Featured Image Credit: Image Press Agency / Alamy Stock Photo / CBW / Alamy Stock Photo
Topics: Film and TV, Christopher Nolan, Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr, Matt Damon, Celebrity
Anish Vij
Topics: Film and TV, Christopher Nolan, Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr, Matt Damon, Celebrity
Christopher Nolan has ditched CGI by opting to recreate the first nuclear weapon detonation for his upcoming movie.
Oppenheimer will be the director's first ever biographical drama and Peaky Blinders' Cillian Murphy will star as infamous scientist J Robert Oppenheimer.
Check out the epic teaser below:
Advert
The film will take a look at the theoretical physicist's role in devising the atomic bomb during WWII.
Nolan, 52, is known for his rather physical approach to filmmaking and wants the movie to be of 'immense scope and scale'.
In an interview with Games Radar's Total Film, he said: "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, I got him on board early on – 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," he added.
"There were big, logistical challenges, big practical challenges.
"But I had an extraordinary crew, and they really stepped up.
"It will be a while before we’re finished. But certainly as I watch the results come in, and as I’m putting the film together, I’m thrilled with what my team has been able to achieve."
The star-studded cast will also include Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon and Emily Blunt.
"We’re trying to tell the story of somebody’s life, and their journey through personal history and larger-scale history," Nolan continued.
"And so the subjectivity of the story is everything to me. We want to view these events through Oppenheimer’s eyes.
"And that was the challenge for Cillian that I set him, to take us on this journey; that was the challenge for Hoyte van Hoytema, my designer, my whole team: how do we view this extraordinary story through the eyes of the person who was at the heart of it?
"All of our decisions on how to make this film were based on that real premise."
The synopsis for Oppenheimer reads: "J. Robert Oppenheimer is one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war, and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress."
Oppenheimer opens in cinemas on July 21, 2023.