The movie on Friday Oppenheimer was first shown in Japanese theaters, several months after its release in the United States, in July 2023. The film is about J. Robert Oppenheimer, who oversaw the project to create the first atomic bombs during World War II world war (weapons that were used against Japan, killing around 150 thousand people in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945). The theme of the film is therefore a very sensitive topic in Japan, where people who survived those bombings almost 80 years ago still live.
In the rest of the world, the film was a huge success both among the public (it grossed almost a billion dollars) and among critics (it was the most awarded film at this year’s Oscars). No official reason was given for the delay in its release in Japan, where it also received little publicity. The distribution of the film in Japanese cinemas was not handled by Universal, which handled it in the rest of the world, but by Bitters End, a Japanese company that usually distributes independent films.
Last year the film was criticized in Japan for not adequately representing the suffering of civilians affected by the atomic bombings, especially after the film was associated on the internet with the film Barbiedecidedly more frivolous, with which it shared the release date, in the so-called “Barbenheimer”.
– Read also: Why do people still live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
