Christopher Nolan finally explains how he recreated a nuclear explosion in ‘Oppenheimer’ without CGI

When we first heard about Christopher Nolan claiming he did not use any CGI for recreating a nuclear bomb for Oppenheimer, many people were skeptical about what this truly meant. Was Nolan saying he created a literal nuke just for a Hollywood film? The answer, it turns out, is no. But what the filmmaker did put together to represent an atomic blast is fascinating nonetheless.

Though there is archival film footage of nuclear blasts that exist, Nolan understandably did not want to put that literal black-and-white celluloid into his movie in order for the entire experience to be optimally consistent. As he explained to IGN:

“[A]rchival footage is inherently distancing. We needed to be in the texture of the film with all of the imagery we created. So it was incumbent on us to be guided by, and not contradict, the documented reality, but to be expressive of it in our own way.”

Nolan went on to explain that rather than being based on solely the black and white footage, his team would recreate “what people said about it” in full color. In order to do this, a variety of techniques and shots were used to create the overall effect, with the end result in the film being a collage of many different images edited together. This included “sparking flashes and fiery flurries” and even ping-pong balls being “smashed together,” according to the article. The process led by visual effects wizards Scott Fisher and Andrew Jackson also included hurling paint against walls and creating novel luminous magnesium solutions to represent different aspects of the blast. As the article explained:

“By filming these events super-close up at variable frame rates they combined with Director of Photography Hoyte Van Hoytema’s sweeping IMAX cinematography to create in-camera effects that fill the screen with a power that such a monumental event demands.”

Literal flammables were also used such as “combining magnesium flares with gasoline, and black powder explosions,” Nolan said. The events filmed ranged in scale from impossibly small, almost microscopic, to “very large-scale explosive events” in the New Mexico desert, just like the real Manhattan Project scientists, he added.

Oppenheimer explodes into theaters on July 21.