Hollywood keeps sending movie characters to hell in films like What Dreams May Come, Spawn, and Bedazzled, and VFX artists keep finding it difficult to creatively and credibly depict it. It is almost impossible to produce imagery that will satisfy everyone because heaven and hell are ultimately very subjective concepts. Hence, this proved to be a very difficult task for the makers involved in Keanu Reeves’ Constantine.
The Francis Lawrence-directed 2005 film was a fun mashup of noir, horror, and comedy thrown in for good measure.
But Constantine was released before the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) improved the way superhero movies were perceived. Filmmakers who chose to adopt the occasional comic book were free to interpret it however they saw fit. Therefore, Lawrence wanted to create a unique mashup of superheroes, film noir, and biblical terror.
Well, you may be able to relate to an intriguing connection this 2005 movie has with the upcoming Christopher Nolan-directed biographical thriller if you are such a devoted VFX fan.
Oppenheimer’s Interesting Connection to Keanu Reeves’ Constantine
In the 2005 film, Constantine, Keanu Reeves plays exorcist, John Constantine- a cynical man with the power to see and speak with half-demons and half-angels. He also has the ability to travel between Earth and Hell. But, did you know Constantine’s portrayal of Hell was influenced by nuclear test footage?
Yes, the idea of Hell in the movie, according to the director, Francis Lawrence, is based “on the geography of what is around us right now.” He continued:
“That was actually a combination of me and the visual effects supervisor and the production designer sitting down and sort of coming up with the biological growth that’s growing all over the cars and what that looks like and the color palette. And we started to look at the nuclear test films from the 1940s of the nuclear blasts and just decided that it would be great if the landscape was not only violent with these creatures, but also the atmosphere. So we decided that it was kind of an eternal nuclear blast except nothing ever really gets obliterated because it’s eternal and it’s constantly going.”
On the other hand, Oppenheimer’s entire narrative is based on the same framework. The upcoming flick is essentially a biographical thriller about J. Robert Oppenheimer. For the unversed, he was the theoretical physicist who contributed to the creation of the first nuclear weapons.
And, instead of using computer-generated graphics, real explosives were used during filming to replicate the Trinity nuclear test.
How Oppenheimer Created Nuclear Explosion Using Practical Effects?
Scott R. Fisher, head of Oppenheimer’s special effects, recently explained how he made a nuclear explosion look real without using any computer-generated imagery. Directed by Christopher Nolan, the film follows the life and career of theoretical physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the key players in the development of the atomic bomb.
Cillian Murphy starrer has already gained attention from trailers that emphasize Nolan’s dedication to capturing as much as possible in camera without the use of visual effects.
In a recent interview with Total Film (conducted through Slash Film), Fisher shared a deep insight into the movie’s practical effects.
The special effects supervisor explained in detail how he was able to film a nuclear bomb explosion without using CGI, saying that they used some “old-school” filming methods. To quote him:
“It is like an old-school technique. We don’t call them miniatures; we call them big-atures. We do them as big as we possibly can, but we do reduce the scale so it’s manageable. It’s getting it closer to camera, and doing it as big as you can in the environment.”
Fisher further added:
“It’s mostly gasoline, propane, any of that kind of stuff, because you get so much bang for your buck. But then we also bring in stuff like aluminum powder and magnesium to really enhance the brightness, and give it a certain look … We did a bit of that on this, because we really wanted everyone to talk about that flash, that brightness. So we tried to replicate that as much as we could.”
Although it is unclear how everything will play out on screen, there are now less than two weeks until viewers can see Oppenheimer’s practical magic in action.
Oppenheimer is arriving in theaters on July 21, 2023, while Constantine is streaming on Max.
Source: Slash Film; IMDB
