OPPENHEIMER (2023) Ending Explained, The Real Life Story, Chronological Order & Movie Spoiler Review
welcome to the heavy spoilers show I’m your host Paul in this video we’re breaking down Oppenheimer the new Christopher Nolan biopic explores the history behind the creation of the atomic bomb and a figure who’s arguably one of the most important people to ever walk the earth throughout this video we’re going to be discussing the real life story behind him what happens at the end of the movie and also the aftermath of the entire thing heavy spoilers ahead so if you’re wanting to go into the film without having anything ruined then I highly recommend that you
turn off now please hit the thumbs up button and make sure you subscribe to the channel if you want to see more videos like this by the way huge thank you for clicking this now let’s get into Oppenheimer this is a national emergency so Julius Robert Oppenheimer was born on April 22nd 1904 credited as being the father of the atomic bomb oppenheimer’s seen as a man who ended Wars but in turn gave us the power to destroy ourselves completely often we get quotes attributed to Great Men and Oppenheimer arguably has one of the most famous
of all time now I am become deaf the destroyer of worlds this was added as he watched his creation Light Up the Sky you
it carries a lot with it this is clearly a man showing remorse and regret about the damage that is seemingly great achievement could now bring now before the film’s release I saw one of the best written reviews for a movie that I’d ever seen discussing the film daramuni said it’s about the gulf between theory and practice intention and result the folio of ego and the fear that any effort to understand the forces governing this chaotic World in which we live in unleashes Madness it’s an incredible way to describe the movie and I think it really
gets to what it’s trying to drive home now for the next part of the video want to discuss the real life figure’s life and some of the techniques used to explore up in hymer’s history Nolan stated that the black and white scenes are something that are objectively true whereas the color ones are somewhat subjective kinda feel like this might even be a naughty Doctor Strange Love though the scenes themselves are far from a tongue-in-cheek comedy Jack Howard also discussed the making of process for this and how Nolan actually wrote the script as if it was
in first person this really allows you to get into the mind of him and it makes for an incredible experience on the big screen now benheimer began his life in New York City to his mother Ella and father Julius an unobservant Jewish Family they’d come to the US during 1888 and this was in order to build a life for themselves Robert’s father had been hired by a textile company upon arriving and after working his way up he became a wealthy executive this allowed the family to move to an upper class area in New York Anarchy
Robert a great footing to start his life off at his younger brother Frank became a psychiatrist Museum found out rise Robert became an incredible chemist graduating in 1921 he then joined Harvard and majored in chemistry before moving to study in Europe now whilst all this is going on the path to the atomic bomb was also coming into play ironically Oppenheimer as we mentioned before was born in 1904 and this was also a significant year where things fell into place elsewhere at Cambridge University Frederick study theorized that the energy within atoms could be harnessed into a
weapon which would one day have the potential to destroy the entire world he was scoffed at but 13 years later the atom was split by anist Rutherford and Research into this continued at an alarming rate Germany was at the Forefront of a lot of these scientific discoveries however their downfall was actually laced within Hitler’s bigoted views when he gained power during 1933 he actually expelled all of the Jewish scientists who’d been part of the project and a lot of them then fled to the US here they continued their research as part of the man had
project which Oppenheimer would of course come to head up now speaking of Ernest Rutherford oppenheimerland in 1924 that he had been accepted into Christ College Cambridge he contacted Rutherford directly requesting to work at the Cavendish laboratory but unfortunately Ernest wasn’t too welcoming Oppenheimer was seen as someone who was extremely clumsy unless he had to pass a basic lab course before he was welcomed in he did this but he found it extremely boring with his true passion being in theoretical physics Oppenheimer was also pretty dislike there too and this was due to some of his really
Disturbing Behavior he actually poisoned an apple and left it on the desk of a cheetah in the hopes that he would then eat this however luckily he didn’t but Oppenheimer admitted that he immediately regretted doing this his parents were alerted by the university and though probation was threatened they didn’t fact managed to avoid this Oppenheimer apparently also tried to strangle his friend with a trunk strap at one point and the other guy is often pay it out in a good light he cleared really had this darker side too now whatever the man did at University
didn’t hold him back and his talent clearly kept opening up doors for him eventually he secured a job at the University of California which is where he had a faithful meeting with Gene tatlock played by Florence Pugh she becomes a key character in the film and is arguably one of the most crucial people in his life a member of the Communist party was suspected the pair were politically aligned and this eventually led to the FBI opening up a file on him though he didn’t join them this sowed the seeds for his downfall which we’ll talk
more about later on in the video now even with his politics by 1941 he was selected to take part in the Manhattan Project selecting a sign Los almanos New Mexico the movie of course brings the creation of their work to life it really shows everything that went into it and we get all the intensity behind just how much of a race this was to build the bomb build a town build it fast he’s only scientists ring their families who never get the best I was also at this location that Oppenheimer slipped up and unfortunately this
built off the back of what we talked about before Oppenheimer was approached to pass his discoveries on of the Soviet Union which he ended up actually turning down however because he didn’t report it to the authorities this eventually caused problems and lots of mistrust around him as we see in the film he also had an affair with tatlock despite being married with two kids this was to a woman named Kitty who in the films played by Emily Blunt tatlock being so close to the Communists at the FBI tapping his phone and this was to see
if he was in fact selling off Secrets later on in 1949 the Soviets managed to make progress on their bomb and they tested it before the us predicted that they’d have the capacity to was believed that someone had been selling them Secrets which led to eyes further falling on Oppenheimer earlier on in their lives tatlock 2 was questioned and this all came to a head in 1944 she ended up taking her own life at the age of just 29 and this was after suffering from from clinical depression the war itself start drawing close to an
end when Hitler took his own life in 1945 however the Japanese were still all in on it and as a nation they refused to back down thus the developments continued and with the help from British scientists the first bomb detonation took place on July 16th Nolan captures this moment incredibly in the film and as I’m sure you know he detonated a real bomb now this was in a nuke obviously but it shows how much effort he put into making this movie the guy tried to use as little CGI as possible and though there’s computer generated
effects they are kept to a minimum also it is a bit weird doing this video and having to give spoiler warnings and stuff because I’m starting to think is it a spoiler if it’s history wait a minute you didn’t learn how World War II ended we won now the bomb was suspended from a tower and upon its detonation it destroyed 4 800 feet the tower itself was instantly reduced to atoms and even the sand surrounding it was instantly turned to Glass now because of this the project was seen as a success but what came next
of course changed the world Humanity now had a weapon that almost matched the power of God in its destructive force was nothing like the world had ever seen coming in at 18.6 kilotins this was equivalent to every single bomb dropped on London throughout the entire Blitz after this point the plan shifted to what would happen in Japan and how the country was gonna win the war Japan was actually offered the chance to surrender with them being warned that die consequences would occur if they refused to leaflets were drop warning citizens that the bomb was coming
and they were told that they had to escape that didn’t happen though and as mentioned earlier the country refused to give up the bomb was built and it was loaded onto the Enola Gay carrying the message greetings to the emperor it was dry on August 6 1945 and as we know the world would never be the same again the bomb instantly killed sixty thousand people and a survivor of it recently spoke to the Today Show about what they witnessed there was a lot of commotion and there was uh people were saying that there was a
B-29 coming or towards the Hiroshima American Howard coquita was seven years old living with his grandparents near hiroshima’s Ground Zero so my brother and I his name is Kenny my older brother he and I we climbed on top of a wolf who watched the vapor trail and fortunately my grandmother being much smarter than us she told us to get off the roof an act that saved their lives I didn’t see the flash I didn’t hear the boom I was knocked out instantaneously when I came to which is I’m sure a number of minutes later the
structure was on top of me and things are beginning to burn around me somehow Howard his brother and grandmother survived this was not an ordinary bomb but it was something much bigger everything was burning they saw things no person should witness there were already a number of people that were there along the roadside people was burned suffering and then you know begging for a drink of water some of the injuries so so severe that for example people with Burns their skins would be dripping from their bodies and some of the people actually have broken them
so you know protruding when we came back after the uh the surrender we came back to the same area and the whole city was completely flat it was really devastating to see radiation of course filled the air and many people lost their hair with some even dying of cancer shortly after in total the bombing is said to have led to the deaths of 130 000 people low Judo Ola was being instantly disintegrated the true number will never be known obviously looking back there’s a lot of debate over whether this was the right thing to do
as many of the people killed weren’t involved in the war per se they were just part of the nation and with many of the victims being children a lot of people feel it was an extremely tragic event even the pilot of the plane’s logbook had him feeling remorseful with him questioning how many people that he just helped to kill this is something the film focuses on too but the argument in favor of it is that it helped end the war however there would be more Bloodshed to come and the Japanese government still wouldn’t surrender they
were lost in confusion over what had just happened as they were just unable to communicate with the military radio towers and had no idea what was going on they sent someone out to survey the area and report back what they saw and all this person could see was a giant smoke cloud in the sky Upon returning the leader surmise that not many bombs like this could be quickly developed and thus they decided to endure and continue the war the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki just three days later and eventually the Japanese gave up and
decided to surrender Oppenheimer left Los Alamos in October 1945 with an intense feeling of Guild which he expressed to President Truman meeting him in the Oval Office he said he had blood in his hands which Truman remarked would come off in the wash Truman would later state that he was a crybaby scientist and that he didn’t ever want to see him in his office again Oppenheimer refused to support a hydrogen bomb project and this ended up angering the officials out in Washington in 1945 Oppenheimer was called in to explain his communist affiliations and this was
after years of suspicions fueled by Lewis Strauss played by Robert Downey Junior the real life figure carried the same Grudge that we see in the film humiliated in front of Congress yes prior he’d harbing a grudge against him and eventually this led to oppenheimer’s ousting these are all things which the film beautifully demonstrates and Strauss becomes the antagonist to hoppenheimer that wants to ruin his career believing he was a Soviet spy it proved to be his undoing and he was shortly stripped of his clear ends and deemed a security risk these scenes are laced throughout
the film and they build towards the ending which we’ll talk about in just a bit on a closed room hearing that lasted four weeks he was instructed to give detail of all his personal affairs his friends turn against him and he found himself an outcast even though In the Airs following bias of the hearings came out they clearly showed that Oppenheimer was loyal to the US but refusing to continue building weapons had people turn against him Joe Biden’s Administration actually formally reversed the decision recently which in the end has exonerated Oppenheimer at the time there
was was uproar too with Einstein calling it a conspiracy and Werner Von Braun saying that in England he would have been given a Knighthood and the aftermath of this Oppenheimer actually rallied against the use of nuclear weapons and stated that you can’t really Target specific individuals and thus civilians will always be caught in the blast he also believed that there’d be an arm race specifically with the Soviets and as we know we ended up getting the Cold War however things change with the altering of administrations and JFK was far more welcoming to him than what
had come before he offered him a retrial but Oppenheimer declined however a little over a week after JFK’s assassination he accepted an award from president Lyndon this announced all his achievements in physics and it was somewhat an olive branched directly from the government now this summer plays into the ending of the film and in case you’re watching this without seeing it the final scene has to do with the conversation he has with Einstein throughout the movie we get a tease towards it an earlier Strauss witness stop in high Moran Einstein talking Einstein leaves the conversation
and Lewis tries to talk to him but the scientist just walks right by without even giving him a glance they cut around it and that points you wondering exactly what it is that Einstein said in the final scene we get to check out this conversation in full and here for ourselves all the words exchanged Einstein said that he’d be regarded highly by the government and that one day they would end up honoring him however he said they’d be doing it for themselves rather than for him man all in all it was just a big Pat
on their own backs while this is going on we see him receiving his award surrounded by those that gave the negative testimonies now at its most basic level is it common on how the government and scientific Community used him to win the war because of their seal now some won’t be shown off like a trophy that they can just parade around even though he’ll be given the Limelight it will always be self-serving with them not caring about the costs that it actually had on him the world will very much cheer him up and spit him
out which in many ways is what straw represents oppenheim is standing up against the hydrogen bomb means that they’re on a front to him now and we all know about what he had to go through Einstein walks away and he stares into the pond wondering if his actions will one day lead to the downfall of humanity recalling a prior conversation he thinks about how triggering the bomb could lead to a chain of events that could potentially destroy all life on Earth he contemplates whether his actions will inadvertently lead to this and we see an earth
covered in nuclear missile impact points painting out a harrowing picture this of course has a double meaning as originally the talk was about how building that specific bomb could trigger things to get destroyed across the entire planet in one foul swoop however Nolan here is dealing with the idea of escalation it’s a theme he’s tackled before and at the end of Batman Begins we had Gordon talking to Batman about this if they get knives their enemies will get guns and if they get guns their enemies will get armor-piercing rounds the race aren’t stop and it’ll
be a constant struggle to stay one step ahead of everyone one which will lead to building bigger weapons them triggering that first bomb caused other countries to have to build them too and the hydrogen bomb is in the end goal it’s simply the next step after that who knows and there will be a constant upping of weapons across the planet now a hydrogen bomb has never been fired in war but it has been tested Brynn did it as well and it shows how we’ve even had to up our arms in order to get to a
point where we can rival the rest of the world it’s owning stuff and on the opposite side of this conversation is Lewis Strauss throughout the movie It’s shown that not only the Congress hearing hurt him but also the paranoia of us seeing these two talking as he approached the pair Einstein walked away completely ignoring Lewis and this is due to what he represents he’s very much a figurehead of the government that would turn on Oppenheimer and he likely realizes exactly what he is now this paranoia goes on to make Strauss hey Oppenheimer and intern this
leads to his own downfall Strauss would later attempt to get a higher position in the government but his medal and accusations of Oppenheimer worldly to his undoing his hand in it eventually was exposed leading to him not getting the job and both the pair’s Ambitions have left them at a loss the film asks if and trying to achieve things we ultimately lead to our own ends then that is something I think schematic throughout the movie both Strauss and Oppenheimer will race to get ahead but ultimately neither will really come out winning now all scientific discoveries
can potentially come with a dilemma of what it actually costs to achieve the things we want Oppenheimer created a bomb that ended up stopping the war but in turn ushered in a new age of humanity now his legacy is still felt on everything today however Oppenheimer didn’t live too long after the events of the film in 1967 he died due to throat cancer said to be brought on by prolific smoking I will always be looked back on as the person who built the bomb that ended the most devastating War Humanity’s ever faced from this Pawn
on the Warfare changed drastically and instead we headed towards more cold Wars for with Espionage and tactics the threat of nukes has kept other countries from using them as we have seen firsthand how destructive they can be Humanity luckily realized how devastating bombs like this are and they rightfully held off using them due to the fear they could be used back over in the case of Oppenheimer he of course witnessed what his work did and it’s unlikely that he peacefully passed having a warm feeling about his work her deaths caused by them still can’t be
counted and it’s clearly a complex issue that people still debate that’s what Nolan’s work brings to life as well and it’s an incredible accomplishment on every single level foreign as I’m sure many of you know I’m a die-hard Nolan fan I think the guy’s an incredible writer director and lastly editor that manages to tell sometimes incredibly complex stories in a really thrilling way I think that’s the case here too when he brings together all of his Styles and talent to tell us oppenheimer’s story it beautifully adapts the American Prometheus book and manages to handle his
entire life constantly jumping back and forth between timelines to show how the past affected the future now because of this I think some people might get lost especially when trying to discern what’s happening when Nolan does separate this a lot of the time with black and white and they actually built special IMAX cameras for this as by default they’re built they were built when Color Film was readily available so they never had that functionality and only however he just did it for this movie the guys clearly put a ton of effort into this film and
he’s elevated everything that he could to tell just a very complex story there’s themes tackling the cult of personality and how Creations get taken out the hands of the Creator and then giving you Life by people who have more nefarious means I also don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie since I last watched 2001 that was so wash with color vivid imagery and a score that beats away and drives the action immersion is the word here and the film sucks your eye in especially in IMAX Killian Murphy becomes Robert Oppenheimer and I was actually surprised
at how many faces there are considering the budget for this is just 100 million I’m guessing all these actors drop their prices to work with Nolan because the director yeah he’s easily one of the best alive and that doesn’t mean the movie’s perfect and I actually thought the bomb itself was pretty underwhelming for that to be the big thing they’ve hyped up for months now due to them really setting one off I was expecting it to be big but I think this is a shot that you could have actually used CGI for Don’t Shoot Me
Nolan just my opinion and I also thought the JFK name drop was I don’t know kind kind of like when they say Robin at the end of The Dark Knight Rises it felt like a sort of sequel setup thing rather than being a natural line of dialogue but I am nitpicking there it’s just something that stood out to me now the movie also drops a bit after the bomb drops and then you have the Arrow air kind of just goes through most of the hearing still brilliant but yeah I think he could have cut things
out without losing much of the movie’s impact also the I am deathline I’m never gonna look at that line in the same way again because of how they have him saying it as he slips it in should be I am death the destroyer of girls terrible now at the end of the day though yeah we’ll move we’ll move on and the impact is what stays with me and that ending especially is something that I’m gonna remember for a while the film opens with raindrop setting a puddle and it’s ending with the pawn perfectly brings it
all full circle it shows how an idea can start small and then grown to something big and perfectly tells the dangers of Discovery curiosity kill the cat is the moral of this story and it begs the question of whether any weapon like this is worth the cost that comes with it overall I was blown away by the movie pun not intended and this was an exhilarating experience for the the full three hours I really enjoyed seeing it and though the movie’s not for everyone it’s definitely one of the best films of the year now obviously
I’d love to hear your thoughts on Oppenheimer and also what you took from the movie specifically comment below and let me know and if you enjoyed the video please hit the thumbs up button and don’t forget to subscribe for videos like this every day if you want something else to watch them make sure you check out a video on screen right now and I know I’ve been a bit you know kind of tower in this I’ve been trying to be respectful uh but yeah you might have more fun over at one of them without the
way huge thank you for singing through the video I really appreciate you sitting up till now I’ve been your house Paul and I’ll see you next time take care peace
