Oppenheimer: Rotten Tomatoes Critics Are Stunned By Nolan's Apocalyptic Epic
The reviews are finally here — and director Christopher Nolan has done it again, according to critics.
Nolan's newest movie, "Oppenheimer," has been one of the most highly anticipated movies of 2023 ever since it was officially announced in 2021, and it looks like he's delivered on every promise about the scope and quality of this extremely ambitious project. Based on "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, which hit bookshelves in 2005, Nolan's movie casts his frequent collaborator Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb who came to deeply regret his involvement in its creation. The film also boasts an all-star cast that includes Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Matt Damon, Josh Hartnett, and far, far too many other all-stars to list here.
Reviews dropped on Rotten Tomatoes on July 19, two days before the movie's wide theatrical release, and Nolan fans can rest easy, as critics unanimously praised everything from the filmmaker's direction to the performances within the film. As Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph succinctly put it, "It's at once a speeding roller-coaster and a skin-tingling spiritual portrait; an often classically minded period piece that only Nolan could have made, and only now, after a quarter-century's run-up."
Critics are going wild over Oppenheimer
As soon as the critical embargo on "Oppenheimer" lifted, culture writers everywhere rushed to praise Nolan's latest effort. Matthew Jackson of The AV Club wrote, "It's Christopher Nolan's best film so far, a step up to a new level for one of our finest filmmakers, and a movie that burns itself into your brain." Over at The Atlantic, David Sims said, "It's more impressive for how the director has made such a personal narrative feel epic, not just in visual breadth but in dramatic sweep, presenting a story from the past that feels knotted to so many present anxieties about nuclear annihilation."
Mahnola Dargis wrote for The New York Times that "'Oppenheimer' is a great achievement in formal and conceptual terms, and fully absorbing, but Nolan's filmmaking is, crucially, in service to the history that it relates." At The Washington Post Ann Hornaday agreed, saying, "[Nolan] has brought to life not just J. Robert Oppenheimer, but the still-crucial arguments he both started and tried to end. 'Oppenheimer' boldly posits that those arguments are still worth having, in a film of magnitude, profundity and dazzling artistry."
David Fear at Rolling Stone praised Nolan explicitly, writing, "Any filmmaker can create a cinematic universe. (Many have. Too many, some might say.) Very few can show you how a genius perceives the building blocks of our universe, right before that same person imagines something that threatens our existence in it."
No, really — critics absolutely loved Oppenheimer
We're not kidding; critics loved "Oppenheimer," realizing that Nolan made a challenging, unsettling, and successful film focusing on humanity's ability to bring ruin to itself. Richard Roeper at the Chicago Sun-Times was unequivocal, saying, "Magnificent. Christopher Nolan's three-hour historical biopic 'Oppenheimer' is a gorgeously photographed, brilliantly acted, masterfully edited and thoroughly engrossing epic that instantly takes its place among the finest films of this decade." David Rooney at Hollywood Reporter agreed, writing, "This is a big, ballsy, serious-minded cinematic event of a type now virtually extinct from the studios. It fully embraces the contradictions of an intellectual giant who was also a deeply flawed man."
Others noted that the film isn't exactly an easy watch — which is to be expected, considering what it's about — but that the discomfort is, in its own way, the point. As Matt Zoller Seitz put it at RogerEbert.com, "As a physical experience, 'Oppenheimer' is something else entirely—it's hard to say exactly what, and that's what's so fascinating about it." Over at Vanity Fair, Richard Lawson agreed, writing, "'Oppenheimer' is a mainstream offering of uncommon resonance, sending the viewer out of the theater head-spun and itchy-eyed, ears ringing from all its sophisticated, voluble explosion. David Ehrlich at IndieWire also found the movie disturbing in all the right ways: "'Oppenheimer' offers an indelible portrait of the age when people began wielding power they couldn't necessarily control, and few movies have so disturbingly crystallized the horror of opening Pandora's box."
Some critics highlighted Cillian Murphy's performance in Oppenheimer
No matter how great of a director Christopher Nolan might be, he'd be nowhere without his powerhouse cast, and critics noticed — especially when it came to Cillian Murphy. The veteran actor has worked on a plethora of projects with Nolan, including "Batman Begins" and "Inception," and according to critics, he centers the film as Oppenheimer, a troubled genius whose most famous invention is also a horror.
Owen Gleiberman at Variety said, "Cillian Murphy, with a thousand-yard beam, the half-smile of an intellectual rake, and a way of keeping everything close to the vest, gives a phenomenal performance as Oppenheimer, making him fascinating and multi-layered," while Alison Willmore at Vulture remarked of the film, "Its scope comes from Murphy's haunted performance, and the way that the movie (with help from Ludwig Göransson's panic attack of a score) submerges you in the mindset of its protagonist as though it can create a psychic connection to the past."
Over at USA Today, Brian Truitt wrote, "Cillian Murphy turns in a haunting career-best performance as theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Robert Downey Jr. astounds in a way we haven't seen in quite some time." Bill Goodykoontz of Arizona Republic agreed, simply saying, "The acting is uniformly brilliant, with Murphy, Downey and Blunt simply astounding."
Some critics didn't totally love Oppenheimer, but they were largely overruled
Well, not every single critic loved the film — there are always a few outliers, and a couple of critics did give "Oppenheimer" a couple of marks in the "rotten" column. One was Mike Ryan at UPROXX, who said of Nolan's film, "Making a bomb that kills a lot of people and probably keeps one up at night. Yeah, I bet. I'm not sure the movie is saying much more than that and, at three hours long, even though the editing and narrative style keeps it moving, it gets to be redundant."
Kristy Puchko at Mashable agreed with Ryan, writing, "My patience wore thin as the director gave into one of his favorite indulgences: a bleeding soundscape." (Nolan's movies are famously headache-inducing with their sound design, and there was no likelihood that "Oppenheimer" would have been any different.) "Oppenheimer" clearly isn't for everybody, but most critics agree: Nolan's latest epic is yet another triumph from the acclaimed director.
"Oppenheimer" hits theaters on July 21, 2023.