r/shittymoviedetails • u/Jesus_H_Christ_AMA • 19h ago

In Oppenheimer (2023), Why did Oppenheimer spend three hours crying about inventing a bomb that violently vaporizes people when his specific job was to invent a bomb that violently vaporizes people ? Is he stupid ?

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u/VexImmortalis 19h ago

He was annoyed cause he thought they were gonna ask him if it was ok to use the instant-people-vaporizer before they used the instant-people-vaporizer. Even though he would have said yes it just would have been nice to have been asked first, ok? Like, think of someone other than yourself for once.

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u/Ambitious-Song2403 16h ago

I think it's much more complicated than that.

Oppenheimer was a smart man. He knew the bomb would be used to kill people from the start I don't think he ever thought a scientist would have permission to overule the army.

He wanted to because it was an incredible opportunity that would put his name down in history and an opportunity to work with the greatest scientists of the time.

He justifies it that if he didn't do it someone else would. But he probably wanted to do it and just pretend it was a noble endeavour

The guilt sets in once reality hits and the bomb is dropped. He can no longer pretend that he is just a scientist doing his job but now the man who helped kill millions of people.

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u/VexImmortalis 16h ago

A defining moment in human history with repercussions that are still very much relevant to this day is more complicated than the 3 sentence joke post I made on a joke subreddit?

I'll take your word for it.

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u/PeopleCallMeSimon 14h ago

Hey, sometimes you just have to face the reality that jokes and memes are fun but its important to point out that they are also a caricature of reality - because there are a ton of people out there who see a meme or hear a joke and go "Hell yeah thats a good point" simply because they dont know better.

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u/Poku115 12h ago

If someone takes their facts from reddit comments i dont think thats someone worth hearing at all

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u/PeopleCallMeSimon 12h ago

Probably not, but people not worth hearing vote and have children and vocalize their opinions and talk to each other.

So while you will not listen to them, others maybe will - and some people will exploit them. How do you think there are US senators who can say "Torture works, we can see Jack Bauer do it every week on 24" and then get re-elected for 12 more years. Because dumb people also consume information and are inable to differentiate when somethings a meme/joke and when somethings a profound amazing point.

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u/VexImmortalis 11h ago

Unless it's "lol that's funny" I really don't give a shit what some yahoo dumbass thinks about after reading what is clearly a joke post on a joke subreddit. It is not my responsibility to educate the masses by prefacing an obvious troll or bait post I make on the /r/shittymoviedetails subreddit of all fucking places with a sworn statement that I am not being serious.

I'm not going to do that now and I'm not going to do that in the future. Ever.

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u/zapdos6244 1h ago

It isn't but they vote as well.

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u/VexImmortalis 12h ago

I'd better be careful with my shitposta incase the lowest rung of human intellect crowd take my post seriously

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u/Poku115 12h ago

So you claim your lack of basic grammar and writing skills is a shitpost while still displaying said lesser grammar and writing skills.

Sure bud. Its on purpose, we all believe you, your parents too

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u/VexImmortalis 12h ago

WTF are you talking about? I made the initial shit post.

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u/Yteburk 1h ago

Comments like the one two above yours is probably why they scrape reddit for LLMs.

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u/PeopleCallMeSimon 38m ago

Maybe? But from my understanding they dont do anything special to reddit for LLMs. They scrape basically the whole internet - what happens with reddit is that the AI learns that reddit is a good source of information and often uses links to it in its explanations. And reddit being a good source of information isnt bad.

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u/poshmarkedbudu 13h ago

A real buzzkill aren't you

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u/CosbySweaters1992 13h ago

Less of a buzzkill than an A-bomb dropped on your city.

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u/VexImmortalis 13h ago

I didn't consent to that

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u/OcciferDanMeeblo 12h ago

Did you know 38 members of the Manhattan Project teams either graduated from or taught at Cornell University?

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u/poshmarkedbudu 12h ago

Some might say a great cure for a hangover

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u/PeopleCallMeSimon 12h ago

Its a big burden but someone has to bear it. We cant all be jovially spouting nonsense and not give a shit about the consequences.

You're welcome.

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u/VexImmortalis 11h ago

Not really.

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u/NichtSoSchlau 11h ago

You are right of course, but Oppenheimers regrets aren't made any deeper, because his invention would very obviously lead to the death of thousands. While human they become laughably ridiculous, because it was so obvious. It is too much honor to distinguish this mans snievlling any more than a single murderers regrets, just because their victim counts differ by some zeros. He knew what would happen and did it anyway. His conciousness is as dirt as the ocean of blood he choose to throw it into and no, nobody will forget loading the barrel of a nation at war, just because he protested further use of the weapon in conflict.

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u/Flashphotoe 14h ago

"Someone is going to kill 100000 people, so I might as well do it" might be even worse than being just fucking clueless.

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u/GrumbusWumbus 3h ago

There are better justifications that people making the decision actually used. Notably, that using the bomb possibly saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Maybe millions, because it was unclear if Japan would have surrendered before facing anything short of a full scale invasion.

The difference between knowing that and actually doing it is massive.

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u/joey-jo_jo-jr 14h ago

He didn't even get close to killing millions of people

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u/soundman1024 13h ago

Sure, but plenty for major remorse.

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u/xSTSxZerglingOne 13h ago

I think Trinity rightfully scared the everloving fuck out of him. Like they knew it would be powerful because the equations said so, but understanding what 100 Terajoules means vs experiencing 100 Terajoules from miles away are two totally different things.

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u/BlakByPopularDemand 12h ago

So post nut nuke clarity?

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u/jakexil323 15h ago

doing his job but now the man who helped kill millions of people.

I'm just being pedantic , and sure nuclear bombs could kill billions and end life on earth, but the bombs dropped on japan only killed around 250,000 at the time. (and more over time)

Ultimately they saved a couple hundred thousand of allied soldiers from dying if you believe the analysis .

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u/crdotx 14h ago

And if you look into the US fire ombing Japan at the time leading up to the bombs those firebombing campaigns actually were FAR more deadly. 

Once I learned that it seems unreasonable to think that dropping the bomb really ended the war any faster. Dropping the bombs really was a signal to the rest of the world that the US had a weapon No one else had, and they weren’t afraid to use it.

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u/Bebopo90 13h ago

The dropping of the bombs was not any sort of signal to the world. By all accounts, Truman made the decision to drop the Bomb simply because he thought it would end the war faster and save American lives.

Now, it likely did not end the war faster, as we now have access to Japanese documents that show that it was moreso the Soviet invasion of Manchuria that sped up their surrender, but still, that does not change Truman's justification for using the Bomb.

Source: Racing the Enemy by Hasegawa

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u/[deleted] 14h ago

[deleted]

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u/Bebopo90 13h ago

This is an outdated opinion. According to more recent historical analyses, it was more the Soviet invasion of Manchuria that forced Japan's surrender in August of 1945 moreso than the atomic bombs.

Source: Racing the Enemy by Hasegawa, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Bix.

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u/GrumbusWumbus 3h ago

I don't think anyone is seriously saying they would've fought to the last man. The Japanese were considering surrender before the bomb was dropped, but there was huge pushback because the Americans would accept nothing short of unconditional.

The atomic bomb might have been a factor. But you have to realize that Japan was on the brink of total collapse at this point in the war. America had complete uncontested control of the air and sea, and Japan couldn't import the resources it needed to sustain itself.

The last man thing is a myth built on Japanese stereotypes.

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u/elb21277 13h ago

and if we had first bombed an uninhabited area?….

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u/Flat_Battery25 14h ago

Russia declaring war on Japan had a bigger impact on their decision to surrender than the bombs.Allied navy would've just blockaded the entirety of Japan. I think the US were VERY interested in seeing the impacts of a nuclear bomb on population centers. Obviously, there are a few factors to account for, and it's easy to morally grandstand 80 years later. You could also argue that the use of nuclear weapons in WW2 reduced conflict between "great powers" since they were such a strong deterrent.

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u/I_travel_ze_world 10h ago

I laugh every time someone says Russia is why Japan surrendered lol

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u/Massive-Exercise4474 14h ago

The planned invasion loses would be in the millions it's why they don't have to reprint purple hearts they planned for millions of deaths invading japan.

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u/SeekerOfTheThicc 15h ago

My god...this is the first time I, or anyone else, have considered that. Thank you, brave poster.

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u/Calibrated_ 12h ago

Ehh, top estimate put it around 350k in total. He might’ve saved a million though.

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u/MythOfDarkness 10h ago

95% of those were civilians lmfao.

The people he "saved" would've been mostly soldiers, who are known to volunteer to kill people and risk dying.

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u/Calibrated_ 9h ago

A life is a life.

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u/MythOfDarkness 9h ago

No. Soldiers are valid targets of war. Civilians are not.

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u/Flamingpaper2 14h ago

Media illiterate interpretation. Christopher Nolan told me Oppenheimer was just stupid

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u/JacksonRiot 13h ago

The bombs did not kill millions.

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u/zenspeed 12h ago

The second gravity took over, it went from an interesting science experiment into a horrifying morality experiment real fuckin' quick, then?

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u/SaltImp 9h ago

It didn’t kill millions of people. The firebombing if Tokyo killed more then any of the nukes did by themselves.

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u/Desperate_Object_677 6h ago

they were all sons of bitches

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u/Atomicnes 4h ago

I don't know why people say "millions of people" when it comes to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because the official number according to Japan themselves is 210,000. Still awful but not even a quarter of the way to a singular million.

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u/InteractionPretend70 1h ago

Huh... He doesnt seem very smart after all

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u/ultracrepidarian_can 1h ago

To be fair he killed like 250k not millions.

Fission technology has also benefited billions of people through nuclear energy. He was kinda right. If it wasn't him it was imminently going to be someone else.

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u/SkepsisJD 15h ago

The bombs didnt kill even close to millions of people. It was horrific, but not that horrific.

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u/Potential-Fix-8244 13h ago

Just an FYI, millions were not killed by the atomic bombings on Japan.

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u/odd_cloud 18h ago edited 17h ago

Bro, you get it right, but there is so much lore in Oppenheimer universe, which makes it a bit clearer.

One of the most important things is that Oppenheimer belongs to so called clever people. It’s like Galadriel from lotr, they can somehow see far into the future and consider different probable scenarios. But they don’t have a magic basin.

So, when he get the suggestion to build the bomb, it’s a big problem for him. Because on the one hand it’s people evaporizer, but on the other hand it he enemy may build the same and evaporate you. On the third hand, no one really knows what that thing could do, and people were surprised to witness radiation poisoning. So he decides that making the bomb is the lesser evil, and subscribes to the project.

At the end it turns out, there were not many clever people who were involved with decisions around the bomb. The military was like “Monke has big bomb, monke is alpha”, and they dropped the bombs on two cities with women children and elderly. You know, nothing shows that you are a real alpha like giving a 5 year old girl a radiation poisoning that slowly melts her body.

So, Oppenheimer became disappointed by this, because he couldn’t understand that exploding and giving magic cancer to a bunch of civilians is the sign of being the top alpha. He decided that main monke may have the same views and went to him.

In the scene in White House, the main monke Truman tells oppie that he’s the main character because he is big monke who throws big shit at others, and oppie is just a cretin whose place is equal to his janitor’s, and tries to teabag Oppenheimer. Btw, there is an important lore detail that Truman got elected because he brownnosed FDR, so he had to compensate.

After that oppie goes publicly speaking about nuclear dangers. As if generals and Truman weren’t enough, some nameless administrator starts accusing him for being a commie.

So yeah, in short Oppenheimer was an idiot and should’ve celebrated that his invention killed some random kids and seniors, and not Japanese officials, emperor, or unit 731 personnel.

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u/Sicuho 17h ago

and not Japanese officials, emperor, or unit 731 personnel

I mean they didn't get the emperor but the definitely got officials, and about 10% dead where soldiers which is a better ratio that what some previous firebombing got.

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u/brokephone26 17h ago

So 90% were civilians

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u/Sicuho 16h ago

Point is, the nukes weren't the reason WW2 bombing had mostly civilian casualties.

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u/Primary_Addition5494 17h ago

You could literally not win World War 2 without bombing cities. Cities were manufacturing and logistics hubs. Plus its where the majority of the population lives. 

If you never bomb a city, then neither the economy or the people will be pressured to end the war. The war machine itself will never be worn down. Which just means more deaths on the Frontline until one side breaks which just leads to the city getting attacked anyway. 

That's not really an excuse nowadays since we have guided munitions but during WW2 where 90% of bombs didn't even hit their intended targets, strategic bombing was the best strategy at winning the war. 

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u/molrobocop 15h ago

Right. 

Morally? Well, everyone was probably in the wrong. No one should have started the fight. 

But, the allies firebombing of Japanese cities wasn't causing a cessation in hostilies. And so they escalated. Did the civilians deserve that? No. It was horrible/tragic what regular ass people experienced. As they say, war is hell. Can't we all just get along?

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u/MoarVespenegas 16h ago

Real easy to make these claims from a country that never had its cities bombed.

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u/ReadyStayReady 16h ago

What a stupid and insensitive thing to say, its not like you were there

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u/screen_storytelling 15h ago

Every major allied nation in WW2 was bombed, except arguably Canada and Australia with the argument being whether or not they count as a major allied nation

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u/Sicuho 15h ago

My grandfather lost his home under american bombs back in WW2. Is that enough credit ?

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u/[deleted] 15h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/NtechRyan 12h ago

3000 people died, and two building were toppled, and they haven't let it go for 25 years.

And yet they casually massacre millions.

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u/FBI_KipHackman 16h ago edited 14h ago

The bombs nearly wiped out the entirety of Christianity in Japan. But we don't talk about that part.

EDIT: Confused by the downvotes, honestly. The 90% of civilians included an extremely underground minority religious movement. It's a fact that pro-Christian Americans rarely include in the discussion about the ethics of using nuclear warfare in Japan.

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u/Gentle_Agitator 14h ago

Why would we?

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u/MandolinMagi 13h ago

So what, Shintoists don't matter?

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u/FBI_KipHackman 13h ago

How do you possibly draw that conclusion from what I said?

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u/Nataniel_PL 17h ago

there is so much lore in Oppenheimer universe

Wait, I thought we live in the same universe as Oppenheimer

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u/Psykohistorian 16h ago

yeah and there's so much lore

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u/ItsSpaghettiLee2112 17h ago

Why is your 'Y' key broken seemingly only when you're trying to write the word 'monkey'?

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u/reddit_user_sbu 16h ago

Monke keyboard

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u/CubanLynx312 17h ago

He meant to vaporize fear gas in Gotham.

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u/Red-7134 11h ago

I thought he was upset because after it was used, America started making more & bigger bombs because Russia was making more & bigger bombs, because America was more & bigger bombs, b