James Cameron: Christopher Nolan chickened out with Oppenheimer

In a new interview, the legendary director slams Christopher Nolan for playing it safe with the bomb's aftermath — and teases his own brutally honest take on Hiroshima.

Two years after Oppenheimer shook moviegoers, director James Cameron doesn't think Christopher Nolan's film went far enough. In an interview with Deadline, Cameron says Nolan "chickened out" by only offering a brief glimpse of the bomb's real devastation and aftermath.

The film skips over the burned bodies and instead jumps straight to Oppenheimer's internal struggle with what he had unleashed. Cameron calls it "a moral cop-out," arguing that while the film shows Oppenheimer being emotionally affected, it avoids digging into the true horror his invention caused.

As some of you may remember from earlier reports, Cameron is now planning his own film on the subject — Ghosts of Hiroshima, based on Charles Pellegrino's upcoming book of the same name. He promises an uncompromising depiction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, holding nothing back — a film in the spirit of Steven Spielberg, but about nuclear warfare.

He's openly stated it might be his least commercial film ever, but insists he'll portray the truth — to offer a different perspective than Nolan did. The project is still in early development, as Cameron remains focused on his Avatar sequels.

What did you think of Oppenheimer — did it hold back too much?