{"id":69829,"date":"2016-01-29T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-29T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.premiumbeat.com\/blog\/?p=69829"},"modified":"2016-01-27T14:53:50","modified_gmt":"2016-01-27T20:53:50","slug":"5-films-that-influenced-christopher-nolan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.premiumbeat.com\/blog\/5-films-that-influenced-christopher-nolan\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Films That Influenced Christopher Nolan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before Christopher Nolan was a blockbuster director, he was a kid who loved movies. Here are the five films he identifies as his biggest influences.<\/h2>\n

Top image via Collider<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Christopher Nolan<\/a> has established himself as one of the blockbuster directors<\/strong> of this\u00a0generation. The skills he has acquired as a filmmaker can be credited to the countless movies\u00a0he’s seen in his lifetime.<\/p>\n

“Movies become indistinguishable from our own memories,” Nolan said in an interview with Wired<\/a> magazine. “You file them away and they become very personal.”<\/p>\n

Here’s a look at how five specific films<\/strong> played a major role in establishing Nolan’s blockbuster worlds.<\/p>\n

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2001: A Space Odyssey<\/h3>\n

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\nImage via MGM<\/em><\/p>\n

In May of 1977, Star Wars<\/em><\/a> reinvigorated the world’s love of sci-fi and space films<\/strong>. That summer, theaters in the UK re-released Stanley Kubrick’s<\/a> space epic,\u00a02001: A Space Odyssey<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

My dad took my brother and me to Leicester Square, which is where you\u2019d find the biggest theaters in London. I remember very clearly just the experience of being transported to another world. I was a huge\u00a0Star Wars<\/em>\u00a0fan at the time. But this was a completely different way of experiencing science fiction. I was seven years old, so I couldn\u2019t claim to have understood the film. I\u00a0still\u00a0<\/em>can\u2019t claim that. But as a seven year old, I didn\u2019t care about understanding the film. I just felt this extraordinary experience of being taken to another world. You didn\u2019t doubt this world for an instant. It had a larger than life quality.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I tell people this story, they often find it unusual that a child of that age would want to see\u00a02001<\/em>. But the truth is all of my friends went to see\u00a02001<\/em>\u00a0in the year after\u00a0Star Wars<\/em>. We would all sit and talk about what it meant. It was \u2018pure cinema.\u2019 The fact that it\u2019s challenging cinema in an intellectual sense doesn\u2019t bother you when you\u2019re a kid. You just appreciate the feeling of the movie.<\/span>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Entertainment Weekly<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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It just has that sensory stimulation of pure cinema that speaks to people of all ages. People forget kids like it too \u2014 because we were all into spaceships. \u2014\u00a0Empire Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\nImage via The Guardian<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

It’s obvious that 2001<\/em> highly influenced Nolan’s Interstellar<\/em><\/a>, but director\u00a0Stanley Kubrick would be the one that really shaped Nolan as a filmmaker. Not only did Kubrick’s work leave an impression, but so did his personal approach to the craft.<\/p>\n

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From<\/span> a storytelling point of view, from a directing point of view, there is one thing I associate with what he does, which is calm. There is such an inherent calm and inherent trust of the one powerful image, that he makes me embarrassed with my own work, in terms of how many different shots, how many different sound effects, how many different things we\u2019ll throw at an audience to make an impression. But with Kubrick, there is such a great trust of the one correct image to calmly explain something to audience. There can be some slowness to the editing. There\u2019s nothing frenetic about it. It\u2019s very simple. There\u2019s a trust in simple storytelling and simple image making that actually takes massive confidence to try and emulate. \u2014\u00a0Entertainment Weekly<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s not Kubrick’s filmmaking alone either, as the director also influenced Nolan’s approach to studio collaborations<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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I think anyone who is working [for the studios] looks to Kubrick as the great example of someone who is able to make films that were very personal to him, very idiosyncratic, with a great degree of passion, while collaborating with the studios and making what he did fit within the economic models of their times. \u2014\u00a0Entertainment Weekly<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That mindset has since helped Nolan’s production company, Syncopy<\/a>, establish itself as a blockbuster powerhouse in a matter of years. Syncopy has collaborated with Legendary Pictures, DC Entertainment, and Warner Bros. to produce films that have hit nearly $4.7 Billion in box office sales<\/strong> \u2014 in less than a decade.<\/p>\n

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Blade Runner<\/h3>\n

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\nImage via Warner Bros.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Director Ridley Scott<\/a> had just blown audiences away with Alien<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>when his\u00a01982 follow-up film,\u00a0Blade Runner<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>hit theaters. The films established Scott as a blockbuster filmmaker during Christopher Nolan’s most influential years<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I have always been a huge fan of Ridley Scott and certainly when I was a kid. Alien, Blade Runner just blew me away because they created these extraordinary worlds that were just completely immersive. \u2014\u00a0Media Factory<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This film has influenced nearly all of Nolan’s movies. He considers Blade Runner<\/em> a key touchstone of science fiction<\/strong>. The film’s production design and style were key to establishing the base of Nolan’s Batman universe.\u00a0Nolan even cast Blade Runner<\/em> star Rutger Hauer<\/a> in Batman Begins<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\nImage via\u00a0Warner Bros.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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It\u2019s hard to say what was conscious homage, and what was my analysis of why Blade Runner was so convincing in its production design and in the way it uses\u00a0its sets. From a pragmatic point of view, Blade Runner is actually one of the most successful films of all time in terms of constructing that reality using\u00a0sets. On Batman Begins, unlike The Dark Knight, we found ourselves having to build the streets of Gotham in large part. So I immediately gravitated toward the visual treatment that\u00a0Ridley Scott had come up with, in terms of how you shoot these massive sets to make them feel real and not like impressive sets. And immediately we started looking at the rain, the handheld cameras, the longer lenses\u2026<\/p>\n

So myself, my designer Nathan Crowley, and my cinematographer Wally Pfister, we started to throw all of that into the mix of how you can help the look of something, how you can create texture, as Ridley Scott has always been the absolute master of. Creating a texture to a shooting style that maximizes the impact of the set, and minimizes the artifice \u2014 the feeling that this world has edges to it that you would\u00a0see at the edge of the frame. Blade Runner is one of the examples of how you can take a camera and get down and dirty\u2026 and really envelop your audience in the atmosphere of the world you\u2019re trying to create. We definitely tried to emulate that style, and I think in doing so we\u00a0actually created homage, particularly where we used the\u00a0rain very much. \u2014\u00a0Forbes<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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The Spy Who Loved Me<\/h3>\n

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\nImage via MGM<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Released the same year Nolan first watched\u00a0Star Wars<\/em> and 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/em>, 1977’s\u00a0The Spy Who Loved Me<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>may be the\u00a0most well-known Roger Moore<\/a> Bond film. To the eyes of a kid, this was the coolest Bond ever<\/strong>. To Christopher Nolan, 1977 may have been the greatest year ever.<\/p>\n

One of the first films I remember seeing was\u00a0The Spy Who Loved Me<\/em>\u00a0and at a certain point the Bond films fixed in my head as a great example of scope and scale in large scale images. That idea of getting you to other places, of getting you along for a ride if you can believe in it \u2014 in The Spy Who Loved<\/em> Me,<\/em> the Lotus Esprit turns into a\u00a0submarine\u00a0and its totally convincing, and it works and you go ‘Wow, that’s incredible.’ \u2014\u00a0IndieWire<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nolan frequently cites this particular Bond film\u00a0often, but he is a huge fan of Bond films in general. He credits the franchise for creating threats that played on audiences fears<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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Interestingly, the Bond films, back in the 60s, they were very specifically about Cold War fears \u2014 They introduced the threat of nuclear terrorism very specifically for the first time in movies and they were closer than people realize, in pop culture terms, to what people feared at the time. And I think that one of the things in taking on an action film set in a great American city post-9\/11, if we were going to be honest in terms of our fears and what might threaten this great city, then we were going to come up against terrorism and how that might feature in the universe of Batman. And I think we approached it with a great deal of sincerity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\n<\/a>Image via Stay For The Credits<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

It wasn’t only the Dark Knight trilogy<\/strong> that benefitted from the influence of 007. In fact, the closest thing we may get to a Christopher Nolan James Bond film is Inception<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Bond influence on the film was very intentional because, for me, growing up with the Bond films \u2014 they’ve always stood for grand-scale action. \u2014\u00a0BBC<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Spy Who Loved Me<\/em> was not the only Bond film to be a major influence, as Nolan also cites On Her Majesty’s Secret Service<\/em><\/a> as his favorite Bond film. Overall, it was the world of James Bond<\/strong> that showcased an expansive cinematic universe.<\/p>\n

I think for me, when you look at the idea of being able to create a limitless world and use it almost as a playground for action and adventure and so forth, I naturally gravitate towards cinematic worlds, whether it\u2019s the Bond films and things like that. So without being too self-conscious about it or without too much intention as I was writing it, I certainly allowed my mind to wander where it would naturally and I think a lot of the tropes from different genres of movies, heist films, spy films, that kind of thing, they therefore sort of naturally sit in that world. \u2014\u00a0Collider<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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The Thin Red Line<\/h3>\n

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\nImage via Fox 2000 Pictures<\/em><\/p>\n

Terrence Malick<\/a>‘s 1998\u00a0film,\u00a0The Thin Red Line<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>is listed as one of Christopher Nolan’s all-time favorite films. The film helped Nolan realize that there were no set boundaries in film editing<\/strong>, which helped him set up the story in Memento<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

I also see a lot of attempts to do what I saw Terrence Malick doing, in terms of the portrayal of mental states and memory. If you watch The Thin Red Line, that was a revelation to me. He\u2019s cutting to memories and flashbacks with simple cuts; there are no wavy lines or dissolves. There are moments [in Memento] where Guy\u2019s character is remembering his wife that were taken very much from that film. \u2014\u00a0Movieline<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\n<\/a>Image via\u00a0The Film Stage<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Superman<\/h3>\n

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\nImage via Warner Bros.<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the great films that I am very influenced by that we haven\u2019t talked about was\u00a0<\/span>Dick Donner\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Superman<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>It made a huge impression on me. \u2014\u00a0The Hollywood Reporter<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Donner took on the character of Superman, he made the image of how people my age saw Superman. I still remember the trailers. I remember going to the cinema to see something else and seeing these epic trailers \u2014 the character standing in the cornfield, Marlon Brando’s voice \u2014 and that stuck with me. \u2014\u00a0IndieWire<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n