An observant viewer has noticed a blunder in the background of Christopher Nolan’s new film Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer, which opened on Friday (21 July), stars Cillian Murphy as J Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist known as the “Father of the Atomic Bomb.”
The film is told in three timelines, with scenes from Oppenheimer’s early life and work on the A-bomb intercut with scenes from his 1954 security hearing and Lewis Strauss’s (Robert Downey Jr’s) US Senate confirmation hearing in 1959. While Oppenheimer has been praised for its meticulous recreation of its mid-century setting, one fan appears to have spotted an error in a 1945 scene.
After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer is called upon to deliver a speech to a cheering crowd, many of whom are waving American flags.
Flags from the time period were used in other scenes, such as when Oppenheimer stands beneath the 48-star flag at Trinity base camp.
Some fans even claimed that the error was intentional, and that it was meant to convey Oppenheimer’s subjective memories subtly. “Personally I think it was done intentionally,” they wrote, “because coloured scenes were from Oppenheimer’s perspective which is his present day’s memory that was after the 50-star flag was established.”