(Credits: Far Out / Video Still)
To the outside world, Christopher Nolan seems like a fearless director. After all, this is the man who somehow turned a $100million biopic of the scientist who created the atomic bomb into a billion-dollar cultural phenomenon. Nolan has always made his movies his way and has been rewarded with rave reviews and enormous box office figures. Hell, the only time he made anything that even resembled a flop was when a global pandemic shut down most cinemas across the world, and even then, he tried to jumpstart the entire theatrical business with Tenet. However, there is one assignment that Nolan has admitted he would be too scared to take on – and it’s because it means so much to him.
In 2014, Nolan was riding incredibly high in Hollywood, having made three stratospheric hits in a row: The Dark Knight, Inception, and The Dark Knight Rises. He was given carte blanche to do whatever he wanted with his next film, so he decided to blast off into outer space with Interstellar. In truth, Nolan had been fascinated by science-fiction and space-set movies since childhood when he saw two films that seemed like they altered his brain chemistry: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars.
Nolan told The Daily Beast that he first saw Star Wars when he was only seven years old, and he’s never forgotten the transformative experience of watching George Lucas’ galaxy far, far away on the big screen. He marvelled at “the possibility of the screen opening up, sucking you in, and taking you to a different galaxy” – and a short time later, had a similar experience watching the re-release of Kubrick’s more oblique, but no less stunning, space epic.
“My father took me to see it on one of the biggest screens in London in Leicester Square,” Nolan remembered, “and that was also a seminal experience. I was in awe of the scale of it; the escapist possibilities of it; and the sense of adventure and ability to take the audience across the universe.”
As he embarked on his own career in the movie business, Nolan took a while to build up to his own space adventure. However, he admitted it was always in the back of his mind that he’d love to try his hand at it if “ever given the chance to give an audience of today that experience.”
Fascinatingly, though, 2001 and Star Wars could be viewed as representations of the two sides of Nolan’s creative brain. Even though he made an all-conquering Batman trilogy, throwing himself into the world of existing IP isn’t generally where his passions lie. After all, he confessed, “I’m a lot more comfortable trying to do my own thing than carrying the weight and expectation of the entire world.” Indeed, he was probably only keen on making a Batman movie because it was a way to establish himself as a maker of large-scale films early in his career – and because his relationship to the character was tangential, at best.
Indeed, when Nolan was asked if he was ever interested in directing Star Wars: The Force Awakens, JJ Abrams’ 2015 sequel that kickstarted a new cinematic trilogy, he quickly admitted, “I think I’d be afraid to touch it.” He admired Abrams’ guts for taking on the challenge, explaining, “He’s boldly going where he went before in Star Trek, and it takes colossal balls.”
At the core of the matter, Star Wars is simply too close to Nolan’s heart for him to actually want to involve himself in the franchise’s creation. He knows how much Lucas’ creation means to “40-somethings like me who live and die with each new bit of information,” and that fear of angering the fans has always encouraged him to keep a healthy distance.
In truth, as time went on and he got more removed from his days in Gotham City, it was always likely that Nolan’s creative instincts would want to express themselves in an original fashion like Kubrick’s, as opposed to fitting himself into another IP factory like Star Wars – even if he loves it so much that it scares him.
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