Christopher Nolan on ‘Oppenheimer’ Visuals

Chris Nolan is undoubtedly a master when it comes to on screen visuals, whether its gravity deifying dream like states that twist the fabric of reality in Inception or in what turned out to be an incredibly accurate portrayal of a black hole in Interstellar.

In Oppenheimer however Nolan has shot a recreation of the Trinity test of Oppenheimer’s bomb out in the New Mexico desert without using any CGI. In an interview with Empire, Nolan said.

“I mean, I’ve done a lot of explosions in a lot of films, 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.”

Chris Nolan On Getting Inside Oppenheimer’s Head

Nolan’s film follows the theoretical physicist’s role in the Manhattan Project. Between 1942 and 1946, during the Second World War, to produce the first nuclear weapons.

With fears that scientists working for Adolf Hitler are working on a nuclear weapon of their own. A team of scientists and military officials are determined to beat Germany to it.

Nolan talks about out his need to give audiences a look inside the mind of Oppenheimer and how to portray his genius on screen, telling Empire.

“There’s the idea of how we get in somebody’s head and see how they were visualising this radical reinvention of physics, one of the things that cinema has struggled with historically is the representation of intelligence or genius. It very often fails to engage people.”

You can read the full interview with Empire.

Oppenheimer is out July 21 watch the trailer below.