Oppenheimer - 2023 Christopher Nolan & Cillian Murphy (birth of the Atom Bomb).

[ianh]

Hi All,

The first "official" Teaser Trailer for Chris Nolan's next film has just dropped (there's a whole bunch of fan-made ones on YT, this is the first genuine teaser) -

This story follows Murphy as Physicist J Robert Oppenheimer based on the Pulitzer winning Novel about his life but concentrates around the creation of the first Atom Bomb and it's aftermath as Oppenheimer attempted to "put the genie back in the bottle" as it were. It also stars Florence Pugh, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon and Rami Malek so far.

It's a Nolan film so I'll be watching it anyway but this one seems to be a heavy character study so I'm expecting a lot from the cast and, looking at who they've got so far, I'm very interested.

 

[ianh]

Wake up OP

I was genuinely still asleep til now

 

[ianh]

They had a trailer for this earlier...honestly it looks awful I do not expect many people to go see it the marketing is making it look like an indie movie with little actual action in it.

From my OP a year ago........

It's a Nolan film so I'll be watching it anyway but this one seems to be a heavy character study so I'm expecting a lot from the cast and, looking at who they've got so far, I'm very interested.

Outside of the Trinity test there's likely to be no "action", it'll mostly be character study stuff i.e. who he was, why he changed his mind on Nukes post war and the anger that created in the US against him, the pressure the US military put on scientists to create something when they had little idea of the final outcome i.e. would just one bomb ignite all the oxygen in the sky and kill the world (this was a genuine concern that the military ignored to get their bomb etc).

 

[ianh]

I enjoyed Tenet but it was hard going understanding the sequence of events, so I can see why Mr & Mrs General Public would also have had less fun watching it as they effectively took what would've felt like a MENSA test whilst watching it if they tried to unravel what's happening.

Dunkirk on the other hand complete sailed past me into obscurity, with nothing other than "WTF is Harry Styles doing here" remaining afterwards, and even terrific actors like Hardy and Branagh gave fairly "bland" performances to me. It's not that I didn't enjoy it, but it almost felt like a MaccyD's compared to Nolan's usual Wagyu Fillet Mignon offerings.

 

[ianh]

Ah nuts. Was planning on booking tickets to the new Imax to go watch this - but just seen it's certified as a 15.

I had a quick look at the BBFC classification of this film as a 15 seems overly harsh at first....................until I read why its 15

The reason definitely runs into spoiler territory (hence the inline spoiler) and I really struggle to understand why, from what I read is the main reason for a 15 certificate other than general swearing - a "nudity" scene with boob and bum viewable - needed to be included in such "graphic detail" that it jumped from a 12A (which would've been ideal) to a 15, limiting the potential audience.

Here's the BBFC reasons if anyone's interested but it's a bit spoilery - https://www.bbfc.co.uk/release/oppenheimer-q29sbgvjdglvbjpwwc0xmda2mjm0

 

[ianh]

Some more spoiler-free reviews -

Stuckmann - "Nolan has made a challenging adult drama"

Jahns - "Awesome-tacular"

Traditional media Reviews -

Independent - 4/5 - "The prioritisation of cleverness in Oppenheimer isn’t necessarily a criticism of Nolan – more a testament to who he is as an artist."

Oppenheimer is clever, imaginative and Christopher Nolan at his best – review

Cillian Murphy allows the light to dim from his eyes in every subsequent scene, but it is Robert Downey Jr who is titanic here

www.independent.co.uk

Telegraph - 5/5 - "It’s at once a speeding roller-coaster and a skin-tingling spiritual portrait; an often classically minded period piece that only Nolan could have made, and only now, after a quarter-century’s run-up."

Oppenheimer, review: Cillian Murphy dazzles as the destroyer of worlds

Christopher Nolan's portrait of the father of the nuclear bomb is a triumph, like witnessing history itself being split open

www.telegraph.co.uk

Guardian - 4/5 - "this movie, for all its audacity and ambition, never quite solves the problem of its own obtuseness: filling the drama at such length with the torment of genius-functionary Oppenheimer at the expense of showing the Japanese experience and the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

Oppenheimer review – Nolan’s atom bomb epic is flawed but extraordinary

Christopher Nolan’s account of the physicist who led the Manhattan Project captures the most agonising of success stories

www.theguardian.com

Empire - 5/5 - "A masterfully constructed character study from a great director operating on a whole new level. A film that you don’t merely watch, but must reckon with."

Oppenheimer

Cillian Murphy stars in Christopher Nolan's explosive thriller. Read Empire's review.

www.empireonline.com

NY Times - "A drama about genius, hubris and error, both individual and collective, it brilliantly charts the turbulent life of the American theoretical physicist"

‘Oppenheimer’ Review: A Man for Our Time

Christopher Nolan’s complex, vivid portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” is a brilliant achievement in formal and conceptual terms.

www.nytimes.com

Forbes - "Oppenheimer is Nolan’s weakest film to date, and a sharp contrast to his perfectly ambitious and complex vision in Dunkirk."

Critic’s Review: ‘Oppenheimer’ Is A Hot Mess

Christopher Nolan's latest film is his first stumble — will audiences agree? We'll find out this weekend.

www.forbes.com

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One things to note about "traditional" reviews, whilst all talked about Nolan's direction and choices, virtually none actually talked about the quality of film itself i.e. costume, set design, script, acting (apart from Cillian Murphy), effects/CGI, cinematography, score etc and all effective spent 90% of their reviews (and therefore my time reading them) waffling about the real Oppenheimer and his story - To me that is a fundamental failing of how a professional journalist (vs a youtuber etc) should "review" of a film when their review doesn't actually say "this bit is good because, this bit was bad because" etc and instead talks about everything other than the quality of the film.

For example, it took about 30 mins in total to try and pull the "1 line review" quotes above for each review, and in a professional review of a movie it really shouldn't be that hard to pick out "is this good or bad and why" from it, especially when the youtubers are talking about all these points and also picking out issues which people might want to know beforehand such as the low mumbling audio mix (a common Nolan complaint) etc. It's no wonder these people are getting far more traffic than the traditional media as they actually spend most of their time talking about the film they're reviewing, and do so in a way which is easily accessible and answers the most important question "should I see this" within a few minutes.

 

[ianh]

That seems a bit of a flawed method

As @n111ck said this is a totally flawed logic.

To be very blunt - no-one really cares what either of you think about the internal "flaws" in the logic of another person.

As they stated, it's their logic for them alone to judge whether they like a film. They didn't ask for people to critique them or their choices. By all means put forth your own views on how you enjoy media, but telling others "they way you enjoy it is wrong" is pretty poor to me.

 

[ianh]

No Way

Its almost like different people can have different opinions on something as individually subjective as Art

 

[ianh]

The best way I could think to describe it for people to judge is this - if you are the sort of person who loved the entire HBO Chernobyl series (accident, cover-up and court-room style investigation afterwards) and wanted to see something similar but concentrated heavily around a single main lead in a condensed time-frame of 3hrs then you'd probably like this almost docu-drama too. I also can see why people are saying that the "need" to see this in IMAX is overblown as I can't imagine any scene I saw in my normal Vue cinema being made so substantially different by IMAX that it would've changed my view on that scene.

Personally I absolutely loved it and it was an easy 8/10 for me. I would split the film into two sections, the build-up to Trinity and then the aftermath. I think most people would be interested by the "build-up to Trinity" section, but for me I was absolutely riveted by the other section which is what others are describing (accurately to them) as "Men talking in a room" aection, which might seem boring to others but to me each scene was one in a series of acting masterclasses, with every little facial tick, expression, eye contact between speakers, body language etc holding far more importance than what the words being said meant.

If all that kind of stuff blows past folks (no criticism here) then its completely understandable why they'd get bored in the second section just watching numerous scenes of people talking. However, one thing I found annoying, and its becoming a common criticism of Nolan's recent directional style, is that it felt like he's trying to add extra complexity into a story as his own cerebral exercise, at the expense of everyday Mr & Mrs General Public. I know it would have made for a less brain-twisting film, but if he'd just kept a linear timeline with just the occasional short flash-back then the film would've been far more palatable to the average cinema-goer and would probably have done even better at the box-office that it currently has and got better reviews.

Someone else mentioned the "Men in rooms " section was a bit like The West Wing (which I also adore) and whilst I can kind of see that point around the acting, a Sorkin script runs absolute rings anything Nolan has created, which is another one of the recent criticisms of his films - technically detailed Genius but lacking genuine human warmth/appeal in the writing (someone described it as how an advanced AI would write, able to technically describe emotions but having no real understanding of them).

I'll definitely be getting a hard copy once its for sale as it's been the best film I've seen this year, but I can also see the very valid criticisms people have had with it and I worry that Nolan is becoming like a pop band who make their music more and more complex with each album in a bid only to impress other musicians but at the cost of losing the the fans who still just like pop music.

 

[ianh]

I don’t agree with you , I think it’s very different to Chernobyl.

I didn't say it was like Chernobyl, I said people who liked Chernobyl will probably like Oppenheimer.

But what do any of those have to do with a biography about Oppenheimer?

I agree with you, I think your point is what a lot of people are missing with this film. It's a character study of one man, how things effected him, how he dealt with his inner demons etc rather than "How we built the bomb" documentary which seems to be what a lot of people thought this film was and are then complaining about when it wasn't.

Another example is people saying why wasn't Japan shown, which leads back into your point about this being an Oppenheimer film and I thought the film did a great job of showing his inner struggles afterwards (the crowd applauding him and cheering which in his mind he hears as the screams of the atomic victims etc).

Sadly the fact people still don't realise that this is a character study of one individual is a failing of the advertising/PR around the film and not of the people who watched a different film to the one they expected and I wonder if that is yet another reason for the more muted public reaction to this film.

 

[ianh]

It's made over $715 million so far which, off a $100m budget, is fantastic. I'd say that around $300m was needed to break even with marketing and cinema cut etc.

Oppenheimer (2023) - Financial Information

Financial analysis of Oppenheimer (2023) including budget, domestic and international box office gross, DVD and Blu-ray sales reports, total earnings and profitability.

www.the-numbers.com

 

[ianh]

It's probably unlikely to hit $1B but its still making over $10m a week in the US plus there international sales too. However, whilst it's at $777m worldwide right now and it should pass $850m eventually, I think it'll struggle to pass $925m but it's great that the success of this may open the doors to more cerebral films (or character studies) is exciting for me.