No one is advocating for the power of the cinematic experience with as much enthusiasm and conviction as Christopher Nolan. The director’s commitment to analog film formats and seeing movies as they were intended, on the big screen, is nothing new. However, the man behind “Dunkirk” — the first non-franchise movie to top the box office since March — also has a few things to say about the current tentpole climate.
In an interview with The Los Angeles Times, the director who brought the world “The Dark Knight” trilogy, shared his concern that with studios making movies to hit release dates, and building out pre-planned cinematic universes, they risk not giving audiences something bold or original.
“What’s interesting about that whole paradigm is, you can’t fault the studios for looking to likely hits, for looking for areas where people seem to want more of something. But Hollywood and the studios have also always understood that novelty, freshness, is one of the magical ingredients of movies. And I don’t think the studios ever want to risk losing that completely,” he said.
“When they start dating films too far out, when a grand plan is unveiled for years into the future, there is a risk that that unexpected quality in movies could get lost. So I think the studios recognize that it’s very important within those tent poles that they need surprises in there. They need things to come along that the audience isn’t expecting,” Nolan continued. “Because that’s part of the excitement of why we go to the movies: What are we going to see that we haven’t seen before? It’s a balance between giving audiences things they’re familiar with but then giving them things that are new and fresh.”
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It’s certainly a fair point, and there’ve been many big budget flicks over the past years that feel like they’re all using the same moviemaking template. In fact, one of the arguments for the success of peak television is that the medium is allowing the kind of storytelling risks that filmmakers don’t have in the current studio system. However, don’t expect Nolan to direct television anytime soon.
“I think a lot of the conversation about television in opposition to movies isn’t really representative of the differences in media. As a kid, I loved watching ‘Miami Vice,’ but the relationship of what Michael Mann did in that to what he did in ‘Heat‘ — they’re just completely different things,” he said. “I think there are amazing things being done on television. I would point to my brother [Jonathan] and sister-in-law [Lisa Joy]’s show [HBO’s ‘Westworld‘] as being one of them. I certainly don’t want to disparage TV. I think there are amazing things being done. But it’s very different to films.”
“Films are a particular type of storytelling. It’s not better than TV, it’s not worse — it’s just a completely different experience. And I think because they both consist of audiovisual information, people confuse the two. Obviously there’s a shared skill set and there are people like my brother or J.J. Abrams who can go back and forth with amazing facility. But at the end of the day, they’re different,” Nolan continued.
“I would never rule anything out. But while I have the opportunity to make theatrical movies, I want to take it. I also find that it takes total focus for me to do a theatrical film and I don’t really have time to develop other things or think about other things for the couple of years that I spend doing it. I’m not very versatile in that sense — I can just do the one thing,” he added.
Frankly, as long as Nolan is getting pretty much carte blanche from Warner Bros., we’d rather see him stick to the big screen too. But if you wondering what other television shows Nolan might be watching, he also reveals he’s “a big ‘Silicon Valley‘ fan.”
“Dunkirk” is now playing.