Christopher Nolanâs latest film, âOppenheimer,â has become one half of the box office and pop culture phenomenon âBarbenheimer,â sweeping up glowing reviews along the way.
But eagle-eyed fans have spotted a mistake in a scene set in 1945, as Cillian Murphyâs J. Robert Oppenheimer stands among a crowd waving American flags â bearing the wrong number of stars.
âIt was good and all, but Iâll be that guy and complain they used 50-star flags in a scene set in 1945,â Twitter user Andy Craig wrote on Friday.
In 1945, the American flag featured 48 stars, as Alaska and Hawaii hadnât yet become U.S. states.
It wasnât until July 4, 1960 that a 50-star flag was first flown in the U.S..
But in another scene set in the same year, the correct American flag flies behind Oppenheimer.
One Twitter user had a theory: âI can argue that this is done intentionally as the colored scenes were from Oppenheimerâs perspective, while the black and white scenes were from another. This would be a memory of Oppenheimer from his present day memory which does have 50 states on the flag.â
The film depicts the events of Oppenheimerâs life, flitting between his days as a student in the 1920s, his time overseeing the development of the nuclear bomb during World War II, and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission committee hearings in 1954 during the McCarthy era, in which he was stripped of his security clearance due to his associations with the Communist Party.
âBarbie called this in didnât she,â another Twitter user joked, referencing the fact that âOppenheimerâsâ release date coincided with Greta Gerwigâs âBarbie.
Coming in behind âBarbie,â âOppenheimerâ opened at $80.5 million in the U.S. over the weekend, according to Comscore. Both movies essentially doubled predictions from weeks ago, Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, said.
Itâs unprecedented to not only have two films do so well, but also to help each other with the âBarbenheimerâ trend, Dergarabedian said.