Editor Jennifer Lame put together this five-minute video from Oppenheimer, written and directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Cillian Murphy. The video features new scenes from the R-rated thriller, which is going head-to-head in theaters against Barbie in a matchup referred to as “Barbenheimer.” Who will win? Moviegoers who love being emersed in big productions on the largest screeners possible.
Cillian Murphy reunites with director Nolan to star as J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb. Murphy previously worked with Nolan on 2005’s Batman Begins as Dr. Jonathan Crane / Scarecrow and put in a cameo in 2008’s The Dark Knight. In 2010’s Inception, Murphy played Robert Fischer, heir to the energy conglomerate Fischer Morrow. And in 2017’s Dunkirk, Murphy played a Royal Navy soldier. Oppenheimer marks his first starring role in a Nolan film.
“What I wanted to do was take the audience into the mind and the experience of a person who sat at the absolute center of the largest shift in history,” said Nolan, describing his interest in telling Oppenheimer’s story. “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. And his story must be seen to be believed.”
Emily Blunt stars as Robert’s wife, biologist and botanist Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer. Oscar winner Matt Damon is General Leslie Groves Jr., director of the Manhattan Project, and Robert Downey, Jr. plays Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
Oscar nominee Florence Pugh is psychiatrist Jean Tatlock and Benny Safdie is theoretical physicist Edward Teller. Michael Angarano plays Robert Serber, and Josh Hartnett plays pioneering American nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence. The cast also includes Oscar winner Rami Malek, eight-time Oscar-nominee Kenneth Branagh, Dane DeHaan, Dylan Arnold, David Krumholtz, Alden Ehrenreich, and Matthew Modine.
Oppenheimier is based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Nolan’s big-budget thriller marks the first time a feature film has included IMAX black and white analogue photography.
Universal Pictures’ Oppenheimer opens in theaters on July 21, 2023.
