“Nothing frightens me more”: Why the world needs a Christopher Nolan comedy
At this point in his career, Christopher Nolan is free to make whatever kind of movie he wants for however much he needs it to cost, safe in the knowledge that his name alone is enough to virtually guarantee success.
Admittedly, Tenet was a rare misfire, but the time-bending blockbuster should definitely have a pandemic-afflicted asterisk next to its box office failure. Ever since Memento put him on the map, the filmmaker has tackled almost every single one of mainstream cinema’s foremost genres, but comedy has always been the glaring exception.
The aforementioned mind-melting Memento ticked off psychological thrills, The Prestige doubled down as both a period piece and a literary adaptation, Insomnia was a remake of a pre-existing movie, Batman Begins was the reboot of a comic book property that spawned sequels, Interstellar dove headlong into sci-fi of the eye-popping and existential variety, Inception did action-packed escapism on a massive scale, Dunkirk immersed audiences in the horrors of war, and Oppenheimer took on the biographical drama.
That leaves horror and comedy as the only major stones left unturned, and while the former hasn’t been heralded as one of Nolan’s favoured delivery methods for cinema, the latter certainly has. In fact, it’s the comedies he loves that make the prospect of seeing him mount one of his own so tantalising, specifically because the Academy Award winner and box office botherer has a soft spot for the silly ones.
Feature-length Saturday Night Live spinoff MacGruber and Will Ferrell’s Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby have been singled out by Nolan as among his guilty pleasures, and they’re both exceedingly stupid – but still massively entertaining – romps. The director has a reputation for maintaining the stiffest of British upper lips at all times and never being caught dead in anything but a pristine suit, so who wouldn’t want to see him oversee a production designed entirely to split the sides?
That’s not to say Nolan can’t be hilarious, with many of his credits featuring plenty of funny moments, although they’re largely situational as opposed to zingers and one-liners being stuffed into the script for the sake of it. Comedy is the one frontier of Hollywood’s staple genres that he’s yet to navigate, and the fact there’s only a 50/50 chance he’d be able to pull it off is part of what makes it so enticing.
If Nolan’s next project is an action flick, a thriller, a drama, a mystery, or a sci-fi, then it stands to reason it’ll be very good at the very least because that’s what’s expected of him, and he’s proven already he can master it. Comedy, however, is an entirely different proposition that could either spectacularly blow up in his face or underline that there’s literally no type of film he can’t adapt to.
Tenet star John David Washington told USA Today that Nolan has a habit of quoting Wayne’s World to add another laugh-out-loud gem to his arsenal of personal favourites, but in an interview with the same outlet, the filmmaker explained why he doesn’t have a vested interest in making one himself.
“To be perfectly honest, nothing frightens me more than the concept of doing a comedy when I see what these great comedic filmmakers are up against,” he offered. “You put a couple of jokes in a serious film, and if they don’t land, you just cut them out. The idea of constructing an entire narrative that’s totally at the mercy of the audience’s comedic response to it is an extraordinary thing that they do. It’s a real high wire act that I admire tremendously, but wouldn’t ever want to step into that arena.”
In short, why hasn’t Nolan directed a comedy? By his own admission, because he’s scared. That’s fair enough, but nobody ever managed to reach the top of their chosen profession without taking a risk or two or making a huge swing and missing it by miles.
As one of the most popular and successful auteurs of the 21st century, there isn’t much left on the table that he hasn’t yet touched, and diving headfirst into the waters of comedy is something cinephiles deserve to experience at least once, regardless of whether it’s yet another triumph in a career defined by them or Nolan’s first-ever unmitigated disaster.
