Posted on 12/19/2022 11:26:09 AM PST by Red Badger
The epic is heading for a strange head-to-head with Barbie at the box office
Universal has released the first full trailer for Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist closely associated with the invention and detonation of the first atomic bomb in the 1940s.
The tone is epic and serious as we see a montage of the bomb being devised and prepared at the Manhattan Project site in New Mexico, while Cillian Murphy, as Oppenheimer, looks on, aghast at his creation.
“They won’t fear it until they understand it, and they won’t understand it until they’ve used it,” he says in voiceover. “I don’t know if we can be trusted with such a weapon.”
Many of Tenet and Inception director Nolan’s preoccupations are present and correct: science, explosions, awe at the mysteries of the universe, fear of the cost of progress. Notably not present in the trailer is most of the incredibly starry supporting cast Nolan has assembled for the film, which includes Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Benny Safdie, Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, and Kenneth Branagh, as well as a reported one-scene cameo from Gary Oldman.
Nolan, who loves practical effects and shooting on film (Oppenheimer is shot on 65 mm IMAX film by regular Nolan collaborator Hoyte van Hoytema, including a world-first sequence of analogue IMAX black-and-white photography) claims to have recreated an atomic test “without the use of computer graphics” for the movie. Yikes.
Oppenheimer will be released on July 21, 2023, which is the very same day that Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie’s Barbie hits theaters. Barbie was recently the subject of a similarly epic, though much less serious, teaser trailer which riffs on 2001: A Space Odyssey by Nolan’s idol Stanley Kubrick.
Although the two films clearly have different tones, they both rank among the most anticipated of next year (even more so after these trailers), both boast starry casts and hot directors, and both have a reported budget of $100 million. It’s rare to see two big studio beasts such as these pitted directly against each other at the box office.
There’s an extra bit of spice to this rivalry: Oppenheimer will be distributed by Universal Pictures, in a departure for Nolan, who had stayed with Warner Bros. for 20 years before dramatically breaking with the studio over its shift toward streaming. Barbie’s distributor? Why, it’s Warner Bros.
Agreed. Inception was a masterpiece, even with DiCaprio and Ellen Page. Heck, I even really enjoyed Interstellar. Tenet... wtf?
He probably is.
Eventually Tom Cruise will destroy his body and stop acting. Larry Bird blew out his back working on his mother's driveway.
They have a replica of the Trinity tower and device at the Atomic Museum in Albuquerque, saw it today while shopping at Costco. The gift shop used to carry Fat Man and Little Boy earrings until a Japanese tour group came through.
One thing about Nolan’s films, they are always originals.
He was very good in a flick about the Irish revolution The Wind that Shakes the Barley.
I started to watch it.... I had heard nothing of it but with such a cast I thought it had to be good. Didn't make it though the first hour. It just didn't gel....
If it's a straight biopic, it sounds like a waste of Nolan's talents.
Then again, Tenet was weird and convoluted and I hated it.
It looks like there's a good cast in Oppenheimer, but it's weird to think that people one's own age or younger are going to play Oppenheimer, Truman, Stimson, and the rest of those old guys.
The End of the Spear - A movie about the Auca Indians and the martyrdom of Jim Eliot and his friends.
Beyond the Next Mountain - At the close of the 19th century, the British branded the Hmar people of northeast India as “the worst headhunters.” It was a label well deserved at the time. But in 1910, a single copy of the New Testament Gospel of John came into this village and changed the course of history for the Hmar people. Through that single copy of John’s Gospel, Chawnga, the father of Rochunga Pudaite, was introduced to a revolutionary “new life in Christ.” He and a few tribesmen “forsook all and followed Christ.” Chawnga believed that Rochunga was God’s chosen instrument to bring the Scriptures to the entire Hmar tribe in their own language.
Maybe he got an old Pit from the Russians.
Left that one out: https://tubitv.com/movies/560465/end-of-the-spear
I did a lot of work at the Lab so spent tons of time in Albuquerque. Bought a "I have become death" t-shirt at a downtown bookstore (I can't remember the name) and a set of the earrings for my wife. She loves wearing them since both she and I worked the nuke business for a long time.
Already a creepy religion junkie.
They weren’t old when they were young!..............
Nothing to do with Oppenheimer. But “Stretch” is a good movie. Perhaps it’s conservative by showing the decadence of Hollywood in a funny way. It’s like True Romance meets Taxi Driver meets American Graffiti. Shake all that up and a weird spirit rises through the floor boards up from the basement.
Yeah, Amsterdam was a Covid release movie and those films didn’t get much promotional money. Perhaps it was the way it was edited that didn’t gel; he sort of put the beginning of the story at the 40 minute mark of the film. It worked for me, Tarantino style editing I guess. I think David O Russel makes great films generally. I really liked American Hustle. The Fighter was also very good. Silver Linings Playbook a little too chick-flicky for me but a solid movie overall.
I Heart Huckabees is one of his first, it was apparently a difficult film to make but ended up being pretty decent. There are some youtube clips of the director going insanely mad screaming and cursing at Lily Tomlin - kinda funnier than the film itself.
The Fighter was great!
Thanks. I'll look for it. Going to stay with mother in-law for the holidays, I'll need a lot of ideas to fill the time. :-)
I’ve seen three dramatizations of the Manhattan project.
1. Oppenheimer (TV Miniseries done by the BBC) with Sam Watterson as Oppenheimer. I thought it caught Oppenheimer’s personality well, a combination of overbearing arrogance & naivety! David Suchet was an effective Teller. I liked Milton Johns portrayal of George Kistiakowsky. He had some of the best lines and memorable scenes. I did not care for the portrayal of Groves; it portrayed him as kind of a dumbass. He was anything but that!
2. Fat Man and Little Boy - Liked Paul Newman’s as Groves. I think he caught his personality well. All the other characters were much weaker, maybe Newman just dominated the scenes. It had the “Tickling the Dragon’s tail Incident” (a composite) well dramatized. Dwight Schultz as Oppenheimer was ok, played him as a much weaker individual personality-wise.
3. Day One (Made for TV movie) It was ok. It had Tony Shalhoub (TV’s Monk!) as Teller. That’s about the best I can say.
This new one Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer, I’ll have a hard time getting tommy Shelby out of my head. I’ll expect technical & managerial problems to be solved by a well-placed bullet or beating.
Thanks for the information! Here’s a possible opening scene for a movie:
Sakharov speaking of the past: “Russian atomic scientists had a copy of the Los Alamos “Black Book”, the top secret atomic design handbook.”
Oppenheimer words as text on the screen: “I don’t know if we can be trusted with such a weapon.”
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