A veritable film phenomenon of the summer, Oppenheimer is a blast that has blown away a number of spectators! The latter are already beginning to dissect the film, revealing a rather tasty little error!
Released in theaters on July 19, Oppenheimer got off to a flying start in the United States, collecting $80.5 million. The 3-hour biopic, led by Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt, therefore does better than Interstellar, Dunkirk, Tenet or Inception. In France, it attracted more than 800,000 onlookers during its first weekend.
On social networks, the phenomenon continues to cause a lot of ink to flow. For director Paul Schrader, Oppenheimer is “the best and most important film of the century”. However, this does not exempt it from small errors, such as this rather surprising historical error spotted by several Internet users.
During a sequence where Oppenheimer, alias Cillian Murphy, splits the crowd, small American flags are waved by many extras. Some eagle-eyed viewers could see that these banners contained 50 stars. However, in 1945, the date on which the scene takes place, the American flag included 48 stars. This was the case between 1912 and 1960.
The “Stars and Stripes”, nickname of the stars and stripes, has been modified several times since its first version in 1777. One year after American independence, the flag represented 13 stars in a circle. 27 successive versions then succeeded each other, each set up to follow the increase in the number of States.
His last version with the 50 celestial stars therefore dates from July 4, 1960, after Hawaii’s accession to statehood in August 1959. Christopher Nolan, known for his perfectionism and meticulousness, therefore let a historical inaccuracy pass in his biopic, which did not escape the watchful eye of moviegoers. Michel and Michel, our experts from the Faux Fitting show, are also impressed by this lovely find!
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As a reminder, Oppenheimer takes us to 1942. Convinced that Nazi Germany is developing a nuclear weapon, the United States initiates, in the greatest secrecy, the “Manhattan Project” intended to develop the first atomic bomb in history. To pilot this device, the government hires J. Robert Oppenheimer, a brilliant physicist, who will soon be nicknamed “the father of the atomic bomb”.
It is in the ultra-secret laboratory of Los Alamos, in the heart of the New Mexico desert, that the scientist and his team develop a revolutionary weapon whose dizzying consequences continue to weigh on the world today…