I’m up for a discussion. I haven’t seen the movie yet primarily because I wrote a history of the development of atomic weapons spanning 1939-49 (first published in 2009), and I’d figured Nolan wouldn’t be able to get all this into 3 hours without doing violence to both the science and the history. However, I resolved to watch it on streaming, and will do so as soon as I can.
Yeah, I'm not super well read on the Manhattan Project, but even I noticed some bits that were a bit off. If I knew the subject better, there's a chance it would be absolutely maddening rather than just "That's weirdly wrong..."
My whole family did the Barbenheimer thing opening weekend (that is a lot of movie to get through on a Friday night after work) and I think most of us enjoyed Barbie more (while still also liking Oppenheimer). I did kind of hope there'd be more physics in it, but it makes sense that there's not.
Interesting. I haven't seen Oppenheimer or Barbie because I'm not a big fan of visual media, on the one hand, and on the other hand I read enough reviews to know that neither one was my jam.
I kind of shudder to imagine what a bunch of arts-culture types would do to any science-culture story, making it (ahem) palatable and interesting to themselves and their target audience. (They'd say - and think - "to all viewers/readers".) I've encountered "science" books that leave me knowing more about the decor and sartorial tastes of the scientists interviewed, along with the journalist's interviewing experience, than about the science that was their ostensible topic. I've also encountered recently published "science" books that state any number of things that were "common knowledge" 20+ years ago, and are now known to be nonsense - as if they were still generally believed to be accurate. (No citation, of course.)
Movies are naturally less able to go into depth than books. I have to presume movies ostensibly about science - or engineering for that matter - would average even shallower and probably more inaccurate. (Just look at the movie industry's portrayals of historical events.)
None of that accounts for why arts academics aren't seeing the movie. But I'd be unsurprised if other STEM people felt much like I do, except perhaps for my overall distaste for visual media.
There's definitely a bit of Monkey's Paw potential in wanting my more qualitative colleagues to see it, in that there's a decent chance any subsequent discussion gets dragged in directions I won't find congenial. I think I'd still prefer that to not seeing it at all, though.
I’m up for a discussion. I haven’t seen the movie yet primarily because I wrote a history of the development of atomic weapons spanning 1939-49 (first published in 2009), and I’d figured Nolan wouldn’t be able to get all this into 3 hours without doing violence to both the science and the history. However, I resolved to watch it on streaming, and will do so as soon as I can.
Yeah, I'm not super well read on the Manhattan Project, but even I noticed some bits that were a bit off. If I knew the subject better, there's a chance it would be absolutely maddening rather than just "That's weirdly wrong..."
My whole family did the Barbenheimer thing opening weekend (that is a lot of movie to get through on a Friday night after work) and I think most of us enjoyed Barbie more (while still also liking Oppenheimer). I did kind of hope there'd be more physics in it, but it makes sense that there's not.
Interesting. I haven't seen Oppenheimer or Barbie because I'm not a big fan of visual media, on the one hand, and on the other hand I read enough reviews to know that neither one was my jam.
I kind of shudder to imagine what a bunch of arts-culture types would do to any science-culture story, making it (ahem) palatable and interesting to themselves and their target audience. (They'd say - and think - "to all viewers/readers".) I've encountered "science" books that leave me knowing more about the decor and sartorial tastes of the scientists interviewed, along with the journalist's interviewing experience, than about the science that was their ostensible topic. I've also encountered recently published "science" books that state any number of things that were "common knowledge" 20+ years ago, and are now known to be nonsense - as if they were still generally believed to be accurate. (No citation, of course.)
Movies are naturally less able to go into depth than books. I have to presume movies ostensibly about science - or engineering for that matter - would average even shallower and probably more inaccurate. (Just look at the movie industry's portrayals of historical events.)
None of that accounts for why arts academics aren't seeing the movie. But I'd be unsurprised if other STEM people felt much like I do, except perhaps for my overall distaste for visual media.
There's definitely a bit of Monkey's Paw potential in wanting my more qualitative colleagues to see it, in that there's a decent chance any subsequent discussion gets dragged in directions I won't find congenial. I think I'd still prefer that to not seeing it at all, though.