‘The man who moved the earth’
The Syncopy and Universal logo flash on the screen, disappearing as quickly as they arrive. No clear image is seen as a voice announces a changing world, urging an unseen figure to seize his chance. Sparks of light can be seen against a pitch-black background, but nothing else. A different, doom-laden voice chimes in alongside an ominous soundtrack as we see an assortment of objects arranged on a table, among them a hat and pipe. Descending, ticking clock figures appear one by one before we return to the sparks, which evolve into a fiery hellscape. We see the back of a figure as he faces a window, adjusting the hat we saw earlier on his head as the time figures decrease further. The fiery image appears again, dominating the screen, even more tumultuous than before. Finally, we see the figure of Cillian Murphy walking at the front of a crowd. The time figures are no longer there, replaced with the unsettling, laconic tagline ‘The World Forever Changes’, before finally cutting to the title screen alongside a voice announcing the significance of Cillian Murphy’s unspeaking figure.
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer won’t be released for nearly a year, and will doubtless have more trailers in the future, which will likely have more expository dialogue. But these teaser images are a masterclass in less is more. Many viewers might guess the subject of the movie upon seeing the title, or may know about its production beforehand simply by being a follower of Nolan’s career. Like the teaser trailer for Nolan’s The Dark Knight (which I wrote an article about for The Oxford Student), these promotions work so effectively because of what they don’t show. The first image of the Syncopy logo instantly alerts aficionados to the fact that this a Nolan production, but the first spoken words work so effectively because we’re not shown an image of who’s speaking them. We are left in literal and metaphorical darkness as we await more information. The first image we see of the hat is a visual metonymy; rather than showing Murphy’s full figure first, we are shown the headgear that summarises the figure we later see in the teaser’s final image. The hat is also a defining feature in the film’s similarly minimalist poster; Murphy’s face can’t be seen amidst the fiery explosion behind him, but the hat is in clear view. The sense of intrigue in the trailer is constantly bolstered by the group of voices, which we hear clearly but whose speaking faces we are never allowed to witness on the screen. We know the actors involved in the production from the poster and can make decent guesses as to who’s speaking from this information, but this teaser trailer works best as an exercise in elegant restraint.