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Director on director crime.
James Cameron recently called out Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winning film “Oppenheimer” for being “a moral cop out” in the topic of nuclear war.
Cameron, 70, spoke to Deadline about his plans to direct a film based on Charles Pellegrino’s upcoming book “Ghosts of Hiroshima” and was asked if he was surprised about the success of “Oppenheimer.”
“It’s interesting what he stayed away from,” Cameron said about Nolan, 54. “I love the filmmaking, but I did feel that it was a bit of a moral cop out. Because it’s not like Oppenheimer didn’t know the effects.”
“Oppenheimer” won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, and grossed nearly $1 billion at the worldwide box office. The film follows theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) who helped develop the nuclear bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II.
Cameron told Deadline he took issue with the film’s lack of depiction of the effects of the bombings.
“He’s got one brief scene in the film where we see — and I don’t like to criticize another filmmaker’s film — but there’s only one brief moment where he sees some charred bodies in the audience and then the film goes on to show how it deeply moved him,” said Cameron. “But I felt that it dodged the subject.”
“I don’t know whether the studio or Chris felt that that was a third rail that they didn’t want to touch, but I want to go straight at the third rail,” the “Avatar” director continued. “I’m just stupid that way.”
Cameron also promised that his upcoming movie will tell the nuclear bomb victims’ stories.
“Okay, I’ll put up my hand. I’ll do it, Chris. No problem,” Cameron stated. “You come to my premiere and say nice things.”
The Post has reached out to Nolan’s rep for comment.
Nolan previously addressed the criticism of not showing the Hiroshoma and Nagasaki bombings in “Oppenheimer” in a 2023 interview with Variety.
“The film presents Oppenheimer’s experience subjectively,” he explained. “It was always my intention to rigidly stick to that. Oppenheimer heard about the bombing at the same time that the rest of the world did.”
“I wanted to show somebody who is starting to gain a clearer picture of the unintended consequences of his actions,” the “Dark Knight” filmmaker added. “It was as much about what I don’t show as what I show.”
As for Cameron, he teased some of his plans for his upcoming nuclear warfare film.
“I don’t want to get into the politics of, should it have been dropped, should they have done it, and all the bad things Japan did to warrant it, or any of that kind of moralizing and politicizing,” he told Deadline.
“I just want to deal in a sense with what happened,” he added, “almost as if you could somehow be there and survive and see it.”
English (US)