Oppenheimer viewers stunned after cinemagoer brings baby to screening

The story of a baby who attended a screening of Oppenheimer has gone viral on social media.

Released in cinemas last month, Oppenheimer is an intense three-hour-long drama about theoretical physicist J Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) and the invention of the atomic bomb.

Much of the film concerns Oppenheimer’s work at the Los Alamos wartime laboratory, as well as his later political persecution at the hands of government official Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr). Dirrected by Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer contains sexual content and strong language and is rated “15” in the UK.

However, that seemingly hasn’t stopped one parent from bringing their baby into the screening with them, in an incident recounted on Twitter by a fellow cinemagoer.

What’s even more surprising, however, is that the baby is said to have been “glued to the screen throughout”.

“Not sure which is weirder,” wrote critic Matthew Turner, in a post which has been “liked” over 80,000 times. “The fact that someone brought an actual baby to an 11.50am screening of Oppenheimer a couple of days ago, or the fact that said baby was glued to the screen throughout, didn’t cry and only coughed a couple of times in THREE HOURS.”

In a follow-up tweet, he confirmed that the baby attended a showing at the London cinema Picturehouse Central.

Fans of Oppenheimer piled in with jokes in the replies, with one person suggesting that the baby was a “reincarnated adult who is still aware of their past life”.

“That baby will probably be writing Pauline Kael-esque New Yorker film reviews by the time they graduate from kindergarten,” another person wrote.

“That’s my kind of baby,” someone else remarked, while another person joked that it was “all the more remarkable given that i heard the baby was left pretty underwhelmed by [Nolan’s 2017 war drama] Dunkirk.”

In the wake of Oppenheimer’s release, some fans have pointed out a small but possibly pivotal detail that many viewers may have missed.

Oppenheimer was released in cinemas on 21 July, on the same day as Greta Gerwig’s satirical toy adaptation Barbie. The simultaneous release prompted an unofficial moviegoing phenomenon referred to as “Barbenheimer”, with both films enjoying hugely successful performances at the box office.

Warner Bros recently apologised after it referenced “Barbenheimer” in a social media post advertising the film, leading to accusations that it was trivialising nuclear war.