Director Christopher Nolan has consistently expressed his disinterest in utilizing CGI for the sake of showcasing a large budget or creating extravagant spectacles. Instead, he prefers to rely on practical camera work whenever possible. He aims to maintain a sense of realism in his films. Only when necessary does he incorporate effects to ensure a seamless integration.
However, in the case of “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan undertook a significant challenge. The recreation of an atomic bomb test. During a conversation with Collider Editor-in-Chief Steve Weintraub, Nolan revealed that his latest film not only prioritizes practicality but also eschews any CGI shots, totaling “zero” in number.
Considering what Oppenheimer is aiming to do, that may seem quite the stretch to pull off. The film adapts the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin to tell the story of American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer – played in the film by the excellent Cillian Murphy . Oppenheimer is widely known as the father of the atomic bomb. Naturally, that means there will be scenes that showcase the devastation of an atomic blast. Especially when recreating the tests scientists performed in the desert to see the effects of their handiwork.
The Practical Effects
Already, we knew that at least some of the work was going to be practical. Nolan previously detailed how the Oppenheimer team recreated the Trinity test. It is the first-ever test explosion of the nuclear bomb in the desert of New Mexico in 1945, entirely without CGI. That alone seemed like a monumental feat considering the logistical planning required to match the brilliance of the explosion described by the onlookers at the time of the real-life blast, but Nolan pulled it off. It should be no shock considering the mountains this team has moved to make the film work, including creating a whole new technology to film the black-and-white sequences in IMAX.