What Does Christopher Nolan’s Big Oscar Win With Oppenheimer Do For His Legacy?
It really felt like on Sunday night, years and years of hard work came to a culmination for Christopher Nolan. The director went into Oscar night already having received acclaim for many past projects over the last twenty years.
Some even say a flawless filmography, but with Nolan taking home Best Director at the 2024 Oscars, some of the stars of his films winning individual awards, and in the end, Oppenheimer winning big and taking home Best Picture, one can’t help but wonder if Nolan could even outdo himself as his career continues.
Nolan didn’t need to win at the 96th Academy Awards. His work will already be studied and adored by film schools in the years to come. He could have fallen into mediocrity or the world of streaming after he wrapped up The Dark Knight Trilogy in 2012, as the industry was doing a big shift towards comic book IPs and streaming platforms were on the rise.
But no, Nolan sent us to space with Interstellar right-slap dab in the middle of the resurgence of Matthew McConaughey’s career, otherwise known as the McConaissance. A film that had a ton of spectacle but was shot down by Oscar voters. From there, he tackles World War II with Dunkirk, a film that got a Best Picture nomination, but many knew it would not take home any major prizes. Still, it’s one of the best war films produced in the last twenty years.
To backpedal a bit, Nolan gave us one of the biggest blockbusters of the 2010s, Inception. A film that felt like a passion project and the studio gave him $250 million to go do whatever he wanted because he set a trend when he made The Dark Knight. Most directors in the world of making superheroes can’t go off and do what he did with a film about performing a heist in someone’s dreams.
Nolan also needed some redemption from disaster; that was his film Tenet in 2020. He fought a battle that he even knew at some point he was going to have to tap out of and give into the mess the world was in at the time.Â
Oppenheimer would follow Nolan’s biggest box office bomb, but it’s not like he needed it to save his career; it did far more than that. The biopic of Atomic Bomb physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer is as impactful in its artistic statement just as much as it works as a great popcorn-eating movie experience, and it also elevated its director into the world of how today’s films are marketed.
Christopher Nolan does not strike you as an eccentric man. He seems like a calm, simple-minded individual who just likes to read, drink tea, and spend time with his family. It just so happens that he gets to make studios nearly a billion dollars, and they reward him for it big time. The creative process matters to him, not the Hollywood premieres, and yet Nolan seemed to step out of his comfort zone for Oppenheimer a bit in terms of marketing.
His appearances on Stephen Colbert’s show during his press tour are hilarious. He called into the Rich Eisen show, revealing he loved Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. If Nolan had a guard to let down, he did it, and it helped his cause on the Oscar campaign because, with a movie like Oppenheimer out in the zeitgeist, one had to know this was going to make a big impact on pop culture.
Credit here also must go to his wife and producing partner, Emma Thomas. He gratefully thanked her in his Oscar-winning speech. She seems to be the voice in his ear to have told him that this project needed to elevate him and the persona he carries as one of the best living filmmakers because that right now is an argument many are having about where Nolan stands among the filmmaking gods.
Nolan didn’t need the golden statue; a lot of the filmmakers he admires never got one. So this potentially propels him, maybe even past his heroes, not just in the eyes of cinephiles but also among your common film lovers who may not seek out Kubrick or Kurosawa. The guy can do whatever he wants now. That James Bond film he teases from time to time? It could happen. Bond is due for a reboot in the years to come. And if not, he can go do whatever he wants now.
He has the backing of the entire industry; many want to take their shots at his work, but he brushes it off and just goes and makes the next big epic while we all just write about it. Nolan has progressively made a better film than the one he had made previously in some aspects. It’s crazy to even wonder what he would do after Oppenheimer.
Legacies are a hard thing to maintain. People crash and burn all the time and ruin chunks of their lives due to bad decisions. Nolan is arguably the most methodical director out there, as he has just climbed the mountain and solidified his legacy as one of the greats, and you can bet he’s somewhere right now prepping to outdo himself again.
What do you think of Nolan’s filmography? Have you watched Oppenheimer? Is the Oscar sweep deserving? Let us know in the comments below.