The first reactions to Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer are here!

Oppenheimer, first reactions, Christopher Nolan

The arrival of a new Christopher Nolan movie is always an event and the upcoming Oppenheimer looks to be no exception. The world premiere of Oppenheimer took place in Paris, France earlier today and the first reactions to the movie have begun to emerge on Twitter. To make a long story short, the audience loved it, with critics tossing out every adjective in the book to describe Nolan’s latest epic.

You can check out a handful of the first reactions to Oppenheimer below.

Christopher Nolan’s #Oppenheimer is fantastic – big & bold w/ electrifying performances & an incredibly visceral pacing to it. It’s both quietly intimate & also a ferocious moviegoing experience at the same time. See it in IMAX 70mm & it’ll be among your favorite watches of 2023 pic.twitter.com/GAZWiPEgFW
— Erik Davis (@ErikDavis) July 11, 2023

I'm absolutely seeing this movie again in IMAX 70mm because it demands another viewing. ABSOLUTELY needs to be seen on a movie screen. pic.twitter.com/koVxYFF5m0
— Steven Weintraub (@colliderfrosty) July 11, 2023

#Oppenheimer is my film of the year.

Christopher Nolan makes 3 hours fly in stunning form. Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. are incredibly strong.

The story is chilling in the tragic sense of World War II’s lack of humanity and on intimate human levels.

Stunning and scary. pic.twitter.com/TkxJeGfd5E
— BD (@BrandonDavisBD) July 11, 2023

I think #Oppenheimer is Nolan’s JFK. And I LOVE LOVE LOVE JFK. Cillian Murphy mesmerizes in a star-studded moral quandary about Scientific Theory becoming deadly fact. The entire cast is outstanding, and while the history is DENSE, it’s Nolan’s most streamlined and accessible. pic.twitter.com/S8B2wAgzEb
— Sean O'Connell (@Sean_OConnell) July 11, 2023

#Oppenheimer left me stunned: a character study on the grandest scale, with a sublime central performance by Cillian Murphy. An epic historical drama but with a distinctly Nolan sensibility: the tension, structure, sense of scale, startling sound design, remarkable visuals. Wow
— Matt Maytum (@mattmaytum) July 11, 2023

The downside? The women are badly served – Emily Blunt only once gets out of her stressed mother role. But it’s straight into my Nolan top three, alongside Memento & The Prestige
— Jonathan Dean (@JonathanDean_) July 11, 2023

OPPENHEIMER is…incredible. The word that keeps coming to mind is "fearsome." A relentlessly paced, insanely detailed, intricate historical drama that builds and builds and builds until Nolan brings the hammer down in the most astonishing, shattering way.
— Bilge Ebiri (@BilgeEbiri) July 11, 2023

There’s no fat on #Oppenheimer at all. It’s a long one but the pace of the rich narrative is perfect. It’s hard to single people out but Downey Jr. and Ehrenreich are insanely good and pure alchemy together. The sound and production design, as well as the score, are impeccable. pic.twitter.com/KWPdxheRNW
— Simon Thompson (@ShowbizSimon) July 11, 2023

It’s hard to talk about something as dense as this in something as silly as a tweet or thread but Oppenheimer really is a serious, philosophical, adult drama that’s as tense and exciting as Dunkirk. And the big moment – THAT MOMENT – is awe inspiring.
— Lindsey Bahr (@ldbahr) July 11, 2023

OPPENHEIMER is one of if not Nolan’s best work. And that comes from a huge Nolan admirer. I’ve see it twice. Impeccable immersive filmmaking of the highest order. Cillian Murphy gets the role he deserves. In love with Downey’s work. This one demands your attention.
— Josh Horowitz (@joshuahorowitz) July 11, 2023

I was skeptical, but Oppenheimer has stuck with me since seeing it last week. Yes, it's 3 hours, but in a dense-Scorsese way and the last 20 minutes (why Emily Blunt clearly took the role) bring its three narrative threads to a moving conclusion. (1) pic.twitter.com/dEC4hLlYiF
— Gregory Ellwood – The Playlist 🎬 (@TheGregoryE) July 11, 2023

A sign that French audiences loved #Oppenheimer is that they stayed in front of the Grand Rex theater long after the film ended to debate about it!
— Elsa Keslassy (@ElsaKeslassy) July 11, 2023

#Oppenheimer is staggering in every sense of the word. Might sound nuts to say this about a Chris Nolan movie that isn't INCEPTION, DUNKIRK, or even TENET, but this could be his most formally daring work yet. Sharp script, impeccable sound design, and Cillian Murphy is a *force*
— Jeremy Mathai❄ (@Somthin_Tookish) July 11, 2023

These types of first reactions typically tend to be quite positive, but I find it hard to imagine that Christopher Nolan hasn’t knocked it out of the park yet again with Oppenheimer. I can’t wait to see the movie to find out for myself, but I just wish I lived anywhere near an IMAX cinema.

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin, the movie stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it. As one would expect with a Christopher Nolan movie, the cast is pretty packed. In addition to Murphy, the film also stars Emily Blunt as his wife, biologist and botanist Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves Jr., director of the Manhattan Project, and Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.

The rest of the cast includes Florence Pugh, Benny Safdie, Rami Maleck, Josh Hartnett, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Angarano, Dane DeHaan, David Krumholtz, Alden Ehrenreich, Matthew Modine, and many more. The film has also received an R-rating, making it Christopher Nolan’s first R-rated movie in over twenty years.

As the film was shot on IMAX stock, it will be screened in the biggest format across the nation, with the prints said to be 11 miles worth of film weighing in at nearly 600 pounds. The IMAX screenings will range from 70mm to IMAX Digital, 35mm, Dolby Cinema, and more. Oppenheimer will hit theaters on July 21st.