Spike Lee reveals how he would improve ‘Oppenheimer’
Veteran filmmaker Spike Lee has revealed that while he was a fan of Christopher Nolan’s recent movie Oppenheimer, he would have made some slight improvements.
Oppenheimer is Nolan’s big-budget adaptation of American Prometheus, Kai Bird’s biography J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man dubbed as ‘Father of the Atomic Bomb’. Starring Cillian Murphy as the titular physicist, the film was one of the cinematic events of the year, kicking off the ‘Barbenheimer’ cultural phenomenon after being released on the same day as Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.
Oppenheimer has been such a success that it is already certified as the highest-grossing biopic of all time, surpassing what 2018’s Freddie Mercury and Queen drama Bohemian Rhapsody made at the box office. Nolan’s latest hit is also the highest-grossing World War II movie ever.
During a new interview with The Washington Post, Malcolm X director Spike Lee discussed the brilliance of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. He also revealed that he showed his previous work, Dunkirk, in his class. He said: “And Chris Nolan with Oppenheimer, you know, he’s a massive filmmaker. Great film. I showed [Dunkirk] in my class. And this is not a criticism. It’s a comment. How long was that film [Oppenheimer]?”
Lee then explained how he would improve Oppenheimer, stating that he would show more of what happened to the Japanese people who suffered the full might of Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb after they were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Lee said: “If it’s three hours, I would like to add some more minutes about what happened to the Japanese people. People got vapourized. Many years later, people are radioactive. It’s not like he didn’t have power. He tells studios what to do. I would have loved to have the end of the film maybe show what it did, dropping those two nuclear bombs on Japan. Understand, this is all love. And I bet he could tell me some things he would change about Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X.”
Watch the trailer for Oppenheimer below.
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