These 33 Insane Details From Christopher Nolan Movies Prove He's The Best
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Christopher Nolan has been called many things. Auteur. Visionary. British.
He is all of these things and more, and brings his signature love of practical effects, sound design, and time manipulation into every movie. That level of dedication has resulted in some incredible details and behind-the-scenes stories that, much like Tenet, we're still trying to figure out.
1.Before we dive into his movies, a fun fact: Christopher Nolan doesn't have a smartphone or an email address.
This is pretty understandable from the man who loves celluloid and classic film techniques. As recently as 2020, Nolan confirmed that he doesn't have a smartphone:
"It's true that I don't have a smartphone. I have a little flip phone that I take with me from time to time. I'm easily distractible, so I don't really want to have access to the internet every time when I'm bored."
Same goes for email:
"I just have never been particularly interested in communicating with people in that way. I prefer just calling people from a landline. So yeah, I mean, everybody finds their own way to communicate with people and deal with things."
2.Some of the actual boats that rescued soldiers at Dunkirk were used in Dunkirk.
I needed a refresher on the statistics of the lives saved at Dunkirk, and it's still mind-blowing. Over the course of just eight days in 1940, 360,000 British, French, and Belgian troops were ferried to safety from Dunkirk. Many civilian vessels were part of the evacuation, and 20 were used in Christopher Nolan's 2017 film.
For the history nerds like me who want to know, among them were the Hilfranor, Elvin, Endeavor, Mary Jane, Caronia, New Britannic, and Princess Elizabeth.
3.In Inception, you can tell whether they're in reality or not based on whether Dom is wearing a ring. This proves that the final scene is indeed not a dream.
If you haven't seen it or don't remember, Leonardo DiCaprio's character Cobb is pretty hung up on his deceased wife. He uses dreams to escape, so it's fitting that in the dreamworld, he's still married (and wearing his ring). This is a subtle but easy way for Christopher Nolan to show whether Cobb is dreaming or awake. And when he comes home to his kids in the end? No ring! So it's a happy ending after all.
4.The officer who finds The Joker's calling card in Batman Begins is named "J. Kerr," which is a common alias of the Clown Prince of Crime in the comics.
This could mean that there's an actual cop in Christopher Nolan's film named J. Kerr, but it's more likely that The Joker himself submitted the evidence, trying to get Batman's attention.
5.One "tick" in the soundtrack equals a whole day on the water planet in Interstellar.
This mind-blowing detail has understandably gotten pretty popular since the film came out. It was already staggering when Cooper and Brand leave the planet after about three hours to find that 23 years has passed on the ship and Earth.
But Hans Zimmer added an extra layer to the time-bending craziness. If you listen to the music playing during their time on the planet, you'll notice a ticking noise. Each individual tick (1.25 seconds apart) represents an entire day passing on Earth. Re-watching the scene, it's easier to imagine (and harder to watch, knowing what's at stake for Cooper) the time flying by on Earth.
The full water planet scene:
6.The marketing leading up to The Dark Knight involved a "Gotham City newspaper" circulating around San Diego during the 2007 Comic Con, stating that a man believed to be The Joker was found beaten to death.
There was also an event called "Why So Serious?" which was essentially a big hunt for clues around the convention center. Those who wound up in the right spot were picked up by a black Escalade with Gotham license plates. A picture of the fans climbing into the car was included in the Gotham newspaper.
7.In Memento, Lenny says that he's learned to trust his own handwriting. This comes into play when Teddy tells him to write something on his photos, but Lenny doesn't yet trust Teddy. So Lenny writes the note without using his normal handwriting.
8.Christopher Nolan had his team plant 500 acres of corn for the scene in which Cooper, Murph, and Tom drive through a cornfield.
After filming was finished, the corn was sold, and the profits put back into the film's budget.
9.A man in the crowd stands up and claims Tesla's machines are dangerous in The Prestige. Later in the film, we see that same man working for Thomas Edison.
Edison and Tesla had an infamous feud, so it makes sense that one would send an employee to sabotage the other.
10.Each individual frame of the black hole in Interstellar took 100 hours to render. Each second: 100 days.
The stunning effects took up 800 terabytes of data. That's half a billion floppy disks. That's 11,000 tons of floppy disks. I don't know why it only makes sense to me to visualize it in floppy disks.
But the incredible final result wasn't solely for movie magic. Physicist Dr. Kip Thorne helped Nolan's team create as realistic a black hole as possible, considering we've only barely glimpsed one. Creating the VFX helped Dr. Thorne in his research. He wrote two scientific papers based off the rendering.
"Building a Black Hole" with Dr. Kip Thorne
11.Christopher Nolan, a big fan of classic film tricks, used forced perspective rather than CGI as much as he could when set-decorating Dunkirk.
12.The bird-killing, collapsing cage in The Prestige is a real trick developed in the 1800s by French magician Buatier De Kolta.
The trick was popularized by Harry Blackstone, Sr. and his son, Harry Blackstone, Jr. Modern performances use a fake bird, but the original trick was just like it was shown in the movie. The cage collapses if not held in a certain way, disappearing up the magician's sleeves. The bird inside is typically killed, and a second one is revealed, the magician claiming it is the original bird, unharmed.
However, there is a version of the trick in which the cage collapses into a tube around the bird, leaving it alive.
13.If you look closely at the food in the kitchen in Interstellar, you'll notice all the food can be made with corn (pancakes, chowder, cornbread, corn syrup). Makes sense, considering it's the only crop left on Earth in the movie.
Fans of corn syrup, I've got good news for you about the apocalypse.
Credit: u/thetango
14.In Memento, Lenny writes down Teddy's license plate as ending in "7IU." Since the "I" can either be a capital "i" or a "1," both versions of the actual plate are shown. This reinforces the fact that Lenny can't always trust his own notes.
Credit: u/oscar3kings
15.Nolan based each main character's special skill on filmmaking roles in Inception.
In Nolan's words, "In trying to write a team-based creative process, I wrote the one I know."
Cobb: Director
Arthur: Producer
Ariadne: Production Designer
Eames: Actor
Saito: Studio
Fischer: Audience
16.Nolan loves tiny details, like the fact that Cooper has to manually reset his automatic watch after lying in cryosleep.
The type of watch Cooper wears winds itself based on the wearer's movements. Whether it was the costumer, McConaughey, or someone else who pointed out that he'd have to manually wind the watch after lying motionless in cryosleep, Nolan definitely wanted it in the movie.
17.In The Dark Knight, Batman is wounded by attack dogs. In The Dark Knight Rises, he still has the scar.
Most superhero movies show heroes injured for exactly five minutes, and then the injury is never seen again. But not Nolan's superheroes.
Bruce: "How will it hold up against dogs?"
Lucius: "We talking Rottweilers or Chihuahuas? Should do fine against cats."
18.The fateful room where Cobb and Mal spend their anniversary is #3502. The train that barrels through the street in the dreamworld is a Fillmore & Western Railroad GP35 #3502 model.
19.To show the bus crashing through the wall of the bank (which was actually a post office) in The Dark Knight, the bus had to be taken apart and then rebuilt inside the building.
It was then concealed behind a fake wall and shot through it with an air cannon. Think it would've been easier to just crash a bus through a building? Nolan probably did, too (stay tuned for Tenet).
20.Ariadne wears a tight bun in Inception because animating long hair in zero-gravity is a lot of work.
Credit: u/Johnish63
21.Inception is essentially a heist movie where "your mind is the scene of the crime." It's fitting that the first letters of the characters' names spell out "DREAMS PAY."
Dom
Robert
Eames
Arthur
Mal
Saito
Peter
Ariadne
Yusuf
22.Victor Zsasz, serial killer from the Batman comics, appears briefly in Batman Begins.
The scars on his body represent the number of people he's killed. Guy's a bummer!
23.The Joker writes an obituary for the mayor to announce him as his next target in The Dark Knight. The author of the obituary is "Joe Ondrejko," who is the construction coordinator for many Christopher Nolan projects.
Mr. Ondrejko is actually the construction coordinator for a lot of huge movies and TV shows.
24.Teddy's number in Memento is the exact same number as Marla Singer's from Fight Club
25.A magician shown in The Prestige pretends to be differently abled to further impress people with his tricks, never breaking "character" in public. This is based on real-life magician William Robinson, who pretended to be "Chung Ling Soo" for years until his death on stage.
The story is truly insane, and not too dissimilar from The Prestige. Like Angier and Borden, William Robinson was in a feud with another magician named Ching Ling Foo, a Chinese magician. When an agent was looking for a Chinese magician, Robinson created a character based off Foo's name (though he briefly went by Hop Sing Soo).
As Chung Ling Soo, Robinson never once broke character in public. Even when Foo tried exposing Robinson, the papers weren't interested in his story. Robinson died in 1918 while performing a trick where he seemingly catches a bullet.
The trick involves guns that have real bullets loaded into them (for the audience to see), but the gunpowder explosion takes place underneath the chamber so that the bullet never fires. However, the night of Robinson's final performance, there was too much gunpowder residue in the barrel from previous performances, and the bullet was actually fired, killing Robinson.
His final words were, "Oh my God. Something's happened. Lower the curtain," which were his first English words in public since he created the character of Soo.
26.Cobb's name in Inception is based off a major character in Christopher Nolan's debut film, Following.
27.Kenneth Branagh, who acted in Dunkirk, stated that the WWII veterans who attended the premiere in London were impressed by the film, except for the sound design. They said "the film was louder than the battle."
Of course, many veterans were incredibly moved by the film. Ken Sturdy, who made it out of the real Dunkirk when he was 20, had this to say:
"It was just like I was there again. I was in those little boats picking them out of the water," he said. "I had the privilege of seeing that film tonight, but I'm saddened by it because of what happened on that beach.
"Watching the movie, I could see my old friends again, and a lot of them died in the war. I went on convoys after that in the North Atlantic. I had lost so many of my buddies.
"Don't just go to the movies for entertainment. Think about it. And when you become adults, keep thinking.
"Tonight I cried because it's never the end. It won't happen. We the human species are so intelligent, and we do such astonishing things. We can fly to the moon, but we still do stupid things."
28.When the semi-truck gets flipped in The Dark Knight, that's not CGI trickery or miniatures. They really flipped a semi.
See how they did it here.
29.To prepare for making Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan made the journey from England to Dunkirk in a boat with his wife and a friend.
The journey, which usually takes about 8 hours, took 19 due to poor sea conditions.
30.While filming The Dark Knight, the crew accidentally broke an IMAX camera. At the time, there were only four of the cameras in the world (three after Chris was done).
IMAX cameras are so expensive and rare, the average peasant like myself doesn't even know how much they really cost. The rumored estimate is $16,000. A WEEK. All we know for sure is that they're insured for half a million dollars.
31.Christopher Nolan used cardboard cutouts to flush out the crowds on the beach in Dunkirk.
The other major reason is that the man just does not like CGI. And with modern audiences quick to notice computer graphics — especially in the middle of a film that's as realistic as Dunkirk — I can't blame him.
32.The script for Tenet calls for a plane to crash into a building. So Christopher Nolan used the classic film trick of taking a real plane and...crashing it into a building.
BTS footage
33.Dr. Kip Thorne helped keep the science in Interstellar accurate, but it wasn't his first foray into Hollywood. Carl Sagan based some parts of his novel Contact on Dr. Thorne's work, and he was consulted for the movie adaptation. Both films starred Matthew McConaughey.
Specifically, Thorne gave Sagan ideas on wormholes, which are featured in both Contact and Interstellar.
