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  • James Cameron Defends ‘A House of Dynamite’ Ending: “It’s the Only Possible Ending”

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    James Cameron made waves when he called Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer a “moral cop-out” for not depicting the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.

    So what does he think of the ending of Netflix‘s A House of Dynamite, which — spoilers follow — stops just shy of showing potential nuclear destruction in America?

    The riveting thriller’s ending divided viewers when it was released in October, with some feeling the film pulled a punch by wrapping on a cliffhanger, leaving the audience unsure if a rogue ICBM destroyed Chicago, and how the film’s president (Idris Elba) responded.

    A House of Dynamite was directed by Kathryn Bigelow — Cameron’s friend, former spouse and frequent collaborator — and the Avatar filmmaker tells The Hollywood Reporter that he had dinner with Bigelow just a few weeks ago and they discussed the ending.

    “I said to her, ‘I utterly defend that ending,’” he says. “It’s really the only possible ending. You don’t get to the end of [the classic short story] ‘The Lady or the Tiger?‘ and know what’s behind which door.”

    Continued Cameron: “But that’s not even really the point. The point is: From the moment the scenerio began at minute zero when the missile was launched and detected, the outcome already sucked. There was no good outcome, and the movie spent two hours showing you there is no good outcome. We cannot countenance these weapons existing at all. And it all boils down to one guy in the American system, the president, who is the only person allowed to launch a nuclear strike, either offensively or defensively, and the lives of every person on the planet revolve around that one person. That’s the world we live in and we need to remember that when we vote next time.”

    Concluded the filmmaker: “So the end of that movie was the only way that movie could have ended because — as the computer says at the end of War Games — ‘the only way to win is not to play.’”

    Cameron has used his work to warn about the threat of nuclear war going back to his 1984 feature debut, The Terminator. His films Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The Abyss and True Lies also revolved around nuclear threats.

    The director has obtained the rights to the Charles Pellegrino’s book Ghosts of Hiroshima, which chronicles the true story of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who in 1945 survived the nuclear blasts at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Cameron promised Yamaguchi on his deathbed in 2010 that he’d make the film.

    On the subject of Oppenheimer, Cameron previously told Deadline, “it’s interesting what he stayed away from. Look, I love the filmmaking, but I did feel that it was a bit of a moral cop out. Because it’s not like Oppenheimer didn’t know the effects [of the bomb]. He’s got one brief scene in the film where we see — and I don’t like to criticize another filmmaker’s film – but there’s 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’t know whether the studio or Chris felt that that was a third rail that they didn’t want to touch, but I want to go straight at the third rail. I’m just stupid that way.”

    For more from James Cameron’s wide-ranging and deep-dive interview with THR, read this week’s cover story: James Cameron Is Ready to Move Beyond Avatar: “I’ve Got Other Stories to Tell.”

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    James Hibberd

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  • Video: ‘A House of Dynamite’ | Anatomy of a Scene

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    “I’m Kathryn Bigelow, and I’m the Director of “A House of Dynamite. So here we are with Deputy National Security Adviser Jake Baerington, played by Gabriel Basso. And he’s in a hurry because he’s just learned that there is an incoming nuclear ICBM to North America. And he’s getting this information and trying to get to the White House, which is where he works. So he’s in a hurry and he’s trying to communicate with our general from Stratcom, played by Tracy Letts, “By moving to DEFCON 2, sir, we are potentially risking a spiral of alerts.” And what’s interesting about this scene is, of course, the movement and the urgency of it. But the fact that you have two different philosophies, You have a more hawkish approach that the general is providing, and then you have a more dovish approach, a wait and let’s try to analyze this in a more careful fashion that Jake Baerington is putting forward. “That’s your job, not mine. You have someone you can call who will tell us just what the hell’s going on? Don’t let us hold you back.” So what’s interesting here, I think, is all the different sets that we had to create as a seamless movement from A to B. Well, you start with the security kiosk, and that was a build. And then he gets through the security kiosk. And then. And then he’s going through the White House briefing room. He’s on his way to the White House Situation room. And that’s in the middle of a briefing. And that was also a build, but in another part of the studio. And so trying to make it a seamless integration, then we needed an exterior to make that work. And so we went to a golf museum, which was built in the same period as the White House was built. And it has pillars and it has a portico that’s actually architecturally very similar. And so we did a couple of beats there to get him from the kiosk to the press briefing room. But we’re intercutting that with Stratcom, which is Strategic Command located in Omaha, Nebraska, which is the home of the nuclear umbrella for America. And that’s where the general is speaking from. Throughout all this, the clock is ticking down. The ICBM is on approach, its inclination has flattened. So they now know this is not a test launch of anybody’s equipment. It’s absolutely on course and on track for impact in the continental United States. So it’s a very heightened moment exploring various options and various trajectories. And so trying to put all these different locations together in a way that makes it feel seamless. And then we see our flight pilots who are going to ready the B-2s, a B-2 is a particular bomber of which carries nuclear warheads. So if we were to, in this situation, retaliate, that would be one method of retaliation. We shot at a studio in New Jersey called Cinelease, and we had three of their stages, and each stage was a different set. One was Fort Greely interior, one was Stratcom interior and one was White House Situation room interior. And our production designer, Jeremy Hindle, was truly brilliant in his replication of these locations. He and I visited the White House Situation room and stratcom only for minutes. We couldn’t take pictures, but even based on having been there a few minutes, he was able to replicate it to such a great extent that military personnel that we’re familiar with those locations, they thought we had shot there. I mean, it was kind of that accurate. “Sir, our GBIs will be airborne momentarily. This is what we do.” “Jake, you’re still there?” “Yes, sir.” Well, this is all happening live. It’s almost like a theater piece where the other actors that you see on the screen in the teleconference call, they’re on the set as well, in different sets a ways away, but they’re there so that their response is live to the people, let’s say, in the room of Stratcom, that’s a simultaneous situation. And that was actually fairly complicated to set up. But it was very helpful to the actor to have it be live and have that response time be immediate. “Once the kill vehicle separates, our mid-course intercept system has a success rate of 61 percent.” “So it’s a coin toss? That’s what $50 billion buys us?” “We are talking about hitting a bullet with a bullet.”

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    Mekado Murphy

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  • Kathryn Bigelow Responds to Pentagon Criticism of ‘A House of Dynamite’: “I Just State the Truth” (Exclusive)

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    Kathryn Bigelow is happy A House of Dynamite is sparking conversations.

    That’s her initial — and genuinely enthusiastic — response to The Hollywood Reporter when asked about Bloomberg’s recent report that the Pentagon sent out an internal memo about her film, criticizing its depiction of the United States’ nuclear missile defense system. The movie’s view is based on Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim’s extensive research and interviews with experts: They depict with startling detail how, with less than 30 minutes from detection, officials can best, if ultimately insufficiently, respond to an incoming attack, with the current U.S. system able to stop a nuclear missile roughly 50 percent of the time. (“A coin toss,” as the refrain in the movie goes.) Per Bloomberg, the Pentagon counters that its systems “have displayed a 100 percent accuracy rate in testing for more than a decade.”

    Writers like The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, who visited the set for the film, have already disputed The Pentagon’s apparent claims. Officials including Massachusetts Senator Edward J. Markey have gone public praising the film for raising nuclear awareness — and getting it seemingly right. The Pentagon has complicated the conversation over the level of accuracy in A House of Dynamite, which has premiered to strong numbers on Netflix as the streamer’s number one film, with 22.1 million views in its first three days, per the company.

    But Bigelow and Oppenheim welcome the debate. In an exclusive conversation with THR, they reflect on the movie’s success so far, lessons learned from the controversy around Bigelow’s Oscar-winning Zero Dark Thirty, and why they feel confident in their depiction. 

    I want to get right into it and ask you, Kathryn, about this Pentagon memo that Bloomberg first reported on. What is your reaction to it? 

    KATHRYN BIGELOW It’s interesting. In a perfect world, culture has the potential to drive policy — and if there’s dialogue around the proliferation of nuclear weapons, that is music to my ears, certainly.

    What are your feelings around the fact that they did internally decide to respond to the movie and take some level of issue with your depiction of our missile-defense system? Why do you think that they chose to do that?

    NOAH OPPENHEIM There’s no way for us to get in the minds of the folks who wrote that memo, but as Kathryn said, both of us are thrilled to see a conversation happening between policymakers and experts about how to make the world a safer place. So if the film was a catalyst in some way for that larger conversation and dialogue, that’s one of the reasons why we made it — to trigger that kind of conversation.

    Do you worry, though, that this will challenge the credibility of the film? How do you feel about the fact that they’re taking a stance that opposes, to some degree, what you depict in the film?

    OPPENHEIM As we see it, it’s not a debate between us as filmmakers and the Pentagon. It’s between the Pentagon and the wider community of experts in the space. Senator Edward Markey or retired general Douglas Lute; journalists like Tom Nichols and Fred Kaplan who’ve covered this issue for decades; the APS, which is a nonpartisan organization of physicists — these are the folks who are coming out and saying what we depict in the film, which is that our current missile defense system is highly imperfect, is accurate. On the other side of that conversation, you have the Pentagon apparently asserting that it’s 100 percent effective. We believe all those experts who’ve told us that the system is more like a coin toss like we depict in the film, but we’re glad all these folks are having the debate and the conversation.

    The Pentagon also apparently noted you did not consult them while making the movie. Kathryn, you’ve said you felt it was important to keep this film independent. Can you talk about why, in light of this response?

    BIGELOW It’s the best course of action, to consult with all of the experts that we did. We had extraordinary tech advisors on this film, and then they were our North Star.

    OPPENHEIM I’m a former journalist, you’re a journalist. I think it’s safe to say that folks who are not currently serving in government are often more free to speak their minds and to give you an accurate picture, as opposed to trying to advance any particular agenda. So relying on folks who recently served in the Pentagon, recently served in our intelligence agencies in the White House — we feel pretty confident in the accuracy of the picture that they gave us.

    Kathryn, Zero Dark Thirty obviously elicited a ton of response and controversy from government officials and experts. Were there any lessons learned, or wisdom gleaned, from that experience in terms of how to operate in the aftermath of the release of these films, which speak so directly and potently to our real world?

    BIGELOW I just state the truth. In this piece, it’s all about realism and authenticity. Same with Zero Dark Thirty and same with Hurt Locker — even though Hurt Locker was obviously a work of fiction, and this is a work of fiction. For me, these are pieces that lean in hard on realism. You’re inviting an audience into, say, the battledeck of STRATCOM. That’s a place that’s not easily accessible, and so you want it to be authentic and honest. That’s my goal, and I think we achieved it. 

    In addition to the public commentary from experts that you mentioned, Noah, what have you heard from people about the film as it’s soared on Netflix over the last few days?

    OPPENHEIM It’s been really gratifying that the folks who know the subject the best have told us that they feel like we’ve captured it accurately and that this is the world that they have been examining for all their careers.

    BIGELOW To be honest, nuclear weapons have been shrouded in silence for several decades now. It’s my opinion that this was a conversation that needed to happen.

    This movie has struck such a chord since it premiered. It’s been at number one on Netflix for the last few days. Do you think that’s partly why it’s resonated — the fact that it is something that has been shrouded in silence, as you say?

    BIGELOW Very much so. It’s grappling with the idea that we’re surrounded by 12,000 (nuclear) weapons. We live in a really combustible environment, hence the title — we live in A House of Dynamite. The unthinkable — it’s time to address it and, in a perfect world, begin discussions about reducing the nuclear stockpile. 

    OPPENHEIM It is extraordinary, the power of the Netflix platform in terms of its ability to reach an audience all over the world and drive a conversation. The number of people who’ve watched the movie just in these first few days, it’s beyond our wildest expectations, and you’re seeing a conversation about this not just in the United States, but all over the world, because Netflix has that kind of global reach. Hearing from people in my past life as a journalist, hearing from friends and family all over the world whose attention has been turned to this very important issue so that they’re coming out of the movie and saying, “Wow, Kathryn Bigelow sure can make a compelling thriller,” and “I was on the edge of my seat for two hours,” and also, “I’m thinking about this really critical policy issue for the first time in a long time” — the combination of those two things is pretty great.

    Kathryn, how about for you? This is your first streaming movie. Are you online? Are you tracking the discourse?

    BIGELOW(Laughs.) I mean, I’m receiving texts and emails all over the world. It’s really very profound. The reach is extraordinary, but more importantly, the story, the concept, the subject is what’s really inspiring conversation and feedback and trepidation — in a good way. In other words, this is a conversation. That is a long time coming. We have in February the beginning of the negotiation for the START Treaty, and I’ve heard from one gentleman who will be involved in that negotiation, who’s seen the movie twice — and would like to see a meaningful impact in that negotiation.

    There’s so much talk about the ending, the uncertainty that it very intentionally leaves viewers with. Have you followed the way that people are sitting with it and debating it?

    OPPENHEIM Kathryn and I wanted the movie to invite the audience to lean in the end, to not kind of give anyone an easy out or tie it up with a bow. We wanted to instigate reflection and conversation, and we both give a lot of credit to Netflix for letting Kathryn make the movie that she envisioned from the very beginning. As the ending is driving people to talk more about this subject, it’s exactly what we hoped for.

    BIGELOW I tend to start films with a question, or I certainly have recently anyway. With Hurt Locker, it was: What is the methodology of the insurgency in Iraq and the bloodiest part of the war? In Zero Dark Thirty, why did it take 10 years to find Osama Bin Laden? In this one, the film in itself poses a question that then gives the audience an opportunity to answer.

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    David Canfield

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  • ‘A House of Dynamite’: Why Its Controversial Ending Actually Works

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    SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from “A House of Dynamite,” now streaming on Netflix.

    The political thriller “A House of Dynamite” is all about a chaotic and unstable situation — and it’s also, in a situation with far lower stakes than what the film depicts, been the victim of one.

    Directed by Kathryn Bigelow in her return to filmmaking after an eight-year hiatus, this movie is one among several whose fortunes have vacillated wildly in the early going of the Oscar race. “Buzz” — as opposed to viewership numbers or eventual awards nominations — is truly unquantifiable, but after receiving lavish critical praise out of the Venice International Film Festival, Bigelow’s latest cratered when it played at the New York Film Festival. A press-and-industry screening where the film’s final moments were said to be met with outright laughter has been much-discussed.

    That ending seems, for many, to be the final sticking point about a movie that, despite its initial popularity (it currently sits at No. 1 on the Netflix viewership chart, outdrawing even “KPop Demon Hunters”), has frustrated and stymied viewers. The action of “A House of Dynamite” plays out thrice, in a stretched-out version of real time, as we see various tiers of the federal government respond to a missile of unknown origin imminently striking Chicago. 

    For those who hadn’t been familiar with the movie’s structural conceit going in, the repetition (including the presentation of some information multiple times across the story’s three tellings) may have played awkwardly. And the film concluding by cutting away after the President (Idris Elba) makes a decision about whether to launch retaliatory strikes and only showing brief footage of various characters, both known to us and not, heading for a nuclear bunker, seems to have felt to some insufficiently definitive. “A House of Dynamite,” the argument goes, made a promise — to show us what happens when the United States is struck by a nuke. Does it lack the courage of its convictions? 

    Well, no. (Trust social media to decide that the director who, more than a decade ago, came under fire for her brutally frank depiction of torture in “Zero Dark Thirty” has now lost her nerve.) “A House of Dynamite” may currently be poorly served by its being presented on a household-utility streaming service somewhat out of context — in that, for all the dudgeon of its story, it ends on a note of poetic understatement. 

    But then: We don’t need to see the bomb make impact, or what happens after Elba’s head of state makes his choice, to understand that the world as we know it has ended. Indeed, inasmuch as I consider “A House of Dynamite” flawed, its imperfection lies in Noah Oppenheim’s screenplay overexplaining to us, throughout, that the scenario is as dire as it is. (Oppenheim, the writer of “Jackie” and of the Netflix series “Zero Day,” is a former television news executive, and is very at home in explicatory mode.) By the time Elba makes an impossible choice — whether to sit pat and wait to see what happens, or to blindly fling weapons at political adversaries that may or may not be responsible — we know what he’ll decide. And we understand what the consequences will be. 

    There’s little grandeur to “A House of Dynamite,” for all of the high-flying implications of its storyline; the end of the world, it tells us, will be overseen by government officials trying to figure out how to get their Zoom conference to work. The one notable onscreen death — the suicide of Jared Harris’ Secretary of Defense character  — is shot from far away and with no particular cue from the shotmaking or score; a fellow journalist at my screening asked me, after the credits rolled, if it had happened at all. And small details in the closing sequence are telling, and easily missed. (This is true of various grace notes throughout the story, like the repeated hints that Elba’s character is callow and in over his head before, in the end, he allows his military aide to talk him toward nuclear escalation.)

    The various government officials seeking shelter look to be in states of shock as they move toward buses where seats are in short supply; as Greta Lee’s character and her young son move across the screen, voices of military-police officers inform us that one bus is already full and ready to be dispatched, while another has a mere two seats left. The potential for all of these people to escape is slipping away, and they’re the ones with the appearance of access. As the camera moves away from the officials boarding buses (and from one unhappy woman whom we’re told, in voiceover, is “not on the list”), the buses’ destination comes into view: An onscreen chyron indicates that we’re headed to Raven Rock, a “self-sufficient nuclear bunker.” (In a brief coda, we see a soldier on his knees in prayer — the only recourse he has left.)

    The point that’s been made throughout lands with a painful finality: The only safe place on earth is dug into the side of a mountain. Which means that all of those, from those turned away from the buses to those who never had a chance of boarding… A viewer’s brain attempts to reject what follows logically. 

    Which may begin to account for the ending’s unpopularity. I’m sympathetic to those who wanted to see what came next, but the film’s invitation to use your imagination leads those who haven’t already turned on the film to think through a scenario that hits far harder than anything CGI could conjure. This movie is about the procedure of government running up against mortal peril and finding itself unequipped to respond. Its vision of our last days is not one of fire and ash, but of a government employee dragging her tote bag and her kid to the bunker to try to figure out if what will be left of humanity has a future at all. The first of those visions would certainly be scary. But the one Bigelow chose is utterly terrifying. It deserves a second look from any audience members who have the nerve.

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    Danvariety

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  • From Lazarus to A House of Dynamite: Top OTT picks releasing this festive week on Netflix, Prime, and Hotstar

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    A House of Dynamite (Netflix – October 24)

    Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, this action-packed drama stars Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, and Greta Lee. Expect a gripping story with high-stakes drama.

    Nobody Wants This – Season 2 (Netflix – October 23)

    This comedy-drama by Erin Foster returns with its second season. Starring Kristen Bell and Adam Brody, it promises laughs and emotional moments.

    Harlan Coben’s Lazarus (Prime Video – October 22)

    A 6-episode horror-thriller series featuring Sam Claflin, Bill Nighy, and Alexandra Roach. Expect dark twists, mystery, and classic Harlan Coben suspense.

    Tracker (Disney+ Hotstar – Streaming Now)

    An American action series by Ben H. Winters that’s already streaming. It stars Justin Hartley, Jensen Ackles, and Fiona Rene in key roles.

    Attack 13 (Netflix – October 21)

    A Thai horror-thriller film directed by Tawiwat Wanta, starring Tarisa Preechathangkit and Nichaphat Choungthongkam. If you’re into international horror, this one’s for you.