Christopher Nolan Says He's Spent His 'Career Trying to Get Back to That Feeling' of Watching James Bond for the First Time

It’s no secret that director Christopher Nolan loves the James Bond franchise. He’s talked about his admiration of the films several times over the years. Like many of us, he grew up watching those movies, and they have influenced the films he’s made over the years. In fact, he explains that he’s spent his career trying to get back to that feeling of watching James Bond for the first time.

The first Bond film that he watched was The Spy Who Loved Me, and when talking about that experience, he said:

"The first James Bond film I remember going to the cinema to see was The Spy Who Loved Me with Roger Moore. That still is a great favourite of mine. That’s a film that I try not to watch too often. But when I watched it recently – I showed it to my kids, for example – you can tap back into that early experience. I think I was about seven years old when I saw it. I went with my dad to the cinema to see it.

“What I remember, and what I’ve tried to retain from that experience, is the feeling of possibility that you could jump through that screen, and go anywhere in the world, and see the most amazing things. It had such scale, and such possibilities, really. It was pure escapism, and had an excellent sort of fantasy component to it as well – you know, with the car that turns into a submarine, and all that stuff. But really, great.”

He then goes on to share, “I think I’ve spent a lot of my career trying to get back to that feeling and trying to give that experience to audiences – to take you back to that sense of wonderment about the possibilities of what movies can do, and where they can take you.”

As a fan of Nolan, I think he’s done that with all of his movies and the stories that they tell. At least for me, when I watch a Nolan film, I find myself in awe of those films and his talents as a filmmaker. Nolan goes on to explain that one of the ways he pulls off what he’s trying to accomplish is by using physical props and locations:

"When you’re trying to create very large-scale entertainment, you bump up very rapidly against the limitations of what you can build, or what you can conceive, as opposed to the real world. The real world is so large and so extraordinary, and offers such possibilities if you can go on location, and get out there in it.

“That works twofold. It’s both escapism, and it’s both really allowing the audience to go to the cinema, and have them be taken to places that they would never be able to go to in their ordinary lives – places that are extremely glamorous or extremely dangerous, what have you. And that gives tremendous scope to the nature of the escapism that the audience is engaged with.

“But it also informs the narrative, and it informs the stakes of the narrative, because what we’re dealing with Tenet, as in a classic, espionage film, is a threat to the entire world. And I think by showing more of the world, and more of the people of the world, in the film, you’re constantly reminded as an audience member of the scale of the threat. It’s not a localised threat. It’s something that threatens all of us around the world."

Whatever he’s doing, it works! I can’t wait to see what Nolan has in store for us with Tenet, and I also can’t wait to see what other stories he is planning to tell in the future.

Source: Games Radar