Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie (1995)

Pretty Good

How sad is this?

Best movie ever!

Blistering performances.

I've seen this documentary twice now.My shock and horror to the amount of testing we have conducted, makes very clear as to why so many of us are suffering from health issues.331 bombs (as of the date of the film release) were 'tested'. I understand the need for testing with animals and clearly, if they SEE that the ANIMALS were RADIOACTIVE and the SPREAD of the materials....when were they going to realize "Hi! Earth? Atmosphere? WE BREATHE?! Inhale...exhale?! EXPOSURE!?".I'm always saddened to see the effects of human actions. 20 - 30 tests were shocking to hear but 331 was not something I call a smart move.This documentary, shows the damaging effects of human actions. So many bombs underground, above ground, in the ocean, in the atmosphere....so many times tested...I now sit here and think to myself that the latest documentary stated that Chernobyl will take THOUSANDS of years for the radiation to clear...if this was in 1986....I can now see the reason so many of our loved ones are dying from various forms of cancers and the havoc that all that testing with our continued lack of respect for Earth...has now today, caused the "No Global Warming" debate.Alaska is melting, fires, earthquakes, tsunami.....storms...tornadoes in places that we've never had them....sure, no global warming.As someone stated here, the music score is absolutely amazing....be prepared to be blown away (as someone else stated) for the devastation, recklessness of needless numerous testing while the music evokes a feeling of futility as we are completely powerless to rewind time.In the end, a fantastic documentary but definitely, quite dark.

This is a lovely little document. The awe and terror that these technological developments ought to still inspire has waned with the passing of the more imminent threat they once posed, but the story of how one shred of rational justification can snowball into a cancerous, institutionalized insanity remains valid. This documentary doesn't preach or condemn. If it had been mere political diatribe, the filmmakers would never have gained the participation of unapologetic proponents of arms research that they did. It's just a story.Going into the film blind, I wondered where the story could go after the mention of over 100,000 deaths from two bomb drops in Japan. It occurred to me while watching that, nasty and needless as that sheer destruction was, it would have to have been a cautionary lesson. But in fact, history went in entirely the opposite direction. Bigger bombs. More bombs. More efficient delivery of bombs to ensure maximum damage. There was a line that made me chuckle about the eventual "obsolescence" of Fat Man, the bomb that killed over 40,000 in Nagasaki. The absurdities of the maniacal pursuit of greater destructive capabilities can gain nothing from impassioned commentary. As narrator, William Shatner plays it perfectly straight. The facts and the images presented could only be rendered maudlin by an attempt to shade what they represent. There are no soaring strings in the background. If you aren't saddened, awed, and enraged by the footage of goats and mice being caged on the ships of a ghost armada to test the death potential of these boys' toys, no talk will help you to be touched. Boats sunk, buildings broken, animals burned, innocent islanders irradiated: all of these crimes are justified and propagandized with the aim of developing a destructive capacity that can only be viewed as brutal and undiscerning, apocalyptic even.This is a film which shows what a committed group of like-minded individuals can accomplish when given the motivation, funding, and direction. It's a shame that so many engaged and able people would commit themselves to furthering this sort of end.

I grew up fearing a demon. I wasn't alone. Many of us learned, whether in school or through the news, that this demon was out to get us. The demon was different than us. They didn't believe the same as we did. They wanted to hurt us, hurt us so much that they had these horrible weapons pointed in our direction. The demon was called the United Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.A specter of nuclear war hovered right outside my young mind. I didn't know why the USSR was the demon. No one ever took the time to actually teach me anything at all about the USSR. I just knew I was supposed to be scared. I also knew that I wasn't supposed to like "those" people.My knowledge of the USSR? Minimal. Really none. My eighth grade history teacher, known for coming to class in a Elizabethan period outfit, skipped the lesson on the Soviet Union to "punish" us. He was mad, for some reason now faded from my memory, and refused to teach us. "This will be important stuff to you some day," the teacher said. "You'll be sorry you didn't get the lesson. We'll sit here in silence today."Yeah. My public school wasn't the most progressive experience. I've come a long way from Center Junior High School. Hopefully they too have come a long way.We have new demons to fear now. The process, however, is still the same. The xenophobia and ignorance is still the same. Children raised in the world since the World Trade Center came down have been taught by fearful adults to enact xenophobic fears toward people in Muslim countries--and people of the Muslim faith who are our neighbors in our own country.The cycle continues. Someday a new demon will rise and replace our fear of Muslim people. When we turn our eyes away from the Muslim world they too, might turn their eyes away from us. They'll grow fearful of another demon as shall we. We seem to be unable to find our way out of this cycle of fearing that which is different. You can find this same xenophobia in the movie Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie. Narrated by William Shatner, Trinity offers up stunning visual imagery of the destructiveness of the weaponry. It provides an engrossing and terrifying spectacle of destruction. The movie fails to question why the bomb was really developed. Maybe the horror is enough. The demon unleashed from the atom speaks for itself.I wish the documentary moved beyond "othering" those outside of the United States. The same tired old xenophobia is laced through the movie. The bomb was developed, as suggested in the movie, to end a terrible war with Japan. It also makes allusions to needed to protect ourselves against the danger of another more ominous other, the Soviet Union. The most haunting image of all was at the end of the documentary. Horses raced onto a mock battle field, faces and eyes covered with gas masks. Riding the horses were similarly masked human soldiers. When the mask was removed we saw the rise of a new other--the Chinese tested their own nuclear bomb.The horrifying cycle continues. German. Japanese. Soviet. Chinese. Muslim. We can't seem to find a way to see the other as part of ourselves. See http://irreverentpsychologist.blogspot.com/2012/07/demons-of-sixth- grade-red-circles-of.html for more

The HD detonations and superb soundtrack had me wondering if Satan himself was going to pop out of my TV. But for me there was precious little facts on the results of all the testing. As a layman I would like to have known how bad was/is the fallout/radiation on planet Earth. How much did this testing actually pollute the Earth and its life? And what about all the people involved with the testing? I would have liked a lot more input from that angle. It was just one detonation after another. Kind of made me think they were sensationalizing it all, assuming as most do these days that the viewing audience has a short little span of attention.