'Oppenheimer' gets R-rating — and Christopher Nolan has a ...
We’re seven weeks away from the release of “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s epic about the man who led America’s effort to create the first atomic bomb. That act was, regardless of any moral implications, an incredible technical feat, and Nolan’s film will prove to do likewise.
The movie is not just shot on film, but entirely on large format film—a combination of Panavision 65mm and IMAX 65mm, and as the Associated Press reported, the feature is then projected in IMAX 70mm. (And, making its debut, black and white IMAX 65mm.) IMAX prints have weighed in, like a boxer, at 600 lbs. If one were to lay the picture out as one long strip, it would extend for 11 miles.
“The sharpness and the clarity and the depth of the image is unparalleled,” Nolan said to the AP of the preferred projection format. “The headline, for me, is by shooting on IMAX 70mm film, you’re really letting the screen disappear. You’re getting a feeling of 3D without the glasses. You’ve got a huge screen and you’re filling the peripheral vision of the audience. You’re immersing them in the world of the film.”
As the AP noted, only 25 theaters in North America are capable of showing “Oppenheimer” in the way it was meant to be seen by its director – including “the AMC Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles, the AMC Lincoln Square in New York, the Cinemark Dallas, the Regal King of Prussia near Philadelphia and the AutoNation IMAX in Fort Lauderdale.”
The movie runs “just shy” of three hours, the longest of Nolan’s career, and is rated R. “Memento” and “Insomnia” were both R, but other than that, he’s been a PG-13 man. (I’m not quite sure how “Dunkirk” with its scenes of mass, terrifying slaughter wasn’t R, but I don’t make the rules.)
The event-izing of the film’s release makes sense for Nolan, who jumped ship from his longtime studio Warner Bros. after they slipped his movie “Tenet” onto HBO Max back in 2020, a decision he did not appreciate. At CinemaCon this April, he referred to J. Robert Oppenheimer as “the most important man who ever lived.”
The movie, out July 21, stars Cillian Murphy in the titular role. Though the Irish actor has appeared in numerous Nolan projects, this is his first time as the lead. Also in the cast are Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Robert Downey Jr., Benny Safdie, and Jack Quaid. If you are anything like me, you’ve been schlepping around the Pulitzer-winning Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin book “American Prometheus,” upon which Nolan based its script. While it doesn’t quite weigh 600 lbs, the 800 page door-stopper is a bit of a hassle to carry around on the bus.
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