Oppenheimer is a landmark picture in many ways, not least because it’s a total throwback. We’re talking about a self-conscious middlebrow epic about America, once a subgenre of its own and relatively common product for studios hungry for awards. These types of films fell radically out of fashion after the 1980s and have barely been attempted since.
In fact, there was just such a movie in 1989 that covered much the same ground as Oppenheimer—a very prestigious historical drama starring Paul Newman called Fat Man and Little Boy about the project to build an atomic bomb during World War II. It was overwrought and clunky. But it got made because the people who made it and the people who financed it thought it was the kind of thing that could win them Oscars and make them a lot of money....