{"id":54125,"date":"2025-07-06T05:53:33","date_gmt":"2025-07-06T13:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=54125"},"modified":"2025-07-06T05:53:33","modified_gmt":"2025-07-06T13:53:33","slug":"james-cameron-going-nuclear-for-next-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/06\/james-cameron-going-nuclear-for-next-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"James Cameron Going Nuclear for Next Movie?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell\u2019s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood<\/a>.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

Last week, in exploring major new pieces<\/strong> at The Atlantic<\/em> and The New Yorker<\/em>, I observed that coverage related to the 80th anniversary of the dawn of the nuclear era seems to be picking up. Let me briefly mention an update re: my own contribution before we get to Mr. Cameron.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve mentioned previously that my new award-winning film<\/a> will start streaming, and screening on TV, from PBS on July 12. Today, the companion e-book with the same title has been published: \u201cThe Atomic Bowl: Football at Ground Zero \u2013 and Nuclear Peril Today<\/a>.\u201d It\u2019s just $5.79 and includes previously unpublished stills and material from the film and much more. Read more here<\/a>. If you are a writer on film, TV, nuclear issues, or books, you can request a link to view the film now or possibly a copy of the book, via: gregmitch34@gmail.com<\/a>. Or leave a Comment here<\/a>. Thanks.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ve always found it amusing<\/strong> that James Cameron grew up just across the river from me near Niagara Falls, Ontario. He even mentions it in the interview I am covering today (no, he does not refer to me). I\u2019ve never been a major fan of most of his films, but took notice, given my personal interests, when he declared a dozen or so years ago that his next movie would tackle Hiroshima and Nagasaki.<\/p>\n

He had optioned a book by Charles Pellegrino about several victims of the Hiroshima bombing who took the \u201clast train\u201d to Nagasaki and ended up meeting the bomb there once again. As it happens, I had interviewed at length one of those \u201cdouble hibakusha\u201d back in 1984 in Nagasaki, Kenshi Hirata. (An excerpt is included in my new e-book.) I had posed the question: Was Hirata doubly unlucky \u2013 or doubly lucky, since he survived?<\/p>\n

Anyway: Cameron decided to do another \u201cAvatar\u201d and then another. He kept mentioning every so often his intense plan to make his atomic bomb film, still linked to Pellegrino\u2019s writing, but never made much if any progress.<\/p>\n

He still hasn\u2019t, in tangible form, and in the new interview<\/a> for the popular Deadline entertainment site, he admits he hasn\u2019t written a single word of the script yet. But he has continued to think deeply about it, and Pellegrino has a related book, \u201cGhosts of Hiroshima,\u201d coming around August 1. In the new interview, Cameron continues to promise a big movie that will focus on re-creating the days of the two bombings in Japan and the immediate aftermath, meaning the victims and survivors will stand at the center, more than in any previous drama, I will add, made outside Japan.<\/p>\n

In the interviews, he points \u2013 as I often have \u2013 to Christopher Nolan almost ignoring this in his \u201cOppenheimer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yeah\u2026 it\u2019s interesting what he [Nolan] stayed away from. Look, I love the filmmaking, but I did feel that it was a bit of a moral cop out\u2026 and I don\u2019t like to criticize another filmmaker\u2019s film \u2013 but there\u2019s only one brief moment where he sees some charred bodies in the audience and then the film goes on to show how it deeply moved him. But I felt that it dodged the subject. I don\u2019t know whether the studio or Chris felt that that was a third rail that they didn\u2019t want to touch, but I want to go straight at the third rail. I\u2019m just stupid that way.<\/em><\/p>\n

Okay, I\u2019ll put up my hand. I\u2019ll do it, Chris. No problem. You come to my premiere and say nice things\u2026 I can\u2019t tell you today what\u2019s going to be in the movie. I\u2019ve been making notes for 15 years and I haven\u2019t written a word of the script yet because there\u2019s a point where it\u2019s all there and then you start to write. That\u2019s how I always work. I explore around, I remember the things that impact me. I start to assemble \u2019em into a narrative. And then there\u2019s a moment where you\u2019re ready to write. And I\u2019m not in that head space right now.<\/em><\/p>\n

Well, let me leave it at that for now and simply point to this link<\/a> for the lengthy interview and post a few excerpts from it. Photo below of Cameron a few years back, between Pellegrino and one of the \u201cdouble survivors.\u201d<\/p>\n

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I don\u2019t want to get into the politics of, should it have been dropped, should they have done it, and all the bad things Japan did to warrant it, or any of that kind of moralizing and politicizing. I just want to deal in a sense with what happened, almost as if you could somehow be there and survive and see it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Because I just think it\u2019s so important right now for people to remember what these weapons do. This is the only case where they\u2019ve been used against a human target. Setting aside all the politics and the fact that I\u2019m going to make a film about Japanese people\u2026I don\u2019t even speak Japanese, although I have a lot of friends there. I\u2019ve been there a million times, and I may need to work with a Japanese writer, a Japanese producer, so that I am not a complete outsider to their cultural perspective. I want to keep it as a kind of neutral witness to an event that actually happened to human beings, so that we can keep that flame alive, that memory. They\u2019ve only died in vain if we forget what that was like and we incur that a thousand fold upon ourselves and future generations\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Right now, look at the lingering enmity that\u2019s gone on for half a century between Israel and Palestine. Look at the enmity that\u2019s gone on between the US and Iran over time. Look at what\u2019s happening in the world with Russia. The doomsday clock just keeps ticking closer and closer and closer to midnight. Nuclear war is not on our display screen right now, it\u2019s not on our dashboard. We tend to not be able to grasp it, we tend to be in denial about it. I want to make a film that just reminds people what these weapons do to people, and how absolutely unacceptable it is to even contemplate using them. I think Trump is the first president who has bandied around the idea of, \u2018My button\u2019s bigger than your button.\u2019 That\u2019s something he says to Kim Jong Un. I\u2019m like, what? Are you nuts?<\/em><\/p>\n

You\u2019re dealing with something that\u2019s on a whole other level. Look, this may be a movie that I make that makes the least of any movie I\u2019ve ever made, because I\u2019m not going to be sparing, I\u2019m not going to be circumspect. I want to do for what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, what Steven Spielberg did with the Holocaust and D-Day with \u201cSaving Private Ryan.\u201d He showed it the way it happened.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Thanks for reading Oppenheimer and the Legacy of His Bomb ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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