Across his career, Christopher Nolan has had a few central preoccupations – delivering mind-melding twists on character dramas, explorations of how physics shapes our universe, all wrapped up in big, blockbuster spectacle. His latest feature, Oppenheimer, looks set to be all of those things at once, going by its latest trailer – ostensibly a historical drama about the creation of the atomic bomb and the physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who devised it, but more of a typical Nolan brew than that sounds. Check out the full trailer here:
Taking audiences into the heart of the atomic reaction that rendered the world’s most devastating weapons, there’s ominous imagery here that brings to mind the dazzling science-based light displays of Interstellar. But this is also a big, practical-effects historical drama in the vein of Dunkirk too, and also seems to be a psychological exploration of the man responsible. Plus, it looks absolutely massive and stunningly shot. In other words, it’s a Christopher Nolan movie through and through. As the official synopsis has it, Oppenheimer is an “epic thriller that thrusts audiences into the pulse-pounding paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it”.
Cillian Murphy plays Oppenheimer himself, with Emily Blunt has his biologist wife Kitty. Also starring are Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Benny Safdie, Michael Angarano, Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh. Dane DeHaan, Alden Ehrenreich, and Matthew Modine. The film famously hits cinemas on the same day as Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie – in the ultimate box office battle, the winner looks set to be cinema itself.