After all the fuss over Oppenheimer‘s unexpected nudity and sex scenes, some audiences didn’t even get to see them.
In order to secure a release in the Middle East and India, distributors censored Florence Pugh’s most prominent nude scene with a CGI dress. In the original version, Oppenheimer and his lover Jean Tatlock (Pugh) are both nude, sitting in armchairs in a hotel room. After censorship, Pugh appears to be wearing a black strapless minidress.
Another sex scene between Tatlock and Oppenheimer attracted a conservative Hindu backlash in India. Not due to the sex itself, but because Oppenheimer quotes a Hindu text mid-coitus: The famous “I am become Death…” line from the Bhagavad Gita. Tatlock finds a copy of this book in Oppenheimer’s bedroom and asks him to recite it in bed.
In response, a prominent Indian journalist labeled the film a “scathing attack on Hinduism.” India’s minister for information and broadcasting also called for the scene to be deleted.
Meanwhile, on Twitter/X, most commenters found the censorship amusing. Some who saw the censored version said it was simply distracting—along with another scene that blurred Florence Pugh’s bare back. Others compared it to similar censorship techniques from countries including China and Iran.
(In case any Americans are feeling smug about their country being a supposedly censorship-free zone, think again. Disney+ did something similar to cover Daryl Hannah’s butt in Splash.)
Unsurprisingly, some commenters also had questions about the decision to censor Oppenheimer in the first place. It’s an amusing double standard to censor some bare boobs in an adult film about the trauma of nuclear warfare. It’s also hard to imagine Christopher Nolan being happy with this situation. After all, he just spent months promoting how he made the film with shockingly little CGI.
