Been looking forward to seeing this for ages and I woke up this morning with the first thought on my mind being I’m seeing this film today, the same way I used to wake up at Christmas thinking today is Christmas, so I was really hoping not to be disappointed. In terms of spectacle, as expected, it definitely did not - the bomb testing scene and the speech scene with the crowd stamping their feet are absolutely insane, intense and engrossing. This is the first feature length film I’ve seen in IMAX and I’m glad because watching and feeling the explosion was one of the memorable things I’ve seen on a screen. 

I don’t think there’s a below 8/10 performance from any of the cast and I felt fully immersed in the world, the time and the tone of what was going on. The final act was definitely the weakest for me - the intensity was obviously going to drop post the explosion scene (and I’m glad it did) but I thought the final hour of run time would be more dedicated to posing moral dilemmas and important questions. When the topic is something so huge and impactful, I didn’t care so much about the intricacies of who maintained their political standing years later and why that was - I wanted more into Oppenheimer’s experience and my own thoughts to be provoked more. 

I really liked the development In Oppenheimer’s demeanour and manor over the film as you saw the impact it was all having on him. However, I still left feeling like I could have been shown more about him as a person and his momentary experience and feelings as time passed. This is just as true in the first two acts as the third - I thought Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt were also great but we should have seen more of them (and any resemblance of a relationship with his children). Maybe this is intentional to demonstrate the magnitude of what he was dealing with and how that outweighs any more grounded, personal human experiences that he may have experienced. But at the same time, one thing I liked was that, in dropping everything to go and see Jean after however many years, it demonstrates that despite the gravity of the implications of his actions, human nature will still dictate decisions and that personal human experience will always be vital to a person, no matter their importance on a wider scale. So, I would have liked to see more development of both relationships and how/why they fell in love, or in Kitty’s case, how they navigated such difficulties in their marriage. 

The other complaint I have was again the sound mixing. The sound design was unbelievable (I think I’m using these terms correctly), but there was multiple times throughout the film when I could not make out the dialogue and left a scene not knowing what had been said. I thought maybe this was my concentration dropping as I’d heard from others before that this was less of a problem than in previous Nolan movies but now others seems to have had the same experience as me. It’s just frustrating because it was draining enough keeping up with the different characters and the nature of the film without trying to almost lip read at times to make out important lines that were being spoken. 

I know myself that I generally prefer more grounded stories with well written characters and I’ll always prioritise that in my personal assessment and enjoyment of a film over action sequences and grand spectacles. Because of this I find myself with the same criticisms of almost every Nolan film because they nearly always prioritise spectacle (not that the two are mutually exclusive). Even with Inception, which is one of my favourite ever films, the characters leave so much to be desired for me, and whilst I think Oppenheimer is an improvement in this regard, it’s still not what it could be in my opinion and the nature of the film meant it would have been a disaster if there wasn’t more focus on developing tangible real characters in this. When reviewing Nolan films though I don’t want to take his technical mastery and ability to create jaw dropping scenes for granted - the visuals and the score are phenomenal again and I’d never turn down the opportunity to see his films in cinemas. I think this definitely ranks towards the top of my favourite Nolan films and may see an increase in score on rewatch.