Christopher Nolan Doesn't Know If He Believes Tarantino's Retirement Plan

Nolan didn't go to film school. Neither did a lot of people reading this, and we obviously love that.

We’re also super excited for The Odyssey coming up, and while that release date ticks closer, we’re going back to some of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer press appearances to get some inspiration ahead of his epic adventure story.

We love to learn from this auteur, who has paved a path, making his films his way.

Check out this appearance on the ReelBlend Podcast and the key takeaways from Nolan’s answers.

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"There's No Substitute for the Real World"

Nolan drew a line between admiring films and actually making them. For him, theory and practice have always run in parallel, not in sequence. He called filmmaking an “infinitely complex” art form.

“You learn by doing,” he said. “I think it was Stanley Kubrick who famously said the best way to learn how to make films is to make a film. Certainly, that was my path, was doing, and then thinking about it and looking at other people's work, and that would inform your process. But really, there's no substitute for the real world for actually doing things and seeing how things play out. And you know that's something that can be difficult to explain to the studios sometimes.”

He started borrowing his dad's Super 8 at age 7.

Do the thing. Don’t wait. Just start.

"The More Areas in Which You Can Embrace Reality ... the Richer the Film Becomes"

Along those lines, he also talked about the importance of “reality” and immersion on his sets. He wants a real rotating hallway and a real ship for The Odyssey and a real Boeing 747 crash.

He said, "For me, the more areas in which you can embrace reality, the more areas in which you can allow the real world to inform your process, the richer the film becomes.”

Nolan preps a lot, but by being open to reality and the world, his locations can change, actors’ performances can change, and the approach to cinematography can change. Flexibility breeds creativity.

What does embracing reality look like for us on a low-budget shoot? These could include real locations, strong casting, letting actors surprise you, and not taking shortcuts as much as we can.

'The Odyssey' Credit: Universal Pictures

"The Decision Was Made at Script Stage"

Nolan was asked about making Oppenheimer R-rated. The runtime and rating for The Odyssey have not been revealed, but speculation is that it could be another R, with a reportedly shorter runtime.

R ratings and hours-long movies can be deterrents, but Nolan wasn’t fazed.

"The key thing to answer in that question is that the decision was made at script stage,” he said. When we approached Universal about making the film, it was very clear. We said, ‘Okay, it's going to be an R-rated film.’”

With a film like The Dark Knight , he said the strategy is different.

“Those are films that you go into with the studio knowing full well that that's the rating you're aiming for. You're aiming for that audience, that breadth of audience, and so you have to change things to make it work, and you have to get clever about how you do things and how you present violence in the action.”

You hopefully know what level of violence or sex your story actually needs as you’re writing it—and who your audience is. You should be able to justify those choices if you land a distributor.

"When It's Working ... It Becomes Very Much a Character"

At one point, Nolan cited Ridley Scott via the Thelma & Louise commentary, when the director relays he’s heard that you shouldn’t notice a score in a film. Scott and Nolan both hate that idea. (A lot of TikTok editors would likely disagree with that philosophy, too.)

“He says, ‘You know, people will say that if the music's working well in the film, you don't notice it,’ and he's like, ‘That's complete bollocks,’” Nolan said. “It's nonsense. It's like, the music should lift and elevate. I remember listening to that many years ago thinking, ‘That’s absolutely right.’”

Learn more about the art of film composing and how it ties to story.

Nolan said, “When it's working, when it's something that you feel as a filmmaker you want to put in there in a passionate and an obvious way, it becomes very much a character in the film. I love movies that do that.”

'The Odyssey' Credit: Universal Pictures

The Tarantino Question

The hosts asked Nolan where he falls in the retirement debate, specifically calling out Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino has publicly said he plans to stop after one more film; Martin Scorsese's stated position is the opposite, as he’s still trucking on new projects at 83.

Nolan said that the reasoning behind Tarantino’s wish to go out on his own terms is that late-life work by some directors does not always hold up to work produced in their earlier years. It seems he doesn’t want to see a fall-off in quality as he gets older, although that isn’t guaranteed to happen.

Nolan continued, "I'm not sure that I would trust my own sense of the absolute value of a piece of work to know whether or not it should have been brought into existence. I'm a big fan, as is Quentin, of films that maybe don't fully achieve what they try to, but there's something in there that's a performance or a little structural thing or a scene, you know, that's wonderful."

The interviewers point out that if Ridley Scott followed the same philosophy, he wouldn't have made Gladiator.

What Nolan is saying is that the filmmaker is a bad judge of their own work's place in history. The standard of "does this measure up to my best" is the wrong filter. We want to have perfect careers, sure—nine feature films, nine successes topped by a magnum opus. But that’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself as a filmmaker, especially when the creative process can be a reward in itself.

The Odyssey opens in theaters July 17 from Universal Pictures.