Oppenheimer: The ‘destroyer of worlds’ who built the atomic bomb – and how his legacy still impacts us today

Published

2 years ago

July 21, 2023

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Each time Vladimir Putin raises the spectre of nuclear confrontation, the trail ultimately leads back to one man.

Eighty years before the Russian president invaded Ukraine, and brought the potential of such weapons back to mainstream attention, J Robert Oppenheimer was recruited to lead a team that would construct the world’s first atomic bombs.

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The Manhattan Project, set up during the Second World War in 1942, was guided by fear that if the US and its allies didn’t make them first, Hitler’s Nazi scientists would.

A left-wing theoretical physicist not known for his leadership qualities or laboratory acumen, the American was an unconventional pick but proved a devastatingly effective one.

As blockbuster biopic Oppenheimer hits cinemas, Sky News looks at how the father of the atomic bomb still shapes the world decades after his creation was deployed.

An unusual recruitment

Oppenheimer was appointed by General Leslie Groves, the project’s military leader, to head up Site Y – a secret weapons research facility at Los Alamos, New Mexico.

But there were, as Oppenheimer biographer Professor Ray Monk puts it, “all sorts of reasons” not to appoint him, notably perceived association with communist organisations that had made him a suspect of the FBI.

Born to a Jewish family in New York in 1906, his student years had seen him drawn to the left as Germany’s fascist regime saw friends and relatives oppressed and forced to flee.

During studies at Harvard, Cambridge, and Germany‘s Gottingen university in the 1920s, he was known for being a “disaster in the laboratory”. Of his time studying physics at Harvard, Oppenheimer himself said: “My feeling about myself was always one of extreme discontent.”

He may have been unconvincing in the lab, but found his calling as a university lecturer in California. His ability to explain complex science in a relatively straightforward and compelling way proved key to impressing Groves, who interviewed countless scientists before a chance meeting with Oppenheimer.

Crucially, he also recognised the need for urgency.

Prof Monk says: “Oppenheimer knew Heisenberg, one of the greatest scientists in the world, who he worked with at Gottingen, was leading the Nazi bomb project and was worried they would get one before the Allies.

“He was in no doubt at all – the duty of all scientists in the US, and the allied countries, was building a bomb first.”

Building the bomb

Los Alamos was one of three sites critical to the development of the atomic bomb.

The others were a factory in Hanford, Washington, where plutonium was made; and a hidden base in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for enriching uranium.

The two elements would act as fuel for the bombs made at Los Alamos, two of which would be dropped on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in August 1945.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND OPPENHEIMER’S BOMB

The basis of atomic bomb is the process of nuclear fission – when the nucleus of an atom is split into two smaller nuclei, releasing a large amount of energy in the process.

This was discovered in 1938 by two German scientists, and Oppenheimer realised its destructive potential when word reached him in 1939.

The prospect of weaponising nuclear fission focused the minds of scientists across Europe, with plutonium and uranium identified as elements that could undergo the process.

With the process understood, the race was on to weaponise it.

Cynthia C Kelly is founder and president of the Atomic Heritage Foundation, dedicated to the preservation of the Manhattan Project and crucial to having the three sites gain national park status in the US.

“It was a first-of-a-kind effort across the board,” she says of the Manhattan Project, named after the New York City district where it was founded.

With the city that never sleeps deemed too busy for such a secretive initiative, the three laboratories were set up in isolated places far away from urban centres and the coast. They brought together geniuses from across America and overseas – including Britain and some who fled Nazi Germany – into one single-minded pursuit.

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“It required creative minds from the machinists to the craftsmen – everything had to be perfect,” Kelly adds, with a “classic absent-minded professor” at the heart of it.

“They had to take this energy, which had been uncontrolled up to now, figure out how to control it, and package it tightly enough to fit in the bomb bay of an aeroplane that could transport it and drop it.

“They had little confidence in harnessing this technology in time for the end of the war.”

Becoming Death

But harness it they did – and the world would change forever.

The first atomic bomb test in New Mexico happened on 16 July 1945, after which Oppenheimer uttered a line that, along with his trademark fedora and pipe, has become quintessential to his public image.

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” he observed after the so-called Trinity Test, quoting a sacred Hindu text in a reminder of his acumen as a philosopher as well as a scientist.

A few weeks after, death followed on an unimaginable scale. On 6 August, a uranium-based bomb named Little Boy was detonated over Hiroshima; and another, Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki three days later.

Both cities were left unrecognisable, 200,000 people died, and Japan surrendered. Oppenheimer was shaken.

“Right up until the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, he had no moral qualms whatsoever,” says Prof Monk.

“Even when the Germans surrendered (on 7 May 1945), and it was obvious the Americans were still going to use the bomb against the Japanese, he had no qualms.

“But he thought one demonstration of the awesome power of this weapon was enough.”

A new world

Despite its undoubted role in ending the Second World War, which cost the lives of some 90 million people, Oppenheimer was changed by the atomic bomb, believing it made the prospect of future conflict “unendurable”.

“It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country,” he said in 1946, later signalling his opposition to his government’s plan to develop even bigger nuclear weapons.

Oppenheimer was ignored and held in deep suspicion, and his security clearance at the Atomic Energy Commission eventually rescinded. He died of lung cancer in 1967 with none of the power he once yielded.

Nuclear weapons have not been used again, but the threat lingers. America and Russia’s arsenals are far smaller than their Cold War peak, but they hold 90% of an estimated global stockpile of 13,000 weapons.

Other nuclear powers include China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Like Putin, Kim Jong Un has on several occasions threatened to use them. The Nuclear Threat Initiative, an organisation focused on reducing nuclear and biological threats, says the world could be “sleepwalking into a nuclear disaster”.

Ever since Oppenheimer witnessed the Trinity Test in the New Mexico desert, Cynthia C Kelly says there’s been “no way to put the genie back in the bottle”.

Beyond the mountain

While Oppenheimer failed in his post-war efforts, his work is the best example world leaders have of why they wouldn’t want to risk “mutually-assured destruction” by launching a nuclear weapon.

Two cities devastated beyond recognition have seemingly served as the ultimate deterrence.

“Oppenheimer was invited to say he regretted developing the atomic bomb many times, most prominently when he visited Japan, and his answer was always no,” says Prof Monk.

“It can be argued the fact the weapons have never been used again shows deterrence works.”

Beyond deterrence, the Manhattan Project also unleashed an era of science and innovation still being felt today, including nuclear energy vital to weaning ourselves off greenhouse gases.

Last year, American scientists performed the first-ever nuclear fusion experiment to achieve net energy gain, paving the way for a “clean energy source that could revolutionise the world”.

Some experts have called for a Manhattan Project-style initiative to combat climate change, leveraging the same urgency and determination to tackle a crisis that threatens us all. The startling rise of artificial intelligence, already compared to the threat of nuclear weapons by its very creators, may present another such opportunity.

Unfortunately, nothing seems to focus the minds quite like war.

“Weapons are one part of the nuclear story, and that will be with us until we blow ourselves up,” says Kelly.

“Hopefully that won’t happen and, as Oppenheimer put it, we can see beyond the mountain.”

Entertainment

Emilia Perez was a BAFTAs and Oscars frontrunner – where did it all go wrong?

Published

10 hours ago

February 13, 2025

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Emilia Perez was a BAFTAs and Oscars frontrunner - where did it all go wrong?

At the start of awards season, Emilia Perez looked like it could come away as one of this year’s big success stories.

First there was a slew of gongs at the Golden Globes, including best comedy or musical film, and then came the Oscar nominations – it leads the race with 13 nods, and broke the record to become the most nominated non-English language film in the history of the awards.

At the BAFTAs this weekend, it is shortlisted for 11 prizes; just pipped by papal thriller Conclave, which has 12. And star Karla Sofia Gascon has made history as a trans woman nominated for best actress at both ceremonies.

Set in Mexico but mostly filmed in France, Emilia Perez is an operatic Spanish-language musical which tells the story of a Mexican drug lord who undergoes gender affirmation surgery. In May last year, it won the Cannes Film Festival jury prize, setting it on its trajectory to 2025 awards season success.

The film’s acknowledgement seemingly reflected the more progressive attitudes of voters in recent years – but as its profile rose, so did the scrutiny.

US LGBTQ+ advocacy and cultural change group GLAAD has described Emilia Perez as a “step backward for trans representation”, and highlighted reviews by transgender critics who “understand how inauthentic portrayals of trans people are offensive and even dangerous”.

The film has also come under fire for stereotypical depictions of Mexico and an apparent minimal inclusion of Mexican people among the main cast and crew. Of its main stars, Gascon is Spanish, US actress Zoe Saldana is of Dominican Republic and Puerto Rican descent, and Selena Gomez is American, though her father was of Mexican descent. Adriana Paz is Mexican.

In a post on X in January viewed more than 2.7m times, Mexican screenwriter Héctor Guillén shared a mock-up poster saying: “Mexico hates Emilia Pérez/ Racist Euro Centrist Mockery/ Almost 500K dead and France decides to do a musical/ No Mexicans in their cast or crew.”

While stories about “narco” crime in Latin America have long been depicted on screen, Emilia Perez has been particularly criticised for its handling of the subject. Since 2006, a bloody war between Mexican authorities and the drug cartels has raged, claiming the lives of more than 400,000 people, according to government data. More than 100,000 have gone missing.

Offensive? Or a ‘crazy marvel’?

General audiences appear to have made their thoughts clear. On film database site IMDB, Emilia Perez gets 5.5 out of 10, while its nine competitors in the running for best picture at the Oscars rate between 7.3, for The Substance, and 8.8 for I’m Still Here.

On review site Rotten Tomatoes, Emilia Perez gets a 72% from critics, but just 17% from audiences; again, the rest of its Oscars competitors range from Wicked’s 88% critics’ score to I’m Still Here’s 96%, or Nickel Boy’s 65% audience score to I’m Still Here’s 99%. The two takeways? The gap is clear whichever way you look at it; watch I’m Still Here.

That’s not to say Emilia Perez does not have its supporters. Speaking after a screening in October, Oscar-winning Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro said it was “so beautiful to see a movie that is cinema“, and hailed director Jacques Audiard as “one of the most amazing filmmakers alive”.

A review in US entertainment outlet Deadline in May during Cannes last year was headlined, “Jacques Audiard’s musical is crazy, but also a marvel”, with the writer saying the “sparkle never outshines the essential seriousness of the subject”. In Variety, another US entertainment publication, the headline praised Gascon’s electrifying performance.

Paz, who shared the Cannes best actress prize with her co-stars last year, has questioned the criticism about the film being “offensive” to Mexico, saying: “I really want to know why, because I didn’t feel that way.”

Carlos Aguilar, a film critic originally from Mexico City who writes for the Roger Ebert film website, was generally positive in his review, giving the film three out of four stars.

However, he highlights that Emilia Perez is “not a Mexican film” and notes “Mexican audiences have grown accustomed to American perspectives exploiting narco-related afflictions for narratives unconcerned with addressing its root causes”.

Questioning intentions behind these productions is valid, he says, “but to decry Audiard for partaking in the common filmmaking practice of telling stories away from what’s immediately familiar to him would seem an overly simplistic assessment”.

Karla Sofia Gascon’s resurfaced tweets

But the criticism from some trans people and some Mexicans is not a good look for a supposedly progressive film about a trans woman in Mexico. All publicity is good publicity does not apply here.

A lot of this criticism, though, had been made before the Oscar and BAFTA nominations. Emilia Perez was still riding high at that point.

The nail in the coffin came after those nominations were announced, when offensive tweets posted by Gascon were unearthed. They were old, but not that old; the first dated back to 2016, but some were more recent.

In the since-deleted posts, Gascon took aim at Muslims’ dress, language and culture in her native Spain and suggested Islam should be banned.

And less than a month after the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in 2020, which prompted a global reckoning about police brutality and racism, Gascon called Floyd a drug addict who “very few people ever cared” for.

Writer Sarah Hagi, who screenshotted the posts and shared them, wrote: “This is all from the star of a movie that is campaigning on its progressive values, you really gotta laugh.

Gascon, who was a regular in Mexican telenovelas before transitioning in 2018, issued an apology after the posts emerged, saying that “as someone in a marginalised community, I know this suffering all too well and I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain”.

She added: “All my life I have fought for a better world. I believe light will always triumph over darkness.”

‘This is an opera, not a criticism of Mexico’

At the London Critics’ Circle Awards earlier this month, Gascon’s co-star Saldana called for people to be “abstract with your idea of redemption” and to keep “minds and your hearts open, always”.

But it looks like the damage has been done. While Saldana is still favourite to win best supporting actress at both the BAFTAs and the Oscars, and the film may win gongs for its music and maybe technical accolades, it seems the momentum for taking home any bigger prizes has gone.

As the backlash intensified, Audiard gave an interview to Deadline last week. He said he had not been in touch with Gascon and that he was “very sad” to see the issue “taking up all the space” around the film. What she said in her tweets was “inexcusable”, he added.

The filmmaker also addressed criticism about representation of cartels and drug crime, saying: “Opera has psychological limitations. It seems I’m being attacked in the court of realism.”

Audiard said he never claimed to have made a “realistic” work or a documentary. “For example, I read a review where it said that night markets in Mexico City don’t have photocopiers. Well, in night markets in Mexico City, one also doesn’t sing and dance. You have to accept that is part of the magic here. This is an opera, not a criticism of anything about Mexico.”

Finally, asked if he had any regrets or if there was anything he would do differently, he said the one regret was that the film was not made in Mexico. “And the simple reason for that is that the film funding, the public funding for film in Mexico was not as good for us as what was available to us in France”.

Emilia Perez now heads to the BAFTAs and Oscars embroiled in controversy. But it is not the first. Remember British star Angela Riseborough’s nomination in 2023? Some, like Green Book in 2019, weathered it out to win. And Will Smith won his Oscar just moments after slapgate in 2022.

We’ll see at the BAFTAs on Sunday and at the Oscars next month, how forgiving voters will be about Emilia Perez.

Entertainment

Mad About The Boy: Bridget Jones is back – but is she still relevant?

Published

16 hours ago

February 13, 2025

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Mad About The Boy: Bridget Jones is back - but is she still relevant?

A “verbally incontinent spinster, who smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish and dresses like her mother” – not an auspicious introduction to Bridget Rose Jones, but accurate.

On paper, it doesn’t sound like the dream role, but Renée Zellweger disagrees, telling Sky News: “It’s the best job in the world to step into her shoes for a while”.

Three decades after the character came to life on the page, and following a trio of earlier films, Zellweger has returned to “this just endearing character” for a fourth movie, Mad About The Boy.

With returning characters including Hugh Grant, Colin Firth and Emma Thompson, new relationships are also introduced, with Leo Woodall and Chiwetel Ejiofor joining the cast.

Zellweger goes on: “I love her. I love her humour. I love her vulnerability. I love her imperfection. I love the opportunity to play out her miscalculating a plan and it maybe, surprising her in her execution. I love all of it.”

The first film earned Zellweger an Oscar nod for her portrayal of Bridget, and the character’s name has gone into the lexicon.

Mad About The Boy director Michael Morris – the first male director to step into the franchise – told Sky News: “When you see Bridget, you realize how many, how few characters there are in film that are just unapologetically human. It’s weird. There should be more…

“She looks the way she looks when she gets up. She’s late for school. She drops things when she shouldn’t drop them. She makes the wrong speech when she needs to give the right speech. And all of those things make you just fall in love with her.”

After years of soul-searching, her creator, Helen Fielding, has decided the key to Bridget’s appeal lies in her revealing “the gap between how you feel you are supposed to be and how you really are inside.”

Fielding’s anonymous columns for The Independent, first published in 1995, were a word-of-mouth hit. The four subsequent books were bestsellers.

Produced by Working Title – the production company behind British hits including Four Weddings And A Funeral, Love Actually and Notting Hill – the first film took more than $280m (£225m) worldwide.

Studio bosses will be hoping Mad About The Boy will work a similar magic, and with ticket pre-sales proving bigger than Barbie, it’s looking promising.

Digging down into Bridget’s enduring appeal, Angela McRobbie, Professor of Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths University of London, told Sky News the character’s timely merging of political and popular culture sent out a positive message to young women in the 90s and early 2000s.

“The figure of Bridget Jones, both in writing and then in film represented a new kind of young woman who had been to university, who knew her Jane Austen, and who knew a little bit about feminism.

“There was a sense in which the knowledge of feminism haunted the Bridget Jones phenomena, but in a way that she wanted to discard it and put it in the past.

“She wanted to be feminine. She wanted to be sexy. She wanted to [wear a] Playboy bunny outfit. And in her dream landscape, she imagined a white wedding with lots of kids in the Home Counties. There was a sense in which what the column and then the film did was offered a kind of release from the burden of being feminist”.

She says Bridget wearing a see-through shirt and miniskirt into the office was her way of saying: “We have to live with sexual inequality, it’s not such a bad thing. I want to be a real girl. I want to enjoy my sexuality if it gets me the attention I want from the boss”.

McRobbie goes on: “In some ways, you could say she was legitimising a kind of sexual inequality in the workplace, but in a fun, light-hearted way.”

Emotional intelligence coach and Bridget Jones fan Miriam Bross told Sky News she can see why Bridget has been described as “feminist Marmite”.

“I think one of the reasons why people react strongly to her is because she was turned into an icon. She was supposed to be the woman of the 90s…

“That’s when you get this polarisation where you feel like you have to either be in favour of Bridget or not. But actually, she’s such a complex character that there’s something for everybody.

“She was this single woman who had fun. Yes, she ends up with a man in the end. But that isn’t the main part. The main part is that she is successful. Even though she makes mistakes, she is a normal weight and is still chased by men.

“Why Bridget still lives on is because she gave people the main message – be yourself and you’re going to be okay.”

Bross also says that Bridget helped prove that a film focused on the female experience could be as successful as a male-led movie.

“In the 80s, rom coms were all about neurotic men finding love… The female leads in them had very little to say.”

A case in point is Julia Roberts’s actress heroine in Notting Hill – as Bross says – “her silence is so normalised that Ronan Keating wrote the song When You Say Nothing At All celebrating her silence”.

But then in comes Bridget: “She talks. She has voiceovers. We see her thoughts. It’s about her. It’s not just about her and love, it’s about her in her job, we see her working. We see her making mistakes. We see her.”

Bross goes on: “Who doesn’t like to see themselves represented on film? Representation matters very much. And here was this flawed woman who got the guy in the end.”

Both McRobbie and Bross say they will be watching Mad About The Boy.

But is it the same old Bridget we’ll see in the new film? With a very different tone to previous instalments, can fans look forward to the dollop of nostalgia they’re likely craving?

As McRobbie rightly notes, the experience of the Gen Z audience watching the movie today is very different to that of their predecessors.

“It’s a much tougher world than it was certainly in the early 2000s and even in the second film. Young women have to deal with toxic masculinity, and they have to navigate their way through sexuality and they’re much more aware of sexual violence.”

It begs the question, will Bridget have the same appeal in 2025 as she did in 2001?

Bross says she still has much to offer: “This character is like an old friend. So even if she’s not entirely up to date, you will still love her…

“When people are stressed, when they’re anxious, they turn to the familiar. People do need something soothing. They need narratives that help them calm down in stressful times.”

Meanwhile, Zellweger promises Bridget will still exhibit all the qualities that have made her beloved worldwide.

“I think it’s just a continuation of these authentic representations of a person’s experience and different life chapters.

“It feels like the essence of the person is the same and her very familiar optimism, her vulnerability and her sweetness and her humour, all that’s the same.”

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is in cinemas now.

Entertainment

Emilia Perez was a BAFTAs and Oscars frontrunner – where did it all go wrong?

Published

16 hours ago

February 13, 2025

admin

At the start of awards season, Emilia Perez looked like it could come away as one of this year’s big success stories.

The film’s acknowledgement seemingly reflected the more progressive attitudes of voters in recent years – but as its profile rose, so did the scrutiny.

Offensive? Or a ‘crazy marvel’?

Carlos Aguilar, a film critic originally from Mexico City who writes for the Roger Ebert film website, was generally positive in his review, giving the film three out of four stars.

Karla Sofia Gascon’s resurfaced tweets

But the criticism from some trans people and some Mexicans is not a good look for a supposedly progressive film about a trans woman in Mexico. All publicity is good publicity does not apply here.

A lot of this criticism, though, had been made before the Oscar and BAFTA nominations. Emilia Perez was still riding high at that point.

In the since-deleted posts, Gascon took aim at Muslims’ dress, language and culture in her native Spain and suggested Islam should be banned.

Writer Sarah Hagi, who screenshotted the posts and shared them, wrote: “This is all from the star of a movie that is campaigning on its progressive values, you really gotta laugh.

She added: “All my life I have fought for a better world. I believe light will always triumph over darkness.”

‘This is an opera, not a criticism of Mexico’

The filmmaker also addressed criticism about representation of cartels and drug crime, saying: “Opera has psychological limitations. It seems I’m being attacked in the court of realism.”

We’ll see at the BAFTAs on Sunday and at the Oscars next month, how forgiving voters will be about Emilia Perez.