Oppenheimer

Science! Best known for its supporting role in Bill Nye the Science Guy, science is the method by which we deepen our understanding of the world around us. It tells us what lies in the hearts of stars, the process by which our bodies are formed, and how to turn lead into gold probably. Science isn’t just about nature, it undergirds the world man has established. It has provided us with new materials for building, new medicines for living, and new frontiers for exploring. Most important of all, if you’re an enterprising young empire looking to make a name for yourself, that is, it can tell us how to blow stuff up. Indeed, in the past century alone science has gotten exponentially better at being the carelessly tossed book to the LEGO tower of human infrastructure, culminating in the atomic bomb, one of the most destructive and dangerous weapons to ever be in the hands of a guy whose most standout qualification for wielding such power is usually their having won the most high-stakes popularity contest ever conceived. Yes sir, nukes are serious business, and their inception (get it?) calls for an appropriately serious movie. Hence Oppenheimer, the deeply serious 2023 Christopher Nolan-directed biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Father of the Atomic Bomb. Oppenheimer is, ahem, blowing up at the box office right now, and rightly so, given that it’s a tightly written, impeccably directed, brilliantly acted portrait of one of the most consequential figures in human history (and given the fact that fate has blessed it with a highly memeable shared release date with Barbie). This week, then, in a Barbenheimer double feature, Magellans at the Movies will be reviewing Oppy’s cinematic life as well. Light that pipe and doff that fedora because we’re going in!