James Cameron Hits Out At Christopher Nolan's Oscar-Winning Film 'Oppenheimer'; Here Is Why

Los Angeles, June 30 - Legendary Hollywood director James Cameron has hit out at acclaimed director Christopher Nolan for his 2023 epic biographical thriller Oppenheimer, which has been hailed as one of the best films of the 21st century. The movie is based on the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist who helped develop the first nuclear weapons during World War II.

Oppenheimer was declared the best movie at the 96th Academy Awards, in which it won 7 Oscars, including Best Picture. Cameron, however, has criticised Nolan for not depicting the aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombing, which killed over 250,000 people. While Cameron acknowledged Nolan's filmmaking, he felt disappointed that Oppenheimer didn't depict the aftermath of the atomic bombing.



During an interview with Deadline, the "Avatar" director said, "Yeah, it's interesting what he stayed away from. Look, 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. He's got one brief scene in the film where we see — and I don't like to criticise 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. But I felt that it dodged the subject".

Meanwhile, James Cameron himself is working on a film based on the Hiroshima bombing titled Ghosts of Hiroshima, which tells the story from those on the business end of the unimaginably destructive blasts that turned Japan into a hell-scape and killed hundreds of people and much more over time as the radiation ravaged the bodies of survivors.

While Nolan's "Oppenheimer" grossed nearly $1 billion at the global box office, Cameron feels that "Ghosts of Hiroshima" could be his lowest-grossing film because of the subject matter, as he will be showing the aftermath of the atomic bombing. Cameron's film will be based on Charles Pellegrino's book Ghosts of Hiroshima, which comes out August 5 from Blackstone Publishing and The Story Factory.

Interestingly, "Ghosts of Hiroshima" will be Cameron's first film other than the Avatar movies since "Titanic", which was released more than 2 and a half decades ago in 1997. The filmmaker will be directing this upcoming film between the next Avatar movies. His next release, "Avatar: Fire And Ash" (Avatar 3), will debut on December 19 this year.

Stay tuned...