10 movies that wouldn’t exist without Christopher Nolan, for better or worse
Being one of the modern era’s most celebrated filmmakers comes with its own unique set of perks, with the continued success experienced by Christopher Nolan also singling him out as an inspiration to many.
While it would be ludicrous – hopefully, anyway – to expect Oppenheimer to give rise to a slew of three-hour biopics, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker’s fingerprints have become increasingly apparent in 21st-century cinema.
Whether it’s the post-Batman Begins boom for grounded reboots, The Dark Knight recontextualising how seriously a comic book blockbuster could be treated, or his insistence on forsaking the quick fix of CGI assistance in favour of keeping things as practical and tangible as possible, Nolan’s influence has been immense.
Not always in a positive way, though, even if the thinly veiled imitators are hardly abominations across the board. That being said, for better or worse, the following ten films all took their cues from the Nolan playbook without even trying to hide it, not that it worked out on every occasion.
Films that wouldn’t exist without Christopher Nolan:
10. Barbenheimer (Charles Band, TBC)
Even though it hasn’t been released yet, prolific B-movie producer Charles Band obviously wouldn’t have concocted his blatant homage to the cinematic event of 2023 were it not for Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie going head-to-head in a box office battle for the ages.
Fusing the two together, Barbenheimer will follow the misadventures of Dr. Bambi J. Barbenheimer, a scientist who lives in the world of Dolltopia with her lover, Twink Dollman. No, really. Having been left infuriated by the way dolls are treated in the real world, she decides to take the fight to humanity by dropping a nuclear bomb on them.
The tagline of “D-cup, A-bomb” offers an inclination of what Barbenheimer is going to be, but it was a surprise nobody managed to beat Band to the punch, considering the term was one of pop culture’s hottest buzzwords over the last year.
9. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie, 2018)
After getting his feet wet on Rogue Nation, Christopher McQuarrie became the first director to ever helm more than one Mission: Impossible movie when he returned for Fallout, which is effectively the Dark Knight of the entire franchise.
Repainting Tom Cruise’s indestructible Ethan Hunt as more of an actual human being than a proxy for the set pieces, McQuarrie may not have cited Nolan’s follow-up to Batman Begins as a direct inspiration, but he doesn’t need to when its influence is so apparent in the most weighty and resonant Mission: Impossible to date.
Not that anyone was complaining when Fallout was a spectacular example of big-budget filmmaking done phenomenally well, justifying McQuarrie’s call to look to the comic book genre as inspiration as opposed to cinematic espionage and spycraft.
8. Dark Phoenix (Simon Kinberg, 2019)
For almost two decades, the X-Men were the stars of one of cinema‘s most lucrative and bankable properties until Simon Kinberg became the poster child for not handing a first-time director $200million after sending them out to be slaughtered by critics and murdered at the box office.
Not exactly shying away from the influence of the Dark Knight trilogy, the filmmaker admitted that he “approached Dark Phoenix with those films in mind and wanted to emphasise the character drama.” Kinberg wanted his film to be “more raw and intimate and personal than we’d done with the franchise before,” which is fair enough.
In execution, though, he ended up hand-delivering audiences both the worst-reviewed and lowest-grossing X-Men movie ever, which suffered more ignominy by going down in history as one of the biggest flops in history.
7. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rupert Wyatt, 2011)
After Tim Burton‘s misfiring remake, nobody was really crying out for Planet of the Apes to be dusted off and rebooted again a decade later, at least until Rise of the Planet of the Apes came along to launch what turned out to be one of the 21st century’s finest trilogies.
Matt Reeves picked up the baton handed to him by Rupert Wyatt and ran with it, and the ball is now firmly in Wes Ball’s court to carry on the resurgence when Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes releases in 2024. Treating fantastical subject matter with the utmost seriousness is ripped right from the Nolan playbook, something producer Dylan Clark hardly shied away from.
“We’re not as good as Chris Nolan, but we looked at that and went, ‘Oh, well, that’s right. That’s what people want,'” he said. “You’re going to show them these franchises in different lights. Do it in a different way. Give them some different stuff to chew on, and make it about things that they’re dealing with now, or else it will feel a little bit antiquated or outdated or just feel like a bad remake, which we’ve seen.”
6. Power Rangers (Dean Israelite, 2017)
Ambitiously envisioned as a six-film series that would reinvent the titular group for a brand new era, Power Rangers ended up as merely the latest one-and-done franchise that tried to burst into a sprint before it had even contemplated trying to walk.
The ‘dark and gritty’ aesthetic made Nolan’s fingerprints obvious to the point of blatant, but star Bryan Cranston took things one step further by overconfidently stating his contributions to Power Rangers as a giant floating head in a jar had the capability to walk in the footsteps of Nolan’s Dark Knight trio.
Describing it as “as different a reimagining as the Batman television series as it became the Batman movie series,” Power Rangers sold more in merchandise than it did in tickets to obliterate sequel hopes in one fell swoop, with Cranston’s Zordon never getting the chance to act as the Alfred to the team’s many Bruce Waynes.
5. Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)
Mounting a sequel to one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made was a tall task, but Denis Villeneuve reiterated his credentials as one of his generation’s finest filmmakers by living up to the monumental pressure that came with Blade Runner 2049.
It may not have been reflected in the box office numbers, but Villeneuve did a sterling job carrying on from Ridley Scott’s masterpiece. The Dune director and Nolan have long had a mutual appreciation for each other that borders on fanboying, so it’s ironic the latter was the dream candidate to take the reins on 2049.
When producer Andrew Kosove was asked for his dream director during the genesis of development, he said Nolan, and explicitly stated how “the methodology that Chris Nolan brought to Batman is precisely what we aspire to whoever the filmmaker is, whether Ridley comes back and joins us or it’s someone else.” The Dark Knight trilogy was “the template” for Blade Runner 2049, not that Villeneuve was beholden to his contemporary.
4. Ghajini (A. R. Murugadoss, 2005)
A. R. Murugadoss’ thriller – and its 2008 remake of the same name – surrounds the mystery of a man who loses his memory every 15 minutes, which places him in the predicament of having to rely on photographs, tattoos, and handwritten notes to find the person who murdered his lover. Sound familiar?
When word reached his ears of the unauthorised remake, Nolan wasn’t best pleased. When Murugadoss mounted his second version of Ghajini, though, Memento was credited as an influence, which wasn’t the case the first time around. According to Anil Kapoor, it may have stemmed from his displeasure.
The actor shared that during a conversation with Nolan, “He said, ‘I have heard that one of my films has been copied'” very matter-of-factly. His mind-bending breakthrough feature was ultimately acknowledged on the second attempt, although the potential threat of legal action may have spurred the decision, not that it prevented both tilts at Ghajiri from finding huge success.
3. Terminator Genisys (Alan Taylor, 2015)
McG had already touted the Batman Begins as an influence on Terminator Salvation, and even though that failed to work out, Alan Taylor did the exact same thing anyway when he embarked upon his own ill-fated attempt at rehabilitating the flagging sci-fi franchise.
“For Nolan to come in an say ‘I respect this material so much I’m going to take it up to here’, that’s a great inspiration,” he said to Slash Film. “I think any version, whoever is directing Terminator, would be very respectful and serve the first two and probably feel a bit more freedom by the end.”
Unfortunately, much like its immediate predecessor, Terminator Genisys was a bust. Nothing like Batman Begins and barely even comparable to the first two entries in its own saga, one positive is that Dark Fate didn’t bust out the Nolan influences for the third time in a row. Not that it needed to when James Cameron was back in the fold, even if it ended in eerily similar levels of disaster.
2. Reminiscence (Lisa Joy, 2021)
Hugh Jackman suffered the misfortune of taking top billing in a movie that scored the worst opening weekend for any film to have debuted on over 3,000 screens when Reminiscence flopped hard in the summer of 2021, although Christopher isn’t the only Nolan lurking in the background.
The feature-length directorial debut of Lisa Joy, the producer and filmmaker has been married to Jonathan Nolan since 2009, they co-created Westworld and Fallout together, and he’s been one of his sibling’s most prominent creative collaborators dating back decades.
The atmospheric hybrid of sci-fi thriller and intense murder mystery was perhaps intentionally marketed by Warner Bros to evoke those comparisons without even having to play up the family connection, but in the end, Reminiscence shot for something between Blade Runner and Inception, only to fall flat on its face.
1. Skyfall (Sam Mendes, 2012)
The 50th anniversary of James Bond‘s cinematic adventures couldn’t have gone much better after Skyfall became the first 007 adventure to cross a billion dollars at the box office, which may well have happened even if it weren’t for Nolan.
However, when the person wielding the megaphone quite literally said the second chapter in Nolan’s superhero trilogy “was a game-changer for everybody” that “did help give me the confidence to take this movie in directions that, without The Dark Knight, may not have been possible,” it goes without saying the story would have been completely different.
Heralded as one of the best Bonds ever, Skyfall was by far the most lucrative feature to have peeked at Nolan’s homework, but Mendes was smart enough not to try and pass it off as his own.
