Oppenheimer (2023) Trinity Test Scene Features Real Explosions, Captured on Camera Without Using CGI

Christopher Nolan is known for going all realistic when it comes to things capturing things blowing up on camera. And his upcoming movie Oppenheimer, is quite literally about that. It is only natural to expect that Nolan has once again pulled off highly dangerous stunts on a scale suited only for the big screen. In a recent interview, Nolan spoke about real explosions, replicating that of the world’s first nuclear bomb, that he created and shot, for Oppenheimer.

Explosions shown in Oppenheimer are once again, all real, with no CGI

Oppenheimer’s lead star Cillian Murphy, and director Christopher Nolan spoke to Empire magazine about their upcoming film Oppenheimer. They shared how the movie is an “essential cinematic experience”, not just in terms of the fact that it suited for nothing less than an IMAX, but also in terms of the story. Nolan says that “the ultimate stakes of any big blockbuster is the survival of the world. And that’s what this story is. I know of no story with higher stakes than Oppenheimer’s story.”

Speaking about going all literal with, as Cillian Murphy describes, blowing people’s “lids” off, Nolan elaborated on how they recreated the Trinity test of Oppenheimer’s bomb, with real explosions in the New Mexico desert. They have been captured in the movie without using any CGI.

“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.”

Needless to mentions, explosions in Nolan’s films have all been pretty iconic, more so because we know they were all real. Some of the most talked about include the hospital sequence featuring Heath Ledger’s Joker from Dark Knight, and more recently, the Boeing 747 blowing up in Tenet.

Oppenheimer hits theatres next month, on July 21, 2023.