Christopher Nolan On The Origins Of His BATMAN, INTERSTELLAR Criticisms and More
In a new discussion with The Hollywood Reporter, the revered filmmaker has spoken at length about his life, influences and body of work. Hit the jump to read what he had to say about his early interest in rebooting Batman, ambition, origin stories, sequels and the sound of Interstellar.
In the words of The Hollywood Reporter, Christopher Nolan is "responsible for many of the most critically and/or commercially successful films of the 21st century"; most notably, his three Batman films: Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. In an extensive interview with THR, the 44-year-old filmmaker discussed the early stages of developing Batman Begins, the first of his Dark Knight Trilogy. "It came to me in a very interesting way," he says, explaining that his agent, "Dan Aloni, called and said, 'It seems unlikely you'd be interested in this, but Warners is sort of casting around for what they would do with Batman.' It had reached the end of its last sort of life, if you'd like. And at the time, nobody used the term 'reboot' — that didn't exist — so it was really a question of, 'What would you do with this?'"
Nolan had previously made (relatively) small thrillers (Following, Memento and Insomnia), so he didn't initially seem like an obvious choice for a superhero blockbuster. However, he was indeed very interested in crafting a new take on the Caped Crusader, as it was clear to him that Tim Burton's 1989 Batman movie -- "however brilliant" it was -- was not "that sort of origin story, it wasn't that real-world kind of epic movie; it was very Tim Burton, a very idiosyncratic, gothic kind of masterpiece. But it left this interesting gap in pop-culture, which is you know, you had Superman in 1978, but they never did the sort of 1978 Batman, where you see the origin story, where the world is pretty much the world we live in but there's this extraordinary figure there, which is what worked so well in Dick Donner's Superman film. And so I was able to get in the studio and say, 'Well, that's what I would do with it.'" The idea of exploring the character's early days was uncharted teritory, he says. "We didn't have any kind of reference for that idea of kind of resetting a franchise. It was more a thing of, 'Nobody's ever made this origin story in this way and treated it as a piece of action filmmaking, a sort of contemporary action blockbuster.'"
We already know that Nolan and screenwriter David S. Goyer did not initially plan to make a trilogy of Bat-films, instead working one picture at a time. "I was like, 'You know what? You've got to put everything into the one movie and just try and make a great movie because you may not get this chance again.'" Of course, Batman Begins was a hit for Warner Bros., so the next thing was thinking about, "'OK, what would we do in a sequel?' We were able to adapt and grow with the way the public perceived the films and with what the films became, as opposed to trying to plan ahead, you know, five years, six years or whatever." Nolan doesn't talk a lot about his most recent movie, Interstellar, though responds to those who were befuddled towards the film's unusual (but daring) use of sound. "You know, it's a beautifully mixed film," the 44-year-old dishes. "The guys did an incredible job. When it comes to blockbusters, I think people are a little more conservative about the expectation of how the sound should be balanced. And I'm fortunate that I'm free to be able to do it as I I see fit and really experiment with it and push those boundaries. It's a fun thing to do." The closing question from THR quizzes Nolan on what he would like people to say, looking back on his work. "I'd like them to say that they were always ambitious, you know, always trying to do something with the most sincere intentions and really trying to be ambitious. I think that's all you can hope for. As far as whether they're any good or not, obviously, I hope people like them [laughs] -- but that's sort of impossible to say, really." The full interview can be found below, with much, much more from the filmmaker on a variety of topics. What do you make of Christopher Nolan's comments?
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