“It’s a very popular fallacy”: Oppenheimer Director Christopher Nolan Slams Hollywood for Ignoring What Made Star Wars a Success
Filmmaker Christopher Nolan, who has received high praise from critics as well as audiences, and is well known for his films with intricate storylines, is regarded as one of the most popular and talented directors of the twenty-first century. Regardless of whether it is Inception, The Dark Knight trilogy, Interstellar, Dunkirk, or Tenet, his films left an enduring impression on the audience.
One of the most eagerly anticipated films of 2023 is his upcoming Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, and is set to compete with celebrated director Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. But recently, the director criticized the business leaders for downplaying the factors that contribute to the success of a hugely successful franchise.
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Christopher Nolan calls out executives for ‘willful denial’ of Star Wars success
During a recent interview with The Telegraph, Christopher Nolan spoke about 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope when he went ahead to criticize the studios’ increasingly narrow conception of what a movie on the big screen should be like. He said,
“Whether for budgetary reasons or reasons of control, studios now look at a screenplay as a series of events and say ‘this is the essence of what the film is’. And that’s completely at odds with how cinema developed, right from the Lumière brothers’ train pulling into the station, as a pure audiovisual experience. But it’s a very popular fallacy – sometimes with critics as well, quite frankly – that all that matters is the scale of the story being told.”
The director added that people would often tell them that the success of Star Wars had nothing to do with the visual effects and it was all down to its great story, but it’s not the case. He noted that it’s true that the story is great, but it’s also the visual and aural experience of the movie that makes it what it is today. Nolan added, “So this willful denial of what movies actually are has set in.”
Christopher Nolan talks about the inclusion of his daughter in Oppenheimer
Nolan, during an interview with The Telegraph, was asked about how he thought about including his eldest daughter Flora in his upcoming movie Oppenheimer, which stars Peaky Blinders actor Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer along with Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, and others.
He said that Flora and his wife Emma Thomas, who is also the producer for the movie, had decided to visit him on set for a week and in the spur of the moment, Nolan asked his daughter if she would like to step into a still-vacant role that time of a nameless young woman who appears in Oppenheimer’s vision which is described as ‘hellish, conscience-pricking‘, as the pierced white light flares away the flesh from her face.
Nolan explained,
“We needed someone to do that small part of a somewhat experimental and spontaneous sequence. So it was wonderful to just have her sort of roll with it.”
The director pointed out that he never tries to analyze his intentions, but the point is that if someone creates an ultimate destruction power here like an atomic bomb, it is going to take away your near and dear ones. So he adds that maybe including his daughter in the movie was his way of expressing that.
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Christopher Nolan mentioned a significant reason that made Oppenheimer happen
The Inception director noted during the interview that when he was talking to his family about Oppenheimer during an early draft of the movie in 2021, one of his sons said to him that no one cares about such stuff, and he said to him that he should probably care.
He added that his son’s words sort of became a reason why he wanted Oppenheimer to happen, and then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine happened, with which the specter of nuclear war sort of returned.
He pointed out that he does not make movies to make a point but to ask engaging questions and try to entertain the audience and give them an experience that he hopes lingers and he is hopeful that the same is going to happen when the audience watches Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer will premiere in theatres on Friday- 21st July.
Source: The Telegraph
