World War II Nerd Christopher Nolan May Have Another Classic on His Hands With ‘Oppenheimer’

Whereas previous teasers focused on Murphy’s portrayal of the infamous scientist, this trailer, offers an extended look at Matt Damon’s Manhattan Project director Leslie Groves, emphasizing the film’s race-against-the-clock, heist-film quality. It also showcases the rapid construction of the top secret towns where scientists and their families lived and worked on this covert project and the myriad of tests and experiments done at the Los Alamos Laboratory. As in Dunkirk, this time around, the real-world stakes are baked-in. In case you failed to grasp them, Damon’s Groves shouts, in a classic trailer line, “This is the most important thing to ever happen in the history of the world!”

The latest trailer also offers more extensive looks at the film’s stacked ensemble, featuring Emily Blunt, Kenneth Branagh, Florence Pugh, and, in one especially portentous reveal, Tom Conti as Albert Einstein.

“Our work here will ensure a peace mankind has never seen,” Oppenheimer says.

The last third of the trailer calls that into question, with Benny Safie’s Edward Teller warning him that someone will always come along to create a larger, more devastating weapon. The trailer concludes with several poignant black-and-white shots of what appear to be a post-war hearing, potentially the 1954 investigation into Oppenheimer himself, poking into the scientist’s history with various communist and communist-sympathizing organizations.