Oppenheimer's 'Opening Look' Is Giving Audiences Chills

Though the cast of "Oppenheimer" walked out of the film's UK premiere yesterday and will no longer promote the film due to the newly announced SAG-AFTRA actor's strike, a new promotional video for the film is making the rounds from Universal Pictures, keeping the hype cycle alive. The so-called "opening look" is more accurately a long trailer that edits together clips from across the film, and movie fans are responding to it with overwhelming positivity, claiming it gave them chills.

The video shows off the scenes in which J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is questioned by Robert Downey Jr.'s Lewis Strauss. Since official transcripts of Oppenheimer's government hearings are in the public record, those will likely be among the most historically accurate scenes in the movie. The new video also bares glimpses of the drama that ensued at Oppenheimer's Los Alamos research facility, which was infiltrated by a foreign intelligence agent.

Fans are even more enthusiastic about the film after seeing the supercut trailer. As @micahjohansson7573 put it in the YouTube comments, "5 minutes gave me chills. I can't imagine what a 3 hour movie will do to my brain." Well, if the author of that comment wants to know what the full experience is like, they can refer to critics' first impressions of "Oppenheimer," which many are calling an astonishing accomplishment.

Whether or not you understood "Interstellar," Christopher Nolan has made a name for himself as one of the most interesting filmmakers currently working. With "Oppenheimer," he hopes to put audiences in the shoes of a man who, for better or worse, changed the world irrevocably by overseeing the invention of the atomic bomb. And many of his fans seem to think it could be his greatest work yet, a sentiment that the newly released opening look trailer for the film only confirmed.

Some viewers drew attention to the score, which was overseen by Ludwig Göransson, perhaps best known for his work scoring the hit Disney+ series "The Mandalorian." User @BravoSixGoingDark commented, "I'm calling this a potential masterpiece of the year. Ludwig Göransson is killing it with his background score!" 

Others seemed even more excited, with some claiming that "Oppenheimer" will be a standout, not only for the year but for cinema history writ large. "[It's] giving me the chills already," wrote @sarmisthabanik9848. "Can't wait ... this movie will [go down in] the history of classic cinema."

"Oppenheimer" has tough competition to beat at the box office. It opens concurrently with Greta Gerwig's much anticipated "Barbie." While the simultaneous release of two massive yet tonally opposite movies has given rise to the lighter, highly amusing "Barbenheimer" meme, it's clear there's already a huge audience excited to see "Oppenheimer" for all its chilling drama.