Christopher Nolan revealed to Empire in an interview that his filmography owes a lot to James Bond films. The director is known for his often non-linear narrative and a commitment to making groundbreaking films, and now it seems a lot of that comes from a love for Bond films.
While inspiration that Nolan has taken from the franchise is clear in films like Tenet, there is another film from the director that takes clear cues from the Bond franchise: his Batman trilogy, starring Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne and Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon.
Christopher Nolan “plundered” from Bond movies
Bond films usually have some of the best spy action ever put to the big screen, and deal with balancing cerebral plots with action set pieces that are also reminiscent of the spy thrillers of old. These are features that also work well with Batman, which Christopher Nolan admitted to being “my Bond film”.
Regarding taking inspiration from the franchise, he said:
I’ve been plundering ruthlessly from the Bond movies in everything I’ve done, forever. They’re a huge influence on me.
The action of something like Batman Begins does harken back to the type of set pieces that are available for anyone to watch in a James Bond film. They focused on the clever use of gadgets and hand-to-hand combat to create a dynamic, well-choreographed piece of action, that really has the audience believing that the character is a professional when it comes to taking down brutes and grunts who are also seasoned fighters.
Christopher Nolan would love the opportunity to direct a Bond film
Nolan has made his love for the franchise known time and time again in multiple interviews, saying how much he would enjoy making a Bond film. However, nothing of that sort has come to fruition, as the director believes that he needs to be ‘needed’ in a Bond film for him to make it. His exact words were:
You’d have to be needed, if you know what I mean. It has to need reinvention; it has to need you. And they’re getting along very well.
The director would be thrilled to direct a Bond film and has had conversations with Babara Broccoli and Micahel G. Wilson, but they have so far not yielded anything for the visionary director. However, fans are very excited by the idea of a Bond film directed by Christopher Nolan, as the genre seems tailor-made for him.
