke anyone else anymore
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Your lackadaisical attitude is increasingly common and is going to get us all killed one day.
 
The movie was based on a book about Oppenheimer and the development of the first atomic weapons, not the aftermath of their use. lol, at least that's what wiki tells me, and haven't seen the movie nor read the book.

What is Cameron's movie supposed to be? A CGI horror show that shows everything from the point of impact? There are plenty of documentaries out there chronicling the heinous after effects of the bombs, with plenty of horrifying pics and footage to go with it.
Is his movie going to be a documentary or a drama play?

Sadly, I feel it's only a matter of time before nuclear weapons again see use. And the warheads we have today are orders of magnitude more powerful.

If I'm lucky, I've got about 30 years left on this rock. It would be nice to see some good change in my later years instead of the toilet bowl we are currently circling.
 
Cameron hasn't made a good film since 1994. He's got zero authority on what constitutes quality anymore.

"I think it's a really good film. I'm really proud of it. I think it's going to surprise a lot of people."

He said that about Dark Fate before it released. He's either a liar or an idiot.
 
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