For someone who makes incredibly expensive movies, Christopher Nolan almost always goes out of his way to ensure that he only relies on CGI when absolutely necessary, with next summer’s Oppenheimer set to take things to ridiculously new heights.
Having opened up about the real-life dramatic thriller at long last, the filmmaker revealed that he’s only gone ahead and recreated the world’s first nuclear explosion without the use of any digital trickery, and the response was one of mild confusion mixed with bemusement. Clearly, buying a real plane and crashing it through a hangar in Tenet wasn’t enough.
In spite of its early status as would-be front-runner at the 2024 Academy Awards, there are no guarantees Oppenheimer will even be able to top the box office during its first weekend in theaters, seeing as it comprises one half of the battle for the ages that pits it against Greta Gerwig’s star-studded Barbie.
It’s a race we never expected to happen, but also one that remains way too hard to call, although the news of Nolan effectively nuking his own production has left the Barbie fandom suitably unimpressed.
We wonder if Nolan is paying any attention to the buzz surrounding Barbie, or whether or not respective studios Universal and Warner Bros. will blink and move either one of the hotly-anticipated projects on the release calendar. We didn’t expect a black-and-white historical epic hailing from one of the most successful directors of the modern era to be cowering in fear of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling’s neon-clad duo, but that’s what makes the duel so enticing.