Oppenheimer: 5 things you need to know

Starring:
Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Rami Malek

Directed by:
Christopher Nolan

Release date:
July 21, 2023

One of the year’s biggest movies hits theatres this week and those lucky enough to have seen early screenings of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer have described it as “spectacular” and “awe-inspiring.” 
 
The director’s latest epic film takes us into the mind of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist known as the “father of the atomic bomb.” It stars Cillian Murphy in the lead role as well as a star-studded supporting cast that includes Emily Blunt as his wife Kitty, Matt Damon as Leslie Groves Jr., director of the Manhattan Project, Robert Downey, Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett and Rami Malek.
 
And just as he did with his previous films Tenet, Dunkirk and Inception, Nolan favours practical effects over CGI for Oppenheimer and shot the film with IMAX® cameras. He even makes history for shooting sections of the film in IMAX® black-and-white analogue photography for the first time.
 
Here’s everything you need to know about Oppenheimer before its July 21 release:
 

1.  Oppenheimer is based on real events 

The events of Oppenheimer may feel like something straight out of a Hollywood movie, but the story is in fact based on the real life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was tasked with creating the world’s first atomic bomb in 1942 that ultimately changed the world forever.
 
Inspired by the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin, the film takes us through Oppenheimer’s early days as a scientist, through the development of the Manhattan Project to the aftermath of dropping two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945.
 
 

2.  Christopher Nolan wrote the script specifically with Cillian Murphy in mind

Although Cillian Murphy has appeared in five of Nolan’s previous films (The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception and Dunkirk), he had never played a leading role for Nolan until now.
 
Nolan said that while writing the script for Oppenheimer, the Irish-born actor with the piercing blue eyes was the only one who came to mind. 
 
“I try not to think of actors as I write, but Cillian’s eyes were the only eyes I know that can project that intensity,” Nolan said in an interview with The New York Times. “I knew he was one of the great actors of his generation.”
 
The Oscar-nominated director also chose to write the script in the first-person to make it clear the story would be told from Oppenheimer’s point of view.
 
“It took me a minute to actually comprehend and then I realized, oh, that’s a huge responsibility,” Murphy said in a sneak peek video for the film posted on EW.com.
 
Murphy also told Rolling Stone UK it was the best script he’s ever read.
 
 

3.  Nolan re-created the Western town of Los Alamos

To re-create Los Alamos, New Mexico, the site of the top-secret laboratory where the atomic bomb was built, Nolan built a mini-Western town.
 
Even though some of the original structures built for the Manhattan Project still exist, the rest of Los Alamos was too modern to be used for filming. Instead, Nolan chose to shoot many of the interiors at the real Los Alamos and built the exteriors at Ghost Ranch, a 21,000-acre retreat in Northern New Mexico. 
 
“It’s fully immersive and it’s not just the explosions. The town of Los Alamos, you would just walk down the street and you were transported to 1944,” Damon told Cineplex in a recent interview for the film. 
 
They were even able to shoot some scenes in the home where the Oppenheimers lived.
 
The Trinity test site, which included a 100 ft. tower and a bunker to watch the explosion, was built in nearby Belen, New Mexico. 
 
Other scenes for the film were shot on the grounds of the Institute of Advance Study at Princeton University where Oppenheimer and Einstein worked together after World War II.
 
 

4.  The film was made without CGI and makes IMAX® history 

From crashing a real 747 Boeing jet into an airport hangar for Tenet to planting a 500-acre field of corn for Interstellar, Nolan’s movies have been praised for their use of practical effects over CGI. 
 
Oppenheimer was no exception.
 
Even though Nolan had used CGI to create a nuclear explosion in The Dark Knight Rises, he wanted the Trinity test in Oppenheimer brought to life with only practical effects. He tasked his special effects team with re-creating the explosion on a small scale that could be shot with large IMAX® cameras.
 
“There’s a visceral feeling to that footage. It becomes tactile, and in becoming tactile it can be threatening as well as awesome. So that was the challenge. To find what you might call analog methods to produce effects to evoke the requisite threat, awe, and horrible beauty of the Trinity test,” Nolan said in press notes for the film.
 
Nolan hasn’t revealed how the actual explosion was created (it was not an actual atomic bomb despite some rumours on the Internet), but it did involve a long, fish-eyed probe lens that could be attached to large format Panavision 65mm and IMAX® 65mm cameras.
 
Speaking of, Nolan also makes history with Oppenheimer for being the first film to include sections shot in IMAX® black-and-white analogue photography.
 
Since 65-millimeter black-and-white film did not exist, Nolan had to make a special request to Kodak who were able to manufacture it specifically for this film!
 
 

5.  Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s first biopic

Nolan has made us question time, space and even our own dreams through his films. But with Oppenheimer, he takes us on a journey of a different kind with his first biopic.
 
The director said he was interested in telling this story because he wanted to take the audience into the mind of the person who was at the centre of the largest shift in history. 
 
“Like it or not, J. Robert Oppenheimer is the most important person who ever lived,” Nolan said in the press notes. “He made the world we live in, for better or for worse. And his story must be seen to be believed.” 
 
If early reactions of Oppenheimer are any indication, Nolan has shown he can make a film about a real-life figure as intense and epic as any fictional world he’s created in his previous films and we can’t wait to see it on the biggest screen possible.