The highly anticipatedOppenheimermoviehas made waves in the press as news broke of a historical nuclear explosion being recreated on set. That sentence alone sounds like a fever dream, and comically enough,Christopher Nolanfans on Twitter joked about the scenario back when the movie was in its early days of production. Of course, no one actually thought that Nolan’s disdain for CGI would actually lead to him actually setting off a bomb— and yet it did.
This commitment to practical effects has become a distinct aspect of Nolan’s modus operandi, and will certainly be a large part of his legacy in film history. The acclaimed director hasused practical effectsin a number of projects, includingThe Dark Knight Rises,Inception,TenetandInterstellar. All of these projects went on to be very successful at the box office as well as creating notable moments in pop culture, each one exemplifying the director’s unparalleled creative vision.
Career Summary and Notable Projects
Christopher Nolan’s directorial career launched in 1996 with the release of a short film calledLarceny, the first of many famously innovative and complex projects. His consummate work has developed a firmly respected reputation for the director, who’s worked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Nolan’s 2000 breakthrough film,Memento, effectively put him in the big leagues, opening the doors for theseries of big budget projectshe has consistently pushed out throughout the 2000s and 2010s. Christopher Nolan has been nominated for various Academy Awards, Golden Globes, and British Academy Film Awards.
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History of Practical Effects
Much of the acclaim that Nolan has earned has been a result of his use of practical effects. While many sets make use of this method when it comes to small stunts and set manipulation, Nolan has remained loyal to practical effects even as his projects have become increasingly complex. One of his most famous and recent stunts was the destruction of a 747 airplane for the movieTenet, in which Robert Pattinson and John David Washington’s characters crash a plane as a diversion for an airport break-in. The cost of creating small models for the crash and subsequent fire, or alternatively, creating CGI renderings of the entire sequence, turned out to be more expensive than just buying an old and out-of-use plane to crash. This was, of course, a high-stakes undertaking. If the shot didn’t come out right, it’s not practical or economically feasible to just buy another plane. Fortunately, Nolan’s supervision and craft in tandem with the expertise of his effects team pulled off the unbelievable feat, with the crash being completed and captured in one clean take.
This was far from Nolan’s first venture in going to extreme measures for an authentic shot. InInterstellar(2014), Nolan scripted a scene in which a car is seen plowing through a massive cornfield, leaving a flattened trail behind. Rather than creating miniatures, or using a small practical set with the surrounding field digitally constructed, Nolan planted 500 acres of corn. It can never be said of Christopher Nolan that the man isneedlesslywasteful, so he went on to sell the corn and use the profits towards the film’s budget.
Four years earlier, Nolan created an intricate live sequence for one of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s scenes in Inception. This scene in particular deserved recognition as one of the best live action sequences of all time. The scene is marvelous no matter how it was filmed, but the mind-bending visuals being completely real, is a masterclass in filmmaking. In an effort that required the expertise of artists and engineers, Nolan had a hallway set constructed in a centrifuge. In this way, they were able to manipulate the set and flip the entire space on its head as the actors performed their fight. The production got its flowers, withInceptionwinning the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. Now, Nolan continues his tradition of elaborate practical effects with his upcoming film,Oppenheimer.
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Oppenheimer 2023
Oppenheimerwill be based on the true story of physicist J Robert Oppenheimer as he works for the infamous Manhattan Project and the creation of the atomic bomb. The film is set to star Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer along with Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, and Emily Blunt as Katherine Oppenheimer. The film will be a biographical historical drama based on the bookAmerican Prometheus, though we do not yet know how accurate to the history and source material the film will be. One thing that will be extremely accurate is the explosion set off by The Trinity Test, the first and experimental detention of a nuclear bomb. Nolan explained the incredible undertaking:
“Andrew Jackson — my visual effects supervisor, I got him on board early on — was looking at how we could do a lot of thevisual elements of the film practically, from representing quantum dynamics and quantum physics to the Trinity test itself, to recreating, with my team, Los Alamos up on a mesa in New Mexico in extraordinary weather, a lot of which was needed for the film, in terms of the very harsh conditions out there — there were huge practical challenges.” Not much else is known about the scene, so as far as we know, the explosion may not have actually been nuclear, but rather a safer simulation. From Nolan’s description, however, it sounds as if it truly was. The film is set to release on June 25, 2025.
