Expected on July 19, 2023 in our cinemas, “Oppenheimer” by Christopher Nolan will be one of the cinema events of the year. And as usual, the director did not skimp on the means to offer the most realistic show possible.
Tom Cruise, Christopher Nolan, same fight? In 2023, more than ever! The star of Top Gun and the director of Tenet will both be the big hosts of the summer at the cinema: the first on July 12 with the seventh Mission Impossible, the second a week later, with Oppenheimer.
On the one hand, the continuation of a saga of espionage which does not skimp on the spectacle. On the other, a biopic (the first by its author), devoted to J. Robert Oppenheimer, whose work led to the birth of the atomic bomb during the Second World War. But two feature films that will also have this concern for realism in common.
While Tom Cruise multiplies the craziest stunts, risking his life, Christopher Nolan maximizes real special effects. And that’s how he flipped a truck in the middle of the street and decapitated a mid-air plane in the last two Dark Knights. Or rushed a Boeing into a hangar for Tenet’s purposes.
So much so that many jokingly predicted that he was going to detonate an actual atomic bomb in Oppenheimer.
And it will be. Without knowing exactly how. While Total Film unveils the first photos of the film worn by Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt and Robert Downey Jr. (which we see at the top right of the first shot, in black and white), Christopher Nolan talks about the many technical challenges of Oppenheimer. Starting with this one.
“Recreate Trinity [nom de code du premier essai d’une arme nucléaire, réalisé le 16 juillet 1945 au Nouveau-Mexique, ndlr] without using infographics was a huge challenge”he says.
“andrew jackson – my visual effects supervisor, who I hired early on – researched ways we could achieve a lot of the film’s visuals in a practical way.”
“From representing dynamics and quantum physics to the Trinity test itself, to recreating, with my team, Los Alamos [lieu où a eu lieu l’essai, ndlr] on a mesa in New Mexico in wonderful weather (…) there were a lot of practical challenges.”
An ambition that we will also find in the image, during seemingly simpler sequences. Because Oppenheimer will be the first black and white feature film to benefit from IMAX technology.
As in Memento, the filmmaker will alternate scenes with and without colors depending on the point of view of the narration, and some of them represented a real challenge for Kodak.
For the sake of the movie: “The results were exciting and extraordinary. As soon asHoyte [van Hoytema, son chef opérateur depuis Interstellar, ndlr] and I saw the first tests, we knew we were in love with this format.” For the spectators, however, we will have to wait until July for love at first sight.