I Put OPPENHEIMER in Chronological Order and Ruined It

and we both decided right away that by far the most interesting way of approaching that concept was subjectively to tell the story in the first person and also the both alternate between the objective and the subjective so in the screenplay what I did is I said I need a way of breaking up the flashbacks so that we uh separate the scenes in our mind so what I did is I alternated between these color sequences that are intensely subjective we're always in his head we alternate with these black and white sequences that at least to begin with are objective they're Pres a little bit a little bit more in a filmy way it's black and white it's grainy um the shots are sometimes overhead a little bit more distance it's a more objective view that was the voice of Christopher Nolan but he wasn't talking about Oppenheimer no he was speaking over 20 years before he made that about his film momento momento is famous because it is told in Reverse not like tenet where time literally goes backwards but rather the scenes are in reverse order so that the viewers understand the short-term memory l of the protagonist the reverse scenes are intercut with a black and white set of scenes that are told in chronological order and at the end of the film The Two timelines meet sounds familiar right momento was a film that cried out to be re-edited into chronological order to see if the story still worked when told sequentially there are some fan edits out there that kind of do this but an official version was released in 2002 as an Easter egg in a limited edition DVD well 20 odd years later I am following in that grand tradition allow me to present that's right I have re-edited Oppenheimer into chronological order and if you want to you can watch it but if you like me love this movie then your reaction to this is probably what are you doing I will be the first to agree that this edit is pretty close to sacrilege Oppenheimer is a masterpiece of a film and is one of the best screenplays in modern Cinema a huge amount of why this movie is so extraordinary comes from its nonlinear structure I am not for one second saying that the film is better in chronological order I hope I didn't lead anyone to believe otherwise for an instant no it is objectively worse in just about every way and you really really do not want to watch it like this but despite my love for this movie and for Nolan's style of nonlinear storytelling in general I wanted to make this edit as a kind of academic film making and storytelling exercise I wanted to unpack why Nolan chose to structure Oppenheimer in the way that he did and to better understand how he was able to use nonlinear storytelling so effectively so I re-edited the entire film into a perfectly linear story starting from oppenheim's days at Cambridge and running through the events in the order they actually happened concluding with his medal from Lyndon Johnson and already you can see the problem because that devastating instantly iconic ending now comes about 2third of the way through the movie I told you cronel Oppenheimer is terrible and you shouldn't watch it so instead you can just watch this video where I will explain by both the editing process I went through to make it but more importantly I will analyze why this story is so much more powerful when told in a nonlinear fashion and if after all of that you still think you want to watch this movie and if you own a legal copy of Oppenheimer then I'll tell you how you can do that but trust me you don't want to and here's why Oppenheimer like momento is a story told in two parts fishing and fusion fishing is told From oppenheimer's perspective often literally as he recounts his experience on the Manhattan Project to panel in charge of renewing his security clearance the interrogation functions as a framing device for the majority of the story which are flashbacks to oppenheim's life the Second Story Fusion is told from the perspective of Lewis Strauss it's pronounced Strauss sorry Lewis Strauss as he faces a senate confirmation hearing this hearing also functions as a framing device and flashes back to st's various encounters with Oppenheimer over the years culminating with the Revelation that he was the one who orchestrated the Security hearing in order to destroy oppenheimer's reputation so so here we have our first challenge with putting the story in chronological order because it's not two stories it's four stories in chronological order you have the Manhattan Project then you have Straw's past encounters with Oppenheimer then you have Oppenheimer facing his interrogation and finally st's Senate hearing now it's fairly straightforward to combine stories one and two since they overlap chronologically and Story 3 is also easy to include because it is told from oppenheimer's point of view and naturally follows on from the first half of his story but Story 4 is the most out of place and this is the first example of why this film doesn't work in chronological order when we put the scenes in order then 2 and 1/2 hours into a movie called Oppenheimer just as we should be entering the third act we instead cut to what is essentially a short film that treats us to 20 minutes of talking from a character we have barely seen then round out the movie with him not getting what he wanted and revealing information we already know then we conclude the movie with a short epilogue of old pimer getting his medal at the White House and end fairly abruptly with Kitty refusing to shake tell's hand that's a pretty pretty rubbish way to end the story and I know that because it's how the chronological edit ends I told you it's a terrible movie and you shouldn't watch it but it is where the end comes if we put everything in the right order and that's a fact made even worse when you consider that Oppenheimer has one of the best endings of all time so here is where we can find our first lesson in why Nolan arranged the story in the way that he did he uses the nonlinear structure to control the flow of information to the audience he did a similar thing in momento and my solution telling the story subjectively was to deny the audience the same information that the protagonist has denied in Oppenheimer Nolan is following the same principle but is mostly doing it the other way around with the exception of st's story Nolan gives the audience more information than the characters have and he uses that information Gap to either create dramatic tension or to influence our understanding of a scene or character and throughout the original film the main information we have that Oppenheimer doesn't is that we know the consequences of his actions everything we see him doing in the past is colored by the knowledge that his life his country and indeed the world have been forever changed by what he has done and so we are drawn into his character and story as he moves towards becoming the tortured man that we see from the start of the film by weaving the future with oppenheimer's past Nolan shows us the ripples of his actions and decisions not just in the moment but across his entire life that's why the ending is so powerful in a single exchange Nolan manages to Encompass all of the film's themes while also summarizing oppenheim's guilt-ridden realization of what he has B into the world it's such a strong moment and one that the film builds towards for its entire runtime and it works because we the audience fully understand how heavy this burden will become on him in the years that are to follow something that Oppenheimer himself is only just starting to realize in this moment when oppenheimer's story is told in chronological order this line comes 2 hours into the film it's still a powerful scene but it's hardly the all encompassing gut punch of an ending that it is in the original oh and there's also the fact that instead of letting the moment breathe we instead just cut to straw being snubbed by Einstein and then back to a friendly offenheim it kind of undercuts the impact and speaking of straw his total fixation on what the scientists said to each other a key mystery of the entire original film and his character Arc is totally devoid of tension or Intrigue for the audience because we already know what was said but we'll come back to STW the ending is probably the most Stark example of of how the nonlinear structure elevates the story but the whole film does this a lot of the drama in Oppenheimer comes from the fact that we the audience are seeing the longer term impacts of the character's decisions at the same moment they are making that decision take for instance one of the most tense scenes of the film where Oppenheimer is telling Groves about his meeting with Pash the security Chief we see three timelines here the meeting itself him confessing to Groves and finally passion Groves as testimonies to the security panel in this scene no shows us the ripples of oppenheimer's confession in the short medium and long term at the same time as we cut between them the music building throughout as the consequences of what he has done become clear to him immediately and then come back to haunt him a decade later it's a fantastic scene but one that has all of the drama sucked out of it when told chronologically because Nolan uses the cross cutting to deepen the tension by giving us information about how dangerous Pash is while the scene is playing out when Pash first heard about lomin it's he told the FBI he was going to kidnap him and interrogate him in the Russian manner P made it clear he had no intention of leaving any witness left to prosecute that's the man you're dancing with I GA you've heard there this is a man who has killed communist with his own hands in the film we learn that straight away and it immediately makes us more worried for Oppenheimer in this moment but if we only find that fact out later the character loses a lot of his Menace In This scene what Nolan is doing here is giving the the audience information Oppenheimer does not have to make the scene more compelling oh by the way this was probably the hardest scene to edit into chronological order because the meeting is shown as a flashback from oppenheimer's conversation with Groves which itself is a flashback from the interrogation wasn't confused before but I'm certainly getting there now but that brings me to some of the technical challenges I faced with this edit see this was not simply a matter of just reordering a couple of scenes and calling it a day no there was a lot of complexity with this not least because even the framing scene are not told in a linear fashion in the original film The interrogation is completely out of chronological order constantly cutting between oppenheimer's testimony and those of his colleagues and again this is done to create dramatic tension but it makes it a bastard to edit because you have to take all of these little scenes and awkwardly mesh them together into something vaguely comprehensible so the watchability of chronal Oppenheimer goes downhill quite a bit when we get to this point because these moments were simply not designed to be watched as complete scenes they were designed to frame longer scenes that took took place in the past also because the interrogation scenes are framing devices Nolan will often use prepped or post- lapped dialogue to move between them if you don't know what that is I made a whole video about it but briefly it's when the sound from one scene flows into the next one like this would you clear Dr Oppenheimer today this doesn't work when the movie is told in chronological order because the dialogue doesn't match the visuals so where this happens I have done my best to hide it but there's no getting around the fact that some of the cuts between scenes are a bit choppy I was careful to make sure that all of the original dialogue has been kept it's just been moved to its correct chronological place but that's why the editor might just feel a bit clunky in some spots but hey I can only work with what I'm given the same goes for the music oppenheimer's score is probably my favorite from 2023 rivaled only by spiderverse and it is such a powerful tool in this film like the dialogue it often carries over between scenes knitting the story together as we go from the past to the Future so by changing the order of the scenes you corrupt the score now I did my best to mask this but there are moments when the music is a bit out of step with what is happening emotionally in the film simply because the scenes were not originally scored with their sequential order in mind finally there are times when it is just unavoidable not to tell the story in a purely linear way the train scene is a good example of this because even though Oppenheimer is telling grov about his conversation there is little actual dialogue we just cut to the memory if I did it fully linearly instead of looking like this now the FBI talked him down but that's the man you're dancing with together you've heard I not hurt to be on a lookout for it and you said that to B it would look like this now the FBI talked him down but that's the man you're dancing with and you said that to Bion see what I mean so I have kept this scene as a flashback because there really is no alternative but I think it gets a pass because the conversation takes place only a day or two after what we are flashing back to and I have still taken out all of the interrogation scenes from here and move them to where they are supposed to be the same goes for when op is first pitching the idea of Los Alamos to Groves because this is more of a montage than nonlinear storytelling as for the black and white well here is where I had to take a creative Liberty the color distinction in the original film is to show which perspective we are seeing this is less important when we are watching the story chronologically because we don't need to visually distinguish between perspectives and it's as confusing to be chopping between color and black and white within the same scene so to make it bit easier to watch I edited this scene to have the color slowly drain from oppenheim's world as the full weight of what he has done comes crashing down on him basically from the moment the bomb is used the world has changed forever and this is reflected visually in the film from this moment onwards now I will be the first to admit that this is the sort of thing film students do to make their student project seem edgier than it actually is but it was the only way in which I can make the black and white straw scenes work alongside the color Oppenheimer ones while also trying to make the visual change work in the context of the narrative for what it's worth oppenheimer's visions and flashbacks to before 1945 are still in color and they also restor the color for the interrogation scenes to help distinguish that from st's hearing which comes afterwards so it should be clear to you now that the chronological version of Oppenheimer is a worse film because I have totally messed up its structure pacing characters score screenplay editing and even the visuals but one thing I will say about it is that the narrative is much easier to follow when the events are just playing out one after the other now as we have seen this comes by sacrificing a lot of the mystery tension and Intrigue and also this is a film about the character not the sequence of events but I do think that some people might want to watch it chronologically for this reason and because of that I have taken the liberty of adding in the year to help establish the timeline now I will be the first to defend Nolan for not including dates in his film I think they're distracting and also when you add them it makes the pacing feel very inconsistent because sometimes will rattle through a whole year in a single scene While others will span 20 minutes the story is better when the timelines are left ambiguous but since I already messed up the story I figured I might as well add a bit more context for people wanting to understand when certain events took place finally and I'm just assuming that this is a happy accident but in this version the Trinity test happens at pretty much exactly the halfway mark of the movie it feels like when Nolan put this at the exact halfway point of Batman Begins I'm Batman but this also goes to show how this movie is not really about Trinity over half of the runtime of the original film is focused on what happened afterwards and I think seeing it chronologically makes you realize that much more clearly anyway those are my main takeaways from watching Oppenheimer in chronological order like I said at the start for me this was a storytelling and film making exercise and I think it was a valuable one you can break apart and analyze the film all you like but unless you actually sit down and watch how the linear story plays out you can't quite appreciate the level of skill needed to craft it into a compelling screenplay in the way no one did and holy crap is there a lot of craftsmanship in this screenplay it is an incredible piece of writing and made all the more special by being adapted to screen by one of if not the greatest living filmmaker and I've gone and completely ruined it by putting it in chronological order but I have made a bit of a compromise because there are in fact two versions of chronal Oppenheimer the one I have been talking about for this whole video is the Extended Cut which is every single scene of the the original Oppenheimer film laid out in order this is the version that I think is just terrible because that whole last hour with oppenheimer's interrogation and stes are just a bit of a mess with the choppy editing and the fact that the scenes just lose so much meaning when told this way but I think it was important to make that edit to demonstrate the quality of Nolan's original screenplay and the role those scenes played in The Narrative but before we get to that point in time all of the scenes leading up to the Trinity test and its immediate aftermath flow together together much more smoothly because they are longer more complete scenes than the interrogation ones so alongside the Extended Cut you also have simply konel Oppenheimer this film is identical to the konel Oppenheimer Extended Cut but most importantly it ends at the same point in time the original film does we start at Cambridge then go to Berkeley tell the full story of the Manhattan Project and the immediate aftermath and then end with this moment of Reckoning Trinity is the film's climax coming about an hour and a half in and the final deals with Oppenheimer just starting to grasp the scale of the consequences we see his guilt taking shape but did not deeply explore this in the same way the original film does this version is just under 2 hours long and obviously it doesn't hold a candle to the original but I think it tells a different more factual story than the deeply subjective personal exploration of regret and consequences that Nolan bought to the screen it's much more of a traditional biopic and probably what this movie would have looked like if another filmmaker had been being the one to adapt the screenplay from KY Bird's book a filmmaker concerned with the sequence of events not the character so if you do want to watch chronal Oppenheimer then watch that version don't bother with the extended cut it lets you appreciate the writing acting score Direction cinematography and production design of the original film without dragging it all down with the disjointed ending of the Extended Cut if you want to watch it then you can follow the link in the description that will take you to a website that has all the information you need to watch either of the edits at least of will until it's taken down but as with my edits of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Boba Fett fan editing is a bit of a legal gray area so I insist that you only watch this if you have access to a legal copy of Oppenheimer either on home Media or through a streaming service you have a fully paid membership of support the fan editing community and the original creators of the movie by only watching edits of things you have a legal copy of it's that simple also the Oppenheimer Blu-ray looks fantastic and has all of these amazing special features on it so why wouldn't you want to get a copy of it I'm not not making any money off this edit this is entirely a fan-made project done as an exercise in editing film making and storytelling that I am sharing with other people interested in it for the same reason but if you do check out the edit and want to acknowledge that in some way then please consider checking out the work that the icrc has been doing pretty much since the bombing of harashima and Nagasaki towards nuclear disarmament and maybe consider donating to them if you have the means to do so if you want to support me and my work the best way to do that is through patreon or YouTube memberships where you can see bonus videos and other behind the scenes things I am working on like for this video I have uploaded a sort of editor commentary where I walk through the chronal oppenheim edits on my timeline in a bit more detail if you're interested in how I put it together and want to learn more about the technical process behind it oh and if you're watching this and the website hosting my oppenheim edit has been taken down well patrons get access to all of my videos a few days early so they didn't miss out just saying these videos are sponsor free and every single supporter on patreon helps me keep them that way Tears start from just a couple of dollars and I really mean it when I say that every little bit helps thanks to you all and thanks to everyone else for watching subscribe if you haven't already it's free it means a lot to me and I'll see you next time

Channel: Pentex Productions

Views: 110,192

Keywords: Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer trailer, Oppenheimer bomb scene, Oppenheimer movie, Oppenheimer review, Christopher Nolan Oppenheimer, Christoher Nolan, Christopher Nolan interview, Christopher Nolan movies, Oppenheimer edit, Chronol-Oppenheimer, Chronoloppenheimer, Oppenheimer chronological order, Pentex, Pentex Productions

Id: RbeauSzXd94

Length: 19min 17sec (1157 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2023