Christopher Nolan Has Strong Opinions About People Watching His Movies On Television, Phones, And Airplanes
He brings up a great point.
It’s a running joke that we have on the ReelBlend podcast, the official podcast of CinemaBlend. Because we know that Christopher Nolan takes such pride in the way that his feature films are presented, we will chuckle if we ever see someone watching one of Nolan’s best movies – from Batman Begins and The Prestige to Inception – on a phone or airplane screen and exclaim, “Ah yes, exactly as Nolan intended.” If it were up to Nolan, every audience member would enjoy his movies – including the upcoming Oppenheimer – on an IMAX screen, with Dolby sound. But that’s not possible, and as the director recently told ReelBlend, he’s OK with that.
We tend to hold Christopher Nolan on a pedestal when it comes to the topic of theatrical exhibition. He’s one of the last few directors who still fight to shoot on film, and he ticked Tom Cruise off recently by gobbling up all the IMAX screens, preventing Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Part One from staying on that premium format for too long. But when we sat down with Nolan to talk Oppenheimer and his thoughts about cinema, we asked how he really feels when he sees someone watching one of his former movies on a tiny screen. And Nolan set the record straight when he told us:
Nolan’s correct in this assessment. There’s a reason why the 4K transfer of a Christoper Nolan film such as Dunkirk or The Dark Knight will look and sound superior when you play it at home. It’s because in the filming stages of the production, he packed as much material as possible into his celluloid medium, so that even when you watch the film outside of a movie theater, it maintains some of the precision Nolan sought to attain.
Nolan went on to explain:
Does that mean that you should wait to watch Oppenheimer on your Apple Watch? By no means, no. The first reactions to Oppenheimer have made it abundantly clear that this should be seen on the biggest screen possible, even if that means double-featuring it with Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, which opens on the same day.
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Sean O’Connell is a journalist and CinemaBlend’s Managing Editor. Having been with the site since 2011, Sean interviewed myriad directors, actors and producers, and created ReelBlend, which he proudly cohosts with Jake Hamilton and Kevin McCarthy. And he's the author of RELEASE THE SNYDER CUT, the Spider-Man history book WITH GREAT POWER, and an upcoming book about Bruce Willis.