Christopher Nolan will be back next year with Oppenheimer, a biopic that will see the director steer away from his typical genres, although judging from the film’s first full trailer, that doesn’t mean fans will miss out of the director's epic storytelling.
Oppenheimer was announced last yeast with Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy spearheading an absolutely stacked cast, as well as the added curiosity of it being Nolan’s first movie since he parted ways after he parted ways with Warner Bros. in 2020, due to the company’s streaming strategy. Since then, Oppenheimer has added the likes of Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, and Kenneth Brannagh for the type that already appears to have Oscars written all over it.
The new preview shared online by Universal Pictures on the film's official Twitter account (@OppenheimerFilm) swaps images of Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the chief scientist at Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, with others that seem to depict nuclear fission and the destructive effects of the atomic bomb. While the trailer mostly focuses on Murphy’s protagonist, other actors can be spotted in it, with The Boys’ Jack Quaid briefly showing up as the great Richard Feynman, tough undoubtedly the standout moment is the accompanying line “They won’t fear it until they understand it, and they won’t understand it until they’ve used it” that plays over the footage.
Nolan’s screenplay is based on American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a biography written by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin that chronicles the physicist’s life and his struggles to come to terms with being the father of the atomic bomb, a legacy he never rejected, despite his disagreements with how the weapon would end up being used the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even if Nolan’s reported use of practical effects to recreate the Manhattan Porject's infamous Trinity test has made headlines, it’s safe to say this looks like a different kind of Nolan film.
It’s not as if historical dramas are outside Nolan’s spectrum, as Dunkirk already offers a decent glimpse at the kind of themes the director could explore, but Oppenheimer is certainly no Tenet or Batman. This time around, Nolan won’t be joined by long-time working partner Hans Zimmer, instead teaming up with Black Panther and The Mandalorian composer Ludwig Göransson to nail the right score for a film whose sound appear quite immersive in the teaser, something might have experienced as the trailer was also screened at Avatar: The Way of Water screenings this weekend.
Oppenheimer is scheduled for release on July 21, 2023.
Source: Universal Pictures | YouTube