Christopher Nolan recently sat down with Wired to talk about his highly-anticipated film Oppenheimer about the creation of the Atomic Bomb during World War II. During his conversation, the filmmaker compared the ending of Oppenheimer to his 2010 film Inception, saying:

“I mean, the end of Inception, it’s exactly that. There is a nihilistic view of that ending, right? But also, he’s moved on and is with his kids. The ambiguity is not an emotional ambiguity. It’s an intellectual one for the audience. It’s funny, I think there is an interesting relationship between the endings of Inception and Oppenheimer to be explored. Oppenheimer’s got a complicated ending. Complicated feelings.”

As you know, Inception ends in a way that doesn’t make it clear whether Leonardo DiCaprio‘s character Cobb has made it back to real life, or if he is still caught in a dream world. I loved that end, and now I’m excited to see how Nolan is going to bring Oppenheimer to an end.

Nolan previously talked about some of the early reactions from people who have seen the movie and it’s going to be an intense experience for audiences. It’s even been described as a horror movie, which Nolan agrees with:

“It is an intense experience, because it’s an intense story. I showed it to a filmmaker recently who said it’s kind of a horror movie. I don’t disagree. It’s a complicated set of feelings to be entertained by awful things, you know? Which is where the horror dimension comes in.”

Nolan also shared some other early reactions from audiences, which includes the movie leaving people absolutely devastated. He said:

“Some people leave the movie absolutely devastated. They can’t speak. I mean, there’s an element of fear that’s there in the history and there in the underpinnings. But the love of the characters, the love of the relationships, is as strong as I’ve ever done.”

The film is described as “the pulse-pounding paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it.” The film stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who ran the Manhattan Project that led to the creation of the atomic bomb during World War II. He is joined by Emily Blunt as his wife, biologist and botanist Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves Jr., director of the Manhattan Project, and Robert Downey, Jr. as Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. 

The movie also stars Florence Pugh as psychiatrist Jean Tatlock, Benny Safdie plays theoretical physicist Edward Teller, Michael Angarano plays Robert Serber, Josh Hartnett plays pioneering American nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence, along with Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Dane DeHaan, Dylan Arnold, David Krumholtz, Alden Ehrenreich, and Matthew Modine. 

The film is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin. Oppenheimer is filmed in a combination of IMAX® 65mm and 65mm large-format film photography including, for the first time ever, sections in IMAX® black and white analogue photography. 

Oppenheimer opens in theaters on July 21, 2023.