Kathryn Bigelow's Nuclear Nightmare

""It's negative. Negative impact. Object remains inbound." These three sentences-spoken by a U.S. Army officer in Kathryn Bigelow's new film, A House of Dynamite -are said quietly and with clipped military efficiency, but they are laden with dread; they mean that millions of people are minutes away from being incinerated or buried beneath the rubble of an American city."

"Americans, along with billions of other people on this planet, once had a healthy fear of nuclear war. They knew, even if they did not dwell on it, that they could wake up and make a cup of coffee, and then, before they had a chance to finish breakfast, they and the civilization they took for granted every day could be extinguished. That fear seems mostly gone now, and Americans have long needed a movie set in the 21st century to remind them of why they should still be worried about nuclear war. Finally, they have one."

"In recent decades, nuclear war has all but vanished from American movie screens, replaced since the end of the Cold War by special-effects blockbusters about zombie plagues, alien invasions, and errant asteroids. (One of the last major releases about a possible War World III, the HBO movie By Dawn's Early Light, premiered on television more than 35 years ago.) But the world's nuclear weapons haven't gone anywhere. The United States is about to spend nearly $1 trillion on nuclear modernization. Washington and Moscow are still trading nuclear threats while a war of Russian aggression rages in the middle of Europe. India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed powers, recently came within inches of war."

A House of Dynamite opens with terse military warnings that convey imminent, city‑shattering nuclear danger. American public anxiety about nuclear annihilation has largely faded despite enduring global arsenals and renewed geopolitical tensions. Hollywood has largely abandoned nuclear-war narratives in favor of other existential threats, even as governments plan extensive nuclear modernization spending and confront ongoing rivalries. Recent confrontations among nuclear-armed states and continued U.S.-Russia exchanges of threats underscore persistent risk. Kathryn Bigelow's film reintroduces the immediacy of nuclear danger to contemporary audiences and emphasizes that the threat remains real and urgent.

Read at The Atlantic