I can’t help but see the similarities in story beats. The congressional hearing of Hughes and Oppenheimer’s private hearings. The mastermind of it all being Pan Am’s Juan Trippe undermining Hughe’s reputation like how Lewis Strauss with Oppenheimer.

I’m not sure if someone has posted about this before. But I sorta made the connection just now.

Edit: also similar how Hughes worked heavily on innovating aviation to Oppenheimer’s work on the Manhattan project. and how both Hughes and Oppenheimer were both womanizers.

I was just reading some facts about Inception. There are different versions of the story regarding the casting of the lead role. Some say Leonardo DiCaprio was the only actor considered, while others suggest that actors like Will Smith were also considered.

So, what’s the real story?

Joker and Bane are simply iconic. Part of that, of course, is the acting, and to some extent the source material. But Nolan’s role should not be understated. The way he shoots these characters, gives them room to breathe and dominate their scenes. He is a master at creating these larger than life movie monsters. Obviously not every story calls for such a villain but I really hope he makes another movie that does. And of course, it doesn’t have to be an adapted villain. It could very well be an original villain.

Someone asked a question earlier whether Hans or Ludwig would score Nolan’s next film, and it came to me that Chris’ movies with Ludwig hasn’t had the same emotional depth as his previous collaborations with Hans - personal opinion of course. I cannot remember to have heard Ludwig create emotion-inducing scores such as Hans. They are mesmerising and thrilling, no doubt, but lack emotion in my opinion. I agree Chris’ projects with Ludwig hasn’t allowed him to explore such territories in the same way though. This makes me wonder if Chris will trust Ludwig with the score if his next film should have the same emotional depth as interstellar or inception. Thoughts?

edit: I seem to have made myself unclear - I mean not to say Ludwig is inferior in any way, and I obviously think the Oppenheimer score was outstanding. However, it was not in need of the emotionally fragile pieces we have seen in some of Nolan’s previous films, which make me wonder if Nolan’s collab with Ludwig allows him to include such scenes with Ludwig by the scoring table. For instance, Hans did a great job with the big drums and steel and everything on dark knight, but I don’t think he would’ve fully captured the emotional depth of the film without James Howard onboard. Likewise, I ask the same about Ludwig.

Hi! I'm from Latin America and I wanted to know if anyone knows if Interstellar re release would come to theaters here. Excuse my English, is not my first language lol. If anyone knows, I would deeply appreciate it. Thanks!

Zimmer or Göransson? Who do you prefer more?

I feel like Nolan was kinda doing two things at once with him and the former is probably more intentional than the latter.

With Sator, Nolan was taking the standard archetype of the Bond villain and bringing him down to earth. There's a real deglamorization and lack of standard Ham-ness that you'd expect in that kind of character. He's not making big bombastic threats and speeches to broadcast or to his henchmen, nor is he given any kind of a distinctive look to make him identifiable like Blofeld or even the Craig Bond villains. He's downplayed, hell his character would have been an average person if not for the fact that was given this opportunity, gold and the ability to end all of reality.

Even though it does give him a stereotypical motivation of wanting to destroy the world, the film rather than treating it as a given that that's what he's there to do asks "What kind of person would really be okay with destroying reality itself?", especially since his character has been given that task already. And the answer is, a blood hungry violent narcissist who treats people as property and controls their lives with violence and threats. That guy would probably be okay with ending reality, not just because he's that evil but because with the added plot point of him dying of cancer, he already knows he's gonna die soon inevitably anyway, so why not cheat it by controlling how you die, plus get the power to control all of reality and let it die with you?

He was also paying tribute to a kind of movie villain that you don't always see in modern blockbusters. You see villains that are pure bad guys in blockbusters, but Sator feels like if you put a character like Frank Booth from Blue Velvet or Albert Spica from The Cook The Thief The Wife and Her Lover into Spy Sci Fi Action big budget movie. He's not just evil, he's downright unpleasant and creepy in a way that's defined by the major similarity of all of them controlling and abusing women. He feels like the villain of a much darker and nastier film that's been transplanted into one that otherwise could have had a bad guy who was more generically evil in a softer way. Made to suit a PG13 rating but still pushes it.

Even if you wanna call him "cartoonishly evil", the fact that a villain like this exists in a PG13 200 million dollar film is not a commonality and it is refreshing to see a character like that not handled with obvious restraint.

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I can argue both cases here, but Nolan is a very rare case in Hollywood, where the director IS the draw of the film. Even big names like Fincher or Scorsese these days still rely on casting to ensure to studios that audiences will come and watch (ie a certain percentage of audience probably saw KOTFM because of Leo who wouldn't have seen otherwise).

When I see a stacked cast of six giant names, I wonder how many weren't going to see his next film, but changed their mind when the seventh big name joined the project. Why not go 2-3 bigger names, then have a bunch of lesser known actors (like Dunkirk). A ton of money saved in budget that can go into the film. It's not like there aren't thousands of talented actors who could deliver performances as good as the big names. There is something cool about following an unknown, as the viewer, as you're not tainted by every other one of their performances you're familiar with. This in itself is a luxury, because while any producer can benefit from the mystique of an unknown, for most directors, it would impact the box office.

However, the otherside is, Universal likely writing Nolan a blank check so he doesn't need a reason to go back to WB thus he can cast anyone he wants without having to worry about how that will impact budget to the production of the film, and also not having to audition actors. Nolan has the upper hand, even with these big stars, so perhaps not taking giant salaries.

His films aren’t perfect, and he’d be the first to admit it. But I think he’s a dying breed of literate, artist-engineer filmmaker with a specific combination of characteristics to rise to the top of that profession in hits heyday. Because the social norms and conditions that funneled people like him and Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg or James Cameron into filmmaking don’t exist in the same way they used to. Cinema isn’t as new or exciting or central to the culture as it used to be, as other things have absorbed the attention of rich and/or gifted creative children.

If cinema is all Disney IP, it won't attract the people it used to. A significant percentage of the most literate creative minds, the Nolans, the Kubricks, are finding stimulation in computers, or video games, or less fortunately melting their cerebellums on social media, or any number of other things that carry more excitement with young people.

Plus people don’t read books as much as they used to, and the ones who read are doing other things than filmmaking in they year 2024, given what kinds of movies sell tickets.

Not least of all: There will never be an accounting of the brain-cell holocaust visited upon the human race by smartphones. Seriously. It's a population-level event that will have generational effects.

Welles was 25 when he made "Kane," Spielberg was 26 when he made "Jaws," Cameron was 29 when he made "The Terminator," Nolan was 29 when he made "Memento." The cerebral auteurs of tomorrow must have announced themselves by now, and you can find some if you look! but not too many.