Christopher Nolan’s biopic Oppenheimer continues to build an impressive cast. The latest reports state that Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy star Gary Oldman is joining the cast of Oppenheimer – albeit just for one scene. No official details about the role have been announced; the only reason we know that Gary Oldman is going to be in Oppenheimer is that Oldman himself revealed as much in an interview with the UK’s TalkSport radio show, revealing that he was working on Nolan’s latest movie and that his brief appearance would be “one scene, a page and a half.”
American Prometheus is the first full-scale biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the atomic bomb,” the brilliant, charismatic physicist who led the effort to capture the awesome fire of the sun for his country in time of war. Immediately after Hiroshima, he became the most famous scientist of his generation-one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, the embodiment of modern man confronting the consequences of scientific progress.
He was the author of a radical proposal to place international controls over atomic materials-an idea that is still relevant today. He opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb and criticized the Air Force’s plans to fight an infinitely dangerous nuclear war. In the now almost-forgotten hysteria of the early 1950s, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup, and, in response, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss, Superbomb advocate Edward Teller and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover worked behind the scenes to have a hearing board find that Oppenheimer could not be trusted with America’s nuclear secrets.
