christopher nolan has shared some early reactions from oppenheimer and theyre pretty brutal the filmmaker opened up about how audiences have responded so far at special screenings of the upcoming moviesome people leave the movie absolutely devastated he explained to wired about the audiences so far they cant speak i mean theres an element of fear thats there in the history and there in the underpinnings but the love of the characters the love of the relationships is as strong as ive ever doneoppenheimer stars cillian murphy as titular nuclear physicist j robert oppenheimer and follows how he set up the manhattan project during world war two and subsequently created the atomic bombnolan added that he thinks the complexity of this story has contributed to the poignant reactions oppenheimers story is all impossible questions the director continued impossible ethical dilemmas paradox there are no easy answers in his story there are just difficult questions and thats what makes the story so compelling i think we were able to find a lot of things to be optimistic about in the film genuinely but theres this sort of overriding bigger question that hangs over it it felt essential that there be questions at the end that you leave rattling in peoples brains and prompting discussionnolan previously opened up to total film in our cover feature on the movie about how hes drawn to complex figures in his movies i think of any character ive dealt with oppenheimer is by far the most ambiguous and paradoxical he said which given that ive made three batman films is saying a lotyou can still buy our oppenheimer issue right here ahead of the movies release on july 21 2023 for more upcoming movies heres our roundup of all the 2023 movie release datesimage credit universalmelinda sue gordontotal film