Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is the frontrunner for winning Best Picture at the 2024 Academy Awards for a number of reasons. As Nolan’s 12th feature film, Oppenheimer has become the most critically acclaimed movie of his career, earning a staggering 13 Oscar nominations in many of the major categories, including Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, and Best Picture. Despite being personally nominated for 8 Oscars for his previous films such as Memento (2000), Inception (2010), and Dunkirk (2017), Christopher Nolan has yet to win an Academy Award in any category as of the time of writing.
Aside from earning its prestigious Rotten Tomatoes score of 93%, nearly tying Memento and The Dark Knight (2008) for his highest-rated movie of all time (94%), Oppenheimer was a summer 2023 box office blockbuster, earning nearly $1 billion worldwide. Nolan’s work has been celebrated for decades as being some of the most innovative and intellectually stimulating films ever created. His unparalleled ambition and masterful directorial abilities seem to have finally received the credit that they deserve from the Academy, now more than ever with the potential for Oppenheimer to sweep the 2024 Oscars in all of the major categories.
Related
All 10 Oscars 2024 Best Picture Nominees, Ranked Worst To Best
The 2024 Oscar nominations include one of the most genre-diverse Best Picture slates in recent memory, but some nominees are better than others.
8 Oppenheimer Is A Brilliant Reinvention Of The Biopic Genre
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer screenplay is revolutionary
Christopher Nolan is known best for his directorial accolades, but his exceptional skill as a screenwriter still somehow feels overshadowed by the visual magnitude of his own movies. Nolan wrote the adapted screenplay for Oppenheimer based on the biography “American Prometheus” written by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, adding unique stylistic elements such as breaking the movie into two intertwining parts, “Fision” and “Fusion”, to align with the nuclear themes of the film. Nolan also wrote the screenplay entirely in the first person, which is an incredibly rare deviation from the standard screenplay format that seemingly only he, and a few others, could pull off.
7 Oppenheimer Has The Most Oscar Nominations In 2024
Oppenheimer leads with 13 total nominations
The most glaring predictor of Oppenheimer’s Best Picture success is based on its volume of nominations. Nolan’s film has amassed a staggering 13 total nominations at the 2024 Academy Awards, a number only surpassed by three films with 14 nominations in the entire history of the Oscars. Those films were All About Eve (1950), La La Land (2016), and Titanic (1999). With 13 Oscar nominations, Oppenheimer joins the elite ranks of Gone with the Wind (1939), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Forrest Gump (1994), Chicago (2002), Mary Poppins (1964), The Lord of the Rings (2001), The Shape of Water (2017), and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).
6 Oppenheimer Is Christopher Nolan’s Most Deserving Best Picture Winner
Oppenheimer is arguably the greatest film of Nolan’s career
Christopher Nolan is famous for making larger-than-life movies such as Inception and Interstellar, but Oppenheimer combines some of the greatest aspects of his exceptional filmography and wraps them into one powerful and explosive final product. The magnitude and scope of Interstellar, the gritty realism of Dunkirk, the intensity of The Dark Knight, the sharp writing of Memento, the richly complex plot of Inception, and the nuanced characters of The Prestige, all feel directly incorporated into the creation of Oppenheimer. Nolan deserves Best Picture, and Best Director for that matter, for Oppenheimer but also implicitly for his remarkable filmography.
Related
Oppenheimer Cast & Character Guide: Every Actor In Chris Nolan’s Epic Historic Thriller
Christopher Nolan’s next movie Oppenheimer boasts an extensive and talented cast, including a few familiar faces from Nolan’s previous movies too.
5 Oppenheimer’s Performances Elevate The Story To New Heights
Many A-list actors make brief appearances in Oppenheimer
One of the joys of watching Oppenheimer for the first time was recognizing all of the incredible actors that were a part of the robust cast, including Oscar winner Casey Affleck’s short cameo in the 3-hour-long movie. Oppenheimer unquestionably has the greatest ensemble in any movie from 2023, with an excess of leading actors appearing in various supporting roles. Some of the actors include Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Kenneth Branagh, Rami Malek, Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke, Josh Hartnett, Dane DeHaan, Josh Peck, and Benny Safdie, which adds to the overall prestige of the film.
4 Oppenheimer’s Lack Of CGI Is A Marvelous Feat Of Cinematic History
Nolan claims that no CGI was used to make Oppenheimer
Outside of creating some of the most ambitious movies ever made, Nolan’s filmmaking approach is also groundbreaking in his ability to make Oppenheimer with zero CGI elements. As a devout supporter of the traditional filmmaking approach that shoots exclusively on film, Nolan is perhaps the only person on Earth who can make epics such as Oppenheimer shooting entirely on film and without visual enhancements. He is so trusted by the major studios, particularly Universal who distributed Oppenheimer, that they will forego the additional costs of production that come from shooting on film, granting him privileges that virtually no other filmmaker alive has.
3 Oppenheimer’s Sharp Editing & Pace Makes It Seem Shorter Than 3 Hours
Oppenheimer’s dialogue-heavy script still flies by
Another cinematic feat of Oppenheimer is its ability to seemingly make 30 minutes disappear while watching it. Any 3-hour film, especially in a theater, feels like a chore that requires some endurance to get through, but Oppenheimer feels much shorter than its runtime due to its masterful editing and efficient pace. Oppenheimer’s editor Jennifer Lame, who has also worked on the celebrated films Marriage Story (2019), Hereditary (2018), and Manchester by the Sea (2016), deserves the Best Editing Oscar for this reason. Similarly, Killers of the Flower Moon archives a similar feat with its 3-hour, 26-minute runtime.
Related
Oppenheimer Timeline – All Events In Chronological Order
Christopher Nolan’s movie Oppenheimer tells its story across multiple points in time in a non-linear fashion. Here is a chronological order of events.
2 Oppenheimer’s Original Score Is A Career Best For Ludwig Göransson
Oppenheimer’s score is one of the most memorable parts of the film
Ludwig Göransson is one of the greatest living composers working today and has already won an Oscar for his work on Black Panther (2018) as well as two Emmys for The Mandalorian. A longtime collaborator with Donald Glover’s musical persona Childish Gambino, Göransson has arguably created the best original score of his career thus far with his effort in Oppenheimer. Nolan’s film is made even better through Göransson’s iconic and powerful contribution that elevates every aspect of the film, which is made even more impressive considering the caliber of Nolan’s previous composer, Hans Zimmer.
1 Oppenheimer Won Best Picture At Golden Globes & Critics Choice Awards
Oppenheimer is a huge favorite to win Best Picture at the Oscars
Oppenheimer is on a hot streak coming off Best Picture wins at the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards, and is a heavy favorite for Best Picture at the Oscars. With the building momentum throughout the awards season, it would be quite shocking to see Oppenheimer lose steam heading into the 2024 Academy Awards in March. While Golden Globe winners do not always indicate the Best Picture Oscar winners, Nomadland went on to win Best Picture at all three awards ceremonies in 2020, as did 12 Years A Slave in 2013 and Argo in 2012. With so much going for Nolan’s Oppenheimer, it should provide the acclaimed director’s first Best Picture Oscars win.
Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer is a film by Christopher Nolan, which follows the theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man behind the atomic bomb. Cillian Murphy will play the titular role, with the story based on the book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.
- Release Date
- July 21, 2023
- Director
- Christopher Nolan
- Cast
- Cillian Murphy , Emily Blunt , Matt Damon , Robert Downey Jr. , Rami Malek , Florence Pugh
- Runtime
- 150 Minutes
- Writers
- Christopher Nolan
- Budget
- $100 Million
- Studio(s)
- Syncopy Inc. , Atlas Entertainment
- Distributor(s)
- Universal Pictures
