Christopher Nolan blew the living daylights out of us with Oppenheimer – now, the powers that be should arm him with a license to thrill: it’s time for him to make a James Bond movie.
The DNA of Ian Fleming’s tuxedo-sporting, Walther PPK-wielding secret agent is sprinkled across Nolan’s filmography. Inception culminates in one final heist-within-a-heist-within-a-heist in an alpine fortress that feels like a visual echo of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – by the director’s own admission, given it’s his favorite of all 25 so far. If you consider Tenet, it’s basically a Bond film with its occasionally smarmy, deadly Protagonist, extensive globetrotting, and mass-destruction-obsessed villain.
Just look at The Dark Knight trilogy: Rachel Dawes is its Countess Tracy di Vicenzo; Lucius Fox’s cars, gizmos, and witty rapport make him Q for Batman; the Joker is armed with a blade in his shoe, much like Rosa Klebb’s poison-tipped knife in From Russia With Love; and the spectacular opening of The Dark Knight Rises is clearly influenced by Licence to Kill’s mid-air plane hijacking.
He’s not indebted to James Bond – his oeuvre stands on its own, even with these little nods – but after 12 movies and 25 years, one has to ask: is he ready to commit himself to his own contribution to the legacy of 007? He may have all the time in the world, but we want it now.
Christopher Nolan loves James Bond
Actors can get a bit cagey if they’re bundled into the bookies’ Bond odds; if you say you want to play him, it’ll likely never happen, but if you’re too callous about the prospect, you’ll be distanced from the role. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is the hot pick for the next era of the franchise, but he’s been very selective about any sort of comments on it.
Nolan isn’t so delicate: he’s long overtly expressed interest in directing a James Bond movie. In 2010, he described Inception as “absolutely my Bond film” and confessed to “plundering ruthlessly from the Bond movies in everything I’ve done, forever… they’re a huge influence on me.”
“I think, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service would be my favorite Bond. It’s a hell of a movie, it holds up very well. What I liked about it that we’ve tried to emulate in this film is there’s a tremendous balance of action, scale, and romanticism and tragedy and emotion. Of all the Bond films, it’s by far the most emotional. There’s a love story and Inception is kind of a love story as well as anything else. I’m going soft in my old age,” he told Empire.
In 2012, he cited The Spy Who Loved Me as a direct inspiration for his epic visual flair and composition. “The globe-trotting elements of Batman Begins mostly came from the Bond films… one of the first films I remember seeing was The Spy Who Loved Me and at a certain point the Bond films fixed in my head as a great example of scope and scale in large-scale images,” the filmmaker said, as per IndieWire.
“That idea of getting you to other places, of getting you along for a ride if you can believe in it — in The Spy Who Loved Me, the Lotus Esprit turns into a submarine and it’s totally convincing, and it works and you go, ‘wow that’s incredible.'”
During a 2020 appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Nolan revealed his favorite Bond actor: Timothy Dalton, whose coldly received, ahead-of-their-time films feel like an essential step that made Casino Royale possible. “I think he’s closest to the character in the book,” he said.
Give Christopher Nolan the keys to James Bond
The Bond franchise is at an exciting crossroads after Daniel Craig’s hero-redefining tenure came to an end with No Time to Die; as far as the world knows, everything is up for grabs. The casting of 007 will always invite speculation, but after Craig’s era broke new ground by serializing his story, the question of who’ll write, direct, and potentially oversee Bond 26 and beyond is arguably more exciting.
Fertility has always been a sticking point for Nolan. In 2014, he revealed he’d spoken to Bond custodians Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, but it didn’t feel like the right moment for either side. “I love James Bond and I’ve talked with the producers over the years, but nothing’s ever worked out,” he told The Daily Beast. “They do a great job – they don’t need me right now, and Sam [Mendes] is an extraordinary talent. I will absolutely be first in line to see the next Bond film as I have been for all of them.”
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In 2018, Nolan denied rumors he’d direct the 25th entry, but threw out a curious condition for him ever taking the reins. “I deeply love the character, and I’m always excited to see what they do with it. Maybe one day that would work out. You’d have to be needed, if you know what I mean. It has to need reinvention; it has to need you. And they’re getting along very well,” he told BBC Radio 4.
So, with the whiteboard wiped clean and Bond ready for a refresh, may he finally be enticed? Well, on a recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, he once again addressed the possibility – and he was more open to it than ever before.
“The influence of those movies in my filmography is embarrassingly apparent, so there’s no attempt to shy away from that. I love the films, and it would be an amazing privilege to do one. At the same time, when you take on a character like that or work like that, you’re working within a particular set of constraints, and so you have to have the right attitude towards that,” he said.
“It has to be the right moment in your creative life where you can express what you want to express and really burrow into something within the appropriate constraints because you would never want to take on something like that and do it wrong.”
Broccoli has already said the next movie will be a “complete reinvention” of Bond, so here’s an idea: Nolan has just shown he’s at the absolute peak of his powers with Oppenheimer, so let Nolan craft his own 007 saga that spans across multiple movies; a new shaken-and-stirred Dark Knight trilogy, but for the screen-and-page hero he’s always pursued, even if only in iconography.
A report from World of Reel claimed Nolan is actually in talks to direct two movies in the next era of the franchise, but the director has yet to confirm whether that’s true. Broccoli also recently reiterated that it’s a “big road ahead” to the next movie, so we could be waiting a while to find out if it’s happening.
However, unless he’s bluffing, Nolan seemed to quell any and all reports in a recent interview with AP. When asked if he’d be directing a Bond movie of his own, he said: “No, sadly no. No truth to those rumors.”
He’s already an event with his name alone – combine him with Bond, and you make history.
Oppenheimer is available to buy or rent digitally on Amazon Prime, and you can also purchase the movie via these links below:
You can also check out our other coverage here, and other James Bond content here.