Hollywood’s Newest Obsession Is Nuclear War
From A House of Dynamite to Oppenheimer and Fallout, a wave of films and TV shows reflects growing global unease over the politics of deterrence.
Illustration: Valentin Tkach for Bloomberg
The apocalyptic political thriller A House of Dynamite — about the White House’s response to an imminent ballistic missile strike on a major US city — has tapped into America’s renewed fascination with the mushroom cloud genre.
In the new movie by Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow, an intercontinental ballistic missile of unknown origin is headed toward Chicago. Told from three different perspectives, the film suggests not only is such a nuclear attack possible, but that the Pentagon may be incapable of stopping it.