A sex scene in Oppenheimer has fired up some people in India while some viewers spotted an embarrassing blooper.
Oppenheimer — a movie about one of the most famous physicist of all time — is crushing it at the box office, but not without controversy.
The film about the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer has so far pulled in $258 million ($US174 million) globally from a budget of $148 million ($US100 million).
Barbie, the other big hit this winter, has broken past $528 million ($US356 million). The film cost about $215 million ($US145) million to make.
But Oppenheimer has copped backlash from some quarters in India over the portrayal of the nuclear scientist’s most famous quote.
The real-life Oppenheimer was intently interested in the Hindu religion and translated the Bhagavad Gita from Sanskrit into English.
He famously quoted the scripture during an NBC News documentary in 1965 saying, “I am become Death, destroyer of worlds,” while recalling his reaction to the Trinity test, the first successful detonation of a nuclear weapon.
However, in the movie, he says the famous quote during a sex scene — and that has angered some people in India.
Indian journalist Uday Mahurkar posted an open letter to Twitter directed to the film’s director Christopher Nolan.
“It has come to our notice that the movie Oppenheimer contains a scene which make a scathing attack on Hinduism,” he wrote.
The Trinity test was the first successful detonation of a nuclear bomb.
Mahurkar described the scene as a “direct assault on religious beliefs of a billion tolerant Hindus” and said it “amounts to waging a war on the Hindu community”.
Despite the controversy, the movie is still making bank at the Indian box office.
Nitpickers also noticed a blooper as the film used an American flag with 50 stars. However, the film is set in 1945, and at that point there were only 48 stars on the flag as Alaska and Hawaii were yet to formally become US states.
Yet in another scene, the correct flag was used.
The Barbie movie meanwhile, has come under fire from right-wing conservatives.
Ben Shapiro went to see the film and took “pages and page of notes” and then proceeded to set three Barbie dolls on fire in a 43 minute-long rant he recorded on video (note the run-time for Barbie is just under two hours).
Punters are clearly not taking much notice and continue to flock to see the movies.
The success of the two films has led to the use of the phrase “Barbenheimer”.
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