BBC star slams Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer after walking out of cinema

04 August 2023 , 11:32

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BBC star slams Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer after walking out of cinema

BBC News presenter Jane Hill has revealed she complained to the cinema after going to watch Oppenheimer and finding that the sound-track drowned out the dialogue.

The newsreader, 54, said she left half-way through after failing to follow what was going on because she couldn’t hear what the actors were saying. And she was astonished to be told by cinema staff that it happened with “all” the films by Christopher Nolan, which include Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and Interstellar.

She told her 44,000 Twitter followers: “Saw Oppenheimer. Well, managed half of it. Disappointed that music & effects often drowned out the actors, I missed whole chunks of dialogue. Told the cinema I thought the sound needed rebalancing - staff said ‘we have this issue with all Christopher Nolan films. Seriously?”

She was deluged by responses from people who had also struggled to follow the plot, telling them: “Thanks for so many replies to my Oppenheimer observation. I’m relieved it’s not just me who couldn’t hear the dialogue… yet what madness! How can you follow a film if you can’t hear the actors?!”

BBC News' Jane Hill slams Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer after walking out of cinema (Getty Images Europe)

He slimmed down to play J Robert Oppenheimer (David Fisher/REX/Shutterstock)

The biographical thriller, written and directed by Christopher Nolan is based on the 2005 biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, and the film chronicles the career of American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. The story predominantly focuses on Oppenheimer's early studies, his direction of the Manhattan Project during World War II, and his eventual fall from grace due to his 1954 security hearing.

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Cillian Murphy stars as the title character, Emily Blunt as his wife Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as Leslie Groves, the director the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, a senior member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. The ensemble supporting cast includes Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek and Kenneth Branagh.

Despite Jane's reservations about the flick, it has garnered a record-breaking box office success. The film has brought in over $188 million in domestic ticket sales and $231 million worldwide since its opening on July 21.

Nicola Methven