Oppenheimer trailer: A tense Cillian Murphy builds the atomic bomb in Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus. Watch

Ever since Christopher Nolan announced the premise of his next film Oppenheimer, the anticipation surrounding it has been immense. Now, the official trailer of the film has been released by Universal Pictures. (Also read: Christopher Nolan says nuclear explosion in Oppenheimer was done without CGI)

“We imagine a future, and our imaginings horrify us,” says Cillian Murphy’s J Robert Oppenheimer, the nuclear physicist who is credited for inventing the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer was one of the primary forces for the Manhattan Project, a government research effort that was assembled for the creation of nuclear weapons around 1942-1946. He was also the director of Los Alamos Laboratory, where the bombs were created.

The two-minute trailer, that was released with Avatar: The Way of Water in theaters in the weekend, introduces Oppenheimer as a conflicted man whose flaws are ignored in order to focus on his brilliance. “Is anyone ever going to tell the truth about what’s happening here?” he ruminates, indicating that there might be a lot more going on behind the scenes that rarely meets the eye. “They won’t fear it until they understand it,” he says as the shots of the creation of the bomb being built are shown. “And they won’t understand it until they’ve used it.” The trailer continues with Cilian Murphy’s voiceover as a timer ticks down to build up a crescendo of sorts, with the catastrophic realities become more and more palpable with the countdown for the launch.

Headlined by Cilian Murphy, Oppenheimer boasts of a ensemble cast that includes Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Gary Oldman, Robert Downey Jr., Benny Safdie, Josh Hartnett, Dane DeHaan, Jack Quaid, Matthew Modine, Alden Ehrenreich, David Krumholtz, and Michael Angarano among others. Oppenheimer is based on the biographical novel American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006.

Christopher Nolan is not new to creating grand, visually stunning features- with Inception, Insterstellar and The Dark Knight films to his credit. If the trailer is any indication, Oppenheimer will be an epic display that will play to Nolan’s strengths. Oppenheimer premieres in theaters on July 21, 2023, clashing with Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.