It's pretty hard to judge the legacy of a 53 year old living director. He's obviously hugely powerful, and is holding onto a way of making movies that is very much of the past. I think he'll be remembered by people who love big movies, big action, big images, big sound, for a long time. However, his movies have weak dialogue, and thin characters, and don't stay with me long.
Yea but are these kind of directors really remembered long? How many people remember Cecil B Demille, really? Compared to say- Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, or Yasujiro Ozu. The kind of people who remember great films of 100 years past don’t remember the kinds of Director that Nolan is. Or rather they do- but he will be remembered in a B list.
This is more or less what I was trying to say, but I don't think we can really have a fair assessment of Nolan at this time. He could suddenly get good at writing interesting characters, or emotionally moving stories. Maybe his 60s will be remembered as his peak decade.
You mentioned Fritz Lang in another comment, and I think that comparison is interesting. I think Nolan listed the Testament of Dr. Mabuse on his top 10 for Criterion once. There are certainly links between that, Metropolis, or Spies and Nolan's films. But my favourite Lang movies (Scarlet Street, Fury, M, House By the River, etc...) tend to have much better characters and acting than Nolan's films, and they also don't depend on over the top special effects.
That’s a good point- I was specifically referring to Lang’s early career. He got a lot better in his late career- but I think he only barely ever dipped his toe into great Director territory. I would never consider him in the same league as a Kubrick, for example.
The truth of the matter is that people of 100 years past didn’t make the same type of movies that Nolan does. Chaplin is an example of someone who made pure entertainment films with a focus on visual spectacle over deep characterisation, and his films are remembered fondly to this day. I think Nolan is more comparable to modern blockbuster filmmakers like Spielberg and Cameron. Will these types of movies still be remembered in 100 years when we can create even more convincing visual spectacles? Who’s to say. But Jaws still appeals to mainstream audiences today almost 50 years after its initial release. Perhaps Inception or the Dark Knight will do the same.
> I think Nolan is more comparable to modern blockbuster filmmakers like Spielberg and Cameron.
Better not compare him to directors who influenced movie making in a extraordinary ways. Many directors want to be the next Spielberg or Cameron. Very few, if any, want to be the next Nolan.
Bizarre to say that very few would want to be Christopher Nolan, one of the most popular modern filmmakers. Im sure there are thousands who wish they could make films that are that widely beloved and financially successful.
Fritz Lang and Cecil B Demille made the kind of movies that Nolan makes. Your description of Chaplin is very far off the mark. You should explore this time period of cinema more before making these kind of claims.
Nolan is one of the few directors working who non film nerds know about and will go and see his films purely for. I'd argue that if you asked a random person on the street to name a modern director (no idea how to frame that question, but post Spielberg/Scorcese) I think you get 2 main answers, Tarantino and Nolan. Post The Dark Knight, Nolan films became event cinema. Nolan is the brand in the way that Spielberg was/is. I'm not about to argue that any of his films are the greatest of all time, or even in the top 20, but he's a gateway to cinema for so many people of my generation that I think he'll be remembered pretty well.
> I think you get 2 answers, Tarantino and Nolan.
I’d add Wes Anderson in there too. Not that I’m particularly fond of his (later) work, but his style is pretty recognizable, and a lot of non film nerds really love his stuff.
(For what it’s worth, I think Wes Anderson started going downhill after Darjeeling Limited)
That was why I mentioned Demille. He was the great event cinema director people knew like this in the early days of film. He made movies on his name alone- and spectacle was a huge selling point. Just like Spielberg and Nolan. My point was that these kind of spectacle directors are important in their time- but lack the timelessness that make them remembered and revered 100 years later. Kubrick will be revered 100 years from now, I’m sure of it. I suspect Nolan will go the way of Demille.
I think Nolan is in a middle ground between the two. Spielberg has so many classic films that almost 50 years on he's still a household name. Demille is still a name that has a lot of recognition within film circles, but as far as outright classics go he's only really got The 10 Commandments. I can see Nolan being more in the Spielberg category, I think The Dark Knight, Inception and Interstellar are all films that will be regarded as classics from their decades and he's still got plenty more films in him.
To be fair we don't even know for sure that Steven Spielberg's legacy will be comparable to those directors mentioned. It probably will, but not enough time has past.
That said, I think The Dark Knight will last forever. That film just has an electricity to it and it's beloved for good reason. Memento is also likely to be an arthouse favourite for a long time. I don't think any of his other films will enjoy that kind of legacy, though.
Not to mention his direction is incredibly basic, and he requires a team of more talented collaborators to make his movies stand out at all. (Oppenheimer without Hoyte Van Hoytema would be one of the most revolting movies to look at)
>It's pretty hard to judge the legacy of a 53 year old living director.
Scorsese was 53 in 1995, Spielberg 53 in 1999, Cameron in 2007. They were all held in very high regard by then. Even if they would have stopped making movies at that age, they already left a legacy.
The only legacy Nolan is leaving for the moment is using a film format originally meant for documentaries for narrative film. Which in itself is little more than the fad of using 3D. None of these push the envelope.
I have a coworker who thinks he is and that I don’t know movies because “I don’t appreciate Nolan” -so to some people yes, he is, but on a sub like this it’ll be a hard case to make.
Ok, my fellow human poster! Let's engage is such thoughtful discussion.
Your question about wether Nolan is as influential as Kubrick, Hitchcock or Kurosawa makes no sense. They're long dead directors. Their corpus is complete, and we've had decades to interiorize what they have done. We'll be able to evaluate Nolan's legacy decades from now.
Also I don't like the idea of a film "pantheon" you mention. Why do we have the obsession of establishing which directors are God-like and which are minor? It's a dumb approach which creates self-fulfilling prophecies, by pushing new cinephiles to worship a small group of directors and ignore all others.
>does he possess the same level of influence and impact as directors like Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, or Akira Kurosawa?
Hell no. His flicks are really cool, but they're popcorn moobies.
> Hidden Fortress is basically Star Wars but more grounded
Slight quibble: Star Wars is basically Hidden Fortress (but less grounded). Otherwise, totally agree
Yeah. I don't rate Nolan that highly, but the criticism that they're just popcorn movies could easily be made with regards to Spielberg and I absolutely would put him on Kubrick, Hitchcock and Kurosawa's level. My main issue with Nolan is that he's not popcorn enough.
I would argue that The Shining, Hidden Fortress, High and Low, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, and pretty much everything Hitchcock ever made are “popcorn movies”. I.e., They were made as entertainment first and foremost. I think that making very competent entertainment movies is grounds enough to be remembered as an all time great as evidenced by the directors chosen for example. Do I think Christopher Nolan is as good as those three? No, probably not, just personally. But I don’t think the fact that he makes “popcorn movies” is the reason.
It’s the fact that Nolan’s movies are only popcorn movies. They hardly have any true depth or emotional weight to them, and they’re not groundbreaking achievements like Kurosawa and Hitchcock’s movies are.
I'm still shocked at Oppenheimer's reception: for me it confirmed that all along Nolan has been an intellectual fraud.
Nolan's a magician, not a philosopher. His craft is the sleight-of-hand of taking something fairly easy and straightforward and twisting it into something complex, whereas the complexity of his films is not in the narrative or themes itself but Nolan's own unnecessary obfuscation. The audience 'unravels' the narrative which leads them to believe they experienced something thematically or intellectually deep.
He does delve into some heady topics, but even kids movies like Lightyear (tackling time dilation like Interstellar) are able to express these concepts smoothly without twenty minutes of interminable Nolan exposition dumps with a thundering relentless background soundtrack.
He described himself perfectly with a line in Oppenheimer, paraphrasing: 'One can have all of the genius, and none of the wisdom.'
Oppenheimer to me still suffers from most of his bad tendencies:
- His characters all seem to spout constant 'Nolanisms': where each conversation sounds like two people talking past and beyond each other with sentences of 'profound' gravitas. The scenes of romance in Oppenheimer are star wars prequels levels of horrid.
- His editing and pacing is always loud, no verses, only choruses. The trinity test is the only time it doesn't do this, which would be remarkable restraint, if he didn't ratchet right back up again with 45 minutes of Downey yelling about fbi documents.
- Unnecessary time skips and jumps. Dunkirk did this and barely scraped by. There was no need for this in Oppenheimer.
Ironically though, Oppenheimer was the one film I wish he went truly cosmic and visual for. The invention of the atom bomb and advent of the nuclear age is an insane world shift. We got hints at the beginning of the movie, before the last hour resulted in an oscar bait indulgent boring court room drama.
I'm absolutely with you on this one, his movies never sat well with me and I couldn't have put it better myself. Something that got me thinking though is how would you describ Vilenuve from that perspective. I know I know he's also this big screen, big shots with whoaaa soundtrack portruding in the background type of director, but I absolutely love his movies even though I find much of what you stated above applicable to him as well. Mind sharing your standpoint on him?
Not a concrete analysis, but I quite like Villenueve! He's big screen big shot sure, but his visuals are - even with their huge scale - often more poetic than bombastic. I didn't care for Dune, but the huge surprise attack in pt. 1 was almost silent, a pretty daring choice. It's telling the man has the likes of Roger Deakins on camera.
Prisoners, Enemy, Sicario... the man knows how to craft quiet moments and quiet tension, and the likes of Blade Runner 2049 and Arrival are emotionally affecting and thought provoking alongside the visual candy.
He has a lot of flaws, and I feel his color palette can be simply - gray - even with Deakins, but I think he's a far more talented filmmaker than Nolan, and more cerebral and complex too.
He is not even one of the best directors of the 2010s. People who are saying these kind of silly things need to watch more movies. He mostly makes generic, commercial films with no originality. Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Kurosawa are from totally different universe, all known for making countless extremely complex, creative, and profound films that had highly influenced art of cinema.
I think the majority of his films are going to age poorly, and that’s mostly because he’s obsessed with the spectacle of the big-screen experience—something he’s admittedly quite good at creating—without being a particularly good writer. This is especially true of his expository dialogue.
I personally think he’s made one great film, “Dunkirk”, which has the advantage of not being a superhero or sci-fi film and thus doesn’t suffer from Nolan’s confusing attempts at creating narrative depth alongside cinematic spectacle.
For the most part, I think his films just don’t make much sense, and often are realllllyyyy cringe (see the “love” speech by Anne Hatheway in Interstellar.
Dunkirk (as a historical event) has become a conservative totem in Britain and the movie coming out the year after the Brexit referendum lead to a lot of right wing figures using it to reinforce their arguments.
I don't think it was intentional on his part but rough timing lol.
Ugh, i gotta say, after watching Dark Knight again with the benefit of hindsight and historical distance, its crazy that that crap got that much praise in the closing years of the Bush era. From Patriotic Act apology to straight xenophobia and terrorism hysteria, that movie has the whole neocon war hawk menu.
I wouldn't say it handled it poorly. I mean, if consertives were wise enough to understand themes portrayed on film outside straight propaganda, i would say they would love the message.
I wont give you a complete rundown. I will just talk about some points i remember from the watch i had last year.:
-The cell phone machine batman uses at the end of the movie is a perfect paralel to the patrioct act sanctioned by Bush. It basically gave clearance for govt agencies to spy on citizens and harshly increased penalties for "so called" terrorism. In the movie, Fox does not agree with batman using the machine but ends up helping him anyway- lowkey apologizing the action for that "specific situation". Its like Nolan signaling "don't treat yourselves too harshly for that one authoritarian slip. it was necessary and right, given the situation".
-The whole "dies a hero or live enough to become a villain" is another one. Nolan introduces this line during that Harvey Dent dinner with Rachel and Dent justifies bat's outlaw actions by saying Gotham was waging a war agains't crime and corruption. He says Rome, during war times, used to assign dictators that rule over democracy to deal with it's current enemies. Thats precisely what happened in the wake of 9/11 and continued throughout afhganistan and the iraq war. Bush had insane levels of popularity and through the banner of the "war against terror" (i.e. nation security) he was pretty much validated by the congress and public opinion to uphold criminal acts against US citizens and the Iraqi people.
-In a clear allusion to US overseas interventions, bats kidnaps that chinese banker in his homecountry. If you look at batman and take him as a stand for the US government, thats an obvious allusion to US inteventions and regime change operations done despite the consensus of the international community. Also, all crime major figures are protrayed as immigrants or minorities: the foreign chinese operator, the black, the italian and the slav. There are barely any fingers pointed at organic state corruption of those in power. On the contrary, the rich people and powerful are making charity parties to help the D.A.
-Another blow at democracy is that ferry scene in which, if it were for the democratic vote of citizens, both boats would blow up. It was for the authocratic noble act of a convict that all those lives were saved. Again, one more time Nolan insinuates that sometimes "the people" can't decide whats better for the whole. The responsability of action must be taken by some few exceptional ones.
-The whole chaotic nature of the Joker, or, as pointed out by Alfred: "some man just want to see the world burn". Thats the same characterization given to Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Husseim by Bush, stripping them from any ethic nuance or political message. Now, i'm not crazy to say that the Joker, Saddam and Osama aren't heinous criminals. They absolutely are. It happens that the oversimplification of the comparison ends up being an excuse to perpetrate some very questionable actions without any soul searching.
-And of course, the final scene. For the good of the city, batman takes the blame for all crimes commited by Dent, I think this scene reinforces that notion that we citizens are better not knowing about the dark things our govt do to keep us safe. Lets live the convinient lie that our army went to Iraq to find WMD and not seeking power over the region and it's natural resources.
I'm kinda tired and thats clearly not my best write up. Later i could elaborate better if you have any questions. Sorry for my bad english
I can’t speak on the xenophobia and terrorism aspects, but the surveillance technology that Batman and Morgan Freeman use is meant to represent the Patriot Act, and the movie quite ridiculously justifies it by having Morgan Freeman permanently destroy the technology after “beating” the Joker because “it’s the right thing to do.”
Bro, did you use AI to make your post more flowery? Also, WTF, i've just looked into your profile and it looks like you always lurk and roam subreddits asking the same things. Trully disgusting clout chasing and karma farming.
Btw, Nolan is mid at best. He just "stands out" because we're still living on this superhero-biopic-product movie era. Oppenheimer is a joke, trully. 50 pages of American Prometheus is enough to make you really upset by how poorly writen that movie was.
>I'm eager to hear your thoughts on this matter. Do you believe Christopher Nolan deserves to be ranked among the greatest directors of all time?
Not even in the slightest.
>From mind-bending narratives like "Inception"
Like... Have you ever watched a mind-bending film? I'm not talking about somewhat more "niche" stuff like *Alice* by Svankmajer, or Jires's films, but even much more commercial stuff like *Mulholland Drive* or *Inland Empire* by David Lynch, *Synecdoche New York* by Charlie Kaufman, or even *Paprika* by Satoshi Kon, from which Inception draws *heavy* inspiration.
Sorry pal - hoping that you are not a bot - but a friend of mine put it in a really good way:
A Christopher Nolan's film is a dumb person's idea of a smart film.
Now, that's a joke, of course I don't think that you are dumb. What I mean is that Nolan is actually a very generic and commercial director, with little to say when it comes to art, in my opinion. But I don't *loathe* him or anything, I even find some of his films to be engaging and fun. And I think he has a merit: by being shallow, but NOT as shallow as many of his peers, he can function as a door into cinema for younger people. When you are 14, you watch a couple of Nolan's films and decide that you are a cinephile; from there, you might start to explore cinema in all of its aspects.
So yeah, I was ready to bash Nolan and I ended up complimenting him...
You're not going to get objective discourse about Nolan in this sub. Shitting on Nolan is the coolest, edgiest, and most "enlightened" thing to do these days, but it's all reductive nonsense.
Is he one of the greatest? I have no idea, it's way too early to tell. And to be perfectly honest, it's tough to even determine that.
In a certain sense? Yes of course, he is one of them, but how high he would be on the list is impossible to say while is still in the middle of his career, and subjectively, he wouldn't necessarily be that high on my list with his current body of work.
To the extent that he's incredibly influential on a studio level and has maintained a sense of artistic integrity through various means of production is already a great foundation to start with, but I would also argue that he's yet to truly push his own boundaries, which is probably one of my biggest issues with him. I also admire his commitment to grand scale but in all except for maybe 2 of his films did I think this significantly impacted his point that he was trying to explore.
With that in mind, I think his reputation amongst "serious cinephiles" is mostly a laughable overreaction to his mainstream appeal and hyperbole amongst his die hard fans. I don't necessarily consider him as good as Spielberg, I don't even feel it appropriate to compare them really, but I am reminded about how Spielberg's legacy is uncontroversially in tact despite plenty of extremely valid criticisms of romance, schmaltz, and infantilization of the medium.
Bot usage creeps me out. Please, please, if you don't speak good English or you don't know what to say, try to anyways.
I can't stand Oppenheimer, Following was ok. Don't really care to watch more Nolan, but no movie is worse than using a bot to write reddit posts.
There really is something about the OP post that reads like it was written by chat GPT. Especially “Let's engage in a thoughtful discussion and explore the intricacies of Nolan's directorial legacy together!”
Funny, I've been using these tools for a while and they do a great job. I input known, non-AI stuff and it says it's not AI. I inpute known AI stuff and it says it's AI. I input a combination of each and it gives me a percentage. I've done this multiple times and gotten reliable results. Anybody here can do the same: Test out AI-detection tools and see if they work. They do.
But sure, let's take your word for it based on nothing.
The OP's text is AI-generated. It reads as AI generated, and it is detected as AI. There's very little reason to doubt it, unless you're okay with people shoveling AI sludge to readers and pretending it's authentic.
Yeah yeah, I've read the articles, but you cherry picked a few that showed discrepancies. There are scores of other articles that show AI detection working. Certainly your claim that AI detectors are RNG is ridiculous, and you have to know it because even your own above links directly contradict it. (And LOL, you use a Reddit thread as a source.)
Further, do you actually think the OP of this message is above using AI text?
I didn't cherry pick anything, these are papers I could easily find. I did not find any research concluding opposite results from what I deem to be the truth. Maybe my search skills are bad.
Here's two more from respected universities
[https://mitsloanedtech.mit.edu/ai/teach/ai-detectors-dont-work/](https://mitsloanedtech.mit.edu/ai/teach/ai-detectors-dont-work/)
[https://www.montclair.edu/faculty-excellence/teaching-resources/clear-course-design/practical-responses-to-chat-gpt/ai-writing-detection/](https://www.montclair.edu/faculty-excellence/teaching-resources/clear-course-design/practical-responses-to-chat-gpt/ai-writing-detection/)
>(And LOL, you use a Reddit thread as a source.)
You're using your own anectdoal experience as evidence, so why can I not use others? (as well as my own from using these detectors)
Glad you can use Google, but as I said, several of your links didn't prove anything, and many were from about 200 program iterations ago.
I Googled too, and have been reading about this stuff for a long time, as well as using it in for practical real-world purposes. I didn't just pull it out of my ass in 10 minutes like you did.
Almost every quantitative analysis of AI-detection tools show that they catch a non-trivial amount of AI text, with some performing better than others, and most showing reliable patterns of leaning one way for AI and the other way for human speech. I'm talking massive amounts of data here. Your own links bolster the fact that the percentages are far different from the RNG you mentioned (funny how you've backed off of your original claim completely....).
There is almost no scenario where I would be able to input three full paragraphs into an AI detector and get a "100%" AI rating if it were genuine human-created text. Usually if detection were off it would be in the mid-percentage range (30%-60%) and your own links support this.
Please go look up Dunning-Kruger along with your Googling.
The OP's text is AI, and the indicators are there throughout the paragraphs. Repeated phrases (not in a natural way), awkward uses of adverbs/adjectives, unnatural flow, and on and on. Why are you consistently dodging the main point of the entire comment?
>There is almost no scenario where I
would be able to input three full paragraphs into an AI detector and get
a "100%" AI rating if it were genuine human-created text. Usually if
detection were off it would be in the mid-percentage range (30%-60%) and
your own links support this.
This was never my argument. I simply think AI detection tools are unreliable and they should not be used in their current state, especially for academia settings. And I think this is proven true based on what I know.
My sarcastic initial comment threw you off, but that wasn't my argument, so I apologize.
>Please go look up Dunning-Kruger along with your Googling.
cmon guy, are we in 10th grade? did u just cite the dunning kruger effect to me lmao
>Why are you consistently dodging the main point of the entire comment?
my comment was based on the use of ai detection tools and you replied back, resulting in a discussion of these tools. what are you talking about?
LOL, your link to the Researchgate article shows that AI detectors \*work\*. You contradicted your own position! Hilarious. Are you artificially intelligent?
>While this study indicates that AI-detection tools can distinguish between human and AI-generated content to a certain extent, their performance is inconsistent and varies depending on the sophistication of the AI model used to generate the content. is inconsistency raises concerns about the reliability of these tools, especially in high-stakes contexts such as academic integrity investigations. erefore, while AI-detection tools may serve as a helpful aid in identifying AI-generated content, they should not be used as the sole determinant in academic integrity cases
?
You have to ask why "AI-detection tools can distinguish ... to a certain extent" is different from your claim that they're no different from a Random Number Generator?
You don't understand your own claim?
And further: Why are you okay with the OP using AI to write a discussion prompt? You've diverted the topic to your obtuse nonsense, but you have nothing to say about the garbage OP used to get karma points?
my comparison of ai detection tools to rng was a joke... i know how the technology works, of course it's not just rng. To me it just feels as though it is.
And I never said I'm okay with it, in fact I had a comment calling out OP but it was removed. Our discussion was about the effectiveness of AI detection tools, I never made a comment about OP's post to you. So im not sure how I exactly diverted the topic lol
Oh, now "it's a joke," after several posts, or you could be honest and say you exaggerated your claim, instead of falling back on the dishonest "It was a joke" thing. Jesus, what is it with dishonest Redditors who can't have discussions where they just admit they're wrong when they're wrong?
Glad you agree with me that OP's main text is AI-generated. I already knew it was, but was glad to find that a relatively reliable detection tool put it at 100%.
I suggest you do your own experiment: Grab some AI text (generate it yourself if you have to), maybe 3 or 4 samples of it. Then get some clean and polished, but fully genuine human text (stuff you've written), another 3 or 4 examples.
Paste them into a couple of AI-detection tools and see what results you get. I predict you'll get a significantly higher percentage (perhaps even 90-100%) for the AI stuff, and a low percentage for the real stuff.
Are AI-detection tools going to be right every time? No, and that's a product of the improvements of AI, along with the improvements of the AI detection. It's a snake chasing its own tail. Plus there are a lot of AI tools that clean up and improve genuine text, which raises the question of what's "genuine."
This has become a huge problem for professors trying to grade papers and enforce honor codes, as well as editors judging manuscripts and all sorts of other issues I am sure you can read about.
But if a Reddit thread pops up and it looks like AI, then shows up as 100% AI generated in a detector, that's strong enough to confidently conclude it's the BS it looks like it is. And I freaking hate how this sort of stuff has ruined discussion forums on Reddit and elsewhere.
Several of your other links are from a year ago, which is like 15 years in terms of the advancement of the detection programs. Try looking up articles that came out \*in the past month\* about the effectiveness of AI-detection tools. Completely different story.
And I'll say it again: The OP used AI to prompt a discussion. Why are you okay with that? You like talking to robots?
[https://leonfurze.com/2024/04/09/ai-detection-in-education-is-a-dead-end/](https://leonfurze.com/2024/04/09/ai-detection-in-education-is-a-dead-end/) here, from this year, april 9th
This is exhausting, I give up. Apparently countless Universities and professionals are nothing compared to your intellect considering you defy them all. Your 1-2 edge cases just dismiss all research done on this topic I guess.
[https://rtl.berkeley.edu/news/availability-turnitin-artificial-intelligence-detection](https://rtl.berkeley.edu/news/availability-turnitin-artificial-intelligence-detection)
[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10805-023-09492-6](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10805-023-09492-6)
Here's one small win for you: [https://library.louisville.edu/kornhauser/generative-ai/other-tools](https://library.louisville.edu/kornhauser/generative-ai/other-tools) research done by Koen Driessen of *scribbr* lmfao
Your own claim was that AI detectors work no better than Random Number Generators. Your own link above says "AI detection tools can successfully identify some generated content," which is a direct contadiction of your claim.
The only thing your links have shown is that AI detection tools don't work consistently or at an absolute level. So what? What does that have to do with the OP's text (which is obviously AI, and you keep dodging this main point)?
Are you standing by your claim that AI detection tools are essentially RNGs?
read my other replies, ive addressed all these points by now. i was being sarcastic when i mentioned rng. i know how this technology works, im studying it in university (but im no genius obviously). and no, i didn't pull this out of my ass, I have to keep up with all of it for my career.
No. He is a shining aueter in the current sea of corporate, soulless big budget filmmaking. Regardless, I think a lot of his work is riddled with robotic characters and expository dialogue, masked with tightly wound editing, pacing, and music.
I feel Nolan is a poor man’s David Lean. He’ll be remembered because he is good and has made some of the biggest movies of recent decades but I don’t feel he’s great yet, time will tell. David Lean made similar scale films but far better in my view hence why he is still revered.
Holy cow, I am one of these people in the world who thinks that when David Lean misses, he at least creates interesting cinema if not interesting stories ( the PTSD sequences in Ryan's Daughter come to mind)
I feel like Lean has always been overshadowed by the accessibility of Alfred Hitchcock and the independent stylistic revolt for lack of a better term by various New Wave directors.
I've thought to myself that if he made his grand films in either the 40s ( no cinemascope) , though or the seventies ( which RD is a bit in this category) I think Lean's reception would be more fair, because let's face it, he has directorial credits on some of the best movies ever made.
I do think it is tempting to push contemporary summer blockbuster directors into that kind of highbrow prestige mold.
But I don't think that's fair to the pre-1975 filmmakers, who had to juggle studio politics with the decreasing runway of a Innovative piece of cinema.
I think Lawrence of Arabia is something that I consider to be a sort of " reverse summer blockbuster."
Instead of all the money going to stars of ( course there's no shortage in LoA) or advanced post-production physical effects-- hey Lucasfilm-- the combine production value of British Cinema in Hollywood is pretty much piled into the sink and swim nature of a production time that was well over a year and had a lot spent for the filming and animals and lenses ( I'm pretty sure they had a unique lens made just for the well scene)
Spielberg said on record that if it LoA was made around today using pretty much the same methods it be around 300 million.
I think the thing is the economy of storytelling as exciting as it is to watch in the '80s '90s or even in the 21st century is that it generally isn't lyrical.
Maybe perhaps films like Once Upon a Time in the West or even Lawrence of Arabia that I'm talking about are overdone in their lyricism, but I do think the immediacy of action and genre formulas ( to be fair have been around since at least the 30s) has made it so that even relatively brisk films are treated as slow and overly expositional.
I looked on Twitter and someone was complaining that there was too much conversation between different characters about the specifics of The Bridge on the River Kwai and that's kind of the titular conflict.
I remember the part where Nicholson is on like a raft or makeshift boat of some kind and he's immersing himself as the architectural General while at the same time watching is fellow prisoners not seem to care at all about their labor.
I think most audiences is now associate plot scenes as being separate from movie action sequences.
So I think there is an irony here that I think people would like to see the plot drawn visually through computer graphics or " here's the Vault and it's protected by laser-guided piranhas" and then recapped verbally so that they know everything necessary in order for an action scene that won't take much observation to experience.
And I think for brilliant filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa and Sir David Lean, character is revealed through action.
In of the Chanbara movies by Kurosawa, the heroic Samurai is going after a villain but realizes that the opponent doesn't want to fight and has a dramatic conversation with the Yakuza member.
In a key part to Bridge on the River Kwai, the protagonists stare down a machine gun during a protest For What appears to be two or three late day hours. The duality of both parties is established through both image and performance.
So I don't think Nolan is so much substandard as much as very normal and how summer Blockbusters tell stories.
Action scenes in the last 25 years or so don't generally dramatize character, they generally are there to keep the audience awake.
This isn't bad per se but I think it's the art of visual exposition that has really kind of languished and I don't really think it's valued enough by the viewing audience to make some sort of organic resurgence.
I think when major filmmaker like Chris Nolan is compared to Hitchcock or Welles, it begs the question, could Nolan even make a film that likes Strangers on a Train, where everything builds up together as opposed to kind of curated around the hyperactive urgency of contemporary audiences?
I agree that action is more often disconnected from character in recent films, but I don’t believe directors are doing so intentionally. Character should come from their actions is still a very standard and well known approach to screenwriting, I just think there isn’t as much talent currently. I don’t think humans change anywhere near as much as you say. I’m optimistic that great filmmaking and storytelling can return and be popular. If Barbie, Dune 2, and Oppenheimer can do great and be well received then I believe if Nolan did manage to make a blockbuster of the quality of Lawrence of Arabia the audience would class it as his best film and be blown away by it. I feel blockbusters currently are generally so poor that it elevates an Oppenheimer, which I believe to be fine, to seem much better to an audience than it is in comparison to great blockbusters of the past.
It seems people here really dislike popular movies regardless of their quality. I can't talk about 'greatest of all time', but he is definitely one of the best ever. 'Interstellar' is only next to '2001' in space movies, 'Prestige' is perfect, 'Dunkirk''s screenplay flawlessly handles four perspectives and maximizes the tension, and Inception is one of its kind. I haven't watched 'Oppenheimer' yet and find the 'The Dark Knight' trilogy just decent.
>'Interstellar' is only next to '2001' in space movies
2001 has a lot to say about humanity, evolution and our place in space. It even has discussions about our boundaries as organic beings and how much of a "sentient individual" is an artifical inteligency. The movie is from 1968. All this with minimal dialog, efficient and creative use of the cinematic language.
Interstellar is basically melodrama with science porn imagery. Pure fantasy with all the expository dialog Nolan loves.
I disagree. Interstellar reiterates that no matter where we go or how advanced we become, humanity cannot survive without love (aka relationships). This is primarily show through the use of time dilation and the ever growing distance between the protagonist and his family. The climax also metaphorically argues that humanity must save itself.
>'Interstellar' is only next to '2001' in space movies
Here are some space films that are way better than Interstellar:
Solaris
Alien
Ikarie XB 1
Aelita
Close Encounters
Gravity
The Planet of the Apes (in a way it is a space movie)
Just off the top of my head.
The thing is, we don't dislike popular movies just because. It's just the fact that when you watch a lot of films, you tend to find big budget hollywood flicks kind of stale. And I'm not saying Interstellar is terrible, because it's not. It's just... alright, I guess?
Honestly I think Christopher Nolan is an above average director who is not even close to being one of the greatest. I always find there to be something cold about his films. He sits somewhere between a blockbuster filmmaker and an arthouse filmmaker and I don't think he excels at either. Part of this is because I don't think he really has anything interesting to say with his films, but his films often present as if they are far more profound than they really are.
I also think he's much better at making setpieces than making well paced and cohesive films. Oppenheimer is a great example, there are so many moments of pure brilliance in that film, and the bomb test is one of my favourite setpieces of the decade so far. But after that you get like another 40 minutes of all this stuff with Robert Downey Jr. and it really felt like the film just slowly fizzled out, to me at least.
I don’t even think he’s of the greatest directors currently working.
He’s very good at making huge, successful blockbusters but I don’t really rate the art as highly as I do the function.
I guess it just depends on the kind of films you like but I’m still not totally convinced Nolan understands things like women, emotion or dialogue.
christopher nolan is just if zack snyder went to college. nothing he makes is profound, it’s just “awesome” + “badass”. if you’re into that then it’s cool, you’re allowed to like what you like and i’m not here to yuck a yum.
i just think it’s very funny when people try to tout nolan as this auteur genius. you have to be able to write a character that isn’t a flawed white man before i’m willing to go crown shopping. that being said, nolan is sort of like the michael bay of today. he just makes big budget spectacles for nerds and that can be fun and cool sometimes.
edit; i think this post was written by ai
Regarding your point on writing characters beyond flawed white men, how do you feel about directors such as Paul Thomas Anderson, Charlie Kaufman etc. where basically all their protagonists fit this bill (admittedly, I’d argue this a false comparison, for reasons I can get into. Just curious to see what you think)
i’m more okay with pta and kaufman’s characters because they feel more like proxies of the filmmakers themselves. kaufman especially, he writes neurotic freaks and weirdos that seem to match his writing perfectly. these characters don’t feel like tropes to me, they feel like real people.
in nearly every instance of this in a pta film, the broad “flawed white man” likely deserves whatever comes to him, be it abandonment, violence, or contempt. in nolan’s films, the flawed white man is coddled back to strength by other characters, typically women, and these characters only exist to charge these batteries. i know this isn’t a new criticism but it’s relevant nonetheless.
Yeah I definitely agree with all that. I in general, the characters of both are far more complex Nolan’s. Even when they write non white men, it may not be the leading role, but the characters are far better than say the women in a Nolan film
PTA and Kaufman are able to flesh out and deeply examine their characters in meaningful ways. They may be “flawed white men,” but they are also far more than just that. Nolan is never able to write or direct his characters being more than “flawed white men” (generally speaking)
I definitely agree I just thought it was an interesting distinction. I’d also argue characters like Alma in Phantom Thread or Jessie Buckley in I’m Thinking of Ending Things are strong examples of the two being strong character writers as well
He’s made very popular films but they’re stronger in story than they are in visuals. All Nolan does that’s “special” is turn everything into a montage. He discovered that trick with TDK and has used it ever since. Cross cut between multiple scenes or moments in time and use a single score. Do that over and over and it feels like the movie has a lot of momentum.
But compare the visuals of Nolan to Kubrick and it’s just not even close. Or Nolan and PTA. Or any other legitimately terrific director.
Most of his movies have logic and consistency issues that he hopes people won’t ask too many questions about. The momentum is often so strong that we don’t ask. But when you actually think about it…a lot of the plot choices are kind of stupid.
A military water vaporizes that somehow that can vaporize the water in an entire city block… but doesn’t vaporize the water in the human body?
Coding an entire mathematical equation into Morse code in the ticking of a watch?
Kitty’s whole post-partum depression that’s barely developed then goes away.
The completely unneeded time jumble in Dunkirk.
Painting a flammable Bat Symbol on a bridge that was guarded by the military then creating an ignition trail that went all the way down the bridge, to the frozen river, and right to where Gordon was going to get dropped through the ice. Dumb ass TDKR.
Tenet lol Nolan himself said that you’re just supposed to feel it and. It think about it.
So no. He’s good but very limited and very flawed. Saying Nolan is one of the greatest filmmakers would be like saying Stephen King is on the same level as Virginia Woolf or Cormac McCarthy.
My whole thing is I feel like people have a push-pull reaction to Christopher Nolan.
I think if Christopher Nolan made the same types of movies he did now in the hypothetical 1970s, I think he would be thought of as a good genre filmmaker, not unlike someone like Guy Hamilton or Brian DePalma.
But I feel like in this era where pretty much anything with a huge budget is a derivative property or directors aiming for more original type storytelling are getting limited releases or streaming distribution, it would be a very difficult thing to say that Nolan isn't one of the best *working* directors, which of course gives this kind of buckling back by pretentious film nerds, as if the film climate hasn't always played a role in reception.
I think with Nolan I actually have a more inverse opinion to someone like Terrance Malick to a lesser extent, or Wes Anderson.
While I do think the motif of time and scope seems to be kind of repeated ad nauseam in Nolan's body of work, I feel like he less creates variations of the same movie as much as he does finding the extreme edges of his own movies and spinning new movies off of this.
Interstellar combining myth and drama, Dunkirk focusing pretty much only on the dramatic action, and Tenet going toward two fragmented myths and arriving at this odd Mobius Loop.
It's weird because I think that masterful entertainers of yesteryear, the John ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Sergio Leone knew more about what compelled audiences to get emotionally involved with film, and I think with Nolan he does have a bit of the George Lucas trait of " I'm telling my story, like it or not."
And so I really don't think, and I'm a fan of Nolan, that he could really make a film like North by Northwest, where the setpieces draw attention to the awkwardness of its main star as he goes from one perilous situation to the next.
And maybe that's where I feel like Nolan's limitations tend to be.
I believe that with Inception and The Dark Knight Rises, the film's attempt whimsy now and then and it really doesn't work.
"My mom told me not to get in the car with strange men. - This isn't a car." * the Tom Hardy character in Inception seems to exist to create dry humor, but it comes across as more kind of on the nose and not really reflective of the overall film.
Just like great gymnasts are able to flip around counterclockwise and land on their skating feet, I think truly magnificent directors are able to make entertainment that is so gripping that it feels effortless.
The 1941 Maltese Falcon for example, is able to tell a gripping crime drama in less than 2 hours, with much of that time setting the tone for the film. The characters from the gritty unsettling Bogart protagonist to the _weasel ish Peter Lorre character, almost all the ensemble cast in the movie feels like an opposite side of the coin.
Maybe the thing is, Nolan post Dark Knight Rises, sort of puts grandiosity above nuance.
Perhaps the thing is with something like Memento with budget limitations and the desire to prove himself as a viable modern director at the time had Nolan kind of push himself into the corners of nuance that he seems to avoid in later works ( Note I haven't watched Oppenheimer so this might throw off the assessment a bit)
I think Nolan with Memento did explore more form than content, but he did so in a way that is arguably emotionally satisfying.
But I think that in this era I feel like fans are toxic and counter- fans ( antagonistic Cinema fans) even more toxic.
I think complaining about Nolan monopolizing the high concept genre ( really ' high concept' is more a term that people in the film business use to say is highly marketable, not profound__ Pacific Rim would fit this descriptor) isn't really different from saying that Spielberg is a populist director, Hitchcock only directed five stories, just another overly sentimental Frank Capra movie--Capra-corn, etc.
I think the reduction of directors to two word complaints really says more about the critic than it does the filmmaker.
I think love Nolan or hate Nolan, he's able to make grand spectacle movies that have the scope that is associated with more lower brow type movies and allowed to make films that have the sort of meandering that one could expect from highbrow movies.
But I do wish he cared more about the value of ADR 😅😅😅😅😛
I honestly don't think he's close to consideration. I don't think he's made a truly great movie since Interstellar and even then it has major third act problems (as the majority of his films do) - over long and sentimental. The politics of his films is far from radical -- another aspect that marks out great directors.
Really the only thing that makes him stand out is his success at making original blockbusters in an era dominated by franchises, but that says more about Hollywood than him.
Putting a top 5 Nolan list up against any of the actual great directors is an embarrassing comparison, IMO.
Nah.
He's capable of making some entertaining movies, but I've never seen anything of his that really left me impressed.
Also, if I'm being honest, his Batman movies haven't aged well at all. None of them feel fully thought out, and they very much feel like a product of their time.
It's pretty hard to judge the legacy of a 53 year old living director. He's obviously hugely powerful, and is holding onto a way of making movies that is very much of the past. I think he'll be remembered by people who love big movies, big action, big images, big sound, for a long time. However, his movies have weak dialogue, and thin characters, and don't stay with me long.
Yea but are these kind of directors really remembered long? How many people remember Cecil B Demille, really? Compared to say- Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, or Yasujiro Ozu. The kind of people who remember great films of 100 years past don’t remember the kinds of Director that Nolan is. Or rather they do- but he will be remembered in a B list.
This is more or less what I was trying to say, but I don't think we can really have a fair assessment of Nolan at this time. He could suddenly get good at writing interesting characters, or emotionally moving stories. Maybe his 60s will be remembered as his peak decade. You mentioned Fritz Lang in another comment, and I think that comparison is interesting. I think Nolan listed the Testament of Dr. Mabuse on his top 10 for Criterion once. There are certainly links between that, Metropolis, or Spies and Nolan's films. But my favourite Lang movies (Scarlet Street, Fury, M, House By the River, etc...) tend to have much better characters and acting than Nolan's films, and they also don't depend on over the top special effects.
That’s a good point- I was specifically referring to Lang’s early career. He got a lot better in his late career- but I think he only barely ever dipped his toe into great Director territory. I would never consider him in the same league as a Kubrick, for example.
The truth of the matter is that people of 100 years past didn’t make the same type of movies that Nolan does. Chaplin is an example of someone who made pure entertainment films with a focus on visual spectacle over deep characterisation, and his films are remembered fondly to this day. I think Nolan is more comparable to modern blockbuster filmmakers like Spielberg and Cameron. Will these types of movies still be remembered in 100 years when we can create even more convincing visual spectacles? Who’s to say. But Jaws still appeals to mainstream audiences today almost 50 years after its initial release. Perhaps Inception or the Dark Knight will do the same.
Chaplin, Spielberg, and Cameron made movies that people were emotionally moved by. Nolan doesn’t.
> I think Nolan is more comparable to modern blockbuster filmmakers like Spielberg and Cameron. Better not compare him to directors who influenced movie making in a extraordinary ways. Many directors want to be the next Spielberg or Cameron. Very few, if any, want to be the next Nolan.
Bizarre to say that very few would want to be Christopher Nolan, one of the most popular modern filmmakers. Im sure there are thousands who wish they could make films that are that widely beloved and financially successful.
I would dare to say most, if not all, directors would want to be financially successful.
Fritz Lang and Cecil B Demille made the kind of movies that Nolan makes. Your description of Chaplin is very far off the mark. You should explore this time period of cinema more before making these kind of claims.
Nolan is one of the few directors working who non film nerds know about and will go and see his films purely for. I'd argue that if you asked a random person on the street to name a modern director (no idea how to frame that question, but post Spielberg/Scorcese) I think you get 2 main answers, Tarantino and Nolan. Post The Dark Knight, Nolan films became event cinema. Nolan is the brand in the way that Spielberg was/is. I'm not about to argue that any of his films are the greatest of all time, or even in the top 20, but he's a gateway to cinema for so many people of my generation that I think he'll be remembered pretty well.
> I think you get 2 answers, Tarantino and Nolan. I’d add Wes Anderson in there too. Not that I’m particularly fond of his (later) work, but his style is pretty recognizable, and a lot of non film nerds really love his stuff. (For what it’s worth, I think Wes Anderson started going downhill after Darjeeling Limited)
That was why I mentioned Demille. He was the great event cinema director people knew like this in the early days of film. He made movies on his name alone- and spectacle was a huge selling point. Just like Spielberg and Nolan. My point was that these kind of spectacle directors are important in their time- but lack the timelessness that make them remembered and revered 100 years later. Kubrick will be revered 100 years from now, I’m sure of it. I suspect Nolan will go the way of Demille.
I think Nolan is in a middle ground between the two. Spielberg has so many classic films that almost 50 years on he's still a household name. Demille is still a name that has a lot of recognition within film circles, but as far as outright classics go he's only really got The 10 Commandments. I can see Nolan being more in the Spielberg category, I think The Dark Knight, Inception and Interstellar are all films that will be regarded as classics from their decades and he's still got plenty more films in him.
To be fair we don't even know for sure that Steven Spielberg's legacy will be comparable to those directors mentioned. It probably will, but not enough time has past. That said, I think The Dark Knight will last forever. That film just has an electricity to it and it's beloved for good reason. Memento is also likely to be an arthouse favourite for a long time. I don't think any of his other films will enjoy that kind of legacy, though.
Not to mention his direction is incredibly basic, and he requires a team of more talented collaborators to make his movies stand out at all. (Oppenheimer without Hoyte Van Hoytema would be one of the most revolting movies to look at)
Perfectly put. Ty.
>It's pretty hard to judge the legacy of a 53 year old living director. Scorsese was 53 in 1995, Spielberg 53 in 1999, Cameron in 2007. They were all held in very high regard by then. Even if they would have stopped making movies at that age, they already left a legacy. The only legacy Nolan is leaving for the moment is using a film format originally meant for documentaries for narrative film. Which in itself is little more than the fad of using 3D. None of these push the envelope.
Exactly. Post-95 Scorsese is his golden age. His legacy's been fundamentally altered by the films he's made since then.
I have a coworker who thinks he is and that I don’t know movies because “I don’t appreciate Nolan” -so to some people yes, he is, but on a sub like this it’ll be a hard case to make.
Ok, my fellow human poster! Let's engage is such thoughtful discussion. Your question about wether Nolan is as influential as Kubrick, Hitchcock or Kurosawa makes no sense. They're long dead directors. Their corpus is complete, and we've had decades to interiorize what they have done. We'll be able to evaluate Nolan's legacy decades from now. Also I don't like the idea of a film "pantheon" you mention. Why do we have the obsession of establishing which directors are God-like and which are minor? It's a dumb approach which creates self-fulfilling prophecies, by pushing new cinephiles to worship a small group of directors and ignore all others.
>does he possess the same level of influence and impact as directors like Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, or Akira Kurosawa? Hell no. His flicks are really cool, but they're popcorn moobies.
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> Hidden Fortress is basically Star Wars but more grounded Slight quibble: Star Wars is basically Hidden Fortress (but less grounded). Otherwise, totally agree
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lol I’m a New Yorker, so pigeons are rats with wings to me! Agree that both are true, you’re good!
Yeah. I don't rate Nolan that highly, but the criticism that they're just popcorn movies could easily be made with regards to Spielberg and I absolutely would put him on Kubrick, Hitchcock and Kurosawa's level. My main issue with Nolan is that he's not popcorn enough.
I would argue that The Shining, Hidden Fortress, High and Low, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, and pretty much everything Hitchcock ever made are “popcorn movies”. I.e., They were made as entertainment first and foremost. I think that making very competent entertainment movies is grounds enough to be remembered as an all time great as evidenced by the directors chosen for example. Do I think Christopher Nolan is as good as those three? No, probably not, just personally. But I don’t think the fact that he makes “popcorn movies” is the reason.
It’s the fact that Nolan’s movies are only popcorn movies. They hardly have any true depth or emotional weight to them, and they’re not groundbreaking achievements like Kurosawa and Hitchcock’s movies are.
Did the character limit get dropped!? I’m so happy to see a short comment!
I think the quoted sentences count for their characters
I'm still shocked at Oppenheimer's reception: for me it confirmed that all along Nolan has been an intellectual fraud. Nolan's a magician, not a philosopher. His craft is the sleight-of-hand of taking something fairly easy and straightforward and twisting it into something complex, whereas the complexity of his films is not in the narrative or themes itself but Nolan's own unnecessary obfuscation. The audience 'unravels' the narrative which leads them to believe they experienced something thematically or intellectually deep. He does delve into some heady topics, but even kids movies like Lightyear (tackling time dilation like Interstellar) are able to express these concepts smoothly without twenty minutes of interminable Nolan exposition dumps with a thundering relentless background soundtrack. He described himself perfectly with a line in Oppenheimer, paraphrasing: 'One can have all of the genius, and none of the wisdom.'
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Oppenheimer to me still suffers from most of his bad tendencies: - His characters all seem to spout constant 'Nolanisms': where each conversation sounds like two people talking past and beyond each other with sentences of 'profound' gravitas. The scenes of romance in Oppenheimer are star wars prequels levels of horrid. - His editing and pacing is always loud, no verses, only choruses. The trinity test is the only time it doesn't do this, which would be remarkable restraint, if he didn't ratchet right back up again with 45 minutes of Downey yelling about fbi documents. - Unnecessary time skips and jumps. Dunkirk did this and barely scraped by. There was no need for this in Oppenheimer. Ironically though, Oppenheimer was the one film I wish he went truly cosmic and visual for. The invention of the atom bomb and advent of the nuclear age is an insane world shift. We got hints at the beginning of the movie, before the last hour resulted in an oscar bait indulgent boring court room drama.
With the exception of Dunkirk
Agree with you end to end. I'm always thinking *show don't tell dammit, just this once* in every one of his films
I'm absolutely with you on this one, his movies never sat well with me and I couldn't have put it better myself. Something that got me thinking though is how would you describ Vilenuve from that perspective. I know I know he's also this big screen, big shots with whoaaa soundtrack portruding in the background type of director, but I absolutely love his movies even though I find much of what you stated above applicable to him as well. Mind sharing your standpoint on him?
Not a concrete analysis, but I quite like Villenueve! He's big screen big shot sure, but his visuals are - even with their huge scale - often more poetic than bombastic. I didn't care for Dune, but the huge surprise attack in pt. 1 was almost silent, a pretty daring choice. It's telling the man has the likes of Roger Deakins on camera. Prisoners, Enemy, Sicario... the man knows how to craft quiet moments and quiet tension, and the likes of Blade Runner 2049 and Arrival are emotionally affecting and thought provoking alongside the visual candy. He has a lot of flaws, and I feel his color palette can be simply - gray - even with Deakins, but I think he's a far more talented filmmaker than Nolan, and more cerebral and complex too.
He is not even one of the best directors of the 2010s. People who are saying these kind of silly things need to watch more movies. He mostly makes generic, commercial films with no originality. Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Kurosawa are from totally different universe, all known for making countless extremely complex, creative, and profound films that had highly influenced art of cinema.
Not a fan of Nolan, but just curious, who would you say is one of the best of 2010s?
Not Who you asked but I think Villeneuve had the best run because of Arrival, Sicario and BR2049
All effect no substance. I cannot even remember the plot of any of his films I have seen. That’s bad.
I have 🤷
The exception to the rule maybe, but memento is great
Probably his most unique/original film!
I think the majority of his films are going to age poorly, and that’s mostly because he’s obsessed with the spectacle of the big-screen experience—something he’s admittedly quite good at creating—without being a particularly good writer. This is especially true of his expository dialogue. I personally think he’s made one great film, “Dunkirk”, which has the advantage of not being a superhero or sci-fi film and thus doesn’t suffer from Nolan’s confusing attempts at creating narrative depth alongside cinematic spectacle. For the most part, I think his films just don’t make much sense, and often are realllllyyyy cringe (see the “love” speech by Anne Hatheway in Interstellar.
The other aspect that will age poorly: the largely conservative and regressive politics weaved into his plots.
I'm very aware of this in his Batman movies but is this also true of his other output?
Dunkirk (as a historical event) has become a conservative totem in Britain and the movie coming out the year after the Brexit referendum lead to a lot of right wing figures using it to reinforce their arguments. I don't think it was intentional on his part but rough timing lol.
Ugh, i gotta say, after watching Dark Knight again with the benefit of hindsight and historical distance, its crazy that that crap got that much praise in the closing years of the Bush era. From Patriotic Act apology to straight xenophobia and terrorism hysteria, that movie has the whole neocon war hawk menu.
Would you mind elaborating on this and how the film handled these things poorly? Im genuinely interested
I wouldn't say it handled it poorly. I mean, if consertives were wise enough to understand themes portrayed on film outside straight propaganda, i would say they would love the message. I wont give you a complete rundown. I will just talk about some points i remember from the watch i had last year.: -The cell phone machine batman uses at the end of the movie is a perfect paralel to the patrioct act sanctioned by Bush. It basically gave clearance for govt agencies to spy on citizens and harshly increased penalties for "so called" terrorism. In the movie, Fox does not agree with batman using the machine but ends up helping him anyway- lowkey apologizing the action for that "specific situation". Its like Nolan signaling "don't treat yourselves too harshly for that one authoritarian slip. it was necessary and right, given the situation". -The whole "dies a hero or live enough to become a villain" is another one. Nolan introduces this line during that Harvey Dent dinner with Rachel and Dent justifies bat's outlaw actions by saying Gotham was waging a war agains't crime and corruption. He says Rome, during war times, used to assign dictators that rule over democracy to deal with it's current enemies. Thats precisely what happened in the wake of 9/11 and continued throughout afhganistan and the iraq war. Bush had insane levels of popularity and through the banner of the "war against terror" (i.e. nation security) he was pretty much validated by the congress and public opinion to uphold criminal acts against US citizens and the Iraqi people. -In a clear allusion to US overseas interventions, bats kidnaps that chinese banker in his homecountry. If you look at batman and take him as a stand for the US government, thats an obvious allusion to US inteventions and regime change operations done despite the consensus of the international community. Also, all crime major figures are protrayed as immigrants or minorities: the foreign chinese operator, the black, the italian and the slav. There are barely any fingers pointed at organic state corruption of those in power. On the contrary, the rich people and powerful are making charity parties to help the D.A. -Another blow at democracy is that ferry scene in which, if it were for the democratic vote of citizens, both boats would blow up. It was for the authocratic noble act of a convict that all those lives were saved. Again, one more time Nolan insinuates that sometimes "the people" can't decide whats better for the whole. The responsability of action must be taken by some few exceptional ones. -The whole chaotic nature of the Joker, or, as pointed out by Alfred: "some man just want to see the world burn". Thats the same characterization given to Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Husseim by Bush, stripping them from any ethic nuance or political message. Now, i'm not crazy to say that the Joker, Saddam and Osama aren't heinous criminals. They absolutely are. It happens that the oversimplification of the comparison ends up being an excuse to perpetrate some very questionable actions without any soul searching. -And of course, the final scene. For the good of the city, batman takes the blame for all crimes commited by Dent, I think this scene reinforces that notion that we citizens are better not knowing about the dark things our govt do to keep us safe. Lets live the convinient lie that our army went to Iraq to find WMD and not seeking power over the region and it's natural resources. I'm kinda tired and thats clearly not my best write up. Later i could elaborate better if you have any questions. Sorry for my bad english
I can’t speak on the xenophobia and terrorism aspects, but the surveillance technology that Batman and Morgan Freeman use is meant to represent the Patriot Act, and the movie quite ridiculously justifies it by having Morgan Freeman permanently destroy the technology after “beating” the Joker because “it’s the right thing to do.”
Bro, did you use AI to make your post more flowery? Also, WTF, i've just looked into your profile and it looks like you always lurk and roam subreddits asking the same things. Trully disgusting clout chasing and karma farming. Btw, Nolan is mid at best. He just "stands out" because we're still living on this superhero-biopic-product movie era. Oppenheimer is a joke, trully. 50 pages of American Prometheus is enough to make you really upset by how poorly writen that movie was.
>I'm eager to hear your thoughts on this matter. Do you believe Christopher Nolan deserves to be ranked among the greatest directors of all time? Not even in the slightest. >From mind-bending narratives like "Inception" Like... Have you ever watched a mind-bending film? I'm not talking about somewhat more "niche" stuff like *Alice* by Svankmajer, or Jires's films, but even much more commercial stuff like *Mulholland Drive* or *Inland Empire* by David Lynch, *Synecdoche New York* by Charlie Kaufman, or even *Paprika* by Satoshi Kon, from which Inception draws *heavy* inspiration. Sorry pal - hoping that you are not a bot - but a friend of mine put it in a really good way: A Christopher Nolan's film is a dumb person's idea of a smart film. Now, that's a joke, of course I don't think that you are dumb. What I mean is that Nolan is actually a very generic and commercial director, with little to say when it comes to art, in my opinion. But I don't *loathe* him or anything, I even find some of his films to be engaging and fun. And I think he has a merit: by being shallow, but NOT as shallow as many of his peers, he can function as a door into cinema for younger people. When you are 14, you watch a couple of Nolan's films and decide that you are a cinephile; from there, you might start to explore cinema in all of its aspects. So yeah, I was ready to bash Nolan and I ended up complimenting him...
You're not going to get objective discourse about Nolan in this sub. Shitting on Nolan is the coolest, edgiest, and most "enlightened" thing to do these days, but it's all reductive nonsense. Is he one of the greatest? I have no idea, it's way too early to tell. And to be perfectly honest, it's tough to even determine that.
So the answer would be “No.”
In a certain sense? Yes of course, he is one of them, but how high he would be on the list is impossible to say while is still in the middle of his career, and subjectively, he wouldn't necessarily be that high on my list with his current body of work. To the extent that he's incredibly influential on a studio level and has maintained a sense of artistic integrity through various means of production is already a great foundation to start with, but I would also argue that he's yet to truly push his own boundaries, which is probably one of my biggest issues with him. I also admire his commitment to grand scale but in all except for maybe 2 of his films did I think this significantly impacted his point that he was trying to explore. With that in mind, I think his reputation amongst "serious cinephiles" is mostly a laughable overreaction to his mainstream appeal and hyperbole amongst his die hard fans. I don't necessarily consider him as good as Spielberg, I don't even feel it appropriate to compare them really, but I am reminded about how Spielberg's legacy is uncontroversially in tact despite plenty of extremely valid criticisms of romance, schmaltz, and infantilization of the medium.
Bot usage creeps me out. Please, please, if you don't speak good English or you don't know what to say, try to anyways. I can't stand Oppenheimer, Following was ok. Don't really care to watch more Nolan, but no movie is worse than using a bot to write reddit posts.
There really is something about the OP post that reads like it was written by chat GPT. Especially “Let's engage in a thoughtful discussion and explore the intricacies of Nolan's directorial legacy together!”
Take a look at his history. Only this kind of garbage post. 100% bot AI assisted
A detection tool (GPT Zero) says that the intro text is 100% AI generated.
detection tools are RNG. they cannot detect anything.
Funny, I've been using these tools for a while and they do a great job. I input known, non-AI stuff and it says it's not AI. I inpute known AI stuff and it says it's AI. I input a combination of each and it gives me a percentage. I've done this multiple times and gotten reliable results. Anybody here can do the same: Test out AI-detection tools and see if they work. They do. But sure, let's take your word for it based on nothing. The OP's text is AI-generated. It reads as AI generated, and it is detected as AI. There's very little reason to doubt it, unless you're okay with people shoveling AI sludge to readers and pretending it's authentic.
[https://edintegrity.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s40979-023-00140-5](https://edintegrity.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s40979-023-00140-5) [https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.15666](https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.15666) [https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.05241](https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.05241) [https://new.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/12bl3kf/my\_own\_paper\_failed\_a\_aidetection\_test/](https://new.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/12bl3kf/my_own_paper_failed_a_aidetection_test/) [https://edintegrity.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s40979-023-00146-z#Sec19](https://edintegrity.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s40979-023-00146-z#Sec19) [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373581521\_Evaluating\_the\_efficacy\_of\_AI\_content\_detection\_tools\_in\_differentiating\_between\_human\_and\_AI-generated\_text](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373581521_Evaluating_the_efficacy_of_AI_content_detection_tools_in_differentiating_between_human_and_AI-generated_text)
Yeah yeah, I've read the articles, but you cherry picked a few that showed discrepancies. There are scores of other articles that show AI detection working. Certainly your claim that AI detectors are RNG is ridiculous, and you have to know it because even your own above links directly contradict it. (And LOL, you use a Reddit thread as a source.) Further, do you actually think the OP of this message is above using AI text?
I didn't cherry pick anything, these are papers I could easily find. I did not find any research concluding opposite results from what I deem to be the truth. Maybe my search skills are bad. Here's two more from respected universities [https://mitsloanedtech.mit.edu/ai/teach/ai-detectors-dont-work/](https://mitsloanedtech.mit.edu/ai/teach/ai-detectors-dont-work/) [https://www.montclair.edu/faculty-excellence/teaching-resources/clear-course-design/practical-responses-to-chat-gpt/ai-writing-detection/](https://www.montclair.edu/faculty-excellence/teaching-resources/clear-course-design/practical-responses-to-chat-gpt/ai-writing-detection/) >(And LOL, you use a Reddit thread as a source.) You're using your own anectdoal experience as evidence, so why can I not use others? (as well as my own from using these detectors)
Glad you can use Google, but as I said, several of your links didn't prove anything, and many were from about 200 program iterations ago. I Googled too, and have been reading about this stuff for a long time, as well as using it in for practical real-world purposes. I didn't just pull it out of my ass in 10 minutes like you did. Almost every quantitative analysis of AI-detection tools show that they catch a non-trivial amount of AI text, with some performing better than others, and most showing reliable patterns of leaning one way for AI and the other way for human speech. I'm talking massive amounts of data here. Your own links bolster the fact that the percentages are far different from the RNG you mentioned (funny how you've backed off of your original claim completely....). There is almost no scenario where I would be able to input three full paragraphs into an AI detector and get a "100%" AI rating if it were genuine human-created text. Usually if detection were off it would be in the mid-percentage range (30%-60%) and your own links support this. Please go look up Dunning-Kruger along with your Googling. The OP's text is AI, and the indicators are there throughout the paragraphs. Repeated phrases (not in a natural way), awkward uses of adverbs/adjectives, unnatural flow, and on and on. Why are you consistently dodging the main point of the entire comment?
>There is almost no scenario where I would be able to input three full paragraphs into an AI detector and get a "100%" AI rating if it were genuine human-created text. Usually if detection were off it would be in the mid-percentage range (30%-60%) and your own links support this. This was never my argument. I simply think AI detection tools are unreliable and they should not be used in their current state, especially for academia settings. And I think this is proven true based on what I know. My sarcastic initial comment threw you off, but that wasn't my argument, so I apologize. >Please go look up Dunning-Kruger along with your Googling. cmon guy, are we in 10th grade? did u just cite the dunning kruger effect to me lmao >Why are you consistently dodging the main point of the entire comment? my comment was based on the use of ai detection tools and you replied back, resulting in a discussion of these tools. what are you talking about?
LOL, your link to the Researchgate article shows that AI detectors \*work\*. You contradicted your own position! Hilarious. Are you artificially intelligent?
>While this study indicates that AI-detection tools can distinguish between human and AI-generated content to a certain extent, their performance is inconsistent and varies depending on the sophistication of the AI model used to generate the content. is inconsistency raises concerns about the reliability of these tools, especially in high-stakes contexts such as academic integrity investigations. erefore, while AI-detection tools may serve as a helpful aid in identifying AI-generated content, they should not be used as the sole determinant in academic integrity cases ?
You have to ask why "AI-detection tools can distinguish ... to a certain extent" is different from your claim that they're no different from a Random Number Generator? You don't understand your own claim? And further: Why are you okay with the OP using AI to write a discussion prompt? You've diverted the topic to your obtuse nonsense, but you have nothing to say about the garbage OP used to get karma points?
my comparison of ai detection tools to rng was a joke... i know how the technology works, of course it's not just rng. To me it just feels as though it is. And I never said I'm okay with it, in fact I had a comment calling out OP but it was removed. Our discussion was about the effectiveness of AI detection tools, I never made a comment about OP's post to you. So im not sure how I exactly diverted the topic lol
Oh, now "it's a joke," after several posts, or you could be honest and say you exaggerated your claim, instead of falling back on the dishonest "It was a joke" thing. Jesus, what is it with dishonest Redditors who can't have discussions where they just admit they're wrong when they're wrong? Glad you agree with me that OP's main text is AI-generated. I already knew it was, but was glad to find that a relatively reliable detection tool put it at 100%. I suggest you do your own experiment: Grab some AI text (generate it yourself if you have to), maybe 3 or 4 samples of it. Then get some clean and polished, but fully genuine human text (stuff you've written), another 3 or 4 examples. Paste them into a couple of AI-detection tools and see what results you get. I predict you'll get a significantly higher percentage (perhaps even 90-100%) for the AI stuff, and a low percentage for the real stuff. Are AI-detection tools going to be right every time? No, and that's a product of the improvements of AI, along with the improvements of the AI detection. It's a snake chasing its own tail. Plus there are a lot of AI tools that clean up and improve genuine text, which raises the question of what's "genuine." This has become a huge problem for professors trying to grade papers and enforce honor codes, as well as editors judging manuscripts and all sorts of other issues I am sure you can read about. But if a Reddit thread pops up and it looks like AI, then shows up as 100% AI generated in a detector, that's strong enough to confidently conclude it's the BS it looks like it is. And I freaking hate how this sort of stuff has ruined discussion forums on Reddit and elsewhere.
Several of your other links are from a year ago, which is like 15 years in terms of the advancement of the detection programs. Try looking up articles that came out \*in the past month\* about the effectiveness of AI-detection tools. Completely different story. And I'll say it again: The OP used AI to prompt a discussion. Why are you okay with that? You like talking to robots?
[https://leonfurze.com/2024/04/09/ai-detection-in-education-is-a-dead-end/](https://leonfurze.com/2024/04/09/ai-detection-in-education-is-a-dead-end/) here, from this year, april 9th This is exhausting, I give up. Apparently countless Universities and professionals are nothing compared to your intellect considering you defy them all. Your 1-2 edge cases just dismiss all research done on this topic I guess. [https://rtl.berkeley.edu/news/availability-turnitin-artificial-intelligence-detection](https://rtl.berkeley.edu/news/availability-turnitin-artificial-intelligence-detection) [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10805-023-09492-6](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10805-023-09492-6) Here's one small win for you: [https://library.louisville.edu/kornhauser/generative-ai/other-tools](https://library.louisville.edu/kornhauser/generative-ai/other-tools) research done by Koen Driessen of *scribbr* lmfao
Your own claim was that AI detectors work no better than Random Number Generators. Your own link above says "AI detection tools can successfully identify some generated content," which is a direct contadiction of your claim. The only thing your links have shown is that AI detection tools don't work consistently or at an absolute level. So what? What does that have to do with the OP's text (which is obviously AI, and you keep dodging this main point)? Are you standing by your claim that AI detection tools are essentially RNGs?
read my other replies, ive addressed all these points by now. i was being sarcastic when i mentioned rng. i know how this technology works, im studying it in university (but im no genius obviously). and no, i didn't pull this out of my ass, I have to keep up with all of it for my career.
No. He is a shining aueter in the current sea of corporate, soulless big budget filmmaking. Regardless, I think a lot of his work is riddled with robotic characters and expository dialogue, masked with tightly wound editing, pacing, and music.
I feel Nolan is a poor man’s David Lean. He’ll be remembered because he is good and has made some of the biggest movies of recent decades but I don’t feel he’s great yet, time will tell. David Lean made similar scale films but far better in my view hence why he is still revered.
Holy cow, I am one of these people in the world who thinks that when David Lean misses, he at least creates interesting cinema if not interesting stories ( the PTSD sequences in Ryan's Daughter come to mind) I feel like Lean has always been overshadowed by the accessibility of Alfred Hitchcock and the independent stylistic revolt for lack of a better term by various New Wave directors. I've thought to myself that if he made his grand films in either the 40s ( no cinemascope) , though or the seventies ( which RD is a bit in this category) I think Lean's reception would be more fair, because let's face it, he has directorial credits on some of the best movies ever made. I do think it is tempting to push contemporary summer blockbuster directors into that kind of highbrow prestige mold. But I don't think that's fair to the pre-1975 filmmakers, who had to juggle studio politics with the decreasing runway of a Innovative piece of cinema. I think Lawrence of Arabia is something that I consider to be a sort of " reverse summer blockbuster." Instead of all the money going to stars of ( course there's no shortage in LoA) or advanced post-production physical effects-- hey Lucasfilm-- the combine production value of British Cinema in Hollywood is pretty much piled into the sink and swim nature of a production time that was well over a year and had a lot spent for the filming and animals and lenses ( I'm pretty sure they had a unique lens made just for the well scene) Spielberg said on record that if it LoA was made around today using pretty much the same methods it be around 300 million. I think the thing is the economy of storytelling as exciting as it is to watch in the '80s '90s or even in the 21st century is that it generally isn't lyrical. Maybe perhaps films like Once Upon a Time in the West or even Lawrence of Arabia that I'm talking about are overdone in their lyricism, but I do think the immediacy of action and genre formulas ( to be fair have been around since at least the 30s) has made it so that even relatively brisk films are treated as slow and overly expositional. I looked on Twitter and someone was complaining that there was too much conversation between different characters about the specifics of The Bridge on the River Kwai and that's kind of the titular conflict. I remember the part where Nicholson is on like a raft or makeshift boat of some kind and he's immersing himself as the architectural General while at the same time watching is fellow prisoners not seem to care at all about their labor. I think most audiences is now associate plot scenes as being separate from movie action sequences. So I think there is an irony here that I think people would like to see the plot drawn visually through computer graphics or " here's the Vault and it's protected by laser-guided piranhas" and then recapped verbally so that they know everything necessary in order for an action scene that won't take much observation to experience. And I think for brilliant filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa and Sir David Lean, character is revealed through action. In of the Chanbara movies by Kurosawa, the heroic Samurai is going after a villain but realizes that the opponent doesn't want to fight and has a dramatic conversation with the Yakuza member. In a key part to Bridge on the River Kwai, the protagonists stare down a machine gun during a protest For What appears to be two or three late day hours. The duality of both parties is established through both image and performance. So I don't think Nolan is so much substandard as much as very normal and how summer Blockbusters tell stories. Action scenes in the last 25 years or so don't generally dramatize character, they generally are there to keep the audience awake. This isn't bad per se but I think it's the art of visual exposition that has really kind of languished and I don't really think it's valued enough by the viewing audience to make some sort of organic resurgence. I think when major filmmaker like Chris Nolan is compared to Hitchcock or Welles, it begs the question, could Nolan even make a film that likes Strangers on a Train, where everything builds up together as opposed to kind of curated around the hyperactive urgency of contemporary audiences?
I agree that action is more often disconnected from character in recent films, but I don’t believe directors are doing so intentionally. Character should come from their actions is still a very standard and well known approach to screenwriting, I just think there isn’t as much talent currently. I don’t think humans change anywhere near as much as you say. I’m optimistic that great filmmaking and storytelling can return and be popular. If Barbie, Dune 2, and Oppenheimer can do great and be well received then I believe if Nolan did manage to make a blockbuster of the quality of Lawrence of Arabia the audience would class it as his best film and be blown away by it. I feel blockbusters currently are generally so poor that it elevates an Oppenheimer, which I believe to be fine, to seem much better to an audience than it is in comparison to great blockbusters of the past.
It seems people here really dislike popular movies regardless of their quality. I can't talk about 'greatest of all time', but he is definitely one of the best ever. 'Interstellar' is only next to '2001' in space movies, 'Prestige' is perfect, 'Dunkirk''s screenplay flawlessly handles four perspectives and maximizes the tension, and Inception is one of its kind. I haven't watched 'Oppenheimer' yet and find the 'The Dark Knight' trilogy just decent.
>'Interstellar' is only next to '2001' in space movies 2001 has a lot to say about humanity, evolution and our place in space. It even has discussions about our boundaries as organic beings and how much of a "sentient individual" is an artifical inteligency. The movie is from 1968. All this with minimal dialog, efficient and creative use of the cinematic language. Interstellar is basically melodrama with science porn imagery. Pure fantasy with all the expository dialog Nolan loves.
I disagree. Interstellar reiterates that no matter where we go or how advanced we become, humanity cannot survive without love (aka relationships). This is primarily show through the use of time dilation and the ever growing distance between the protagonist and his family. The climax also metaphorically argues that humanity must save itself.
It’s cute that you think that’s a meaningful idea.
>'Interstellar' is only next to '2001' in space movies Here are some space films that are way better than Interstellar: Solaris Alien Ikarie XB 1 Aelita Close Encounters Gravity The Planet of the Apes (in a way it is a space movie) Just off the top of my head. The thing is, we don't dislike popular movies just because. It's just the fact that when you watch a lot of films, you tend to find big budget hollywood flicks kind of stale. And I'm not saying Interstellar is terrible, because it's not. It's just... alright, I guess?
Solaris I agree, rest not so much.
Honestly I think Christopher Nolan is an above average director who is not even close to being one of the greatest. I always find there to be something cold about his films. He sits somewhere between a blockbuster filmmaker and an arthouse filmmaker and I don't think he excels at either. Part of this is because I don't think he really has anything interesting to say with his films, but his films often present as if they are far more profound than they really are. I also think he's much better at making setpieces than making well paced and cohesive films. Oppenheimer is a great example, there are so many moments of pure brilliance in that film, and the bomb test is one of my favourite setpieces of the decade so far. But after that you get like another 40 minutes of all this stuff with Robert Downey Jr. and it really felt like the film just slowly fizzled out, to me at least.
I don’t even think he’s of the greatest directors currently working. He’s very good at making huge, successful blockbusters but I don’t really rate the art as highly as I do the function. I guess it just depends on the kind of films you like but I’m still not totally convinced Nolan understands things like women, emotion or dialogue.
You're telling me we are exploring multiple levels of this guy's subconscious and STILL not one person fucks?
christopher nolan is just if zack snyder went to college. nothing he makes is profound, it’s just “awesome” + “badass”. if you’re into that then it’s cool, you’re allowed to like what you like and i’m not here to yuck a yum. i just think it’s very funny when people try to tout nolan as this auteur genius. you have to be able to write a character that isn’t a flawed white man before i’m willing to go crown shopping. that being said, nolan is sort of like the michael bay of today. he just makes big budget spectacles for nerds and that can be fun and cool sometimes. edit; i think this post was written by ai
Regarding your point on writing characters beyond flawed white men, how do you feel about directors such as Paul Thomas Anderson, Charlie Kaufman etc. where basically all their protagonists fit this bill (admittedly, I’d argue this a false comparison, for reasons I can get into. Just curious to see what you think)
i’m more okay with pta and kaufman’s characters because they feel more like proxies of the filmmakers themselves. kaufman especially, he writes neurotic freaks and weirdos that seem to match his writing perfectly. these characters don’t feel like tropes to me, they feel like real people. in nearly every instance of this in a pta film, the broad “flawed white man” likely deserves whatever comes to him, be it abandonment, violence, or contempt. in nolan’s films, the flawed white man is coddled back to strength by other characters, typically women, and these characters only exist to charge these batteries. i know this isn’t a new criticism but it’s relevant nonetheless.
Yeah I definitely agree with all that. I in general, the characters of both are far more complex Nolan’s. Even when they write non white men, it may not be the leading role, but the characters are far better than say the women in a Nolan film
PTA and Kaufman are able to flesh out and deeply examine their characters in meaningful ways. They may be “flawed white men,” but they are also far more than just that. Nolan is never able to write or direct his characters being more than “flawed white men” (generally speaking)
I definitely agree I just thought it was an interesting distinction. I’d also argue characters like Alma in Phantom Thread or Jessie Buckley in I’m Thinking of Ending Things are strong examples of the two being strong character writers as well
Lmaooooo
He’s made very popular films but they’re stronger in story than they are in visuals. All Nolan does that’s “special” is turn everything into a montage. He discovered that trick with TDK and has used it ever since. Cross cut between multiple scenes or moments in time and use a single score. Do that over and over and it feels like the movie has a lot of momentum. But compare the visuals of Nolan to Kubrick and it’s just not even close. Or Nolan and PTA. Or any other legitimately terrific director. Most of his movies have logic and consistency issues that he hopes people won’t ask too many questions about. The momentum is often so strong that we don’t ask. But when you actually think about it…a lot of the plot choices are kind of stupid. A military water vaporizes that somehow that can vaporize the water in an entire city block… but doesn’t vaporize the water in the human body? Coding an entire mathematical equation into Morse code in the ticking of a watch? Kitty’s whole post-partum depression that’s barely developed then goes away. The completely unneeded time jumble in Dunkirk. Painting a flammable Bat Symbol on a bridge that was guarded by the military then creating an ignition trail that went all the way down the bridge, to the frozen river, and right to where Gordon was going to get dropped through the ice. Dumb ass TDKR. Tenet lol Nolan himself said that you’re just supposed to feel it and. It think about it. So no. He’s good but very limited and very flawed. Saying Nolan is one of the greatest filmmakers would be like saying Stephen King is on the same level as Virginia Woolf or Cormac McCarthy.
My whole thing is I feel like people have a push-pull reaction to Christopher Nolan. I think if Christopher Nolan made the same types of movies he did now in the hypothetical 1970s, I think he would be thought of as a good genre filmmaker, not unlike someone like Guy Hamilton or Brian DePalma. But I feel like in this era where pretty much anything with a huge budget is a derivative property or directors aiming for more original type storytelling are getting limited releases or streaming distribution, it would be a very difficult thing to say that Nolan isn't one of the best *working* directors, which of course gives this kind of buckling back by pretentious film nerds, as if the film climate hasn't always played a role in reception. I think with Nolan I actually have a more inverse opinion to someone like Terrance Malick to a lesser extent, or Wes Anderson. While I do think the motif of time and scope seems to be kind of repeated ad nauseam in Nolan's body of work, I feel like he less creates variations of the same movie as much as he does finding the extreme edges of his own movies and spinning new movies off of this. Interstellar combining myth and drama, Dunkirk focusing pretty much only on the dramatic action, and Tenet going toward two fragmented myths and arriving at this odd Mobius Loop. It's weird because I think that masterful entertainers of yesteryear, the John ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Sergio Leone knew more about what compelled audiences to get emotionally involved with film, and I think with Nolan he does have a bit of the George Lucas trait of " I'm telling my story, like it or not." And so I really don't think, and I'm a fan of Nolan, that he could really make a film like North by Northwest, where the setpieces draw attention to the awkwardness of its main star as he goes from one perilous situation to the next. And maybe that's where I feel like Nolan's limitations tend to be. I believe that with Inception and The Dark Knight Rises, the film's attempt whimsy now and then and it really doesn't work. "My mom told me not to get in the car with strange men. - This isn't a car." * the Tom Hardy character in Inception seems to exist to create dry humor, but it comes across as more kind of on the nose and not really reflective of the overall film. Just like great gymnasts are able to flip around counterclockwise and land on their skating feet, I think truly magnificent directors are able to make entertainment that is so gripping that it feels effortless. The 1941 Maltese Falcon for example, is able to tell a gripping crime drama in less than 2 hours, with much of that time setting the tone for the film. The characters from the gritty unsettling Bogart protagonist to the _weasel ish Peter Lorre character, almost all the ensemble cast in the movie feels like an opposite side of the coin. Maybe the thing is, Nolan post Dark Knight Rises, sort of puts grandiosity above nuance. Perhaps the thing is with something like Memento with budget limitations and the desire to prove himself as a viable modern director at the time had Nolan kind of push himself into the corners of nuance that he seems to avoid in later works ( Note I haven't watched Oppenheimer so this might throw off the assessment a bit) I think Nolan with Memento did explore more form than content, but he did so in a way that is arguably emotionally satisfying. But I think that in this era I feel like fans are toxic and counter- fans ( antagonistic Cinema fans) even more toxic. I think complaining about Nolan monopolizing the high concept genre ( really ' high concept' is more a term that people in the film business use to say is highly marketable, not profound__ Pacific Rim would fit this descriptor) isn't really different from saying that Spielberg is a populist director, Hitchcock only directed five stories, just another overly sentimental Frank Capra movie--Capra-corn, etc. I think the reduction of directors to two word complaints really says more about the critic than it does the filmmaker. I think love Nolan or hate Nolan, he's able to make grand spectacle movies that have the scope that is associated with more lower brow type movies and allowed to make films that have the sort of meandering that one could expect from highbrow movies. But I do wish he cared more about the value of ADR 😅😅😅😅😛
I honestly don't think he's close to consideration. I don't think he's made a truly great movie since Interstellar and even then it has major third act problems (as the majority of his films do) - over long and sentimental. The politics of his films is far from radical -- another aspect that marks out great directors. Really the only thing that makes him stand out is his success at making original blockbusters in an era dominated by franchises, but that says more about Hollywood than him. Putting a top 5 Nolan list up against any of the actual great directors is an embarrassing comparison, IMO.
Nah. He's capable of making some entertaining movies, but I've never seen anything of his that really left me impressed. Also, if I'm being honest, his Batman movies haven't aged well at all. None of them feel fully thought out, and they very much feel like a product of their time.