“We’re in a race against the Nazis, and I know what it means if the Nazis have a bomb,” J. Robert Oppenheimer (Dunkirk’s Cillian Murphy) states in the latest trailer for Oppenheimer. The new footage from Christopher Nolan’s next epic highlights the lead-up to one of the most important developments in history, the creation of a nuclear bomb.
The tense three-minute trailer focuses on the early days of the Manhattan Project as Oppenheimer works with Leslie Groves (Air’s Matt Damon) to create the Los Alamos Laboratory, a secluded site in New Mexico that would serve as the test site for the atomic bomb. As the trailer progresses, the two men begin to contemplate the severity of their work and the devastating impact it could have on the world. As the synopsis reads, Oppenheimer is the tragic story of an “enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it.”
The star-studded cast is featured throughout the trailer. Besides Murphy and Damon, the ensemble features Emily Blunt (A Quiet Place) as Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, J. Robert’s wife; Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man) as Lewis Strauss, one of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s founding commissioner, and Florence Pugh (The Wonder) as a psychiatrist, Jean Tatlock. Benny Safdie (Uncut Gems), Michael Angarano (Minx), Josh Hartnett (Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre), Rami Malek (No Time to Die), and Kenneth Branagh (Death on the Nile) also star.
Nolan (Inception) writes and directs Oppenheimer, which is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Nolan, his wife, Emma Thomas (Tenet), and Charles Roven (Uncharted) will produce. Oppenheimer is distributed by Universal Pictures, which marks Nolan’s first film outside of Warner Bros. in over two decades.
Oppenheimer hits theaters on July 21.
