By consistently aiming his movies at the PG-13/12A certificate, the director has made himself cinema’s pre-eminent big-budget auteur
You can count the directors who’ve been able to command budgets over $200m (£152m) for original blockbusters on one hand, and still have fingers left over. There’s James Cameron, now apparently intent on spending the rest of his career making sequels to his $237m (£181m) Avatar. There’s Christopher Nolan, whose next movie, Tenet, has soared well over that $200m mark. And, well, that’s it. Every other film coming in north of $200m is an adaptation, sequel, spin-off, reimagining or tie-in. Nolan is now out there on his own as that rarest of things: a mega-budget auteur – the one film-maker permitted to take such huge financial punts with wholly new ideas.
Nolan carved this enviable niche in several ways. Firstly, he reliably makes very good films. His lowest-rated on Rotten Tomatoes is Interstellar with 72%, while Memento, Insomnia, The Dark Knight and Dunkirk are all above 90%. If your worst film is Interstellar, you’re doing something right. Secondly, each of his movies arrives riding a tsunami of anticipation. Ever since he turned the superhero movie on its head in 2005 with Batman Begins, audiences can’t wait to see where Nolan’s going next. Arguably, only Quentin Tarantino and, possibly, Jordan Peele are able to whip up comparable pre-release frenzy for a release that isn’t part of a franchise owned by Disney.
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