In recent years, there may have been no other film that sparked as much controversy and praise as “Oppenheimer.”
This film brought director Christopher Nolan the honor of his first Academy Award for Best Picture. However, on the flip side, there are criticisms that are difficult to evade in line with contemporary values. While some of these criticisms are mentioned here, it’s true that this film may not necessarily be politically correct. But what exactly was Christopher Nolan trying to depict to the world as a filmmaker? This is what writer and manga scholar Hiroshi Odagiri discusses.
*This article contains descriptions related to the content of the film.
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Scandals and Acclaim Surrounding ‘Oppenheimer’ Prior to Its Japanese Release
Christopher Nolan’s latest film ‘Oppenheimer’ won seven Academy Awards in 2023, including Best Picture and Best Director. The film, which was finally released in Japan on March 29, has been attracting renewed attention in the United States as well, with Robert Downey Jr.’s behavior at the awards ceremony, for which he won the Best Supporting Actor award, being called racist (Note 1), becoming a topic of conversation on the Internet.
When the film was released in the U.S. in July 2023, fan art combining characters from the film and “Barbie,” which was released at the same time, spread mainly on social networking sites* and caused a firestorm, claiming that the film was “making fun of the atomic bomb damage” (Note 2). As a result, the film had no shortage of gossipy episodes.
*Editor’s Note: Warner Bros. Japan Co., Ltd., the distributor of the film “Barbie,” has stated that “#Barbenheimer” is “not official” and expressed regret over the reaction of the official account in response to some fan art. They commented, “We consider the response lacking in consideration from the official account of the U.S. headquarters to be extremely regrettable, and we take this situation seriously, demanding appropriate action from the U.S. headquarters.” ( open X ).
In Japan in particular, perhaps because of the sensitive subject matter of the film, “a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, the developer of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” the film was not scheduled to be released at the time of the fire, and Universal Pictures, the distributor in the United States, and Toho, the main release window for the company’s films in Japan Towa, the main release window for the company’s films in Japan, were both reportedly not actively working on theatrical releases of the film (Note 3). In December, Bitters End, an independent distributor, announced that it would release the film in Japan (Note 4), and the March 2024 release date finally became a reality.
The fact that the world-acclaimed new film by director Nolan, who is highly popular and well-known in Japan for his “Dark Knight” trilogy featuring the comic book hero Batman, could not be seen in Japan, resulted in a net news-like interest in and of itself. For more than half a year now, this “phantom work” has been repeatedly mentioned in Japanese.
