Whoa! It’s time to geek out. Christopher Nolan just wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal, about the future of cinema. And it’s kind of brilliant, but of course we all expected that. The title online explains: “Christopher Nolan: Films of the Future Will Still Draw People to Theaters”, with the subtitle “When Movies Can Look or Sound like Anything, Says the ‘Dark Knight’ Director, Extraordinary Work Will Emerge”. Now, Nolan is in the midst of finishing work on Interstellar, his sci-fi epic which will arrive in theaters this November. He makes rather some bold comments about the state of the industry.
Christopher Nolan goes on to write very eloquently and he is optimist about the future of cinema, if we can get things under control. It’s a short piece, but cuts right through it and really touch on some great points. The best part of the entire piece is when he gets in the real future, where things could go if they actually turned out well, which is a focus on the experience and spectacle of the movies again in glorious movie palaces. Cinema will have to find new ways to get people into theatres and eventually distinguish itself from competing entertainment platforms. He says an industry change is near with the shift from actual film to digital projection. He talks about how to cut down costs and one day it will be attained. But he also determines that it reduces films to Contents that can be easily shared and streamed on phones, watches, gas-station pumps or any other screen.
There’s something that makes me particularly eager when I read this thinking, in the back of my mind, that we have Christopher Nolan about to bring us Interstellar and J.J. Abrams about to bring us a new Star Wars, and James Cameron about to bring us more Avatar, all on the horizon. I find it interesting that Christopher Nolan is out there with some projects like this on the way because it means there is hope. He’s seen up and coming filmmakers, he knows what’s on the horizon and despite the faintness of some of it, there’s still that drive to make things great again. His statement about modern gimmicks is worth loving.
It sounds like a veiled hint at 3D being one of those gimmicks and he doesn’t buy it. Instead, Christopher Nolan will give us IMAX in full resolution, to show us more depth, expand and deepen the experience. Even though there are plenty of superhero movies, franchises, sequels and adaptations on the way, I’m thrilled to find out what the future does hold and how things continue to evolve with technology in movie theaters and with inventive filmmakers. What do you think of Christopher Nolan’s comments?