‘Oppenheimer’: New Trailer Revealed; Cillian Murphy Calls the Script “The Best I’ve Ever Read”
The countdown has begun for July 21, also known as Barbienheimer, the epic clash between Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer at the box office. With Fast X opening in theaters this week, Universal has decided to kick the marketing campaign for Nolan’s historical epic into high gear by releasing the latest trailer online.
But despite the message he may be sending by pivoting his movie against Warner Bros.’ second biggest movie of the summer, Nolan has another rivalry this year, as previewed during CinemaCon — with 10 more months to go, it’s looking like it’s going to be Christopher Nolan vs. Martin Scorsese for that Best Director Oscar. And having seen no more than a few frames from Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, the new trailer for Oppenheimer definitely teases a fight to remember. (Bradley Cooper’s Maestro could slip in as well.)
At CinemaCon, Nolan called J Robert Oppenheimer, the central figure of the movie, “the most important man that ever lived”, and it looks like he intends to prove that point with his film. He was, of course, the theoretical physicist in charge of the Manhattan Project and the man who designed the atomic bomb, a point of no return for mankind — see the new trailer below to know exactly why.
The scientist is played in the film by Cillian Murphy, who did an interview with Associated Press recently about the film. Murphy is already a classic of Nolan films, after being in his three Batman movies, Inception, and later Dunkirk. The two of them love working together, and Murphy has said before, both publicly and privately, that he would love to be in every movie from Nolan, no matter the size of the part. But of course, when he called to say he had written the lead role of Oppenheimer for him, he couldn’t have been more excited:
“He’s so understated and self-deprecating and, in his very English manner, just said, ‘Listen, I’ve written this script, it’s about Oppenheimer. I’d like you to be my Oppenheimer. It was a great day.
I have always said publicly and privately, to Chris, that if I’m available and you want me to be in a movie, I’m there. I don’t really care about the size of the part. But deep down, secretly, I was desperate to play a lead for him.”
The scale of the project is unprecedented for a movie centered around a scientist, and the stakes have literally never been higher for a historical epic. As teased by the trailer, nobody really knew what would happen when the bomb exploded, and there was a nonzero chance it could actually destroy the planet.
But there was also the possibility that it would end the war and bring back US troops. Moreover, the Americans weren’t the only ones who were playing around with nuclear fission as a way to create energy, so there was also a chance that the enemy would develop the bomb before them and use it against the Allies. But what would happen to the world once such a breakthrough was made? What would it be used for? Nolan had to put all of this, and so much more (including all the political machinations of the time) into a script, which Murphy called the best he’d ever read. And then, he had to put it all into a performance:
“You realize this is a huge responsibility. He was complicated and contradictory and so iconic. But you know you’re with one of the great directors of all time. I felt confident going into it with Chris. He’s had a profound impact on my life, creatively and professionally. He’s offered me very interesting roles over and I’ve found all of them really challenging. And I just love being on his sets.
Any actor would want to be on a Chris Nolan set, just to see how it works and to witness his command of the language of film and the mechanics of film and how he’s able to use that broad canvas within the mainstream studio system to make these very challenging human stories.”
With only a couple more months to go, Murphy is extremely proud of how the three-hour movie turned out, and he’s very excited for the world to see it:
“I’m really proud of the movie and I’m really proud of what Chris has achieved. This was, for sure, a special one, certainly because of the history with me and Chris. We were not walking around the set high fiving, but it did feel special. It’s an event every time he releases a film, and rightly so. Whether I’m in them or not, I always go to see his movies.”
Check out the latest trailer here:
A poster was also released late last week:
Oppenheimer opens on July 21. The film stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer and Emily Blunt as his wife, biologist and botanist Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves Jr., director of the Manhattan Project, Robert Downey, Jr. as Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Florence Pugh plays psychiatrist Jean Tatlock, Benny Safdie plays theoretical physicist Edward Teller, Michael Angarano plays Robert Serber, Tom Conti plays Albert Einstein, and Josh Hartnett plays pioneering American nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence. The movie also stars Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Dane DeHaan, Dylan Arnold, David Krumholtz, Alden Ehrenreich, and Matthew Modine.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
