"Oppenheimer" moviegoers have proven that they are watching very closely.
Fans pointed out a small detail in a scene in the film that has a bit of a possible historical inaccuracy that could be hard to spot for many.
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As it was pointed out, there is a scene set in 1945 that has the movie's star, Cillian Murphy, who plays J. Robert Oppenheimer, standing in a crowd waving flags.
The issue is that the people are waving American flags with 50 stars, which is the wrong number of stars representing the states for that period. The American flag had 48 stars in 1945, because it was before Hawaii and Alaska had become U.S. states.
On July 4, 1960 the U.S. flag with 50 stars was first flown in the U.S. — around 15 years later.
The scene in the film is from Oppenheimer's memory, afan pointed out. There are black and white scenes that represent the viewer's perspective. The scenes with color are meant to be from the perspective of Oppenheimer, from his memory as he looks back from the time when the U.S. flag had 50 stars.
So, there could be an explanation for the 50-star flag being used in the scene set in the 1940s.
There is another scene in the film in which a version of the U.S. flag with the correct number of stars for that year is used — so, the incorrect flags could be a detail that was intentional.
The two biggest movies, "Oppenheimer" and "Barbie," had grossed at least $511 million worldwide on their opening weekend in a history-making profit sweep in theaters for Hollywood. Never before in history has a pair of films opened with one grossing over $100M domestically ("Barbie") and another grossing over $50M domestically ("Oppenheimer").
