Spike Lee says Oppenheimer should have shown Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Spike Lee has gone on the record regarding an Oppenheimer controversy, stating that he thinks the film should’ve depicted the Hiroshima bombing.

Spike Lee isn’t shy when it comes to criticizing the work of other filmmakers. He’s been outspoken regarding the language Quentin Tarantino uses in his movies. While Lee famously said Oscar-winner Green Book wasn’t his “cup o’ tea.”

Now he’s aiming his ire at Oppenheimer, and the fact that Christopher Nolan’s film depicts the building of the atomic bomb, but not the use of it, failing to feature the bomb being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the devastating aftermath.

Here’s what Lee had to see about that omission, and why he believes Nolan should’ve included such a scene.

Spike Lee says Oppenheimer should have shown Hiroshima and Nagasaki

“[Nolan] is a massive filmmaker… and this is not a criticism, it’s a comment,” Spike Lee told The Washington Post. “If [Oppenheimer] is three hours, I would like to add some more minutes about what happened to the Japanese people. People got vaporized. Many years later, people are radioactive. It’s not like he didn’t have power. He tells studios what to do. I would have loved to have the end of the film maybe show what it did, dropping those two nuclear bombs on Japan.”

Lee then qualifies his statement by adding: “Understand, this is all love, and I bet [Nolan] could tell me some things he would change about Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X.”

Conversely, the LA Times Justin Chang recently praised Nolan for not showing the disaster. Chang writes: “The director’s refusal to thrust his camera onto Japanese soil, far from being an act of historical vagueness or obliviousness, instead represents a carefully thought-out, rigorously executed solution to the problem of how to represent history. And his solution speaks not to his insensitivity but his integrity, his refusal to exploit or trivialize Japanese suffering by re-enacting it for the camera.”

Oppenheimer is still in cinemas, while for more on the movie, check out the below articles:

Oppenheimer review | Ending explained | Epic runtime revealed | R-rating explained | Best way to watch Oppenheimer | Christopher Nolan on sex scenes | Cast and characters | Filming locations | True story explained | Is Oppenheimer streaming? | Nolan ranked by Rotten Tomato scores | Is it based on a book? | Age-gap controversy explained | How Oppenheimer died | Christopher Nolan explains strange script | Did Japan ban Oppenheimer? | Review roundup | Does Oppenheimer have a post-credits scene? | Box office | Was Jean Tatlock murdered? | What happened to Kitty? | Why you struggle to hear Nolan’s movies | Oppenheimer’s improvised line | Could Oppenheimer earn $1bn? | Highest grossing R-rated movies