Summary
- Logan Paul criticized the film Oppenheimer, calling it an hour and a half of "just talking." Despite this, the film has received widespread acclaim and achieved box-office success.
- Paul's negative review stands out as one of the first from someone with a significant platform. He had a similar initial reaction to Christopher Nolan's Interstellar but later changed his view.
- While Paul's opinion may discourage some of his young fans from watching Oppenheimer, the film is seen by most as a triumph that expands Nolan's influence in the sci-fi genre and beyond.
Oppenheimer has found a needle in a haystack, as Logan Paul disliked the successful film. The criticism comes as the film exceeds its esteemed predecessors at the box office and fixes itself as a pop culture staple.
Many have described Oppenheimer as the culmination of Christopher Nolan's career. The film is a biopic centered on the eponymous physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer based on the biographical work American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. It details the life and times of one of history’s most important men, from his education to public tribulations during the security hearings. Oppenheimer has received almost unanimous acclaim from critics and audiences and has made massive box office profits.
Despite the widespread support, one person in the public eye has taken issue with Oppenheimer, with Paul giving the film its first high-profile negative review. Paul, a social media personality who recently broke into the wrestling industry when WWE booked him to compete at WrestleMania 38 alongside industry stalwarts The Miz and Rey Mysterio, detailed his distaste on his IMPAULSIVE podcast. “I walked out of Oppenheimer,” he said on the latest episode of ImPaulsive. “I didn’t know what they were trying [to do]. ‘What are you doing?’ Everyone’s just talking. It’s just an hour and a half, 90 minutes, of talking, just talking, talking.”
Paul later expanded on his distaste by commenting, “It’s all exposition. Nothing happened,” flying in the face of public consensus and a rave Oppenheimer review from Bird. At a lengthy 2 hours and 45 minutes, Paul's 90-minute venture into the film is just shy of half the movie's length and is the first such complaint meted out by someone with a large platform of any sort, especially in the entertainment industry. Additionally, Paul revealed he’d had the same feeling about Nolan's Interstellar but has since given it a second chance and reversed that view on the film, adding that he considered it one of his top three favorite movies.
Paul has garnered a large audience of young fans and seen a lot of success, including a resurgence in popularity after facing controversy for a vlogging incident in Japan that Paul now calls the biggest blessing of his life. As such, he’s not known for or tuned in to for his scholarly critique of serious films, and his passing comment might incentivize some members of his audience to abstain from watching Oppenheimer, doing them a major disservice in denying them a chance to learn important historical lessons in one of the most engaging and enjoyable ways they’ve been presented.
Irrespective of Paul's criticism, most people see Oppenheimer as a triumph and an expansion of Nolan's place as one of the most influential sci-fi directors in film history beyond that genre alone. What comes next for Nolan, and where Oppenheimer will end its stellar box office run are yet to be seen, but both have certainly left their mark.
Oppenheimer is now playing in theaters.
Source: IMPAULSIVE/YouTube