The 2015 movie Christopher Nolan wanted nothing to do with: “I’d be afraid to touch it”
Realistically, there shouldn’t be much that Christopher Nolan is afraid of, from a filmmaking perspective. He’s never met a challenge he couldn’t match, apart from the one he wasn’t interested in taking on.
The director has steered a three-hour, dialogue-heavy, R-rated biopic to almost a billion dollars at the box office, reinvented the superhero genre twice over with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, maybe overstretched himself a little with Tenet, and most recently, tackled one of history’s most famous tales.
He’s got no interest in ever helming a musical, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s frightened to take one on; it’s just that he thinks they’re a bit shit. Horror and comedy also remain unchecked on Nolan’s to-do list, but as a fan of Talladega Nights and MacGruber, who’s to say he couldn’t emulate his favourites, even if it gross-out humour and dick jokes don’t sound particularly Nolan-esque.
Through Inception, Interstellar, and Tenet, and to a lesser extent, the Dark Knight trilogy and even The Prestige, the two-time Academy Award winner has shown himself to be a dab hand when it comes to sci-fi or some of the trappings associated with the genre. However, the granddaddy of blockbuster space operas is more likely to leave him in need of fresh underpants than soaked in feverish excitement.
Having spent his entire career batting away speculation that he’s next in line to helm a James Bond film, a recurring line of questioning that’s never going to stop until Eon Productions or its new corporate overlords at Amazon finally cave in and give him one, everyone seemed to forget that Nolan grew up as obsessed with Star Wars as he was with 007.
George Lucas’ original, game-changing sci-fi spectacular was as much of a formative influence as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, but when the time came to head back to a galaxy far, far away with the Disney sequel trilogy, Nolan confessed that the mere thought of tackling Star Wars was a no-go area.
“As far as whether or not I would have ever done it, the truth is, I think I’d be afraid to touch it,” the filmmaker admitted, pointing out that it would take “colossal balls” to shoulder that burden. “I’m a lot more comfortable trying to do my own thing than carrying the weight and expectation of the entire world,” Nolan added. “Particularly 40-somethings like me who live and die with each new bit of information about Star Wars.”
To be honest, he’s the wrong fit for it anyway. The best Star Wars movies need a lightness of touch and the sense that the director is keeping their tongue millimetres away from the inside of their cheek, which is why Abrams’ nostalgia-driven The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker proved so polarising, and probably why Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi conspired to cleave the fanbase in two.
Steven Spielberg could have made a great Star Wars movie, Robert Zemeckis could have before he became obsessed with motion capture and AI, but fellow Lucas friend and/or protégé Ron Howard couldn’t, because he can’t craft pure, unadulterated big-screen fun like the other two. Nolan is one of the best in the business, without a doubt, but Star Wars doesn’t seem like it would be in his wheelhouse.
