Oppenheimer: Christopher Nolan’s latest epic blasts off at CinemaCon with new details and footage

Universal Pictures is taking over the main stage at CinemaCon this evening, bringing the latest details, footage, and hype for upcoming releases from the hallmark studio. During the Oppenheimer portion of the presentation, filmmaker Christopher Nolan took the stage to thunderous applause. While speaking about Oppenheimer, he said, “Picture the finest minds in the country in a desperate race with the Nazis to harness the power of the atom.”

Nolan adds, “Like it or not, J. Robert Oppenheimer is the most important person who ever lived. He made the world we live in for better or for worse. His story has to be seen to be believed.”

The entire film is shot in IMAX, with some portions filmed in black and white. Nolan also revealed a full Oppenheimer trailer would premiere within two weeks in front of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.

Universal and Focus screened the trailer for members of the CinemaCon audience. JoBlo’s Chris Bumbray is attending. He says the promo sets up the movie’s scope, with the notion that they were in a race against the Nazis but lost sight of the fact that the Russians were developing a bomb too. This oversight gets Oppenheimer into trouble with Robert Downey Jr.’s congressional investigator. The footage at Los Alamos is in color, while the footage in Washington is in black and white. With an aggressive sound mix, the score by Ludwig Göransson is fantastic! Oppenheimer is a historical biopic, but it will be as intense and aggressive as anything Nolan has ever done. Be that as it may, people will again say the dialogue is occasionally hard to decipher. Chris was okay with it, but others may feel differently.

The actual plot that the film will follow has technically yet to be released, but audiences know that the movie will center around the life and events of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy). Specifically, the film will focus on Oppenheimer’s involvement with the Manhattan Project, the moral difficulties he faced with undertaking such a task, and the actions that he took after that to ensure that his creation would not tear the world apart. The movie is “an IMAX-shot epic thriller that thrusts the audience into the pulse-pounding paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world to save it.”

For those unaware, the Manhattan Project was the name for creating the first atomic bombs during World War II. Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos laboratory director and the lead theoretical physicist on the project, becoming the world’s most well-known scientist after the bomb’s detonation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In modern history, Oppenheimer is commonly called ‘the father of the atomic bomb.’

Despite the Manhattan Project and Oppenheimer being two of the most well-known names in American scientific history, the movie will be based on the book American Prometheus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Oppenheimer’s life, written by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.

Christopher Nolan directs Oppenheimer from a script he wrote with Kai Bird and Marin Sherwin. Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Alden Ehrenreich, Gary Oldman, Josh Hartnett, David Dastmalchian, Jack Quaid, Dane DeHaan, Olivia Thirlby, Alex Wolff, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, and Gustaf Skarsgård lead the cast.

Oppenheimer drops in theaters on July 21, 2023.