Posted on 07/22/2023 8:42:48 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Hollywood really does seem to be running out of new ideas. British big-budget director Christopher Nolan had his successes a few years ago with yet another round of Batman movies, but his expensive, visually lavish, films have otherwise not drawn large audiences.
His new release, about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who helped build the first atomic bombs, seems very much just another thin remake of a story long told. It is based on a 17-year-old book, American Prometheus, that was itself started way back in 1980. The late Cold War era featured miniseries, movies, documentaries, and plays all about the gang at Los Alamos., Although we have learned quite a bit more about the real Oppenheimer and the atomic spies, thanks to the opening of Kremlin files with the fall of the Soviet Union, Hollywood and the establishment media won’t go anywhere near any of that.
Instead, they are stuck in a late 1970s redux, where the Manhattan Project is a kind of X-Men comic adventure. Oppenheimer, the wise, sensitive leader, is Professor X, of course. A man learned in advanced physics and the Bhagavad Gita, so he can say cool things like “I am become death, destroyer of worlds” when a plutonium bomb explodes. He leads a band of genius scientists, harnessing forces too powerful for ordinary men to understand, and is beset by reactionary right wingers, who would misuse his discoveries. Especially those who did not understand the atomic bomb was only meant to stop Hitler and must not lead to America becoming too powerful and doing dangerous stuff, like, insisting on democracy for Eastern Europe and Russia after the war. That’s the basic story Hollywood keeps retelling.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Groves recruited Robert Oppenheimer out of the important Cal Berkely physics department to lead his bomb design team, as he was well liked by his many colleagues, who were already familiar with much of what the bomb design would be. The “uranium gun” bomb, where one chunk of uranium is shot down a tube into another one, used on Hiroshima, in fact, proved so simple, no demonstration test was needed.
Oppenheimer, of course, was even less interested in protecting the secrecy of the atom bomb than Groves and was a high security risk himself -- his brother, mistress, wife, and most of his friends were members of the Communist Party. He was an ardent left-winger, active in dozens of Communist front groups. His wife, Kitty, was a renowned commie wild child, having a passionate affair in Spain with Steve Nelson, the Communist thug who returned to America to direct CPUSA spy activities.
Nelson scored at least one spy coup at Los Alamos, and probably more. There is a lot of evidence assembled over the years to support the idea that Oppenheimer was a secret member of the party and maybe even a working Soviet spy.
Yes. Just more Hollywood narrative crap.
Father red traitor of all the red traitors we have today.
A little known fact about Oppenheimer- he straight up, attempted to murder one of his professors. Literally poisoned an apple and gave it to him.
Dunkirk was okay. He missed the mark. 1917 was better. Nolan should have gone for that style and Dunkirk would have been well done.
That’s an interesting fact.
Oppenheimer's star started to fade at that point, although the public regarded him as a hero for ending the war. It all came to a head when the Soviets developed their own bomb and Teller pushed for an H-bomb as a counter. Oppenheimer actively opposed the H-bomb and his fate was sealed.
Its a shame that of all the atomic spies, only the Rosenbergs got what they truly deserved. If only all of the others involved could have gotten what they got.
“That is the true story of the America’s Communists over the last 100 years or so. People of intelligence, education, and artistic or scientific merit somehow decided they were too good for America and free society. Their hubris led them to gladly assist the most monstrous worldwide conspiracy in history.”
Just a hunch but I’d guess that they were all atheists. Godless empty vessels full of themselves.
Been to the nuclear museum in Albuquerque?
I strongly recommend to chat up some of those old timers sitting around there as guides! Many are retired USN, USAF or actual scientists that worked with nukes.
Teller and Fermi were technically more important. “Hollywood” likes Bolsheviks…wonder why.
Yep.
I started Richard Rhodes’s book, “the making of the atomic bomb”, then put it down after about 30 pages.
I’ll have to pick it up again as all this hubbub has rekindled my interest.
"Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."
I want to find out if the movie reports that his mistress was a Red Sparrow and she was recruter for others.
I bet not.
I have been there and it is fantastic!
I’ve already had even my own adult kids telling me it was the greatest movie since Cinderella. It appears everyone is buying the crap in the propaganda trailers. I saw the trailer when I went to see “The Sound of Freedom”. I wasn’t impressed. It looked like it was going to be a movie about some fire and the Sun. Not my style.
“started Richard Rhodes’s book, “the making of the atomic bomb”, then put it down after about 30 pages.”
Heck of a book. Give us another post after you’ve read it.
In 1966 (or 1967?), I went to the original museum in Los Alamos, and it was fascinating. In particular, I learned how they instrumented underground bomb tests.
They put various measuring devices underground “near” the bomb — and collected data for the few milliseconds before the devices were vaporized or otherwise destroyed.
But he could schmooze with the best of them, so he was given the job of herding cats.
I give the Intelligence community in the 1940s credit for being able to figure out that Jews tend to have socialist leanings. A third of the theoretical physicists in the Manhattan project and six of the eight founding members of the theoretical lab at Los Alamos were Jews, so I doubt the powers that be had any delusions about what they were letting themselves in for by recruiting so heavily among them. They accepted the cost of the leaks that were certain to follow in exchange for brain power that would end the war all the sooner.
Which is rather like the parable of the frog and the scorpion: "You knew I was a scorpion when you met me."
This back in my life of WW2. My aunt always told us that she was working on a project at Oak Ridge and she couldn’t tell us what she was doing. It was a big mystery to us kids, but she was our sweet Auntie. She married a co-worker and he died not long after they wed. We only saw the great love between them. Years later we learned that he was radiated at Oak Ridge. She lived a long life. During the war both of our parents worked at Huntsville Arsenal in Ala. (I need to make a movie).
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