'Oppenheimer': Everything We Learned At CinemaCon

Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Christopher Nolan’s twelfth feature film, Oppenheimer, is releasing this July, and it’s easily the film I’m most excited about for the remainder of the year. During Universal Pictures’ presentation at CinemaCon, Oppenheimer was the first film to be showcased, and for good reason. The film, which releases on July 21 (alongside Barbie), tells the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) and his role in the development of the Atomic Bomb.

Christopher Nolan directing Cillian Murphy on the set of Oppenheimer. Courtesy of Universal Pictures / IMAX.

To kick off the film’s segment of the panel, Christopher Nolan took to the stage, bringing with him new footage from the film. The footage shown at CinemaCon featured a scene of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) convening a meeting that included Oppenheimer, among others, and showed Strauss saying, “The Russians have a bomb. We’re supposed to be years ahead.” Another part of the footage shown to audiences featured Murphy’s Oppenheimer saying, “I don't know if we can be trusted with such a weapon. But I know the Nazis can’t be.” The sequences shown today gave a better sense of the film’s narrative, which appears to be more grounded and scientific than Nolan’s previous works, which were primarily science-fiction. When discussing the film, Nolan said, “Like it or not, J. Robert Oppenheimer is the most important person who ever lived… He made the world we live in, for better or for worse. His story has to be seen to be believed.”

With many calling Oppenheimer Nolan’s magnum opus, are you excited for the film’s release this July? Oppenheimer arrives exclusively in theaters on July 21. The film stars Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Alden Ehrenreich, Gary Oldman, Josh Hartnett, David Dastmalchian, Gustaf Skarsgård, Jack Quaid, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Dane DeHaan, Alex Wolff, and Casey Affleck, among others.