(CNN) – Christopher Nolan’s latest film Oppenheimer became part of the box office and pop culture phenomenon Barbenheimer and received rave reviews.
But fans spotted a glitch in a 1945 scene in which Cillian Murphy’s J. Robert Oppenheimer stands in a crowd waving American flags with the wrong number of stars.
Cillian Murphy plays J. Robert Oppenheimer. (Source: Universal Pictures)
“It was cool and all, but I’m going to be the guy who complains that they used 50-star flags in a scene from 1945.” wrote this Friday Twitter user Andy Craig.
In 1945, the American flag had 48 stars since Alaska and Hawaii had not yet become states.
It was not until July 4, 1960 that a 50-star flag was flown in the United States for the first time.
But in another scene, set in the same year, the real American flag flies behind Oppenheimer.
One Twitter user had a theory: “I can posit that this is on purpose as the color scenes are from Oppenheimer’s perspective while the black and white scenes are from a different perspective. This would be a throwback to Oppenheimer from his current memory actually having 50 states on the flag.”
The film chronicles the events of Oppenheimer’s life, alternating his days as a student in the 1920s, his time supervising the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, and the US Atomic Energy Commission committee hearings in 1954 during the McCarthy era, at which he was stripped of his security clearance because of his ties to the Communist Party.
“Barbie warned, right?” joked another Twitter user, noting that “Oppenheimer’s” release date coincided with that of Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.”
According to Comscore, “Oppenheimer” grossed $80.5 million in the US over the weekend behind “Barbie.” Paul Dergarabedian, Comscore’s senior media analyst, noted that both films were duplicate estimates from a few weeks ago.
It’s unprecedented that two films not only do so well, but also support each other in the “Barbenheimer” trend, Dergarabedian said.
CNN’s Ramishah Maruf contributed to this article.