Oppenheimer's grandson reveals one detail in hit that he doesn't like

Oppenheimer’s grandson reveals one detail in Christopher Nolan’s box office smash hit’s portrayal of his grandfather that he really doesn’t like

  • In Nolan’s hit, Oppenheimer tries to poison his teacher with poison apple 
  • But Oppenheimer’s grandson Charles said there is ‘no record’ of this incident

Theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s grandson has revealed he had an issue with Christopher Nolan’s movie’s portrayal of his grandfather as someone who tried to kill his teacher with a poisoned apple.

In Nolan’s box office smash hit, Oppenheimer – played by Cillian Murphy – injects a green apple with potassium cyanide and leaves it on the desk of his university tutor Patrick Blackett (James D’Arcy). 

But in the movie, Oppenheimer – known as the ‘father of the atom bomb’ – has second thoughts and throws the poisoned apple in the bin.

His grandson Charles Oppenheimer, 48, has now revealed he didn’t like this part of the movie, telling TIME Magazine: ‘There’s no record of him trying to kill somebody. That’s a really serious accusation and it’s historical revision.’

‘There’s not a single enemy or friend of Robert Oppenheimer who heard that during his life and considered it to be true,’ Charles added. 

His grandson Charles Oppenheimer, 48, (pictured) has now revealed he didn’t like this part of the movie, telling TIME Magazine: ‘There’s no record of him trying to kill somebody. That’s a really serious accusation and it’s historical revision.’

Pictured: J. Robert Oppenheimer – known as the ‘father of the atom bomb’ 

In Nolan’s box office smash hit, Oppenheimer – played by Cillian Murphy – injects a green apple with potassium cyanide and leaves it on the desk of his university tutor Patrick Blackett (James D’Arcy)

Charles said that the poison apple scene in the movie was not the fault of Nolan, as it was already a ‘problem’ in Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2006 biography American Prometheus, on which the ‘Oppenheimer’ box office hit is based. 

‘If you read American Prometheus carefully enough, the authors say, “We don’t really know if it happened”,’ Charles said. 

He added: ‘American Prometheus got it from some references talking about a spring break trip, and all the original reporters of that story – there was only two maybe three – reported that they didn’t know what Robert Oppenheimer was talking about. 

‘Unfortunately, American Prometheus summarizes that as Robert Oppenheimer tried to kill his teacher and then they [acknowledge that] maybe there’s doubt.’

But Charles said that in the movie, the poison apple reference is treated ‘vaguely’ so it ‘didn’t bother’ him as much as the book had.

Nolan’s blockbuster hit focuses on Oppenheimer as he led the Manhattan Project, which ultimately built the deadly weapons that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Amid the dizzying breakthroughs in quantum physics that were coming thick and fast in the 1920s, Oppenheimer shone by publishing 16 papers in three years. 

After securing a teaching job at the University of California, Oppenheimer met psychiatrist Jean Tatlock, who was a keen member of the Communist Party.

In 1947 Albert Einstein, the German physicist who became a naturalized American, tells J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Institute for atomic research in the USA, about his attempts to explain matter in terms of space

J. Robert Oppenheimer’s wife, Katherine, stands next to daughter, Katherine, and overlooks an atrium where son, Peter, points something of interest out

Emily Blunt is Kitty Oppenheimer and Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer

As their romance blossomed, Oppenheimer absorbed her hard-Left politics, a fact which prompted the FBI to open a file on him in 1941.

However, they would never prove that he had joined the party.

By the autumn of 1941, Oppenheimer was taking part in secret meetings to discuss how the US might become the first country to develop the atomic bomb.

Despite the misgivings about his politics, Oppenheimer was selected to lead the top secret laboratory, which became the nerve centre of the Manhatten Project.

The chosen site was ultimately one spotted by Oppenheimer during horse riding trips in his childhood: an isolated boys’ boarding school in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Once in charge though, Oppenheimer made a crucial slip-up that would ultimately cost him his career.

Having been approached by an old associate to pass nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union, Oppenheimer rightly turned the invitation down.

But, rather than reporting the approach to the authorities, he kept it quiet.

Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in Nolan’s movie Oppenheimer

Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer is pictured teaching 

He then compounded his mistake by continuing his relationship with Tatlock despite the fact he was now married with two children.

The FBI had been tapping his phone and reading his mail, meaning they knew he was cavorting with a Communist.

With the bomb race continuing, the US received a huge boost when it became clear the Nazis were nowhere close.

After Hitler’s death by suicide at the end of April in 1945, the focus shifted to Japan, who initially refused to surrender.

With help from British scientists sent by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the first bomb detonation took place at 5.29am on July 16, 1945, at the Trinity Nuclear Test site in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

The second part of the Oppenheimer movie focuses on the second half of the physicist’s life where he wrestles with the consequences of his colossal, world-altering invention.

Oppenheimer has raked in $82.4 million domestically – and has added $98 million for a total of $180 million worldwide.

Alongside Murphy, Oppenheimer also stars Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh.

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