Director Christopher Nolan's new film about atomic bomb inventor Robert Oppenheimer managed to surprise and opened its first weekend in theaters around the world with an estimated $75 million in revenue. We asked the AI Andy to tell us a little about the inventor of the atomic bomb and the new film about him:
Julius Robert Oppenheimer is known as the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in the creation of the first nuclear weapon during World War II. The theoretical physicist was director of the secret Manhattan Project laboratory in Los Alamos, which created the bombs that killed between one hundred and two hundred thousand in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
From the movie "Oppenheimer", photo: courtesy of Tulip Entertainment
Oppenheimer was born in New York City in 1904, and obtained a doctorate in physics when he was only 23 years old. He then taught physics at the California Institute of Technology and Berkeley. In 1942, General Leslie Groves, Jr. asked Oppenheimer to lead the Manhattan Project, despite concerns about Oppenheimer's lack of managerial experience.
Oppenheimer's most famous quote comes from the 1965 television documentary "The Decision to Drop the Bomb." Oppenheimer, interviewed for the film, said that when he saw the first nuclear bomb test, on July 16, 1945, he thought: "We knew the world would not be the same. Some people laughed, some people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu script, the Bhagavad Gita: Vishnu tries to convince the prince that he must do his duty, and in order to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.' I guess we all thought so, one way or another." Oppenheimer had a personal interest in Sanskrit, the sacred language of the Hindu scriptures, and he read the Bhagavad Gita in the original language. Following the film, Vishnu's trial became identified with Oppenheimer.
After the war, Oppenheimer served on the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, where he advocated for greater oversight of the use of nuclear weapons and opposed the construction of the hydrogen bomb.
The new film "Oppenheimer" presents his life, jumping back and forth in time to highlight how he created the world we live in, for better or worse, and how his actions and decisions have had a lasting impact on history. The film was praised by critics, with many praising it for its complex exploration of Oppenheimer's legacy, genius on the one hand, and moral difficulties on the other.
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