'Oppenheimer' Starts Streaming (and 'Extras' Arrive) in November

Plenty of new material and featurettes coming but they will not alter the historical narrative.

Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including “Hiroshima in America,” “Atomic Cover-up,” and the recent award-winning “The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” He has directed three documentary films since 2021 for PBS (and “Atomic Cover-up” coming this fall). He has written about the atomic bombings for over forty years. You can subscribe to this newsletter for free.

Even while still doing good business in theaters, Barbie, one half of “Barbenheimer,” started streaming several weeks ago. Now we learn that Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer will final arrive for home viewing on November 21.

It will stream over Amazon Prime, Apple + and Vudu, among other services, and you can already order the DVD and Blu-Ray versions, with these promised extras, three hours of added viewing:

• THE STORY OF OUR TIME: THE MAKING OF OPPENHEIMER

• NOW I AM BECOME DEATH - The cast, crew and producers join Christopher Nolan in sharing the personal stories that made them passionate about the project's ambitious design for bridging multiple genres.

• THE LUMINARIES - Oppenheimer's all-star cast discusses how they synthesize the script's dramatic narrative with the real lives of historical figures to embody their complex characters.

• THE MANHATTAN PROJECT - To visualize Oppenheimer's ability to see different dimensions and to recreate the historic Trinity test, filmmakers developed unique techniques to craft stunning effects without using CGI.

• THE DEVIL OF THE DETAILS - A look at how production designer Ruth De Jong and team recreated the entire town of Los Alamos with period-accurate props, spectacular sets and painstaking attention to authenticity.

• WALKING A MILE - Costume and makeup craftspeople populate Oppenheimer's immersive environments with iconic figures by utilizing thousands of pieces of clothing and cutting-edge prosthetic applications.

• CAN YOU HEAR THE MUSIC? - Working closely with Christopher Nolan, Ludwig Göransson composes a deeply personal, historically expansive score ranging from the organic to the alien to accompany the visual landscape.

• WE CAN PERFORM THIS MIRACLE - Christopher Nolan's closest collaborators demonstrate how his artistic vision creates camaraderie that drives his talented crew to continue breaking new ground in filmmaking.

• TRAILERS

• INNOVATIONS IN FILM: 65MM BLACK-AND-WHITE FILM IN OPPENHEIMER - FotoKem opens the door to its film labs, where new technologies are invented for using color and black & white 65mm film to visualize Oppenheimer's dual timelines while pushing the format further forward.

• MEET THE PRESS Q&A PANEL: OPPENHEIMER - Chuck Todd moderates a conversation where Christopher Nolan, author Kai Bird, and physicists Dr. Kip Thorne, Dr. Thom Mason and Dr. Carlo Rovelli reflect on the fascinating science and doomsday concerns Oppenheimer illustrates onscreen.

• TO END ALL WAR: OPPENHEIMER & THE ATOMIC BOMB - Explore how one man's relentless drive and invention of the atomic bomb changed the nature of war forever, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and unleashed mass hysteria.

A few notes: Anyone who expected some kind of “epilogue” focusing on Japanese victims of the bombings, due to wide criticism of this absence in the movie, will be disappointed, it seems.

I attended that “Meet the Press” in NYC and wrote about it a bit about it here. Chuck Todd didn’t do us any favors that day as interviewer and it is only fitfully illuminating.

The “To End All War” extra is the 2023 NBC doc on Robert Oppenheimer which, like the movie, does not contest the decision to drop the two bombs over Japanese cities, killing aboout 200,000, 85% of them civilians.

But they promise: “For cinephiles, the 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray discs are equipped with mixed 2.20 and 1.78 aspect ratios, allowing viewers to experience the aspect ratio shifts as intended in select theatrical locations.”