#Unleashing Oppenheimer: Inside Christopher Nolan's Explosive Atomic-Age Thriller

[thatwritererinoriordan]

[denimbex1986]

'Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy recalls how he overcame one particularly challenging scene while filming Christopher Nolan's historical drama. Released this past summer to rave reviews and a strong performance at the box office, Nolan's latest film chronicles the life and career of American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who is widely known as the father of the atomic bomb. Murphy plays the titular character at various stages of the man's life, with the actor's performance garnering significant praise.

In Unleashing Oppenheimer: Inside Christopher Nolan's Explosive Atomic-Age Thriller by Jada Yuan (via Slash Film), Murphy recalls that he was especially nervous about filming one Oppenheimer scene in which he would be speaking Dutch.

"It's a small scene, but I remember talking to Chris in preproduction and saying, 'Chris, what do you want to do about this Dutch scene?' And he said, 'What are you going to do about this Dutch scene?' It's very much that he works at the top of his game, so he expects everyone else to do their work, to do their due diligence."

The solution, it turns out, was to turn to the movie's Dutch-speaking cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema, who translated part of Oppenheimer's lecture into Dutch and recorded himself saying the words aloud for Murphy. "I listened to it and repeated it for about three months every morning," Murphy recalled. "I can still say it. It's one of those things that I will never forget because I did it so many times."...'

[westeroswisdom]

Targaryenheimer? 😎🔥

This unexpected link between Westeros and World War II comes to us from the official making-of book, Unleashing Oppenheimer: Inside Christopher Nolan's Explosive Atomic-Age Thriller (now on sale from Insight Editions), written by Jada Yuan. For the scenes where J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) and General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) travel the country, recruiting scientists for the top-secret Manhattan Project, executive producer Thomas Hayslip worked out a deal with Skyway Rail, a New Mexico-based company co-founded by Martin. 

^^^ That should be Sky Railway – not Skyway Rail. But the link to the company is correct.

George R.R. Martin does live in New Mexico where his railroad is located. And Los Alamos, site of the Manhattan Project, is just 34 miles/55 km by road from Santa Fe where we find GRRM and the depot of his rail line. So there are solid connections.

The agreement allowed Nolan & Co. to temporarily commandeer a track and two train cars ("painted with murals of wolves and dragons," of course) that regularly run between the cities of Lamy and Santa Fe. "The producer also found two vintage Pullman cars in Santa Fe for the sequence — a dining car and another with a lounge area and a sleeper compartment," writes Yuan. "Both just needed a little work to make them period-correct. The production team would also add a flat car and another 'dragon car' to the mix to carry crew, equipment, and background actors. Nolan would shoot interiors for two cross-country sequences — Santa Fe to Boston, and Princeton to Santa Fe — aboard the Pullman cars, while a trip from Berkeley to D.C. would be shot in one of Martin’s 'dragon cars.' In order to film exteriors, Nolan would place a camera at the back of the Pullman cars facing forward toward the engine, thereby focusing only on the period correct part of the train. If any of the engine’s dragon murals were visible on camera, they’d be edited out in postproduction."

Dragons were the weapons of mass destruction of GoT and HotD. So a "dragon car" being used in Oppenheimer sounds right.

[denimbex1986]

'Christopher Nolan originally wanted to film parts of Oppenheimer at the real Trinity test location, and a new book reveals why he had to abandon these plans. Based on American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, Nolan's historical drama hit theaters this past July, earning rave reviews from audiences and critics alike. The filmmaker is now renowned for his desire to make his movies feel as real as possible, and this apparently included attempting to film Oppenheimer's Trinity test sequence at the site of the real atomic detonation in New Mexico.

According to Unleashing Oppenheimer: Inside Christopher Nolan's Explosive Atomic-Age Thriller by Jada Yuan (via Slash Film), which breaks down the Oppenheimer ending and all other elements of the film, real military weapons testing prevented Nolan from filming at the White Sands Proving Ground. As recalled by production designer Ruth De Jong, Nolan and members of the production took a trip to the site and got surprisingly far along in planning their shoot days there. Check out De Jong's recollection of events below:

"That was wild, being out at Trinity. Chris and I were taken directly to the place where the bomb was dropped. We walked in and picked up trinitite. I was like, 'How much radiation am I being exposed to?' Our guide was like, 'You get more radiation flying in an airplane back and forth to L.A. than you do standing here.'

"Chris was like, 'Hey, wouldn't it be great if we could just shoot here?' And then when we actually started to figure out the schedule, we realized that we couldn't shoot there because they were dropping bombs during the time we needed to prep and shoot."

Why Oppenheimer's Trinity Sequence Was So Effective

Early marketing for Oppenheimer teased the historical drama as being somewhat non-traditional, with trailers hyping the film's intensity with an almost horror-movie-like sense of dread. While parts of Nolan's film certainly do adhere to the more traditional biographical drama structure and presentation, the Trinity test sequence in the film proves that the trailers were right to tease the movie as a thriller-esque experience.

In a horror movie, the anticipation and build-up of the scare is just as important as the scare itself. Even though audiences know that the Trinity test, the first ever detonation of a nuclear weapon, didn't result in the annihilation of all life on Earth, the figures involved feared that this was a real possibility. This fear of potentially destroying the world, which is memorably laid out through dialogue by Matt Damon's General Leslie Groves in the film, is further compounded by anxiety and excitement regarding how the introduction of this kind of power could alter human history.

After a tense build up with some effective Nolan cross-cutting, Oppenheimer's nuclear blast is rendered on screen, and it's brought to life without the use of CGI. The layering of practical elements using VFX gives the explosion a truly terrifying, visceral quality. Of course, while the Trinity test itself is one of Oppenheimer's most memorable sequences, the victory speech scene after the bomb is actually used on Japan serves as the perfect conclusion to this section of the film, with Cillian Murphy's lead character grappling with the guilt of his creation.'