Christopher Nolan doesn’t let runtimes define his movies, choosing what’s best for each story. No wonder he’s gone from helming Interstellar at 2 hours 47 minutes to Dunkirk at 1 hours 46 minutes. But 3 hour movies are all the rage these days and given the intense subject matter of his upcoming film, it’s only obvious that Nolan leverages audience’s newfound thirst for longer movies.
In an interview with Total Film, Nolan revealed that Oppenheimer is shaping up to be his longest film yet and is touching the 3 hour mark.
It’s slightly longer than the longest we’ve done. It’s kissing three hours.
Part of it could be chalked out to the film’s complicated subject. Nolan describes Oppenheimer as one of the most complex, challenging, paradoxical characters he’s ever depicted on screen.
[I’m] drawn to interesting protagonists – protagonists who have ambiguity to them. I think of any character I’ve dealt with, Oppenheimer is by far the most ambiguous and paradoxical. Which, given that I’ve made three Batman films, is saying a lot.
This is an interesting revelation on multiple fronts. One, we’re talking about a biopic, which should provide ample time to tell Oppenheimer’s story in its entirety. This is enlightening to hear, given the dense and comprehensive book that it’s based on: Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize winning American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. We’ve seen superhero, fantasy and action movies touching the 3 hour mark so it’s nice to see a biopic enter the hall of fame for a change. Besides, this should also quell some fan doubts on how faithfully the movie will adapt the book; while many details are bound to fall by the wayside, chances are high for the book’s core to be kept intact.
Second, more on a technical front, it will be interesting to see how (or if) Nolan and team face the IMAX platter problem. Due to the large platter size of IMAX reels, movies shot and presented in IMAX were capped to a maximum running time of 2 hours 30 minutes, which could have been why The Dark Knight runs that long (it’s close). It was James Cameron who requested IMAX to support a longer running time for his 2 hour 46 minute cut of Avatar, leading them to rework the platter system to support an extra 15 to 20 minutes. Interstellar clocking in at 2 hours 47 minutes almost broke the IMAX system back in 2014. So it’ll be interesting to see if traditional IMAX can support a 3 hour running time at all. My guess is, that shouldn’t be a problem in 2023, seeing as the 3+ hour Avatar: The Way of Water already screened smoothly, and in high frame rate at that, but we’ll see.
Oppenheimer is set for release on July 21, 2023. Directed by Christoper Nolan for Universal Pictures, it features a star-studded cast that includes Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Jack Quaid, Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, Gary Oldman, Kenneth Branagh, Alden Ehrenreich, Dane DeHaan, and David Dastmalchian.
