Why Christopher Nolan Put One Of His Best Films On Hold For An Entire Decade
Christopher Nolan is one of the best directors working today. He's covered plenty of genres, from war dramas to superhero movies to many kinds of science fiction, and he always leaves his mark on them. Nolan is also the rare auteur who makes four-quadrant blockbusters that both appeal to the masses and earn critical acclaim.
Even over a decade later, however, "Inception" remains one of Nolan's all-time best films. It's a visually stunning and inventive movie that boasts some of the best action scenes ever put to film, and even its title has now entered the lexicon thanks to an ending that still confounds viewers everywhere.
As successful as "Inception" was, it was a long and hard road to get the movie made. Not because of production delays, mind you, but because Nolan himself took his sweet time workshopping the movie before it was ready — along the way evolving it from a horror movie into a sci-fi feature.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, producer Emma Thomas (who's married to Nolan) remembered how Nolan first showed her what would ultimately become "Inception" all the way back in 2001, nine years before its eventual release. "It read enormous," she recalled. "We asked ourselves, 'Could we make it smaller?' We realized that we couldn't do that with a film about dreams because dreams are infinite."
While Nolan pitched "Inception" in 2001 and got an enthusiastic response from Warner Brothers., he ultimately set the project aside to continue developing its complex narrative ... and wound up rebooting the studio's live-action "Batman" movies first.
An idea is like a virus
According to Thomas, "Inception" turned out all the better thanks to the delay. "Chris grew into this film," she explained. "He did 'Batman Begins' and learned an enormous amount." Indeed, Nolan was first and foremost a serviceable visual director before "Inception," a guy who crafted (alongside his brother and writing partner, Jonathan Nolan) complex, cerebral stories, but not necessarily visually compelling movies.
Then came "The Dark Knight," a movie that not only has a fantastic and resonant script with memorable lines but also a movie that (along with "The Dark Knight Rises") taught Nolan how to shoot in IMAX, beginning a partnership that continues to this day. Nolan also became a much stronger visual storyteller thanks to "Batman Begins" and particularly "The Dark Knight," leaning more into composition, visual language, and not just a great script to tell a story.
By the time "Inception" came along, Nolan had not only learned to craft more visually interesting films, but he had also assembled a trusted team of visual effects wizards to finally bring his dream movie to life. What's more, "Inception" was the first Nolan movie with a genuinely good emotional story, too. The Dark Knight trilogy had romance and some emotion, sure, but it felt cold and closer to "The Prestige" compared to Dominic Cobb's (Leonardo DiCaprio) heartfelt journey in "Inception." Thomas attributed much of that to DiCaprio himself.
"Leo spends a lot of time in preproduction with the writer and director," Thomas noted. "So Chris and Leo spent weeks and weeks just combing through the script. The work he did on his character with Chris made the movie less of a puzzle and more of a story of a character audiences could relate to."