How Lengthy Is Oppenheimer In contrast To The Longest Films Ever

Christopher Nolan’s historic biopic Oppenheimer chronicled the lifetime of the person behind the bomb that reshaped the world. Starring Cillian Murphy because the eponymous physicist, Oppenheimer went into nice element about his origin and improvement of the idea that led to the atomic bomb earlier than delving into its creation.

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Within the course of, Nolan used a star-studded solid to convey the true people who have been integral to the creation of the bomb to life on display screen, together with a robust mixture of A-listers and up-and-comers. With so many stars getting display screen time, the runtime for Oppenheimer naturally provides up.

In fact, the lengthy runtime by no means felt that lengthy given how highly effective the performances and filmmaking have been. Oppenheimer turned Nolan’s most-nominated film with 13 Oscar nominations on the 96th Academy Awards, seven of which changed into wins. Nonetheless, its daunting size is curious, given how financially and critically profitable it was.

How Lengthy Is Oppenheimer’s Runtime?

Oppenheimer holds his hand to his face in Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer‘s official runtime checks in at 180 minutes, or three hours (and 9 seconds, if we’re splitting hairs) on the nostril. That places it on par with jam-packed epics like Avengers: Endgame or The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and what it lacks in sci-fi or fantasy motion it makes up for in highly effective dramatic storytelling.

Whereas its non-linear storytelling makes breaking the films into chunks decidedly tough, roughly the primary third of the runtime is devoted to Oppenheimer as a younger man, and the event of the idea behind the atom bomb. The rest covers the creation of Los Alamos, the bomb itself, and the fallout from its use for Oppenheimer personally.

The prolonged runtime is accentuated by the fractured narrative and Nolan’s visible model, as the first storyline surrounding Oppenheimer’s improvement and creation of the bomb is continually minimize with fragments from Oppenheimer’s post-war safety listening to, together with staggering visuals of chemical reactions that act as metaphors for the physicist’s thoughts along with depicting how an atom bomb explosion unfolds.

How Oppenheimer Compares To The Longest Films Ever

Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss in black and white in Oppenheimer

Whereas there are a litany of experimental movies which have runtimes measured by days, not hours, even limiting an investigation merely to mainstream theatrical movies proves that Oppenheimer‘s three-hour runtime isn’t overly spectacular. In reality, it wasn’t even the longest launch in 2023; Martin Scorsese’s historic epic Killers of the Flower Moon clocked in at three hours and 26 minutes.

Oppenheimer is available in effectively behind Ronald F. Maxwell’s two epic Civil Warfare dramas, that are considered two of the longest mainstream theatrical films. Maxwell’s Gettysburg (1993) got here in at 4 hours and 31 minutes, whereas its slogging prequel Gods and Generals (2003) measured a whopping 4 hours and 40 minutes.

Sergio Leone’s iconic epic crime drama As soon as Upon A Time In America (1984) additionally cracked the four-hour mark at 4 hours and 11 minutes, whereas the beleaguered director’s minimize Zack Snyder’s Justice League technically clocked in at 4 hours and two minutes.

Wanting farther again into antiquity, Oppenheimer falls effectively in need of Gone With The Wind (1939) at 3:58, Cleopatra (1963) at 3:53, Lawrence of Arabia (1962) at 3:47, and Cecil B. Demille’s well-known biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956) at 3:40. Oppenheimer was outlasted final yr as effectively by Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, which completed at three hours advert 35 minutes.

How Oppenheimer Compares To Different Christopher Nolan Films

Should you look completely at Nolan’s work versus the whole thing of cinema, Oppenheimer stands out fairly a bit extra. Whereas it might definitely change as soon as his upcoming legendary epic, The Odyssey, releases in 2026, Oppenheimer at the moment stands because the longest movie that Christopher Nolan has ever made, however not by a lot.

2013’s Interstellar flirts with the identical theoretical physics ideas on the coronary heart of Oppenheimer, and its runtime flirts with that of the 2023 Oscar-winner. Interstellar clocks in simply 11 minutes shy of Oppenheimer at two hours and 49 minutes. Like Oppenheimer, it by no means drags given its fascinating visible model and gripping, time-bending story.

Two of Nolan’s Batman blockbusters verify in after Interstellar, with The Darkish Knight Rises operating to 2 hours and 44 minutes, whereas one other Oscar winner for Nolan in The Darkish Knight is available in at two hours and 32 minutes. The primary film in Nolan’s trilogy, Batman Begins, is a bit shorter nonetheless at two hours and 20 minutes.

Whereas Nolan’s movies all are inclined to run on the longer aspect, he does have just a few which can be below two hours. His 2002 psychological thriller Insomnia fell simply in need of the two-hour mark at one hour and 58 minutes, whereas his different early mind-bending thriller Memento clocks in at one hour and 53 minutes.

Nolan’s shortest movie was, unsurprisingly, his first. His function directorial debut got here in 1998 with the neo-noir crime thriller Following. As a real ultra-low-budget indie film, Following unfolds in simply 69 minutes, largely because of its $6,000 price ticket. The film was so well-received, nevertheless, that it acted as a springboard for the remainder of his profession.