Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is set to have one of the biggest casts and crew in
film history, with their seemingly being a new known name added to the list every few
weeks, even during filming.
I've mentioned most of these in community posts, but I wanted to do a video listing
every member, discussing some of the manin ones and their announced roles, so that we
can understand more about what kind of performances, characters and potential we could get come
the release of the auteur blockbuster filmmaker's highly anticipated project.
But before I get into explaining the full cast, if you
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But without further a do, lets dive into the full cast of Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer.
So Christopher Nolan's next big screen picture is a biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the
theoretical physicist who played an important role in developing the atomic bomb for the
Manhattan Project.
The film is an adaptation, based on the pulliter prize winning book, American Prometheus: The
Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and currently, Nolan is
filming with a massive cast and crew in what ought to be another groundbreaking film.
The book itself included a plethora of research into once-classified documents, many interviews
and reconstructed events in order to put together
the full story of Oppenheimer.
It includes a detailed insight into Oppenheimer’s life, his development process of the first
atomic bomb and eventually the government’s undertaking
to discredit him.
There's great description about his childhood and his early days, alongside a deeper exploration
of his possible links to the Communist party and the later security hearings.
So Nolan has a wealth of a material he can bring to the screen, and this time it's going
to be under a completely different studio.
That's because this is the first time that Nolan is not working with Warner Bros in over
a decade, after their controversial decision to simultaneously release their 2021 theatrical
films on HBO Max at the same time as they hit theatres.
And this time around he'll be teaming with Universal to bring this story of Oppenheimer
to the big screen.
Universal Pictures has described the film as an “epic thriller
that thrusts audiences into the pulse-pounding paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk
destroying the world in order to save it.”
But with most of the expanding cast and crew revealed, or
at least the main roles announced already, it's time to discuss them, their roles and
a few of the primary crew members in Nolan's latest epic.
Starting with the lead in Nolan's film, Cillian Murphy plays the integral role, depicting
the life and journey of J. Robert Oppenheimer himself.
He's of course reteaming with Nolan after staring in the Dark Knight Trilogy as Scarecrow,
Inception as Robert Fischer and Dunkirk as the shivering soldier, and even outside of
Nolan’s films, he led the hit TV series Peaky
Blinders, starred in A Quiet Place Part II and much more over the years.
But this time he get's to take center stage in a big theatrical film as the father of
the atomic bomb, depicting his life as an American theoretical physicist
and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley.
We've already seen early scenes at the university filmed and other
sequences that show a good degree of aging going on, suggesting much of his life being
captured onscreen.
Oppenheimer was of course the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and his
development of the atomic bomb lead to him reciting the words of Bhagavad Gita, "Now
I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
So Cillian will have a chance to display all the
emotions that man felt while racing against time to develop the bomb and then also all
the grief he felt after it was used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
All the themes of time and grief that a great Nolan picture tends to include.
We'll likely see both perspectives though, that of developing a bomb to end the war but
then also the regret of creating a weapon that could
be the destroyer of worlds.
Cillian's Oppenheimer will be the centre focus of those ideals and I can't wait to see his
performance and the level of insight he brings to this famous
figure.
And Cillian is going to be starring heavily alongside an actress that he worked with before
in A Quiet Place Part II, and in Oppenheimer, she'll be depicting his wife.
Emily Blunt will be playing Katherine Oppenheimer, and the
two of them were married in 1940, until Oppenheimer’s death in 1967.
After playing iconic roles in both Edge Of Tomorrow and Sicario, Blunt will
be bringing truth to the performance of Katherine, who had quite the up and down life that you
could imagine, in reflection of what Robert also suffered with post-war.
With the end of the war in 1945, Oppenheimer had become known,
and Katherine had become an alcoholic, also suffering a series of bone breaks from drunken
falls and car crashes.
Things did get worse but in the beginning, like Oppenehimer she was
working on the Los Alamos project and hoping it would be for a good cause.
The story of her life, the drama with her husband and what creating
that bomb could do to both of them, will surely be a huge talking point in the film, and Emily
Blunt is the perfect actress to bring a powerful performance alongside that of Cillian
Murphy.
Next up is Matt Damon, an actor that along with great roles more recently in Ford V.
Ferrari, Stillwater, The Last Duel and The Martian, he also starred in Christopher Nolan's
2014 science fiction epic Interstellar.
In Oppenheimer, he will will play Lieutenant General Leslie Groves Jr., the prime director
of the Manhattan Project.
We've already seen him on set in full costume as the general with Cillian and
other supporting roles, but it's clear from the character that Damon is playing, that
he will be another main role in Nolan's latest feature.
There were many individuals who were against Oppenheimer joining the research project and
some even felt he was a security risk, but Damon's Leslie Groves was one of the people
confident that the scientist would be a great leader
in the Los Alamos labratory.
He of course was right and some even said it was a real stroke of genius on his part
that he did believe in him.
So expect quite the important role from Damon, even if his character arc isn't as emotionally
investing as that of the Oppenheimers.
He will still be a huge part of why Oppenheimer was
able to conduct research in the first place and Matt Damon is the kind of actor to always
bring importance and stature to the roles he plays.
Then there's Florence Pugh, a first time actress in a Nolan movie, but she's made a big impact
in Hollywood over the last couple of years.
She starred in Midsummer, Greta Gerwig’s Little
Women and Yelena Belova in the MCU, and she’s lined up upcoming roles in Don’t Worry Darling
alongside Harry Styles, who starred in Nolan's 2017 World War 2 survival thriller Dunkirk,
and she will be seen in Denis Villeneuve's Dune Part 2.
She's clearly impressed Nolan in previous performances and in the biopic she will be
playing none other than Jean Tatlock.
Oppenheimer is of course married to Katherine, but he was also romantic with Pugh's Jean
during World War 2.
Oppenheimer had met her in the 30s and had an affair, but Nolan's film will
likely also depict her time as a member of the Communist Party, creating many security
concerns in the process.
It's going to be interesting to see how Nolan deals with the reports of an
affair going on while Oppenheimer was working on the Alamos project and also the trial that
took place over security reasons.
So she will be a quite controversial part of the story and
maybe even a componenet that tests the relationship between Robert and Kitty, and that of Oppenheimer's
relationship to her friends and the communist party.
Speaking of someone else who has starred in the MCU, Christopher Nolan has also brought
in Robert Downey Jr. to play the role of Lewis Strauss, who served as chairman of the U.S.
Atomic Energy Commission.
It's known that he frequently crossed paths with Oppenheimer and it led to him questioning
his relationship with the US, along with his security access being cancelled.
He will therefore be playing an opposing force to Oppenheimer as the story progresses and
after those early images of Downey and Cillian on set, expect much more of this come as we
build up to the release of the film.
It's gonna be nice to see the actor in a role outside of the MCU, because likes he's demonstrated
in the other work he's put to screen, he's a great actor
who can deliver under the direction of a good filmmaker.
And Nolan does tend to get the best out of his actors, so I predict the same will be
true with Downey.
He's going to have a much bigger role than you think and seeing him
in this kind of role will hopefully be a breath of fresh air.
Moving on to some of the more supporting names in Oppenheimer, that have been given names,
most of the these are going less prominenet but still apart of the story in a few scenes.
This includes Bennie Safdie As Edward Teller, a
theoretical physicist who worked with Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project, reversely
known as the “father of the hydrogen bomb.”
Then there's Dylan Arnold as Frank Oppenheimer,
the scientists younger brother who was also a physicist.
Michael Angarano is Robert Serber, a member of the Manhattan Project.
Emma Dumont As Jackie Oppenheimer, a UC Berkeley economics
student and Communist Party member who marries Frank Oppenheimer, despite the rallying against
his older brother.
Gustaf Skarsgård As Hans Bethe, with the Vikings star playing the head
of the Theoretical Division at the Los Alamos laboratory.
He helped in coming up with the mass of the weapons and developed the method used
for dropping the bomb on Nagasaki.
A role that will be bigger then is let on.
Danny Deferrari is starring as Enrico Fermi, another member of the Manhattan Project who
created the world’s first nuclear reactor and was nicknamed “the
architect of the nuclear age.”
Then shockingly comes Josh Peck As Kenneth Bainbridge, with the ex Drake & Josh star
playing the man who worked on cyclotron research and directed
the Manhattan Project’s Trinity nuclear test in 1945, which was the first detonation
of a nuclear weapon.
And the final of the revealed roles comes with Devon Bostick, who plays Set Neddermeyer,
the physicist from the Project who discovered the critical elementary particle and pushed
for an Implosion-type nuclear weapon.
So most of these roles are based on the real
people in the Manhatton Project, the team that were the all brought together to develop
and make the atomic bomb work.
So important characters, but like I said, less prominent the ones mentioned
before.
The cast members who haven't had their roles roles currently announced, but are starring
in the film include, Rami Malek, Josh Hartnett, Dane DeHaan, Jack Quaid, Matthew Modine, Olli
Haaskivi, Alden Ehrenreich, David Krumholtz, Kenneth Branagh, David Dastmalchian, Jason
Clarke, Louise Lombard, James D'Arcy, David Rysdahl, Guy Burnet, Harrison Gilbertson,
Matthias Schweighöfer, Alex Wolff, Gary Oldman, Trond
Fausa, Christopher Denham, Josh Zuckerman, Olivia Thirlby, Jack Cutmore-Scott and Casey
Affleck, who joined just a few days ago.
As you could tell by me reading off it's a hell of big
cast and it will be interesting to see who they all play.
But I'm sure that like the supporting roles I mentioned before, that they will play
one to two scene parts.
Still, each of them will likely have important moments in the story and not to mention that
more still might be added.
Who's to say that Michael Caine doesn't appear yet again in a Nolan film.
Yes he's retired from playing main roles, but he specifically clarified that this doesn't
mean supporting roles too.
So I wouldn't be surprised if Michael Caine doesnt make a cameo in some
way shape or form, maybe similar to what we saw in Tenet or like the radio lines he delivered
in Dunkirk.
Last but not least, there is the central production roles of Oppenheimer, and along with Christopher
Nolan writing, directing and producing his latest effort, Emma Thomas and Charles
Roven are also primary producers once again, alongside that of the other roles that are
very crucial in bringing this story to life.
One of those includes returning cinematographer Hoyte
van Hoytema, who is joining the filmmaker for a fourth time following Interstellar,
Dunkirk, and Tenet.
After working on Let the Right One In and Her, Hoytema has become a favoured
photographer with Nolan after that of Wally Pfister.
And the film will be shot on a combination of IMAX 65mm and 65mm large-format film for
the highest image quality that we've seen in
his previous work.
And not to mention that Nolan and Hoytema will be using select black and white IMAX
footage for the first time, opening the doors to some potential groundbreaking
filmmaking and stylistic choices that they commonly push.
Then there's also the return of Tenet's editor, Jennfer Lame, who previously worked on Hereditary,
Midsommar and Machester By The Sea, with Nolan praising her for overcoming
the diffuculty of the editing process on his previous film too.
She's the kind of editor that can deal with very complex and nuanced
filmmaking, so Oppenheimer will be another chance to show off her composure at bringing
a difficult project to life.
And finally is also the return of TENET's composer in Ludwig Goransson.
One of the standout elements of tenet was it's score, and even though me and many others
belove Nolan's relationship with Hans Zimmer, the composer is currently busy with bringing
the music of Dune to life, with it being one his
many dreams.
Nolan has recruited Oscar and Grammy winner Ludwig Göransson back for another project,
and while I love the director's partnership with Zimmer, and I'm sure we'll see that again,
I have complete faith in Ludwig because the score for Tenet and all of his other work
has quite impressed me over the years.
I'm sure we'll get another pounding and yet more emotional
score from him this time around, and overall, the whole cast and crew of Oppenheimer has
so much potential.
There may be a lot of people involved, but Nolan is the kind of filmmaker
to really balance everything he's doing and I'm sure that most of the actors will be involved
for a few amount of scenes.
There will be a focus on Oppenheimer and the central characters
and that's really where the heart of this story is and where it should be.
But that was the full cast explained for Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer.
I will be keeping you up to date on everything surrounding his new movie alongside more updates
from Universal Pictures whenever they are made.
It's likely that in typical Nolan fashion we'll have a teaser trailer roughly a year
before the film releases, so expect to see the first look at how
all of this comes together this July or sometime in the summer.
But in regards to the full cast and crew, let me know down below what your thoughts
are towards them, along with what your overall excitement levels are towards Christopher
Nolan's Oppenheimer.
For more updates and content on the work of directors like Christopher Nolan, then subscribe
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