Oppenheimer Movie: Release Date, Major Cast, Meaning, Deaths, Trailer & Reviews

Every few years, Christopher Nolan emerges from the Mount Olympus of filmmakers with a brand-new masterpiece. His consistency is unmatched by any other filmmaker, living or dead. He is one of the most successful auteurs working in film today as a writer, director, and producer, and he creates blockbusters on par with classics by Spielberg or Kubrick in terms of scope.

His collection of work is a checkerboard of innovation and adaptation, including The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, and Memento. In contrast to the rest of his work, Nolan’s twelfth movie will be a biography on J. Robert Oppenheimer. Stay with us as we bring you what we know about Oppenheimer himself, the plot of the movie, the major cast, the premiere date, the trailer, and the reviews.

Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer chronicles the life story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a theoretical physicist who helped build the world’s first nuclear weapons. The film is based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer was actively involved in The Manhattan Project, a World War II research and development project. From 1942 until 1946, he was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, which was led by Major General Leslie Groves of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. In late 1965, Oppenheimer, a habitual smoker, was diagnosed with throat cancer. He went into a coma on February 15, 1967, and died three days later at his home in Princeton, New Jersey, at the age of 62.

Major Cast

Oppenheimer seems to have been cast with the biggest names in Hollywood. While Cillian Murphy plays the title character, Emily Blunt plays Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, who is his on-screen wife. American businessman Lewis Strauss is portrayed by Robert Downey Jr., Lieutenant General Leslie Groves is portrayed by Matt Damon, and American psychiatrist Jean Tatlock is portrayed by Florence Pugh.

Release Date

On Friday, July 21, Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie will both be released in theaters. Oppenheimer will be shown in Imax theaters in addition to regular movie theaters. At three hours in length, the movie is Christopher’s longest to date.

Plot

J. Robert Oppenheimer, at 22 years old, struggles with worry and homesickness in 1926 as he attends the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge to study under the strict Patrick Blackett. At the University of Göttingen in Germany, where Oppenheimer completes his PhD in physics, he meets Werner Heisenberg. He returns to the country with the intention of advancing quantum physics research.

He starts out by instructing at the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley. He meets Katherine Puening, a scientist and former communist, and subsequently Jean Tatlock, a member of the Communist Party of the United States with whom he has a sporadic romantic relationship until her suicide.

After assuring Groves that he has no communist affiliations, US Army General Leslie Groves hires Oppenheimer to command the Manhattan Project to produce an atomic bomb. Oppenheimer, who is Jewish, is particularly motivated by the prospect that the Nazis are working on a nuclear weapons program led by Heisenberg. Oppenheimer gathers a scientific team in Los Alamos, New Mexico, to secretly construct the bomb with the purpose of saving the world, despite the device’s possible worldwide consequences.

When Germany surrenders during World War II, some of the project’s scientists begin to question the project’s future usefulness; however, the bomb is built and the Trinity test is successfully conducted just before the Potsdam Conference. US President Harry S. Truman orders the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forcing Japan to surrender and establishing Oppenheimer as the “Father of the Atomic Bomb.”

Oppenheimer talks with Truman, haunted by the massive carnage and suffering inflicted by the bombs, to urge caution in building even more destructive weapons. Truman is appalled by Oppenheimer’s sorrow, which he interprets as weakness, and asserts that he alone bears responsibility for the bomb’s usage as president. Oppenheimer is still filled with guilt.

Oppenheimer is an outspoken opponent of future nuclear development, particularly the hydrogen bomb. During the Cold War with the Soviet Union, his stance becomes a source of conflict. Oppenheimer is deceived by Teller and other associates at a hearing intended to remove him from political influence, while Strauss leverages Oppenheimer’s relationships with current and former communists, such as Tatlock and Oppenheimer’s brother, Frank.

Oppenheimer’s security clearance is removed despite testimony from multiple allies, harming his public image and reducing his policy influence. As a gesture of political rehabilitation, President Lyndon B. Johnson bestows the Enrico Fermi Award to Oppenheimer in 1963.

Trailer

Below is the official trailer for the blockbuster biopic:

Reviews

Critics lauded Oppenheimer for its storyline, cast performances (especially Murphy and Downey Jr.), and aesthetics; it was generally cited as one of the finest films of 2023 up to that date, however some criticism was leveled at the writing of the female characters. Rotten Tomatoes reports that 94% of 338 critic reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.7/10.

Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, gave the picture an 89 out of 100, signifying “universal acclaim” based on 64 critics. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the picture a “A” on a scale of A+ to F, while PostTrak gave it a 93% overall positive review, with 74% indicating they would definitely recommend it.