“As far as new technology of all kinds goes…”: Christopher Nolan Reveals One 21st Century Tech is Just as Deadly as Nukes
Christopher Nolan is one of the most cutting-edge filmmakers in the Hollywood entertainment industry. His most recent project the biographical epic Oppenheimer is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Nolan wrote and directed the movie himself and produced it alongside Emma Thomas and Charles Roven.
There have been a lot of controversies and debates surrounding AI recently. So much so that writers and actors protested on the picket lines about it for months. When asked for his opinion on AI, Christopher Nolan gave a very diplomatic answer but also managed to explain his take on it in a decent way.
Christopher Nolan Thinks the Issues in Oppenheimer’s Story Are Similar to Those with AI
Oppenheimer follows the American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer on his quest to develop the atomic bomb. The movie had an ensemble cast as Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy was cast as the titular character and Florence Pugh, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, and Robert Downey Jr. played other important characters in the movie.
Christopher Nolan is undoubtedly one of the smartest and most talented filmmakers in Hollywood. In a meeting with the press panel, Nolan spoke about AI and also said how he has to maintain accountability for it. When asked about how he thinks AI will be affecting the film industry, the Dunkirk director told ScreenRant:
“I think as far as new technology of all kinds goes, AI being an obvious example of something we’re looking at right now. To a certain extent, it’s very difficult to look at all of the possibilities and plan according to that. It’s really a question of, to a certain extent, some of these things have to start to happen to know how to respond.”
Nolan said that the issue with the brilliant minds who were involved with Oppenheimer in the development of the atomic bomb was not that they were not able to foresee the consequences; it was that they had no choice or thought that they did not have one. According to the director, the same applies to AI.
Christopher Nolan Explained Why He Wrote the Script for Oppenheimer in First Person
J. Robert Oppenheimer was an intelligent scientist but his life was not without its struggles. In fact, Christopher Nolan stated that he had never encountered the story of someone’s life that was this complicated. He did a great job at bringing them to the screenplay he wrote as can be seen in the movie.
Cillian Murphy once revealed that Nolan had written the script in first person. When asked why The Dark Knight Trilogy director had done what he did, he said:
“And I found, as I was trying to get into Oppenheimer’s head and I was trying to communicate that to the reader, I wanted to get into the head more obviously. I wanted to be more subjective to the approach. So I wound up using the first person.”
Nolan said that scripts are usually written in the third person, but writing in the first person helped him get into Oppenheimer’s head and present the film as the scientist’s own experiences.
