METHUEN — Seventy adults at the “Oppenheimer” matinee Wednesday remained in their seats — silent and still — after three hours and an apocalyptic ending.
Then, unexpectedly — given the movie’s dark conclusion — they applauded and filed from the AMC Methuen 20 IMAX theater, a bit dazed but eager for conversation.
“That should be required viewing for every generation,” said an energized Deborah Neve of West Newbury.
She came with her husband, Tom Neve, and their son, Steven.
Tom was also bowled over by the movie, in which Cillian Murphy plays Julius Robert Oppenheimer, a conflicted and inscrutable physicist who directed the Los Alamos Laboratory for the Manhattan Project’s atomic bomb making during WWII.
The Neve’s son, Steven Misserville, of Newburyport, had reservations about the President Harry Truman portrayal in the movie, but, otherwise, found a piece he said is missing — and needed — in public discourse today.
“I felt like he (Oppenheimer) took the middle road, was the voice of reason,” said Misserville, adding that Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty, played by Emily Blunt, gave vent at the movie’s end to much the audience was feeling.
She had spunk and urged her husband to fight those people in the 1950s who were trying to ruin him.
To the noon showing for the R-rated biopic came a dark fedora and history-minded crowd — with no kids — to put themselves in Oppenheimer’s hard shoes.
On the AMC Methuen 20’s opposite side arrived a pink gingham and delight-seeking audience with kids and moms eager for two hours in “Barbie” land.
The latter came for fun; the prior for immersive history.
Among the Oppies were two friends from Merrimack College, Class of ‘79 and ‘81, Michael Comeau of Haverhill and Dave O’Brien of Andover.
Comeau is a retired executive director for the Massachusetts State Archives in Boston.
He loves history, is a WWII buff, has read Oppenheimer biographies and said before the movie how he was interested to see how it handled the atomic bomb story.
O’Brien, a retired engineer, was expecting the movie to be historically accurate.
“Maybe to understand a little bit better about what led up to the decision to actually drop the bomb,” he said.
That question was on the mind of other movie-goers and not just surrounding the atomic bomb, but also the threats that linger today and the giant shadow cast by the potential for nuclear annihilation.
The movie delves into these big questions and projects how some of them played out in Oppenheimer’s mind and on his face.
The cinematography includes vast New Mexico panoramas of ranges, horses and mountains, star-lit skies, and extreme close-ups.
In the movie, Oppenheimer says the United States’ use of atomic bombs demonstrated why no one should ever use nuclear weapons.
He’s also tortured by what the bombs unleashed when dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945, killing up to a quarter million people, mostly civilians.
Most of the audience was old enough to remember living beside the very real threat of an intercontinental ballistic missile exchange between Cold War antagonists, the U.S. and Soviet Union.
They came hoping to see a good or great movie.
They also included Danville residents Bob Burnham and his son, Brady, a Timberlane Regional High School student.
Bob said his oldest son, who works in finance and lives in South Carolina, saw the movie and told him it is among the top five movies he has ever seen.
Brady came to see the special effects. He likely got what he came for.
Jake Greenwood, from Hudson, New Hampshire, a self-described history guy, said his friends recommended the movie.
“They can’t stop talking about it,” he said.