“I’m just stupid that way”: the Christopher Nolan movie James Cameron called a “cop-out”
There aren’t many stones that get left unturned in a Christopher Nolan movie. Be it overzealous plot lines or minute details to give the cultural backdrop of his films a little further context, he’s notoriously meticulous in his filmmaking.
Strapping an IMAX to the wing of a Spitfire, flipping a commercial truck in the middle of Chicago and making tens of thousands of cardboard cutouts to spread across the beaches of Dunkirk were all some of the detailed takes he opted for, in making his movies as realistic and immersive as possible.
In his latest project, Oppenheimer, the film that earned him what many considered a much-deserved Academy Award, Nolan went as far as he possibly could to recreate the scientist’s invention of the atom bomb. Rather than relying on CGI, Nolan recreated the Trinity Test by using enough TNT that the explosion ended up looking like the mushroom cloud from an atom bomb.
When it came to the pre-production of his Oscar-winning epic, the logistics behind replicating Oppenheimer’s famous Trinity Test explosion would have surely been the tallest hurdle to overcome, and by doing so, Nolan helped the overall film’s cause and its critical reception.
But ultimately, it is more than a film of grand explosions and entertaining action sequences. So much of its praise was rooted in the film’s ability to comment on the morality of Oppenheimer’s invention and the geopolitical domino effect it created. The tension inside the man mirrored the tension of the society around him, and it was that thematic thread that earned the film so much praise.
But fellow Oscar winner James Cameron was one of the few who weren’t so convinced by the project. In his mind, the dive into the consciousness of Oppenheimer didn’t go deep enough. “Yeah, it’s interesting what he stayed away from,” Cameron explained. “Look, I love the filmmaking, but I did feel that it was a bit of a moral cop out.”
He added, “Because it’s not like Oppenheimer didn’t know the effects. He’s got one brief scene in the film where we see — and I don’t like to criticize another filmmaker’s film – but there’s only one brief moment where he sees some charred bodies in the audience and then the film goes on to show how it deeply moved him. But I felt that it dodged the subject. I don’t know whether the studio or Chris felt that that was a third rail that they didn’t want to touch, but I want to go straight at the third rail. I’m just stupid that way.”
I personally believe that Nolan exposed the moral conflict throughout the film, and it wasn’t treated as taboo as Cameron might believe. Because I don’t necessarily believe that skewed morality needed to be displayed through burning bodies and the gory reality of war. Particularly in the case of Oppenheimer and the bureaucratic powers he served, the gruesome reality of war and power isn’t visible. It’s hidden behind data and paperwork that, if anything, makes their abuse of power even more chilling.
