Director Christopher Nolan is not known for doing anything small. The Academy Award-winning director has long embraced a “bigger is better” mentality in his films, most recently evident with his latest, The Odyssey, which was shot entirely in IMAX. As The Odyssey continues to have a massive run in theaters, it is the perfect time to revisit Nolan’s Oscar-winning masterpiece, Oppenheimer, which is making its return to streaming on Peacock on August 16.
Oppenheimer was a critical and commercial darling, securing seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Cillian Murphy. Additionally, it earned around $975 million at the box office, making it the highest-grossing World War II film ever. Featuring an all-star cast that includes Murphy, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, and Florence Pugh, Oppenheimer tells the story of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, played by Murphy, as he manages the Manhattan Project, the United States mission to build an atomic bomb before the Nazis, and what happens after the bomb is eventually used to end the war.
‘Oppenheimer’ Is More Than a Biopic
On the surface, Oppenheimer sounds like the kind of biopic that you may have seen before, but Nolan quickly establishes that he is doing anything but making a conventional historical drama. In many ways, Oppenheimer is as much of a political thriller as it is a biopic. The film shifts perspectives, timelines, and emotions, intimately weaving them with the rise of government paranoia about Communism, Oppenheimer’s personal relationships, and his moral reckoning.
Oppenheimer is a movie that refuses to reduce J. Robert Oppenheimer to either hero or villain. At the film’s start, you can tell that he believes in his mission, that creating the nuclear bomb is a necessary evil that will end the most destructive war in human history. But after its use, he recognizes that his success will become his torment for the rest of his life. It’s this ambiguity around his motivations, and how the surrounding characters react, that helps elevate this above the normal historical biopic.
Streaming Makes ‘Oppenheimer’ Easier to Appreciate In One Key Way
Image via Universal Pictures
Nolan famously champions the movie theater experience, especially IMAX, and the film’s incredible scale almost demands to be seen on the largest screen possible. The test of the first nuclear bomb, done so without CGI, is one of the most visually impressive scenes of the past decade and is even better in the theater.
While the director’s films should always be seen on the big screen if possible, sometimes that isn’t an option. Thankfully, streaming Oppenheimer at home doesn’t change that experience one bit and also offers its own kind of reward.
One of the biggest criticisms of Nolan’s films is that his emphasis on sound often doesn’t apply to dialogue, causing narrative context to be lost. Given that Oppenheimer is a film that depends heavily on dense conversations about quantum mechanics, political maneuvering, and personal agendas, dialogue is more important than ever. Watching the movie at home allows the viewer to control the sound, use subtitles, and helps make certain scenes easier to follow and more complex information digestible. Oppenheimer is also a film that benefits from multiple viewings to help the audience fully understand all the necessary information. Although that might sound more like a chore than something enjoyable, the movie itself is so good that repeat watches are never an obstacle.
Oppenheimer succeeded for many reasons, notably the cinematography, narrative, and cast performances. However, the trust it placed in its audience to embrace the challenging moral and philosophical issues it presented helped make this a film you want to watch more than once. Its arrival on Peacock isn’t just another streaming release but it’s an opportunity to revisit Christopher Nolan’s near-perfect Oscar-winning masterpiece and discover why it’s every bit as riveting as you remember. Three years after release, Oppenheimer is proof that blockbuster filmmaking can be as thought-provoking as it is visually spectacular.
