INT. TEENY TINY CLAUSTROPHOBIC INTERROGATION ROOM, 1954

I am brought in to be QUESTIONED by JASON CLARKE and like EIGHT OTHER DUDES. EMILY BLUNT is allowed to also be in the room sitting behind my shoulder in a vaguely symbolic way.

JASON CLARKE

Dr. Cillian Murphy, are you now or have you ever been a filthy pinko commie traitor? Please answer either “yes” or “da, comrade”.

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Hey now, let’s not cut right to the heart of the matter just yet. Cillian Murphy has to think about his whole life before he testifies.

(I pull out a pre-written statement the size of a phone book)

Get comfortable, this is gonna take like three hours and it’ll be DENSE.

EXT. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY, 1924

I am a UNIVERSITY STUDENT now, and I can totally pass for NINETEEN. In no way do I look like a middle-aged guy cosplaying as HARRY POTTER.

DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

That’s right, we’re gonna be jumping from the security hearing to various points of Cillian’s life as he and other people testify, and the framing device has its OWN framing device as we keep cutting to Robert Downey Jr. at his own government interrogation! Linear storytelling is for SUCKERS!

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

I notice you’ve separated the different timelines into color and black-and-white. Did you forget you already used that trick in Memento?

DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

Uh, you don’t understand, the fact that the black-and-white scenes are pretty much exclusively restricted to Robert’s timeline is, pffft, pure coincidence! No, the black-and-white scenes are objective events as they happened, while the color scenes are subjective experiences as they occurred in the protagonist’s vividly imaginative head.

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

You mean sort of like what Wes Anderson just did in Asteroid-

DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

NO MY THING IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. Now go on and have some surreal subjective imagery for me please.

I oblige. In color, my college-aged self envisions all kind of DISTORTED FIELDS OF DOTS and SQUIGGLY LINES MOVING REAL FAST and just a whole bunch of wibbly-wobbly in-camera practical effects that look like an experimental filmmaker’s thesis project. This shows that I understand ATOMS or something.

DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

Neat! Also, another gimmick I thought of, what if I wrote the entire screenplay, which the audience won’t even see, in the first person for some inscrutable reason?

I privately think that would be utterly pointless, but decide to let him do his thing.

INT. JAMES D’ARCY’S CLASS

I am studying under PROFESSOR JAMES D’ARCY. I knock over some SCIENCE EQUIPMENT because I am an AWKWARD LITTLE WEIRDO.

JAMES D’ARCY

Cillian, for being an awkward little weirdo you are forbidden from attending the lecture by world-famous scientist Kenneth Branagh, doing his third accent in as many Nolan movies!

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

This is frustrating. I shall retaliate by poisoning your food. A classic prank, yes? The joke is that you would die.

JAMES D’ARCY

Wait, what?! There’s no way Oppenheimer really did that.

(checks)

Oppenheimer DID really do that. OKAY. What the FUCK does this say about the protagonist of our movie?

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

It reinforces the point of this section of the movie, which is that I’m an awkward little weirdo. I mean, how awkward and weird is it to attempt homicide on a guy in a fit of adolescent pique, right?

JAMES D’ARCY

No, hold on, we’re not seriously just going to brush right past

INT. BERKELEY COLLEGE

Years later, I am working as a professor at BERKELEY, where I meet FLORENCE PUGH at a COMMUNIST PARTY.

FLORENCE PUGH

Oh, we’re skipping the Germany scenes? I thought the part where you met Heisenberg could’ve had an opportunity for a painfully obvious Breaking Bad joke.

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Yeah well we can’t include every single scene that was added to the movie just so physics nerds can squeal “OMG it’s Giovanni Lomanitz!”, we’d be here all day. Anyway, pleased to meet you! Sorry about Don’t Worry, Darling.

FLORENCE PUGH

Ah yes, the movie set in a remote desert town where me and a bunch of other intelligent and accomplished women were brainwashed by some dumb loser guys into being submissive domestic slaves. Such a shame we can never have an actually smart and fun version of that story, from a director who actually has her shit together. Oh well!

(disrobes)

Now come on Murphy, let’s get pervy!

She and I get EXTREMELY NAKED for a whole BUNCH OF SCENES, causing a number of ACTUAL GROWN-UP PEOPLE to be shocked, SHOCKED, that this movie about government scientists ruthlessly plotting a large-scale massacre would contain something as traumatic as FEMALE NIPPLES.

FLORENCE PUGH

Ah, that was some nice gangly sex we just had there! And what’s this, on your bookshelf?

(grabs book)

Allow me to open this random book to a random page and point at a random snippet of text for you to translate.

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Sure. I imagine it’s some prosaic text that has no meaning whatsoever out of context, like “he found it in the third drawer next to the melon baller” or something boring like that, but let’s check it out.

(reading)

“And now I am become death, destroyer of worlds.”

(I sigh and grind my teeth)

WELL GEE, THAT WOULD BE SUCH AN APT THING TO SAY IF I EVER BECOME RESPONSIBLE FOR CREATING ANYTHING THAT WILL KILL A LOT OF PEOPLE, BETTER KEEP THAT IN MIND JUST IN CASE I EVER INVENT A WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION argh what a dumb thing to put in a smart movie.

INT. CLASSROOM

I am hanging out with scientist JOSH HARTNETT doing various MOVIE SCIENTIST CHALKBOARD SQUIGGLES when student ALEX WOLFF runs in.

ALEX WOLFF

Holy shit, German scientists have split the atom! Think of all the potential new avenues of scientific discovery that-

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

BOMBS

ALEX WOLFF

I - what?

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

CITY-LEVELLING BOMBS

JOSH HARTNETT

SPLITTING ATOMS MEANS HUGE FUCK-OFF BOMBS

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

BOMBS BOMBS BOMBS, WE CAN VAPORIZE THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE IN A SECOND WITH AN ATOM BOOOMB

ALEX WOLFF

Wow. It took your mind like four seconds to weaponize this incredible discovery. So is the scientific community now going to work overtime to ensure that nobody ever abuses this knowledge in such an irresponsible way?

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

(frantically scribbling notes)

Shut up, I have to beat all the other scientists to building the first atom bomb!

JOSH HARTNETT

(doing speed math)

Not if I do it first!

ALEX WOLFF

Okay, scientists are messed UP. Fuck this, I’m going to retrain as a pastry chef.

(leaves)

INT. PARTY

Bizarrely, we choose this point of the film to do more scenes about my PRIVATE LIFE. At another PARTY, I meet EMILY BLUNT.

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

(still thinking non-stop about bombs)

Hi there, I’m a Bond villain-esque mad scientist who’s plotting to blow up the world. You?

EMILY BLUNT

I’m a university graduate who has done the usual 1940s thing and tossed my degree in the trash to go be a housewife. My degree was in Advanced Protagonist Criticism, with a minor in Nagging. Check it out:

(imperious glare)

Letting them destroy you won’t wipe away your sins.

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Hot! Wanna hook up?

EMILY BLUNT

Well I’ve got a husband already but he doesn’t have any lines so fuck him.

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

And Florence has made it super clear that she doesn’t want a serious relationship, so I can easily just break things off with her!

(pause)

Or, continuing to see her on the side right up until she ambiguously either commits suicide or gets murdered would do the trick as well. I’ll play it by ear!

I knock EMILY up and we get MARRIED.

EMILY BLUNT

Nice! Now you go back to obsessing about the bomb, I’ll uh... do whatever female characters in Nolan movies do when they’re not directly thinking about or interacting with the protagonist. Have a drinking problem for a couple of scenes and then never reference it again? That’ll do I guess.

INT. CLASSROOM

One day I am approached by GENERAL MATT DAMON.

MATT DAMON

I need somebody who understands atoms to build this atom bomb for us, and your borderline-irrelevant expertise in quantum mechanics and black holes somehow makes you perfect for the job! What do you say, you ready to take on this extremely top-secret, highest-possible-security project for the US government?

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Sure but not tonight, me and my communist wife and my communist brother and HIS communist wife are going to our communist friends’ house to discuss with some of our communist colleagues the various communist causes we contribute to.

MATT DAMON

...Oh.

(slyly glances into my security file; dozens of literal red flags pour out)

Oh. Ohhh. Uh. The thing is though, we reeeaaally want this bomb.

(flips through the phone book-sized list of my communist connections)

Well you’re not an ACTUAL LITERAL MEMBER of the communist party, right?

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Me personally? No. Unlike most of my known associates, I never got around to it.

MATT DAMON

That’s - under these exact specific circumstances - good enough for us!

INT. CAPITOL BUILDING, 1959

A black-and-white ROBERT DOWNEY, JR. is awaiting a SENATE HEARING with ALDEN EHRENREICH.

ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.

But by 1954, we didn’t need Cillian anymore, so we were able to suddenly do an elaborate double-take and say “Hey WAIT A MINUTE, you’re a COMMIE!!”

ALDEN EHRENREICH

(looking around)

What exactly is this section of the movie, anyway? It features none of the main characters and has nothing to do with the Trinity test. Feels a little vestigial, to be honest.

ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.

It’s a senate hearing to decide whether to confirm my nomination for US Secretary of Commerce, during which I narrate my part in arranging the earlier hearing to revoke a theoretical physics professor’s government security clearance and holy shit, in the age of wall-to-wall formulaic CGI capeshit, how the hell did THIS movie get passed off as a mainstream blockbuster?

Hey, why are we wasting time with this asshole? Back to scenes with me in them please.

INT. GOVERNMENT BUILDING

I am outlining what I need for the BOMB PROJECT to MATT and his snivelly assistant DANE DEHAAN.

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

I’m gonna need all the best science brains you can get your hands on, like I’ll need Enrico Fermi and Richard Feynman-

LAYPERSON IN AUDIENCE

Ooh, ooh, Fermi and Feynman! I’ve actually heard of those guys!

(claps hands excitedly)

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Yes yes, well done.

(I give the audience member a gold star)

Anyway, what I propose is that we go way out to the middle of the desert and build a whole town of our own. That way we can have all the casinos and booze and hookers we want!

(I remember I’m J. Robert Oppenheimer not Bugsy Siegel)

I mean we can develop the bomb in total secrecy!

MATT DAMON

I dunno, a lot of these scientists might not want to spend a couple of years living away from their wives.

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Fuck it, bring the wives! They can uproot their lives and live there too, in hastily-built wooden shacks out in the baking heat, isolated away from civilization and living under military rule and legally prohibited from maintaining contact with their friends and family!

MATT DAMON

Oh right, it’s the forties, women pretty much have to do whatever we tell them! Ha ha, we’re doing patriarchy so well. Anyway, did you have any idea where we should build this town?

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

I was thinking of this beautiful place in New Mexico called Los Alamos. Me and my family spent a lot of time there when I was a kid, and it’s the setting of some of my most precious memories. It might just be my favorite place in the whole world.

(I smile nostalgically)

So yeah, let’s NUKE THE FUCK OUT OF IT

INT. LOS ALAMOS LAB

I gather all the SCIENTISTS together to start designing the BOMB.

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Welcome, fellow sociopaths! Who’s ready to start designing an atom bomb that can level half a city in seconds?

SCIENTISTS

(whoop and cheer)

BENNY SAFDIE

I’m not!

SCIENTISTS

(gasp)

BENNY SAFDIE

I want to design a HYDROGEN bomb which can level an ENTIRE city in seconds!

SCIENTISTS

(let out relieved chuckle)

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Ha ha, that’s the spirit! But also absolutely not and fuck off. Apparently I’m chill with kilotons, but megatons is where I draw the line.

DEVON BOSTICK

One small hitch I’ve noticed: the math suggests that there’s a remote but real possibility that the chain reaction we start with this bomb won’t stop but will in fact ignite the entire atmosphere. What if we run this test and then every single living thing on the face of the planet is obliterated in a great purging fire?

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Oh, what if. What if the next time I’m brushing my teeth I get the hiccups and accidentally inhale my toothbrush and die? You gotta take SOME risks. And I choose to risk the end of human civilization.

We get to INVENTING. At one point I finally put on my iconic HAT AND COAT AND PIPE getup and it’s treated like a SUPERHERO SUIT-UP SCENE even though it’s basically how every 1940s dude dressed. At another time, MATT surprises everybody by bringing KENNETH to the town!

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

OMIGOD IT’S KENNETH BRANAGH MY HERO AND THE ROCK STAR OF SCIENCE EEEEE!!!

KENNETH BRANAGH

Oh you flatter me, I’m just Ken. If you’re all wondering how I got out of Nazi-occupied Denmark, it involved a daring last-minute boat escape just as they started arresting Jewish families, followed by my being smuggled to the UK in the bomber bay of a Mosquito with so little oxygen I nearly died.

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Oh wow, that sounds really exciting! We gonna show any of it?

KENNETH BRANAGH

Nah, that would leave less room for scenes of people writing scientific formulae and being questioned by panels of grumpy white dudes with receding hairlines.

INT. INTERROGATION ROOM, 1954

JASON CLARKE

I resent that characterization!

(checks notes)

Now I see it was around this time that they sent an insane Inspector Javert-type investigator to question you about some commie stuff in a plot thread which didn’t really go anywhere?

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Yeah, he was played by Casey Affleck of all people, ew. But that whole thing was ultra-classified, where did you get that?

INT. CAPITOL BUILDING, 1959

ALDEN EHRENREICH

That’s a good point, where DID they get that top-secret file?

(to audience)

Just a heads-up, pretty much nothing happens in this time period until the very end, so we’re just gonna be filling time with this sort of Greek chorus bullshit.

ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.

Pfft, who even knows who slipped that folder to random goon David Dastmalchian? It certainly wasn’t me. I mean why would I do that, just because Cillian talked trash about me to Einstein? I mean I don’t actually know what he said, but I saw those two, snickering away, having a big joke at my expense, it was about Dolittle wasn’t it SO HELP ME IF THOSE FUCKERS WERE GIVING ME SHIT ABOUT DOLITTLE-

(deep calming breath)

In short I have no clue who set up that treacherous little weasel. Now could we quit wasting time cutting away to me? At this rate we’ll never get to the big ka-boom.

INT. INTERROGATION ROOM, 1954

JASON CLARKE

Yeah, c’mon, get to the fucking ka-boom already.

We're nearly there, hold your horses.

INT. GOVERNMENT MEETING, 1945

My TEAM is just about done with the SCIENCE. MATT and I meet with government bigwig JAMES REMAR.

JAMES REMAR

Gentlemen, it’s time to figure out which cities we should scorch off the face of the planet. I’m not sure why the physicist is having input to this political and military decision, but that’s how it went in real life so I’ll allow it.

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

I must say, after all our hard work scrambling to get our atom bomb finished before the Germans, it’ll be extremely gratifying to blast those Nazis to kingdom come and end Hitler’s reign of-

JAMES REMAR

AHEM.

(points to framed newspaper headline, “BERLIN FLATTENED, HITLER SHOUTS HIMSELF INTO A THOUSAND MEMES AND BLOWS HIS BRAINS OUT”)

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Oh right, that already happened.

(I frown)

Okay, small concern: is blasting thousands of civilians with twenty kilotons of atomic death entirely necessary anymore? Hitler called it quits, Mussolini no longer controls the railroads or the flow of commerce, and Hirohito is now sitting alone on his island surrounded by US battleships, writing his thirtieth draft of a letter of surrender and wondering why he ever thought Pearl Harbor was a good idea. Isn’t the war effectively over?

JAMES REMAR

There would still have to be fighting in the meantime, and thousands of professional soldiers would die! To avoid that, we must make tens of thousands of regular men, women and children minding their own business die!

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

...

JAMES REMAR

Look, we want to yell to the world a big “HEY LOOK WHAT WE CAN DO”, okay?

EXT. LOS ALAMOS

At long last me and my team has done all the SCIENCE and the REFINERY has whipped up the BIG OL’ BRICK OF PLUTONIUM we need finish the BOMB, so we DO SO. It’s now time to TEST this fucker!

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

But oh no, it’s raining and we can’t do the test! This rain had better stop before morning, otherwise we’ll never be able to do the test and Hiroshima and Nagasaki will NEVER be annihilated, how tragic would that be?!

But fortunately(?) the RAIN does in fact ABATE. Me and my team RETREAT to what we imagine is a SAFE DISTANCE.

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Remember men, lie flat so the radiation can’t get you! Be sure to protect yourselves, with sunscreen and tinted glass and whatnot!

(I chuckle mirthlessly)

Wanna take a guess how many of us wind up dying of cancer over the next couple of decades? Cause it’s way more than none.

Finally we set off the BOMB. It goes off with a blinding FLASH and plenty of non-CGI FLAME, and ME and my TEAM watch from afar in eerie silence.

ELDERLY AUDIENCE MEMBER

Eh? Is my hearing aid on the fritz again?

(turns it up)

Hm, might have to replace the batte-

SHOCKWAVE

KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!

ELDERLY AUDIENCE MEMBER

(head disintegrates)

I take a deep, satisfied sigh as I wait for my vision and hearing to return.

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Ah, all those years of work, brought to a successful conclusion! Yessir, that abstract engineering problem sure was a challenging intellectual exercise, but our solutions were elegant and ingenious if I do say so myself. There’s not much that could bring me down from this feeling of accomplishment and-

UNITED STATES MILITARY

(irradiates Japan)

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Oh. Right. That whole thing.

(I read newspaper articles about bombing)

Uh oh.

(I see newsreel footage of the devastation)

UH OH. OH GOD.

(I see photos and read death statistics)

WHAT THE FUCK DID WE DOOOO

INT. HALL

The whole TEAM has gathered to CELEBRATE THE BOMBINGS. I am required to SPEAK in front of these people.

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Well, uh... good work everybody! One hundred thousand killed! That’s... that’s a lot of dead people.

(I mop sweat from my brow)

Ha ha, yeah, that’ll teach those regular people to go about their daily lives!

(I clutch the podium to stop the room spinning)

I’m coming off as composed and confident, right? It’s not too obvious that my soul is trying to tear itself out of my body and fly off into space and then into the sun?

(I valiantly manage to avoid screaming)

I stagger out of the ROOM as various WELL-WISHERS pat me on the back and shake my hand, while the WALLS TREMBLE and the LIGHTS BURN WHITE HOT and the cheering is drowned out by SHRIEKS OF TERROR AND AGONY and I find myself stepping in CHARRED CORPSES and hey, do you think we could have some of those black-and-white objective scenes up in here? You know, the ones where the darkest imaginings of my subconscious aren’t rendered horribly manifest? I could really go for some of those right about now.

INT. INTERROGATION ROOM, 1954

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

So yeah, you see how much I suffer. Truly that mass murder I helped orchestrate has been especially hard on me personally.

JASON CLARKE

Hmph, you say you have all these moral reservations about nuclear weapons. But earlier you clearly didn’t! How do you explain that, huh? When did these so-called qualms magically appear, hmm?

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

...Uh, after the bombings? After we killed ten times as many people as we predicted, and saw in gory detail what massive amounts of ionizing radiation does to a human being? Is this a real question?!

JASON CLARKE

Admit it, you gladly created that weapon of mass destruction for your country, didn’t you! When your nation needed your help to win the war you were eager to do your part, weren’t you! AND IF YOU COULD GO BACK AND HAVE THE CHOICE OF ANSWERING AMERICA’S CALL ALL OVER AGAIN, YOU’D DO IT ALL THE SAME, WOULDN’T YOU!!

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Wait, remind me what this hearing is for?

JASON CLARKE

TO PROVE THAT YOU’RE DISLOYAL TO AMERICA!

(pause)

I - I may have gotten a little sidetracked, it occurs to me.

(frowns)

I need to refresh. Let’s put your wife on the stand and yell at her for a while instead.

EMILY takes my place.

JASON CLARKE

Ms. Blunt, is it not true that you were a card-carrying member of-

EMILY BLUNT

You done fucked up, son. You should have asked Cillian about my years of practice delivering withering criticism.

JASON CLARKE

Er-

EMILY BLUNT

Shut up. You call this a fucking hearing? With all the witnesses coming and going at random to suit whatever the movie’s narrative happens to be focussed on at any given moment, and the questions more geared towards exacerbating the protagonist’s guilt complex than being pertinent to the matter at hand? What kind of ramshackle plot-serving shitshow are you running here?

JASON CLARKE

Well now-

EMILY BLUNT

Not to mention all the flagrant over-the-top kangaroo court antics, and you screaming and gesticulating like a fucking David Mamet character. Even compensating for the whole subjective-color-scene gimmick, these segments are really on-the-nose, don’t you think?

JASON CLARKE

Hey, I’m just-

EMILY BLUNT

Just fuck off you no-neck generic white guy, with your scrunched-up little face lost somewhere on your giant jar-shaped head. I refuse to answer any more questions from the worst John Connor, and that’s counting the CGI Ed Furlong who got killed two minutes into Dark Fate.

JASON CLARKE

(lip trembles)

(shuffles notes)

I...

(flees room, bawling)

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Good work, honey, you showed them! I mean of course it won’t change a thing about this obviously-rigged hearing and I’ll still lose my security clearance and my credibility and my career will stall forever. But you got to say some mean things to them for a few minutes at least!

INT. CAPITOL BUILDING, 1959

ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.

Of course after that pretty much every prominent member of the scientist community knew just how badly Cillian had been screwed over, and they all resented it and hated me over it. But it seems we’ve finally narrated long enough to get to my own hearing, where the next person to speak will be...

(checks schedule)

...Rami Malek, a prominent member of the scientific community. I’m sure he’ll give me a ringing endorsement!

He and ALDEN go in to hear RAMI speak before the SENATE.

RAMI MALEK

Ladies and gentlemen, you ask me what I think of Robert Downey, Jr. Well I think that his achievements speak for themselves. I don’t believe that anybody has accomplished as much as Mr. Downey...

ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.

(beams)

RAMI MALEK

...in the field of BEING A BIG OL’ ASSFACE WHO SUCKS!!

ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.

(falls out of his chair while letting out a Goofy-like yelp)

RAMI MALEK

Yep, he’s a JERK and he screwed over Cillian like a JERK and I wouldn’t confirm him as US Secretary of my DICK. The end.

ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.

Curses! I, the obscure 1950s chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, have failed to secure a cushy federal appointment! What a perfectly logical thing to be the climax of a movie about the invention of the atomic bomb.

(seethes)

And to think it all started with that random conversation between Cillian and Einstein! I wonder what they actually discussed anyway? Perhaps one last time jump can finally tell us...

EXT. LAKE, 1947

I meet with ALBERT EINSTEIN by a LAKE while ROBERT watches from a distance and let his paranoia run wild.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Hi there Cillian! Boy that Dolittle sure did suck, didn’t it?

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

I can’t think about that right now, I’m too consumed with terror about the possible consequences of the abomination I’ve just unleashed upon the world!

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Ah. Are you concerned that in the growing conflict between the US and the USSR, the threat of nuclear extinction will prevent escalation into all-out warfare which may have cost millions of lives if carried out by conventional methods?

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

Well... I mean no, I suppose that wouldn’t be such a terrible thing...

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Are you worried that maybe one day an increasingly insane series of North Korean dictators will wind up building their own nuclear arsenal, and who knows WHAT those maniacs might eventually do?

J. CILLIAN MURPHY

(instant panic migraine)

OH YEP THAT’S THE ONE

I look directly into the camera with a bleak, hollow-eyed thousand-yard stare which bespeaks the burden of having potentially created the means by which a terrible Armageddon will - hey! Hey, you punk kids, I see you! I see you turning this serious dramatic image into a reaction meme, you - HEY GET BACK HERE!

DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

(stepping in front of screen, handing ribbons out to audience)

Okay, well done everybody who got to the end of this thing! Here’s your “I Sat Through a Talky Three-Hour Drama, I am So Smart” award! Now go out and decompress, maybe go see something a lot more pink and happy to give your brains a break! Just be sure not to go for one of those sneaky satirical ones with rich themes to unpack, or you’ll be right back where you started.

(smiles)

And a special thank-you to Universal for letting me indulge myself with this dry, nerdy little movie. I know it won’t make them the same kind of bank as my usual sci-fi and superhero fare, but-

OPPENHEIMER’S BOX OFFICE

KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!

DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

(buried in cash)

wtf

END.