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Despite being renowned for his intricate storytelling and artistic flare, Nolan has never seen Scorsese’s The Aviator. What’s the reason? It’s a combination of intense contempt for a genre that Nolan just detests and personal ambition.
For years, Nolan had been working on a project dear to his heart: a Howard Hughes movie in his own vision. Jim Carrey was supposed to lead his version; this would have been a casting decision that would have given the tale of the eccentric aviator and mogul a fascinating new dimension. However, the release of Scorsese’s The Aviator in 2004 knocked Nolan’s confidence. While working together on Inception, Christopher Nolan admitted to Leonardo DiCaprio, “I never watched Scorsese’s film.” Nolan was more concerned with vision than he was with competition. He was forced to put his ideal project on hold, but the experience taught him a priceless lesson about condensing a person’s life into an engaging story, a skill he later used in other works.
It’s no secret that the director despises typical biopics. He’s made it known that he thinks the genre is too restrictive. “Biopic is something that applies to a film that is not quite registering in a dramatic fashion,” director Christopher Nolan said at a City University of New York discussion. According to him, the term “biopic” undervalues the complexity of an individual’s life. He contends that movies like Citizen Kane and Lawrence of Arabia, which are frequently mislabeled as biopics, are much more than that. They’re not just life stories; they’re huge experiences or psychological investigations. Although many might view Nolan’s Oppenheimer as a biography, he believes it to be anything but.
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