Christopher Nolan picks ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ as his favourite Bond: “It’s a hell of a movie”
Some projects just seem destined to happen. When Steven Spielberg was handed the opportunity to direct Schindler’s List after Martin Scorsese passed the movie along, it was clear he was the only filmmaker to be able to tell such a sensitive story with a large-scale audience in mind. Similarly, it is difficult to imagine anyone but Scorsese helming Goodfellas. And, it must be surely agreed among the entire cinematic landscape that if one moviemaker deserves a chance to make the greatest James Bond of all time, then it is Christopher Nolan.
Truly, it is merely a matter of time before the modern master of spectacle cinema, Nolan, gets his chance to direct a James Bond feature film. In fact, there is a good chance that he may even helm the next movie in the franchise following 2021’s No Time to Die. While Nolan is already signed up for his next project, The Odyssey, the timing couldn’t be better, in some ways. The long-standing Daniel Craig has stepped away from the role and will be replaced by a yet-unnamed thespian; Nolan could well be tasked with ‘rebooting’ the franchise much like he did with The Dark Knight trilogy.
Sure, it’s a dream, but his command of the Academy Award-dominating Oppenheimer was once again proof that Nolan may well be regarded as one of Britain’s finest directorial gladiators. Also, it should be widely noted that Nolan’s love of the franchise is no secret at all, having discussed the possibility of directing a James Bond film several times in recent years.
In 2017, for instance, during an interview with Playboy, the director noted: “I’ve spoken to the producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson over the years. I deeply love the character, and I’m always excited to see what they do with it”. Continuing, the director commented, “You’d have to be needed, if you know what I mean. It has to need reinvention; it has to need you,” suggesting that Nolan’s expertise may be needed once the Bond series switches its lead actor.
“I’ve been plundering ruthlessly from the Bond movies in everything I’ve done, forever. They’re a huge influence on me,” Nolan confessed to Empire magazine in 2010, with this comment being very true to the director’s current filmography. Released in the same year as this statement was perhaps the director’s finest work, the mind-bending epic Inception, a film that took direct inspiration from Peter R Hunt’s 1969 James Bond adventure On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in its ski and snowmobile raid of the final act.
Inception was “absolutely my Bond movie”. Christopher Nolan reported, taking influence from what happened to be his very favourite film of the James Bond franchise, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service starring Australian George Lazenby in the lead role. Nolan admitted to Empire that it might even be his number one: “I think, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service would be my favourite Bond. It’s a hell of a movie, it holds up very well. What I liked about it that we’ve tried to emulate in this film is there’s a tremendous balance of action, scale, and romanticism and tragedy and emotion. Of all the Bond films, it’s by far the most emotional.”
Perhaps the only thing standing between Christopher Nolan and a future James Bond film may in actuality be that he feels that he has already made one, after all, Inception and Tenet particularly, are high-tech thrillers fit with stunning set pieces and even a ‘Bond girl’ or two. These films start with a relatively simple core concept, before sweeping you off your feet and taking you to a world you’d never envisaged.
It all sounds awfully familiar to his love of 007, stating: “For me growing up with the Bond films, they’ve always stood for grand-scale action,” adding that each of the classic Sean Connery, Roger Moore and George Lazenby films “stood for the promise of being taken some place bigger than you could have imagined”.
