Was Oppenheimer actually filmed without visual effects, as Christopher Nolan implied? The film’s VFX supervisor sets the record straight.
Released in theaters on July 19, Oppenheimer was the film phenomenon of the summer with Barbie. Christopher Nolan’s film has already grossed $854 million worldwide, a feat for a 3-hour biopic around the father of the atomic bomb.
Prior to the film’s release, the director of The Dark Knight and Inception said at Collider that the feature film did not contain any digital effects, in particular for the key scene of the film: the explosion of the first atomic bomb. It was enough to ignite the media and the public, who deduced that Nolan had done without visual effects.
At the microphone of The Hollywood ReporterOppenheimer visual effects supervisor Andrew Jackson sets the record straight. “Some people understood that there were no visual effects, which is obviously wrong”rectifies Jackson, winner of an Oscar in 2021 for Tenet.
Some people have understood that there are no visual effects, which is obviously wrong.
“Visual effects can encompass a lot of things. This includes computer-generated imagery and practical special effects created on set”, explains the specialist. In total, the film contains around 200 visual effects shots, including the practical effects shots.
As a reminder, Oppenheimer takes us to 1942. Convinced that Nazi Germany is developing a nuclear weapon, the United States initiates, in the greatest secrecy, the “Manhattan Project” intended to develop the first atomic bomb Of the history.
To pilot this device, the government hired J. Robert Oppenheimer, a brilliant physicist, who would soon be nicknamed “the father of the atomic bomb”.
It is in the ultra-secret Los Alamos laboratory, in the heart of the New Mexico desert, that the scientist and his team developed a revolutionary weapon whose dizzying consequences continue to weigh on today’s world.
In France, the feature film attracted 4.1 million viewers.