Nolan Talks Batfleck, ‘Interstellar’ Plot Holes, and…Corn

Christopher Nolan recently sat down for a chat with The Daily Beast. In this chat, they explored several topics that spanned everything from his position in the Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice film, his responses to some of the critique of Interstellar, and how producing Man of Steel helped inform his decisions on how to shoot the Americana setting shown in Interstellar

The man responsible for relaunching Batman after the character had sputtered out with Batman and Robin, and whose vision for the iconic character transformed him into one of the hottest pop culture properties of the last 10 years, was asked about the new “new Batman.” While some folks have made themselves willfully blind to the fact that Nolan is no longer intrinsically attached to the franchise- having stepped away from creative duties after Man of Steel– and have claimed that he had some sort of hand in bringing in Oscar winner Ben Affleck, Nolan is quick to reiterate what role he’s actually playing in WB/DC’s slate of films.

“I’m only involved in that project in an advisory capacity as an executive producer, so I’m not involved in the day-to-day. When they told me that Ben was interested in doing it, I thought, ‘How thrilling!’ This is the guy who just won Best Picture as a director and as an actor, and I thought it would be a great thing that he’d be willing to do this. I think the guy is incredibly talented and I’m very excited to see what Zack and Ben do together.”

As for whether he ever envisions himself returning to the world of superhero filmmaking, Nolan gives a very definitive answer:

“I worked on it for a long time—almost 10 years—and had an incredible experience. It was totally fulfilling, so I’m done with that part of my life. But it was really thrilling.”

On the topic of his current film, the sci-fi epic Interstellar, Nolan fielded a few key questions. The film is his lowest rated work, and- even with a huge chunk of its haul coming from uber-pricey IMAX screenings- it had the weakest opening of any film he’s directed since 2006’s The Prestige. Here, Nolan addresses two of the film’s perceived flaws: Plot holes and wonky science. 

“To be honest, I haven’t read whatever holes people are trying to poke so I can speak to the validity of it. My films are always held to a weirdly high standard for those issues that isn’t applied to everybody else’s films—which I’m fine with. People are always accusing my films of having plot holes, and I’m very aware of the plot holes in my films and very aware of when people spot them, but they generally don’t.”

He continues, on the subject of the film’s science, which has come under some scrutiny. He points to the hard work of Kip Thorne, who handled the bulk of the scientific research that informed the film:

“There have been a bunch of knee-jerk tweets by people who’ve only seen the film once, but to really take on the science of the film, you’re going to need to sit down with the film for a bit and probably also read Kip’s book. I know where we cheated in the way you have to cheat in movies, and I’ve made Kip aware of those things.”

Another interesting bit from the interview came when Nolan was asked whether his experience producing Zack Snyder’s Superman reboot, Man of Steel, was any help as he shot the All-American dust bowl setting depicted in Interstellar‘s earthbound scenes.

“It was. That all-American iconography has always been so potent in the Superman myth. It was in this script before I came to the project—he was developing the script for Steven Spielberg to direct, originally—and I think the Americana had worked its way in there. I certainly found it very helpful when I realized we were going to have to grow our own corn. I phoned Zack [Snyder] and said, ‘Well how much did you grow?’ and he told me they grew 300 acres and that it cost X amount, so we grew about 500 acres of corn and actually sold it and ended up making a profit off it!”

SOURCE: Daily Beast

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