Wrong Depiction Of American Flag In 'Oppenheimer' Scene Spark Outrage

Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ may be ruling the box office and is indeed the movie that has garnered the greatest positive reception, but the biopic for many of its historical accuracies consists of a few hiccups that somewhat ‘ruined the film’ for certain audiences while some pointed that this may in fact have been a deliberate choice.

The scene consists of one scene showing an inaccurate depiction of the American flag. Audiences and historians took to social media to display their annoyance at this hiccup. The scene showcases J. Robert Oppenheimer standing in front of the American flag, somewhere in the 1940’s waving to a clapping audience, with the audiences waving their star-spangled US flags back at the team of scientists during the Trinity Test.

But there is an error in the flag. As each star represents one state, the flag showcased 50 stars in the movie. While the present-day United States of America has 50 states, back during World War 2, the country only had 48 as Hawaii and Alaska did not become official US states before 1959.

As reported by 'The Mirror', one social media post by an eagle-eyed netizen caught this mistake and made it viral, with many audiences ranging from American, Canadian, Australian, Indian, Taiwanese, South Koreans, French, German, English and many more went on to say that this was one thing that may never unsee.

While this error has largely gone unnoticed, and even for those who have noticed it, this wasn’t much of an issue this is where the movie went wrong for some cinephiles and history enthusiasts, with netizens complaining that while just a minor error, a historically epic biopic which was so well researched should not have such errors.

While some joked that this ruined the film for them, some pointed out that other scenes depicting the flag had the correct number of stars, hinting at the possibility that this may indeed have been an active decision by Christopher Nolan.

Some people went on to say that this might have been done by Nolan to showcase the day when America marked its transition from a 48-state country to a 50-state nation. Knowing Christopher Nolan and his attention to detail, this may have been a deliberate choice as he is known to cover his movies in many layers of metaphor and allegory which are often missed.