Gavin Logan on what’s next for Christopher Nolan…

Last weekend saw the worldwide release of Christopher Nolan’s latest and perhaps one of his most widely anticipated movies to date Interstellar starring Matthew McConaughey as a former NASA pilot turned corn farmer who is tasked with helping to save the human race from extinction. Like most Nolan movies it was met with an explicit reaction and critical dissection from critics and fans alike. The one word that kept popping up in various reviews and opinion pieces was “ambitious”, and I can see why. It’s the perfect way to describe Interstellar.

This isn’t a review (you can read those here and here) so I won’t go into the laborious and intricate details of the movie or why it did or didn’t work for me but one thing is for sure, you can’t go any bigger than Interstellar so it begs the question; having gone beyond space and time, what is next on the horizon for Christopher Nolan?

Let’s be honest, whether you enjoyed Interstellar or not there’s no denying that it was epic. In typical Nolan fashion it asked us to propel our minds to another level and left a lot of the audience asking questions at the end. Going by general reaction, the sheer complexity of the story left a large amount of the viewers divided but despite this Interstellar has racked up well over $83 million at the box-office in it’s first weekend. As we all know audaciously perplexing plot lines are not something new to Christopher Nolan and recent articles that have popped up online have even implied that this particular approach is turning into a gimmick for the director. Memento and Inception were both mind-bending thrillers and for my money two of the best movies in the last 15 years. Even The Prestige was full of abundant mystery and intrigue playing out to a very fulfilling climax. Nolan has a knack of “fooling” us, or at least trying to. However it has almost got to the point where we now completely expect the “twist” so much so that no reveal is truly satisfying. That’s a shame because Nolan is one of the finest filmmakers working today and I personally don’t believe that any other director out there – save for maybe Quentin Tarantino – can both excite and rile up filmgoers and bloggers quite as much as he does, and I mean rile in the nicest of terms.

It’s very clear that Christopher Nolan doesn’t want to make “ordinary” movies. He’s an auteur not bound or defined by genre, yet it’s difficult to see him ever tackling anything simple again. He has set the bar so high now that signing on for something regular just seems like light-years away. Where can he go now that can come close to surpassing Interstellar?

Nowhere.

I’m sure that something huge and unconventional still lies in Nolan’s future but I don’t see it happening any time soon. Perhaps he’ll keep himself busy for a few years helping out in an executive producer capacity with the Warner Bros./DC slate of movies due out. Hell maybe he’ll even be tempted to step in front of the camera again for one or more of their upcoming titles. I can see him toning it down for his next venture. Going back to basics. Returning to his indie roots that helped make Following and Memento cult hits. Who knows? He’s smashed the superhero genre out of the ballpark, he’s successfully dominated the mysterious head-scratcher and with Interstellar he has probably gone as far as he can go with science fiction, unless he wants to transcend his own “real and grounded” mantra. How about an epic western or a stripped back, black and white film-noir?

What would you like to see Christopher Nolan do next?

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Listen to the Flickering Myth Podcast review of Interstellar using the player below:

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