• TGN's Newsletter
  • Posts
  • One Of Oppenheimer’s Most Devastating Lines Was Completely Improvised-TGN

One Of Oppenheimer’s Most Devastating Lines Was Completely Improvised-TGN

Summary

  • The director of Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan, revealed that a disturbing line in the film was improvised by actor James Remar, based on his own research about Secretary of War Henry Stimson.

  • Each actor in the film did extensive research on their real-life counterparts, using the Oppenheimer biography as a resource, which allowed them to bring more depth to their performances.

  • The decision to not depict the actual bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the film was a creative one by Nolan, who explained that Oppenheimer himself was unaware of the bombings before they occurred.

One of the most disturbing lines in Oppenheimer was improvised, director Christopher Nolan reveals. The 3-hour biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer based on the book, American Prometheus, has been in theaters for a couple of weeks now. However, it remains at the forefront of the pop culture discussion thanks to the film’s historical ties, not to mention the cast’s brilliant performance. Nolan, for his part, continues to share set anecdotes, which makes Oppenheimer so much more fascinating, fueling more conversations about the flick.

Speaking with New York Times, Nolan opens up about making the critically-acclaimed Oppenheimer film and how some moments in the movie came about. As it turns out, U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s line about not bombing Kyoto because he honeymooned there wasn’t on Nolan’s script. It was added after James Remar insisted that he found out about it while doing his own research. Read the director’s full quote below:

“There’s a moment where James Remar… He kept talking to me about how he learned that Stimson and his wife had honeymooned in Kyoto. That was one of the reasons that Stimson took Kyoto off the list to be bombed. I had him crossing the city off the list because of its cultural significance, but I’m like, ‘Just add that.’ It’s a fantastically exciting moment where no one in the room knows how to react.” “Each actor was coming to the table with research about what their real-life counterpart had been. They had tons of homework to do. They had a great resource with American Prometheus (the Oppenheimer biography on which the film is based). They then did their own research and what it meant for me, which isn’t something I’d ever really been able to do in the past.”

Why The US Really Chose Hiroshima & Nagasaki To Use The Bombs On

Ultimately, the US decided to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagaski. Nolan’s Oppenheimer doesn’t show the actual bombings, a creative decision that has proven to be divisive online. Nolan has explained why he decided not to tackle this particular moment in history that changed the world forever. According to him, Oppenheimer was actually unaware of the bombings prior to it happening. Despite playing a massive role in creating weapons of mass destruction, he learned about them being used on the radio, like everyone else.

Related: Oppenheimer’s Ending Explained – Can We Forgive J. Robert Oppenheimer?

The Oppenheimer film somehow alludes to the reason why the US specifically targeted Hiroshima and Nagaski. Expanding on that, however, the target committee based their decision on two goals. They wanted to use the A-bombs in a way that would instantly force the Japanese to surrender, and they wanted to show off the power of the United States’ new weapon. Hiroshima was compact enough that one bomb would wipe out the whole city, and they accomplished their mission, with the bomb killing 70,000 to 80,000 people.

Meanwhile, Nagasaki wasn’t even the original destination of the second bomb —something that Oppenheimer doesn’t fully discuss. However, when the Americans struggled to find Kokura, the home to a large Japanese arsenal, they decided to drop the bomb on a secondary location. While the destruction wasn’t as horrendous as what happened in Hiroshima, it killed 40,000 people instantly and destroyed a third of Nagasaki.