Christopher Nolan is regarded as one of the top directors working today. Despite not having that many films under his belt, he has already became many people's favourite director with his re-boot of the Batman series and his novel way of portraying stories in film. To many, Nolan is one of the most overrated directors currently working in the industry the now. However, no matter how much people dislike his films there will always be a huge amount of respect for his defiance against film studios demands for more CGI and 3D. Here's an A-Z guide of everything to do with Christopher Nolan. Be warned,
spoilers within.
A: Antagonists
Nolan's antagonists aren't your average bad guys; most of them are on a revenge mission or to blackmail someone but you're hardly likely to describe any of their aims as revolving around money. The only one I can think of is Salvatore Maroni from The Dark Knight but even then you would hardly describe him as a villain. Nearly every antagonist has a more personal motive in his films such as Borden's jealousy of Angier in The Prestige or Harvey Dent's quest for revenge in The Dark Knight. Arguably, this is what makes Nolan's films so interesting and unique to some people; the challenges the protagonists face aren't as simple as they seem, there's always a deep emotional connection with the villain and his acts (except from the Joker whose actions are without reason thus creating an even greater challenge for the protagonist).
B: Batman Begins
The first of Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy; this is the beginning of his climb to commercial fame essentially. His innovative and realistic approach to the comic book genre has and will become an inspiration for future comic adaptations. Begins is often said to be people's least favourite of the three but it still gathers a lot of worthy respect because it started off a wonderful trilogy and brought a lot of attention to Nolan's previous work. There are some fantastic performances by Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman and Cillian Murphy so Batman Begins is definitely worth watching for those who have yet to see any of the Dark Knight trilogy.
C: CGI
Nolan famously tries to use as little CGI as possible in his films. Now that he has a larger budget for his films and can therefore make his dreams come to life on the screen, it is a little more difficult to not use any CG at all. However, he still tries to make scenes as real as possible with methods such as using real bats in Batman Begins and who can forget seeing that fantastic rotating hallway in Inception? Instead of resorting to CGI Nolan chose to build an entire set on a rotating motor so the actors really were fighting up and down a hallway that was rotating round and round. Despite it being far more difficult to do this, Nolan still tries to stay as real as possible when filming - something not many directors do today.