‘Dr. Strangelove’ explained: The truth behind Stanley Kubrick’s comedy ending

“The 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) consistently ranks among the greatest comedy films of all time. I mean, what couid be funnier than an atomic device capable of blowing up the entire planet and everyone on it? That was what writer-director Stanley Kubrick and writing collaborator Terry Southern found when attempting to adapt Peter George’s novel Red Alert into a serious Cold War drama film. There was no getting around it: only human beings would be ridiculous enough to invent something deliberately intended to end the existence of their species. The subject matter may be dark, but it’s ripe for razor-sharp comic satire. And so, Kubrick and Southern set about writing multiple characters into their script especially for the finest comic actor of the moment, Peter Sellers. Kubrick had worked with Sellers on his previous film, the first screen adaptation of Lolita, and Dr Strangelove was developed as a project specifically with the actor in mind. Never are Sellers’ comic talents more apparent than in the film’s pitch-black ending, which still leaves audiences perplexed today. After Soviet defences failed to stop one partially damaged US B52 bomber jet because it was flying below their radar signals and had lost contact with the American command post trying to recall it, the plane dropped a nuclear bomb on Russian soil. Back at The Pentagon, all hell breaks loose. Why is everyone so upset that the bomb was dropped in Dr Strangelove? Earlier in the film, the Russian ambassador reveals to everyone in the War Room that the Soviet Union has created a nuclear ‘doomsday device’, capable of blowing up the entire world. The device would be detonated automatically the moment any nuclear attack is launched against the Soviet Union, according to algorithms pre-programmed onto a computer. The ‘doomsday device’ of the movie satirises the real-life Cold War principle of mutually assured destruction (fittingly abbreviated to the acronym MAD). It takes this principle to its logical conclusion, embodied in a single weapon of preposterously destructive proportions. Despite scepticism from the American military chiefs in the film about the existence of such a device, their nuclear weapons expert, the ex-Nazi Dr Strangelove, confirms the likelihood of its creation. And so, with one of the US bombers able to hit a Soviet target with a nuclear missile, the entire American and Russian military executives recognise the prospect of an impending apocalypse. …”
FAROUT (Video)
Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Bomb Introduction (Beyond the Bay)
YouTube: Dr. Strangelove trailer
1960s: Days of Rage – Dr. Strangelove – Stanley Kubrick  (Sep. 2017)

Stanley Kubrick