Christopher Nolan's OPPENHEIMER Lands an R Rating and the Director Teases Film's Showstopping Moment
Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated film Oppenheimer has officially been slapped with an R-rating. This will be the filmmaker’s first R-rated movie since his 2002 feature Insomnia.
It was also confirmed that this will be Nolan’s longest film yet at nearly 3 hours long. To put that into perspective, The Associated Press reports that the IMAX prints are “11 miles of film stock” that “weigh some 600 pounds.” The movie will also be available to view in Imax 70mm, 70mm, Imax digital, 35mm, Dolby Cinema, and more.
Nolan shared that “best possible experience” for viewing Oppenheimer is the Imax 70mm film format, but that format will only be made available in 25 theaters including venues such as 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.
Nolan said of the preferred format: “The sharpness and the clarity and the depth of the image is unparalleled. 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.”
Nolan went on to talk about the scenes shot for the Trinity Test, which was the first detonation of an Atomic Bomb. He said: “We knew that this had to be the showstopper. We’re able to do things with picture now that before we were really only able to do with sound in terms of an oversize impact for the audience — an almost physical sense of response to the film.”
Damn, I can’t wait to see what that looks like! When previously talking about the film, Nolan teased the massive scope of the film: "It's a story of immense scope and scale. And one of the most challenging projects I've ever taken on in terms of the scale of it, and in terms of encountering the breadth of Oppenheimer's story. There were big, logistical challenges, big practical challenges. But I had an extraordinary crew, and they really stepped up. It will be a while before we're finished. But certainly as I watch the results come in, and as I'm putting the film together, I'm thrilled with what my team has been able to achieve."
The film stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who ran the Manhattan Project that led to the creation of the atomic bomb during World War II. The film has been described as an “epic thriller that thrusts audiences into the pulse-pounding paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it.”
Murphy is joined in the film by Emily Blunt as biologist and botanist Kitty Oppenheimer; Robert Downey, Jr. as founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Lewis Strauss; Matt Damon as Manhattan Project director Leslie Groves Jr.; Florence Pugh as psychiatrist Jean Tatlock; Benny Safdie as theoretical physicist Edward Teller; and Josh Hartnett as pioneering American nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence. The movie also stars Rami Malek, Gary Oldman, Michael Angarano, Olivia Thirlby, Dane DeHaan, Jack Quaid, Matthew Modine, Alden Ehrenreich, Jason Clarke, David Krumholtz, Kenneth Branagh, and David Dastmalchian.
Oppenheimer will be released in theaters on July 21, 2023.
