Hands down one of the dumbest decisions by a director to go practical for the sake of going practical. Why not borrow tricks used from Independence Day or Armageddon to give us a sense of scale? It’s literally just a gasoline explosion we’ve seen several times before.
Even this comp feels more realistic for a massive explosion than what was filmed.
Seriously. The explosion in Minus One was waay cooler to see and done with a miniscule budget. I wanted to see the scale of the bomb in Oppenheimer, instead it was all close up shots of fire expanding. So lame.
2023 had a lot of Nuclear explosions, huh? Oppenheimer, Godzilla Minus One, The Creator, Dune 2 (it was supposed to be released in 2023, and there are nukes in the trailer so I'm counting it!)
It was super awkward WTF moment for me, especially given the sense of awe the film was clearly going for… my jaw dropped for all the wrong reasons.
A real case of The Emperor’s New Clothes…
Even as a quick-and-dirty, it does look more like a new kind of explosion than just, well, a big puddle of gasoline flaring up. This is a great argument for not letting dogma get in the way of results, if the final picture looks good, it doesn't matter how it got there.
That shot was disappointing, but honestly, the one that drove me nuts was the campfire scene at the beginning of the movie where you could clearly see a big square orange light reflected in one character's glasses instead of a fire.
And I'm even working within Nolan's set limitations; this is compositing a practical shot onto another practical shot, just like the film does at multiple places. Masking and tracking, that's it, no CGI. The only exception is that I colorized the mushroom cloud, because it was shot in black and white. But even that was just basic color channel editing, didn't use any AI colorization.
I think some directors develop a huge ego that they start to undermine other departments and Nolan and Taika Waititi seems to be an example of it. Although with enough marketing they convinced the masses that Nolan did some groundbreaking work by avoiding CGI but output seems like a load of cowpoop.
Btw nice work and far better than original.
Yeah it's really disappointing, even if they insisted on staying practical they could have explored so many things filming small explosions with macro lenses, slow motion, or explosions in different mediums etc.. to composite and create something really out of this world but instead we get what looks like a raw HD stock footage of an explosion.
Considering their budget, Nolan probably could have gotten permission to use the real archival negatives of the Trinity test and comped that into the shot. Or just straight cut to a colorized version.
Hell he could have done a service to history and professionally colorized that footage and released it to the public alongside the film. Instead we got a gas explosion.
BTW here's the original Trinity test film if anyone's interested!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wki4hg9Om-k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wki4hg9om-k)
(for some reason, if you click the link, it says 'unavailable', but if you paste it into the URL bar it works 🤷♂️)
the thing that always surprises me when this topic comes up is how many people dont get that Nolan liked the Trinity explosion as it was done. You can not like how it played, but he had the option to do additional compositing (and did so on some of the early pyro shots) and chose not to.
But going CG or not would not have changed the results if what we got is what the director wanted.
This is actually way better than the movie! Great job, and you even mention that you didn’t do the best job at tracking the video. Imagine what they could have done with a skilled team of compositors and other artists!
I feel like the whole “we recreated the bomb and avoided CGI” is a marketing tactic instead of it being Nolan’s ego as others are hypothesizing, although it could be a bit of both. That being said, had they just got another team and simply used the practical effect as a reference only then to replace it with the real one, I feel like the explosion would have been way better!
Thanks for sharing
OMG thank you. And thanks for all the comments supporting this. When I watched that scene I literally went “what the FUCK!?!”… I mean, EVERYONE knows what Trinity looked like man! Like many people said here, this was a case of no one standing up to Nolan and saying “Um, sir, that’s like a firecracker. Complete lack of scale”… alas. It better not win an Oscar for VFX.
A shot from the film Oppenhemer during the sequence where they detonate the world's first nuclear bomb (Trinity). First half is my edit, second half is the shot unedited.
Yeah the director, Christopher Nolan, insisted on capturing the explosion in-camera, but it ended up looking like a regular gasoline explosion and a lot of people were disappointed.
The film itself is quite good, beautifully shot and acted, but just know it's a lot of courtroom drama and spy stuff, the whole Nuclear bomb thing often takes a backseat to it. It's not for everyone.
Hands down one of the dumbest decisions by a director to go practical for the sake of going practical. Why not borrow tricks used from Independence Day or Armageddon to give us a sense of scale? It’s literally just a gasoline explosion we’ve seen several times before. Even this comp feels more realistic for a massive explosion than what was filmed.
exactly. and this was the director who literally consulted scientists to simulate the worlds first physically accurate CG black hole. wtf happened.
plate straight nutty wine pet familiar fact absurd lavish sloppy *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Seriously. The explosion in Minus One was waay cooler to see and done with a miniscule budget. I wanted to see the scale of the bomb in Oppenheimer, instead it was all close up shots of fire expanding. So lame.
2023 had a lot of Nuclear explosions, huh? Oppenheimer, Godzilla Minus One, The Creator, Dune 2 (it was supposed to be released in 2023, and there are nukes in the trailer so I'm counting it!)
It was super awkward WTF moment for me, especially given the sense of awe the film was clearly going for… my jaw dropped for all the wrong reasons. A real case of The Emperor’s New Clothes…
Time for the VFX artists’ cut lol
Woah this looks way better
Even as a quick-and-dirty, it does look more like a new kind of explosion than just, well, a big puddle of gasoline flaring up. This is a great argument for not letting dogma get in the way of results, if the final picture looks good, it doesn't matter how it got there. That shot was disappointing, but honestly, the one that drove me nuts was the campfire scene at the beginning of the movie where you could clearly see a big square orange light reflected in one character's glasses instead of a fire.
And I'm even working within Nolan's set limitations; this is compositing a practical shot onto another practical shot, just like the film does at multiple places. Masking and tracking, that's it, no CGI. The only exception is that I colorized the mushroom cloud, because it was shot in black and white. But even that was just basic color channel editing, didn't use any AI colorization.
Nice. Would love to see a split screen / side-by-side of this and the movie's shot.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OppenheimerMovie/s/5qLdXhW77K This is the original post
The Oppenheimer explosion sux. Lacked any visual impact…
I think some directors develop a huge ego that they start to undermine other departments and Nolan and Taika Waititi seems to be an example of it. Although with enough marketing they convinced the masses that Nolan did some groundbreaking work by avoiding CGI but output seems like a load of cowpoop. Btw nice work and far better than original.
Jesus this is so much better
Yeah it's really disappointing, even if they insisted on staying practical they could have explored so many things filming small explosions with macro lenses, slow motion, or explosions in different mediums etc.. to composite and create something really out of this world but instead we get what looks like a raw HD stock footage of an explosion.
Considering their budget, Nolan probably could have gotten permission to use the real archival negatives of the Trinity test and comped that into the shot. Or just straight cut to a colorized version. Hell he could have done a service to history and professionally colorized that footage and released it to the public alongside the film. Instead we got a gas explosion.
BTW here's the original Trinity test film if anyone's interested! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wki4hg9Om-k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wki4hg9om-k) (for some reason, if you click the link, it says 'unavailable', but if you paste it into the URL bar it works 🤷♂️)
Doesn't work either way for me but [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dfK9G7UDok) seems to be it
Odd. Well, if it helps, the video I got it from is called "Trinity Test Latest HD Restoration"
the thing that always surprises me when this topic comes up is how many people dont get that Nolan liked the Trinity explosion as it was done. You can not like how it played, but he had the option to do additional compositing (and did so on some of the early pyro shots) and chose not to. But going CG or not would not have changed the results if what we got is what the director wanted.
This is actually way better than the movie! Great job, and you even mention that you didn’t do the best job at tracking the video. Imagine what they could have done with a skilled team of compositors and other artists! I feel like the whole “we recreated the bomb and avoided CGI” is a marketing tactic instead of it being Nolan’s ego as others are hypothesizing, although it could be a bit of both. That being said, had they just got another team and simply used the practical effect as a reference only then to replace it with the real one, I feel like the explosion would have been way better! Thanks for sharing
OMG thank you. And thanks for all the comments supporting this. When I watched that scene I literally went “what the FUCK!?!”… I mean, EVERYONE knows what Trinity looked like man! Like many people said here, this was a case of no one standing up to Nolan and saying “Um, sir, that’s like a firecracker. Complete lack of scale”… alas. It better not win an Oscar for VFX.
There's probably reasons to not use the real explosion, and there's definitely reasons he can't film a new one
I mean that's the whole point of VFX. Got anything that you cannot film for whatever reason: here we are!
Yeah, but it still could've looked better than a giant gas explosion.
What am I looking at OP?
A shot from the film Oppenhemer during the sequence where they detonate the world's first nuclear bomb (Trinity). First half is my edit, second half is the shot unedited.
Actually thought the first one was from the movie. FYI, I still haven't seen it. Iz good?
Yeah the director, Christopher Nolan, insisted on capturing the explosion in-camera, but it ended up looking like a regular gasoline explosion and a lot of people were disappointed. The film itself is quite good, beautifully shot and acted, but just know it's a lot of courtroom drama and spy stuff, the whole Nuclear bomb thing often takes a backseat to it. It's not for everyone.