Trivia / Oppenheimer

• Ability over Appearance: Some of the actors cast, most notably Kenneth Branagh as Niels Bohr and Casey Affleck as Boris Pash, don't look at all like their real-life counterparts but justify their casting with their performances.
• Absurdly Short Production Time: Most films of this scale require at least a year of pre-production and several months of principal production followed by another year of post-production. Christopher Nolan only took three months for prep (which included reconstructing Los Alamos as it looked during the Manhattan Project) and shot the whole thing in just 57 days.
• All-Star Cast: Probably one of the biggest and most notable cast of actors ever assembled up there with The Longest Day. According to Nolan, this was partially a practical concern: casting recognizable character actors in all the roles helped ensure that the audience could keep the dizzying array of characters straight, since Nolan was committed to not making any Composite Characters (save for Ehrenreich's Senate aide). Pretty much every character shown in the film was a real person with a documented contribution to the story. Take a deep breath: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, Emma Dumont, Benny Safdie, Josh Hartnett, Dane DeHaan, Jack Quaid, Tom Conti, Matthew Modine, Dylan Arnold, Olli Haaskivi, Alden Ehrenreich, David Krumholtz, Michael Angarano, Kenneth Branagh, David Dastmalchian, Jason Clarke, Louise Lombard, Scott Grimes, Christopher Denham, James D'Arcy, Casey Affleck, Gary Oldman, Devon Bostick, Matthias Schweighöfer, Gustaf Skarsgård, Josh Peck, Alex Wolff, Tony Goldwyn, Macon Blair, James Remar, Harry Groener, Gregory Jbara, and Olivia Thirlby.
• Awesome, Dear Boy:
  • Matt Damon enjoyed working with Christopher Nolan so much on Interstellar that he and his wife agreed that he could break his promise to take time off from acting if Nolan called.
  • Florence Pugh said that Christopher Nolan repeatedly stressed that Jean Tatlock was not a major role, but Pugh didn't mind, saying that she'd play "a coffee barista in the background" if it meant working with Nolan.
  • Christopher Nolan himself was very enthused to work with Robert Downey Jr. on this film, as he considered his portrayal of Tony Stark in the first Iron Man movie to be "one of the greatest casting decisions in the history of movies". Nolan further expressed excitement that he got to help Downey play against type by casting him as a real person rather than the movie star personas he's known for being. Downey, meanwhile, was ecstatic at receiving a call from Nolan, because, within the acting community, being tapped for a Nolan film is a coveted thing.
• Blooper: In the scene of the Los Alamos populace celebrating the bomb being used and waving American flags, the flags have 50 stars when there were only 48 states in 1945.
• Channel Hop: Christopher Nolan had a major falling out with Warner Bros. / WarnerMedia following the release of Tenet amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic, vehemently disagreeing with their hybrid HBO Max/theatrical release policy for 2021. As a result, he took Oppenheimer to Universal, where producers agreed to his conditions of an exclusively theatrical run (the massive theatrical success of Top Gun: Maverick has since convinced major studios to drop short theaters-to-streaming/VOD windows, at least for theatrically successful movies). Amusingly, Warner Bros. scheduled the release of Barbie on the same weekend as Oppenheimer, in an allegedly vindictive ploy to strike back at Nolan for his decision to go to Universal. The unexpected result of that petty maneuver, however, was the "Barbenheimer" invokedcultural phenomenon, which worked out very well for both films, with Barbie becoming the biggest box office success ever for Warner Bros. and Oppenheimer taking the "highest grossing biopic ever" crown from Bohemian Rhapsody.
• Colbert Bump: Rami Malek's small role as David L. Hill in the film was so impactful that the real-life figure received a Wikipedia article just three days after the film's theatrical release.
• Creator's Favorite: Robert Downey Jr. proclaimed that Oppenheimer was "the best film he's ever been in" at the film's UK premiere.
• Creator's Oddball:
  • This is the first time Christopher Nolan has directed a biopic.
  • It's also the first Nolan film since Insomnia not to have Michael Caine at all in the cast in any capacity. He couldn't travel out of the UK due to his advanced age and being busy with The Great Escaper.
• Dawson Casting: 46-year old Cillian Murphy portrays J. Robert Oppenheimer from his early 20s to his late 50s.
• Doing It for the Art:
  • Pretty much the entire cast, which included A-listers and respected veterans, signed on just to work with Nolan despite some like Oldman only appearing for one scene and taking hefty salary cuts.
  • Black and white IMAX film didn't exist before production. So the production team invented it.
• Dueling Works: With Asteroid City, both being mid-century-set All-Star Cast films set in the American Southwest and have nuclear testing as plot elements, as well as make use of both colour and black and white segments for its storytelling, opening within a month of each other.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Cillian Murphy, already quite slim, had to lose a significant amount of weight to better approximate the real Oppenheimer's appearance. He also trained in horse riding to look more comfortable in the saddle while galloping.
• Fake American: As one would expect from Nolan, there's a few:
  • The Irish Cillian Murphy as the German-American Robert Oppenheimer.
  • The English Gary Oldman as President Harry S. Truman.
  • The English Florence Pugh as the American Jean Tatlock.
  • The Australian Jason Clarke as the American federal judge Roger Robb.
  • The English Jefferson Hall as the American (of Norwegian and French parents) Haakon Maurice Chevalier
• Fake Nationality: There's several:
  • The Scottish actor of Italian and Irish descent Tom Conti plays the German-born Albert Einstein.
  • The American Benny Safdie plays the Hungarian (later naturalized American) Edward Teller.
  • The Northern Irish Kenneth Branagh plays Danish scientist Niels Bohr.
  • Swede Gustaf Skarsgård plays the German-American Hans Bethe.
  • Christopher Denham is an American playing the German Soviet spy Klaus Fuchs.
  • The English Emily Blunt plays the German-American Kitty Oppenheimer.
• Inspiration for the Work: Nolan first heard Oppenheimer's name in, of all things, a lyric from Sting's 1985 song "Russians." In an astonishing coincidence, a different lyric from the same song inspired the character of young John Connor from Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Then he chose the biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin to base the film on.
• Invisible Advertising: There's a lack of marketing in Japan regarding the movie which led to some uncertainty about whether or not the movie will be released in the country given that it's a biopic about the scientist who made the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While it's common that Japanese releases of Hollywood movies are released late, Toho-Towa, who is responsible for the distribution of the movie in the country, has yet to release a statement about its release date. In December 2023, it was reported that Oppenheimer would eventually be released in Japan in 2024 given that the movie is considered to be a front-runner during the awards season. The movie's release would be handled by Bitters End.
• Late Export for You: Rather understandably, the studio dragged its feet in releasing the movie to Japan, given that they were the ones subject to Oppenheimer's invention and are understandably sensitive about the topic of nuclear weapons. It would eventually be released in March 2024, to powerful but mixed feelings.
• Lying Creator: In several interviews, Nolan described the two parallel story-lines as being objective for Strauss and subjective for Oppenheimer, he said nothing that the former will entertain with a lie perpetrated by its main character while the latter, given that the hearings have been declassified, is most likely the truth of the events given with some possibly minor artistic license.
• Meme Acknowledgment:
  • Both Cillian Murphy and Christopher Nolan are amused by "Barbenheimer", but also very much happy that the Friendly Fandoms with Greta Gerwig's Barbie had basically brought back the double feature.
  • Nolan also admitted to catching wind of memes about how he practically detonated a nuclear bomb on-set in lieu of CGI. He's flattered by the perception of his dedication to the craft, but confessed to also being scared that this was the lengths to which his reputation has reached.
• Method Acting: Christopher Nolan insisted on immersion while shooting this film. He required the cast to rehearse in full costume^note even discouraging actors from snacking while running lines so they'd focus on the script and that they be properly dressed before coming on set. Any actor caught wearing modern clothing would be given a long, hard stare until they changed. This was done out of the belief that it could keep the cast ready to shoot at a moment's notice and prevent delays.^note Nolan is known for his intense pace so that he gets as much footage as possible within a normal working day rather than needing to go into overtime and tiring his cast and crew.
• Playing Against Type: Robert Downey Jr. is typically associated with playing flawed but heroic Loveable Rogues who provide a lot of comic relief. In this film, he plays a rare antagonistic role in the form of Lewis Strauss, a vindictive and petty man who tries to destroy the titular character's career and reputation while pretending to be a supportive work colleague and whose scenes are always played seriously.
• Production Posse:
  • Cillian Murphy, Gary Oldman, David Dastmalchian, Matthew Modine, Tom Conti, Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Kenneth Branagh and James D'Arcy have all appeared in previous films directed by Nolan. The first five are veterans of The Dark Knight Trilogy.
  • Ludwig Göransson composes the score once again after Tenet. Editor Jennifer Lame also reunites with Nolan after Tenet.
  • The film's cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema, worked with Nolan on Interstellar, Dunkirk and Tenet.
  • Emily Blunt reunites with her former costars Cillian Murphy and Matt Damon, having worked with the former in A Quiet Place Part II and the latter in The Adjustment Bureau.
  • Olivia Thirlby reunites with both Snow Angels co-star Michael Angarano and The Wackness co-star Josh Peck.
• Reality Subtext: Some critics have interpreted Oppenheimer as Christopher Nolan grappling with his own legacy. As the director of the wildly successful Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, he played a huge role in the rise of the superhero blockbuster, whose box office dominance throughout The New '10s has changed the movie industry in ways Nolan has openly expressed displeasure with. In 2008, The Dark Knight and Iron Man were considered Dueling Movies, and Nolan cast Iron Man's lead, Robert Downey Jr., as the antagonist in this film. While certainly lower-stakes than the creation of the atomic bomb, the parallels are there.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Cillian Murphy and Dylan Arnold are very believable as brothers Robert and Frank Oppenheimer.
• Throw It In!: During the scene with Secretary of War Henry Stimson, the line in which he takes Kyoto off the list of targets because he honeymooned there was not in the script. James Remar added it based on his own research, as this is a common legend about Stimson. However, it is not actually true.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Sam Mendes initially planned to direct a biopic of Robert Oppenheimer as his follow-up to Jarhead but it died during development.
  • Oliver Stone was offered the project at one point, but turned it down.
• Working Title: Gadget. "The gadget" was one of the nicknames for the first atomic bomb during its design stage.

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