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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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He has no time to be subtle with his character's motivations, which is why towards the end you have RDJ going on an expository rant about why his character hates Oppenheimer, which sounds like he's rattling off the Wikipedia page on Lewis Strauss.

You don't need to explain why anyone would hate or distrust Oppenheimer. He's portrayed as an offputting, sometimes dickish person. Really, the question is why anyone puts up with him.

You do have to justify why this guy would take offense and I think they do, at least on a character level (I can't speak to the history). Obviously there's political reasons (which is basically what Josh Hartnett's character is there to highlight in the first hour). But he's also clearly just a thin-skinned, Machiavellian narcissist and the movie is pretty clear on this.

They seed that pretty well. Oppenheimer makes an offhand (rude) comment about his lowly working class background and he flinches. He notably gets annoyed when Oppenheimer says he's "considering" his job offer. He keeps coming back to paranoid tales of people turning scientists against him or how they hate him for being the boss, he seems to have A Thing about the fact that he's a bureaucrat not a scientist. Every individual piece is justifiable because Oppy is an asshole, until it's taken together.

As someone with similar anxious tendencies - unfortunately without the Machiavellian talent - his reaction to the Oppenheimer-Einstein talk actually was uncomfortably legible. Especially the paranoid insanity of "people are reacting emotionally to something in this situation, is it cause they hate me?". It's a pretty perfect example of that pathology.

You don't even need that final scene. It's basically redundant with Truman and his wife's harsh summations of Oppenheimer's behavior and character.

I found it harder to understand his character and decisions.

I also don't think this film was particularly coy about where its sympathies lie - you're supposed to sympathize with Oppenheimer and his entourage of remorseful nerds

Maybe that was Nolan's intention but a biopic imposes more limits on shaping events to fit your narrative.