Universal
“Like it or not,” Christopher Nolan explained at CinemaCon in April, “J. Robert Oppenheimer is the most important person who ever lived. He created the world we live in, for better or for worse.”
Nolan expands on these ideas in a cover interview for the new issue of Wired, saying the importance of Oppenheimer and his story is one of the reasons people should see his film, which hits theaters July 21.
The director calls the film a “wild ride,” a reasonable appraisal for a life story interwoven with what he considers “quite literally the most dramatic moment in history.” Then, for emphasis, he repeats, “In the story.”
When asked about AI and more recent visions of Armageddon, Nolan Wired says he’s less worried than most – even optimistic – and calls it a tool even he, an “old analogue stuffy filmmaker”, would use.
“All of the machine learning applied to deepfake technology is an extraordinary advance in terms of visual effects and what you can do with audio,” he said. “Longer term, there’s going to be wonderful things about the environment, building a door or a window, bringing together the vast amount of data about how things look and how light responds to materials. Those things are going to be tremendously powerful tools.”
He emphasizes that in his view, AI images are not a unique creation in themselves, but rather an amazing mixture.
“It’s not about starting from scratch. It starts from a much more detailed and data-driven idea. It could finally break the line between animation and photography. Because it’s a hybrid. For example, if you tell an artist to draw a picture of an astronaut, they’ll make something up from memory or look up references. With AI it’s a different approach where you actually use the full history of the images.”
When asked about the initial reactions of those who saw the film, Nolan says, “Some people leave the film devastated. You can’t speak. I mean there is an element of fear that is present in the story and in the background. But the love for the characters, the love for the relationships is stronger than ever.
“I recently showed it to a filmmaker who said it was some kind of horror film. I don’t disagree… When I finished the film, I started to feel this color that didn’t exist in my other films, only darkness. It is there. The film fights against that.”
Nolan goes on to explain, “It’s a complicated emotional world to be entertained by horrible things, you know? This is where the horror dimension comes into play.”