The Prestige Author Slams Nolan's Batman Films

[The Laughing Fish]

I found this interview of Christopher Priest, the author of The Prestige, via Comic Book Movie. Speaking to a French entertainment website, Priest talks about how his book was in demand for a film adaptation in Hollywood around roughly fourteen years ago.

Overview:

• He wanted Sam Mendes at first because of his success with American Beauty.
• He opted for Nolan instead because he wanted to give new talent a chance after watching Following (Nolan's first film), and Warner Bros was heavily backing the film rights for Nolan.
• He reckons that apart from Memento and The Prestige, he finds Nolan's work to be "shallow and pretentious".
• He says that his own kids find Nolan's Batman to be boring and they prefer The Avengers and Iron Man instead.
• He claims that he experienced first hand that kids in the theater watching the first two films got bored and weren't paying too much attention to the film unless there was a big action sequence.
• He argues that you can't add any psychological realism to superheroes, and Nolan would be better off making more films like Memento and The Prestige.

I don't necessarily agree that you can't apply any psychological realism to superheroes. But I do agree with Priest that Nolan didn't come close to the mark with Batman at all.

[johnnygobbs]

• He wanted Sam Mendes at first because of his success with American Beauty.
• He opted for Nolan instead because he wanted to give new talent a chance after watching Following (Nolan's first film), and Warner Bros was heavily backing the film rights for Nolan.
• He reckons that apart from Memento and The Prestige, he finds Nolan's work to be "shallow and pretentious".
• He says that his own kids find Nolan's Batman to be boring and they prefer The Avengers and Iron Man instead.
• He claims that he experienced first hand that kids in the theater watching the first two films got bored and weren't paying too much attention to the film unless there was a big action sequence.
• He argues that you can't add any psychological realism to superheroes, and Nolan would be better off making more films like Memento and The Prestige.

I don't necessarily agree that you can't apply any psychological realism to superheroes. But I do agree with Priest that Nolan didn't come close to the mark with Batman at all.

I'm a big fan of Nolan's non-Batman films (to be fair I do like his Batman films too), particularly Inception, however, I also appreciate Christopher Priest's comments about the silliness in trying to make comic-book characters 'real'.

Burton brought a lot of psychological depth to his version of Batman, arguably more than Nolan did, but it was heightened rather than literal.  Burton recognised the inherent absurdity in characters who dress up like bats and cats and so he used that device metaphorically rather than suggesting that this is something real people might do.  In doing so he also gave comic-book movie fans what we like to see which is a fantastical larger-than-life world and people that are, at least on the face of things, entirely different to our own.

I appreciate Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy but I do feel that his approach zaps a lot of the fun out of comic-book movies hence why something like The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy really hit the spot.

[The Laughing Fish]

I appreciate Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy but I do feel that his approach zaps a lot of the fun out of comic-book movies hence why something like The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy really hit the spot.

Marvel Studios are certainly capable of making fun films, but I'd go far by saying they are capable of making films with subtext too, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a perfect example of that. The themes in that film i.e. trust, surveillance, conspiracy are reflected both in the dialogue AND in the action. Whereas the Batman films introduce themes that not only have little to do with the plot, but they totally contradict the characters, e.g. Fox is okay with
using sonar technology to kidnap someone overseas, and gives Batman equipment to commit collateral damage, but he thinks Batman using sonar the way he did to find Joker is taking a step too far?! And of course, the contradictory messages and moments surrounding Batman's moral code only makes his moral dilemma involving the Joker meaningless.

I agree with Priest that Memento and The Prestige are the only films that Nolan made that I thought were good. I believe Nolan is at his best when he makes movies about deeply flawed and tainted people, and how their selfishness affect their relationships with others, i.e. Leonard Shelby's toxic desire for revenge, the two magicians who had betrayed each other and try to one-up over the other (if I recall correctly). In my opinion, Nolan otherwise doesn't know how to make movies about sympathetic characters. They are often undermined by the constant exposition, and their actions are incoherent to understand because they always contradict themselves; not to mention that the plot is too convoluted with too many characters that the main ones aren't fleshed out properly.

I'm also relieved to know that I'm not the only one who thinks Nolan is crap at writing scripts. Priest has now seen Interstellar since that interview, and this is what he said in his review:

Nolan clearly uses dialogue as a sort of fill-in noise. He calls it a sound effect. For him, words are something he has to get the actors to come out with while they're performing set-pieces or going through spectacular scenes.

This was particularly true of Inception, which had one of the worst-written scripts I have come across. I winced at its clumsiness several times while watching it – a later look at the shooting script confirmed the clodhopper style was not my imagination.

http://www.christopher-priest.co.uk/journal/2498/the-stars-my-mutteration/

I've never finished watching Inception, but I honestly didn't think the script was as bad as The Dark Knight.