“Boring and pompous and unexciting and unconvincing”: the writer who can’t stand Christopher Nolan
The films of Christopher Nolan have defined the modern era of filmmaking, known by many for bending the rules of time and reality with trippy action sequences and complex storylines that feel somewhat akin to a puzzle. After the success of Memento, a disorienting haze of a film that was his first foray into the murky depths of memory and time, Nolan was given increasingly high budgets to fulfil his wildest and most ambitious ideas. This has led to a staggering body of work that blurs the line between fiction and reality, with a new set of rules for each story world that leads the viewer through a paradoxical and fractured timeline.
However, not everyone is a fan of his work, with some people praising his directing but criticising his ability as a screenwriter, particularly after the release of Oppenheimer, a film that was marketed as exploring the moral dilemma behind the man who invented the nuclear bomb which was briefly explored in one sequence where Cillian Murphy saw a woman with a burnt face. Nolan is fiercely defended by his army of fanboys and collaborators, but surprisingly, one of his previous colleagues has not spoken highly of his recent work.
Christopher Priest is a British novelist who penned the story behind Prestige, Nolan’s 2006 film starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale. The novel was adapted by Nolan, which only laid the groundwork for a rocky relationship after Nolan vetoed the idea of releasing another version of the book with the film’s artwork on the cover, as he didn’t want the film’s plot to be spoiled. This aggravated Priest, who explained: “Everyone else is on a percentage, and the only hope a writer has is the book. He basically vetoed that. It wouldn’t have hurt him, and it was vetoed on the really selfish, narrow grounds that he didn’t want people to have the film ‘spoiled’”.
However, Priest insists that his aggrievance with Nolan comes from the quality of his writing, praising his earlier work and the auteur status he once held by making low-budget movies. While his earlier films had lesser-known actors and were seen by fewer people, Priest believed these restrictions made his work more imaginative and ultimately of a higher creative quality, saying, “When I saw Following, I thought: yes, this is really an innovative film. It was obviously cheap, with amateur actors, but it had a quality of imagination I thought was absolutely wonderful. I don’t see that any more. I see Batmobiles and spaceships and people jumping up buildings on ropes”.
As Nolan’s career progressed, the stakes and expectations felt much higher, with everyone eagerly awaiting his next project to see what futuristic world his mind would conjure next. But when you become known for a specific genre or trademark, how easy is it to be creative and go against the grain? Is Nolan trapped in a box of his own making by making what his audience expects of him?
Priest seems to think so, saying, “He’s sold out – sold out to Batman! – and that’s a great, great tragedy. He could have been the new Hitchcock. You know, he could have had that auteur quality, of nobody quite knowing what he was going to do next. Always surprising, always innovative. Instead, he’s just spending more and more money, and getting bigger and bigger stars.”
While Priest certainly isn’t a fan of the ‘bigger is better’ style of Nolan’s recent work, many film lovers are eagerly awaiting the release of his next film, which will be distributed in 2026.
