For Noah Oppenheim, “A House of Dynamite” began with a single question. “If there was ever a missile attack on the United States, what happens? What are the procedures that get followed?” says the journalist-turned-screenwriter, who collaborated with director Kathryn Bigelow on the stress-inducing Netflix thriller.
The film meticulously envisions how the government would respond to a nuclear warhead strike on the U.S. Drawing on his experience as a former NBC News president, Oppenheim interviewed numerous senior officials from the Pentagon, CIA, and White House to capture a realistic, minute-by-minute account of the potential response.
“It was our thought from the very beginning,” Oppenheim exclusively explained to RadioTimes.com when asked about taking that approach. “And the reason is simple. If a missile is ever launched at the United States from the Pacific Theater, it will take around 18 minutes to reach here.
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“And so that is the amount of time that the President, his generals, the national security apparatus, would have to figure out what’s going on: Who’s responsible? What are our potential responses? Are there more missiles coming our way?”
He continued: “It’s an impossibly insane short period of time to make any kind of decision, let alone one in which the fate of all mankind depends. And so we wanted the audience to experience viscerally just how short 18 minutes is. So we wanted to tell it beginning to end in real time.
“And then we wanted to give the audience, unlike the real decision makers in life, the benefit of a second shot of experiencing it again from another perspective up the chain. So we go from the folks who would first learn about something like this, then we go up to the generals, then we land with the President –the only person who has the authority to decide what to do.”
‘A House of Dynamite’ ending explained
If you’ve watched A House of Dynamite, you’ll know that its ending is intentionally ambiguous. After depicting the same time period from three different perspectives, the film cuts off each time just before the bomb hits Chicago—and before the President makes a decision on how to respond.
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In the final chapter, the last scenes show high-ranking officials entering a self-contained bunker, while the President contemplates two possible courses of action presented to him by Lieutenant Commander Robert Reeves (Jonah Hauer-King).
The film never reveals which choice the President ultimately makes, nor how events might escalate following the initial strike. Instead, it leaves the conclusion open-ended, inviting viewers to interpret the outcome for themselves.
Why does A House of Dynamite end on a cliffhanger?
If you’re wondering exactly why writer Noah Oppenheim and director Kathyrn Bigelow opted to end the film without any closure for the audience, then there’s an answer. “We chose the ending we did because Kathryn and I both believed that any other ending would let the audience off the hook,” he told Radio Times. “We don’t want to give the audience a clean and neat resolution.
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“Any ending where the world is saved or the world is destroyed allows people to kind of walk out of the experience and say, ‘Okay, well, that’s that…. It ended that way, and it’s over, and I can go back to my everyday life.’”
He continued: “I think we’re trying to invite the audience to lean into a conversation, not about the specific scenario in this movie, but about the world in which we live. That regardless of what those characters decide, we walk out of the theatre or turn off the television, and we’re still in a world where there are several 1000 nuclear weapons, many of which are on a hair trigger.
“And is that a world we want to live in? We should all be participating in that conversation.” Star Jason Clarke, who plays a senior Situation Room official in the film, thought the cliffhanger worked brilliantly in shifting things to the audience.
“This film – which is what Kathyrn does extraordinarily, I think – doesn’t leave it with the movie,” he explained. “It leaves it with the audience.”
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“I very rarely felt a piece that just leaves it with you,” he added. “‘What do you think about it?’ Not what do we think about it – we made it. Here it is. And it’s not just a cerebral feeling. It’s a take your breath away. And the response so far has been just incredible.”
Rebecca Ferguson revealed that she’d been fascinated to hear discussions about the film and its ending so far. “I think there’s the reference point to what’s happening in the world. It’s very topical. There’s a comparison,” she explained. “There is, I think, this underlying… the flabbergasting reality about the amount of nuclear warheads that are out there.
“And I think one of the biggest thing is that people haven’t understood that one person has the power. One human being sits on the power to start a nuclear war – and when that hits, it hits hard.”
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