Oppenheimer | Visual Effects

Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer is an IMAX®-shot epic thriller that thrusts audiences into the pulse-pounding paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it.

The film stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer and Emily Blunt as his wife, biologist and botanist Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer. Oscar® winner Matt Damon portrays 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.

Academy Award® nominee Florence Pugh plays psychiatrist Jean Tatlock, Benny Safdie plays theoretical physicist Edward Teller, Michael Angarano plays Robert Serber and Josh Hartnett plays pioneering American nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence.

Oppenheimer also stars Oscar® winner Rami Malek and reunites Nolan with eight-time Oscar® nominated actor, writer and filmmaker Kenneth Branagh.

The cast includes Dane DeHaan (Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets), Dylan Arnold (Halloween franchise), David Krumholtz (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs), Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story) and Matthew Modine (The Dark Knight Rises).

The film is 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 film is produced by Emma Thomas, Atlas Entertainment’s Charles Roven and Christopher Nolan.

Oppenheimer is filmed in a combination of IMAX® 65mm and 65mm large-format film photography including, for the first time ever, sections in IMAX® black and white analogue photography.

Nolan’s films, including Tenet, Dunkirk, Interstellar, Inception and The Dark Knight trilogy, have earned more than $5 billion at the global box office and have been awarded 11 Oscars and 36 nominations, including two Best Picture nominations.

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#Oppenheimer

[diegoperleche]

It is a shame that the injustice of the Oscars is not Oppenheimer in terms of visual effects, although they did not do it with green screen or computer effects, the practical effects are essentially masterful and in each shot you can see the beauty of the effects.

[karanvirkooner]

the special effects of Oppenheimer are off the charts great

[grogu]

hope the OSCAR committee realises what a mistake they have done by not nominating it for best Visual Effects

[DethronerX]

Bringing the art and fun of practical effects and VFX to the cinema, thank you, Christopher Nolan

[fledits]

They should add a “best practical effects” category at the Oscar’s!

[amiiae]

This movie was a masterpiece. The cinematography and practical and visual effects were amazing, shame on the oscar comittees for not nominating it. The storyline was amazing too, the beginning of the movie and the ending could never have been better than that. The actors were also well chosen and their performance in this movie was just breath-taking. This movie has further inspired me to have a job in the film industry, as well as the other movies of Chris. Thank you so much for this masterpiece!

[su_y]

Oppenheimer should have been placed in the Best Visual Effects category

[rossrparker]

I really enjoyed Oppenheimer but damn, the Trinity test explosion needed to be more grand. It was essentially a gasoline explosion in slow-mo. It felt small and it didn't convey the size and power of these types of explosions. Definitely jarred me out of the movie for a moment.

[christianmcbrearty]

I did agree with the explosion being underwhelming. I do like that it is a real explosion, but the size of it in the movie was NOTHING compared to an actual nuclear detonation.

In a real nuclear explosion it's not so much firey at first, it's a blinding flash of white and then a huge mushroom cloud that goes hundreds of feet up into the sky. You can see nuclear explosions from space. The one shown in the film was spewing out in all directions, which is more in-line with something like a gas explosion.

Also, because the camera was so zoomed in, the explosion lacked scale. It didn't look NEARLY as big as it should have.

I know because one of my old friends was the world's top three pyro-technicians, along with my personal research because explosions fascinate me.

Aside from the explosion though, Nolan aced it as usual with everything else.

[thejman]

I got this on Blu-Ray and when I saw this I was mind blown. Crazy to think those scenes were not cgi but filmed with an IMAX camera.

[shivamarya]

1:53 A Sony Pictures truck on a Universal set?? I guess it was a collective effort

[RISE]

the Imax theatre shook with the particles

[justinassalone]

Oppenheimer is nominated for the golden globes

[dimitristsekeris]

CGI cannot come close to the things Christopher Nolan achieves with practical effects.

[bjcooper]

Absolutely insane that this movie didn’t get nominated

[Light-Rock]

I thought the explosion looked tiny, like maybe a gas station, or a couple oil trucks blew up, either way it did not look like a 2, 000 feet fireball (just the fiery part, not the shockwaves). The flames and embers just looked too big, I was surprised they really used that footage, which would have looked fine if used in his subsequent panic attacks, but in that sequence, it didn't work for me. That gentle fireball with big chunks of flame and glowing debris did not match the blinding white light and knocking people on their feet who were far away. It looked like a regular movie explosion.

[amitrajit]

When you shit on VFX in every interview, it's difficult to justify getting a nomination .. Hopefully it gets a nom!

[swarnayanchakraborty]

Well…still the official line is ‘No VFX’. VFX studios should simply refuse to work on Nolan’s films until and unless they get the credit they deserve.

[JDH_MUSIC]

Special effects were amazing in this movie, however the nuclear explosion scene would have benefited from some cgi as well, strange as it may sound

[श्रीजनरिजाल]

There were reports Universal didn't credit 80% of the VFX artists who worked on this movie which is a real shame.

This trend of downplaying the VFX work is really tiring. Mad Max: Fury Road had 2000+ VFX shots, Top Gun Mavrick had 2400+ and the new Mission Impossible had 2500+. But you won't hear about it. It's not even that the audience hates VFX, they don't. But the real gems of visual effects like Avatar and Dune has become rare. The artists are overworked, underpaid and uncredited. Many VFX looks bad simply because the artists aren't given time to finish it, not because they're cheaping it out. It's not just Hollywood, the whole VFX industry is in a bad shape.