Culture news Star Wars inspires a 7-year-old to make his first film: it was Christopher Nolan!
There is a parallel universe where Christopher Nolan directed a Star Wars feature film. In our world, this British director is at the origin of several major works of science fiction – Interstellar, Inception, Tenet – but he has never officially looked into the most famous universe of SF. Well yes, but he was 7 years old at the time.
Star Wars by Christopher Nolan
Christopher Nolan shares something in common with another renowned filmmaker: Steven Spielberg. From a young age, he always wanted to be a director, as evidenced by his statement at the Tribeca Film Festival: “I was 12 or 13 when I was struck by the idea of becoming a director.” However, he did not wait until his pre-adolescence to create his first short films. Then aged 7, he is swept away by the “Star Wars” tidal wave (Episode IV was released in 1977) like all the children of this decade.
Unlike his comrades, Christopher Nolan is setting up his first cinematographic project made with a Super 8 camera. “Space Wars” is a series of stop-motion animated films paying homage to Star Wars. To realize his vision, he called on his brother Jonathan as well as his uncle who previously worked at NASA, and built his first sets with clay, flour, egg cartons and rolls of paper. toilet paper. The director also presented some of his short films to his children, and he was very critical of his own work:
I actually showed a few to my kids recently because I had them transferred to DVD, and I was a little disappointed at how bad it was. -Christopher Nolan
Christopher Nolan, the king of Hollywood
Nothing has resisted Christopher Nolan for a decade. His projects are without exception (or almost) critical successes and very often commercial successes. Only Tenet was disappointing on this last point – the fault of the Covid-19 pandemic – within a filmography which includes the Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, The Prestige, Memento or even Interstellar and Oppenheimer. The biopic on the “father of the atomic bomb” is proof par excellence that a film is now sold on its name alone. Indeed, millions of curious people went to the cinema in the four corners of the world to discover the story of a scientist played by Cillian Murphy.
Oppenheimer came close the billion US dollars at the box office for an estimated budget of 100 million, which is stratospheric for a film of this genre, and almost completely dominated the award ceremonies. During the 2024 Oscars, Oppenheimer left with 7 statuettes out of 13 nominations : Best Film, Best Direction, Best Actor (Cillian Murphy), Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.), Best Cinematography, Best Editing and Best Original Score. Mass has been said. Christopher Nolan holds all of Hollywood in the palm of his hand.