One part Great Man Theory with tons of navel gazing and genuflecting to a handful of star figures. One part Sorkin-esque courtroom drama.
Zero parts fun.
Three fucking hours long.
Don't waste your money on this shit bag, folks.
One part Great Man Theory with tons of navel gazing and genuflecting to a handful of star figures. One part Sorkin-esque courtroom drama.
Zero parts fun.
Three fucking hours long.
Don't waste your money on this shit bag, folks.
great man theory is when you tell the story of a singular impactful historical figure
That actually is what great man theory is when it's presented in entertainment, especially if the ostensibly great man is presented as uniquely special in their role in a way that no one else could have done, or that their subordinates did not matter except as instruments that carry out the will of the great man.
From what I've read, the film does less of that overall than a typical Nolan film, but it doesn't mean that it isn't there.
It really is possible to enjoy a piece of entertainment without dogmatically rejecting criticism of it.
Yeah I'd say this is decent criteria for whether a history movie can be said to use a great man theory. If you haven't seen the movie there isn't a lot to discuss, but I don't think it implies he was the only one who could have led the manhattan project, and quite contrary to that it's largely about how despite being ostensibly a very popular famous guy that everyone saw as credible on atomic bombs, he was basically powerless to stop it in the face of the overwhelming consensus of the US empire ( and the soviet union to a lesser extent, they build a bomb because we built a bomb so now we have to build a bigger bomb etc.)
Someone else mentioned this:
That doesn't sound good.
I don't remember that specific quote but it was a big government project that not only coordinated a massive amount of resources but also brought a bunch of the world's top scientists to work on it. To call that great man theory seems nitpicky.
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How many of those hundred thousands are shown in the movie? The Manhattan project is a good example for why Great Man History is wrong, but when stuff is written about it not seldom it is made to be this hive of scientists working for one specific goal guided by a super genius. Depiction and framing matters quite a bit.
That's not how the story is presented. Oppenheimer is the constant but-for factor in the lead up to the development of the bomb, with the bulk of the supporting cast being military handlers, social relations, and sex partners.
do you remember any examples? The sense I got from the movie is the opposite. It is basically suggested every physicist in the world more or less understood the technology at least potential if not on the horizon when the findings were published at the beginning, and many of the scientists seem to have a good guess what they are being recruited for despite it being a top secret project. Also, The USSR getting the bomb is treated as an inevitability prior to it was even known whether espionage occurred. I guess the best counter to this is why do we care about Oppenheimer sad at the destruction he helped unleashed if it was basically soon going to arrive anyway, and the only answer is that because the movie is about him.
Nothing I could quote chapter and verse. But the endless need for supporting caste to say - over and over again - that he's exceptionally brilliant, combined with the quasi-mystic music of the spheres stuff they lead into the movie with, heavily implies it.
iirc the actual quote was "all of America's industrial might"
I think it was "all of America's industrial might and innovation"
Yeah, that sounds right i think