‘Oppenheimer’ – The Doomsday Clock Winds Up in New Star-Studded Trailer
Oppenheimer is about more than the bomb – the latest look focuses on the people, the risks, the questions, and the immense fallout.
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer follows the life of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man credited with inventing the atomic bomb. He was a primary contributor to the government-run Manhattan Project that was tasked with researching and developing nuclear weapons in the 1940s. He went on to be the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, where the weapons were built. While a celebrated scientist, his achievements came with a massive human toll.
“You are the man who gave them the power to destroy themselves and the world isn’t prepared.”
Filming Oppenheimer
The “shot with IMAX film cameras” tagline featured on the posters and trailers is a bit of a big deal. This is the first movie to feature in IMAX black and white photography, and it was shot for IMAX 15/70 in what amounts to 18K resolution. It’s a bit bonkers. If you want to take full advantage of that, see it on the biggest screen with the best projector you can. Find the closest IMAX theater to you here. If you want to be really picky, do an internet search for theaters with 15/70 projectors and be prepared to take a road trip.
via Universal Pictures
Along with his use of large format cameras, the director kept with his overall goal to use practical effects as much as possible. In the past, he’s flipped an eighteen-wheeler and blown up a 747. For Oppenheimer, he worked with a special effects team to recreate the look of atomic explosions without using CG. In an interview with Total Film, he spoke of the challenges.
“I think recreating the Trinity test [the first nuclear weapon detonation, in New Mexico] without the use of computer graphics, was a huge challenge to take on. Andrew Jackson – my visual effects supervisor – was looking at how we could do a lot of the visual elements of the film practically, from representing quantum dynamics and quantum physics to the Trinity test itself to recreating, with my team, Los Alamos up on a mesa in New Mexico in extraordinary weather, a lot of which was needed for the film, in terms of the very harsh conditions out there – there were huge practical challenges.
It’s a story of immense scope and scale. And one of the most challenging projects I’ve ever taken on in terms of the scale of it, and in terms of encountering the breadth of Oppenheimer’s story. There were big, logistical challenges, big practical challenges. But I had an extraordinary crew, and they really stepped up.”
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via Universal Pictures
Oppenheimer Cast & Details
Christopher Nolan adapted the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer; he’s also directing and producing.
Cillian Murphy leads the star-studded cast as J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Emily Blunt as his wife, biologist, and botanist Katherine Oppenheimer. Matt Damon portrays General Leslie Groves Jr. (director of the Manhattan Project), Robert Downey, Jr. plays Lewis Strauss (a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission), and Josh Hartnett plays Ernest Lawrence (pioneering American nuclear scientist). The cast also includes Florence Pugh, Benny Safdie, Michael Angarano, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, and others.
Oppenheimer premieres in theaters on July 21st.
