Long movies are back in business, baby! Not that they ever left! And now Christopher Nolan is reportedly going against his biggest critic (himself) in order to break his own record for the longest runtime. You can tell a movie is going to be really big when the runtime is announced nearly four months out. Or years, for that matter.
Nolan’s latest epic Oppenheimer will clock in at close to three hours, according to the latest newsletter from Puck. The movie has some time until its release, so there is a chance that Nolan will take his golden scissors and cut down all of those shots of Cillian Murphy looking like he lost his soul. On the other hand, again, long movies seem to be making a comeback in a big way. Perhaps theaters can bring back those swanky intermission bumpers with those fun little cartoons. Nolan would love that.
Christopher Nolan’s OPPENHEIMER is about three hours long, according to sources who told Matt Belloni in his latest Puck dispatch. Those of us who are choosing to double feature OPPENHEIMER and BARBIE are going to really earn that viewing euphoria. pic.twitter.com/CnZLJ5U5qt
— julia alexander (@loudmouthjulia) March 24, 2023
This could be the longest film in Nolan’s roster, after Interstellar’s already massive runtime of two hours and 49 minutes. But since it took place in space it felt closer to three decades, because that’s how time works up there, allegedly.
Nearly three hours of runtime doesn’t seem that crazy when you consider some of the other stuff that Nolan has been doing for his long-awaited film, like that time he recreated a nuclear explosion without CGI. Surely there has to be some middle ground between too much CGI and no CGI whatsoever. You know, for the sake of the planet.