You should know by now that Christopher Nolan does things his own way – even film trailers. And so, in true Nolan style, the teaser trailer for his upcoming historical biopic Oppenheimer was a cinema-first affair, appearing in front of screenings of Nope in the US, and other films this side of the pond (since we’re still waiting a few more weeks for Nope to drop from a big hole in the sky). Now, the teaser has made its way online too – but in an interactive version that makes it very clear exactly when the film drops. Beyond a looping live-stream version on YouTube and Twitter, the trailer primarily arrived via its own special website – one that calculates the countdown to the film’s cinematic arrival right down to the millisecond. Head to oppenheimermovie.co.uk now to give the full interactive version a watch.
It’s largely a monochrome affair, with all footage of Cillian Murphy as the 'father of the atomic bomb' playing out in black-and-white – but it’s also punctuated by burning orange ashes and vibrant shots of solar activity. This, after all, was a man who had the power of the sun in the palm of his hand, and used it to create one of the most destructive forces on our planet. If there’s little in the way of actual footage in this one, it does offer an early insight into Nolan’s approach here – a countdown to destruction, a look at someone who reshaped our world (or, “the most important man who ever lived”, as a voice here has it), and an exploration of the scientific forces that made it all possible. It looks like heady, brooding stuff with a real sense of weight – a Christopher Nolan film, in other words.
As the trailer makes clear, the film – which also stars Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Rami Malek and many, many more – opens in 11 months, 17 days, 23 hours, 25 minutes and 8.719 seconds. Wait, make that 1.192 seconds. Hold up again, now it’s 24 minutes. We can’t keep up! For people without calculator-brains, that’s 21 July – as many people have pointed out, also the release date for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie. Or, as we say round here, a film about “the most important doll who never lived”.