Christopher Nolan Explains Why He Didn't Use CGI in Oppenheimer

Award-winning filmmaker Christopher Nolan has a new movie coming out this year -- his first since 2020's Tenet -- and with Oppenheimer, Nolan wanted to us CGI visual effects as sparingly as possible. That is obviously a rarity in the modern filmmaking landscape, where computer animation allows for visual effects that are cheaper, safer, and in some cases even more realistic than their practical counterparts. The film, a biopic of nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, reunites Nolan with Batman Begins villain Cillian Murphy, here playing the hero -- or at least the protagonist, given that there is some question as to whether Oppenheimer himself would consider his actions heroic. 

While there are some filmmakers who are obsessively pro-practical effects, Nolan doesn't quite fall into that category, having used a ton of CGI in Tenet, for example. As with The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan tends to use practical effects where possible, and in the case of Oppenheimer (which also integrates analog black-and-white photography in a few scenes), it was apparently an even bigger focus for the filmmaker.

"I mean, I've done a lot of explosions in a lot of films," Nolan told Empire in the latest issue of the magazine. "But there is something very unique and particular about being out in a desert in the middle of the night with a big cast, and really just doing some enormous explosions and capturing that. You couldn't help but come back to this moment when they were doing this on the ultimate scale, that in the back of their minds they knew there was this possibility that they would set fire to the atmosphere. It was pretty amazing to engage in that kind of tension."  

Oppenheimer, Nolan's first movie under a new deal he signed with Universal, was the subject of a pretty active bidding war that included traditional studios and streamers, including Warner Bros., Netflix, and others. It's widely understood that Nolan, who aggressively lobbied to get audiences back in theaters in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, left his longtime home at Warner Bros. because he was unhappy with the company's decision to send movies to HBO Max on the same day as their theatrical release in 2021.

Here's the film's synopsis:

Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer is an IMAX-shot 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.

The film stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer and Emily Blunt as his wife, biologist and botanist Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer. Oscar® winner Matt Damon portrays General Leslie Groves Jr., director of the Manhattan Project, and Robert Downey, Jr. plays Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.

Academy Award® nominee Florence Pugh plays psychiatrist Jean Tatlock, Benny Safdie plays theoretical physicist Edward Teller, Michael Angarano plays Robert Serber and Josh Hartnett plays pioneering American nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence. Oppenheimer also stars Oscar winner Rami Malek and reunites Nolan with eight-time Oscar® nominated actor, writer and filmmaker Kenneth Branagh. The cast also includes Dane DeHaan (Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets), Dylan Arnold (Halloween franchise), David Krumholtz (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs), Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story) and Matthew Modine (The Dark Knight Rises).

The film is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin. The film is produced by Emma Thomas, Atlas Entertainment's Charles Roven and Christopher Nolan.

Oppenheimer is filmed in a combination of IMAX® 65mm and 65mm large-format film photography including, for the first time ever, sections in IMAX® black and white analogue photography.

Oppenheimer will be in theaters on July 21.