Christopher Nolan has been called many things. Auteur. Visionary. British.
He is all of these things and more, and brings his signature love of practical effects, sound design, and time manipulation into every movie. That level of dedication has resulted in some incredible details and behind-the-scenes stories that, much like Tenet, we're still trying to figure out.
1. Before we dive into his movies, a fun fact: Christopher Nolan doesn't have a smartphone or an email address.
2. Some of the actual boats that rescued soldiers at Dunkirk were used in Dunkirk.
3. In Inception, you can tell whether they're in reality or not based on whether Dom is wearing a ring. This proves that the final scene is indeed not a dream.
4. The officer who finds The Joker's calling card in Batman Begins is named "J. Kerr," which is a common alias of the Clown Prince of Crime in the comics.
5. One "tick" in the soundtrack equals a whole day on the water planet in Interstellar.
The full water planet scene:
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6. The marketing leading up to The Dark Knight involved a "Gotham City newspaper" circulating around San Diego during the 2007 Comic Con, stating that a man believed to be The Joker was found beaten to death.
7. In Memento, Lenny says that he's learned to trust his own handwriting. This comes into play when Teddy tells him to write something on his photos, but Lenny doesn't yet trust Teddy. So Lenny writes the note without using his normal handwriting.
8. Christopher Nolan had his team plant 500 acres of corn for the scene in which Cooper, Murph, and Tom drive through a cornfield.
9. A man in the crowd stands up and claims Tesla's machines are dangerous in The Prestige. Later in the film, we see that same man working for Thomas Edison.
10. Each individual frame of the black hole in Interstellar took 100 hours to render. Each second: 100 days.
"Building a Black Hole" with Dr. Kip Thorne
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11. Christopher Nolan, a big fan of classic film tricks, used forced perspective rather than CGI as much as he could when set-decorating Dunkirk.
12. The bird-killing, collapsing cage in The Prestige is a real trick developed in the 1800s by French magician Buatier De Kolta.
13. If you look closely at the food in the kitchen in Interstellar, you'll notice all the food can be made with corn (pancakes, chowder, cornbread, corn syrup). Makes sense, considering it's the only crop left on Earth in the movie.
14. In Memento, Lenny writes down Teddy's license plate as ending in "7IU." Since the "I" can either be a capital "i" or a "1," both versions of the actual plate are shown. This reinforces the fact that Lenny can't always trust his own notes.
15. Nolan based each main character's special skill on filmmaking roles in Inception.
16. Nolan loves tiny details, like the fact that Cooper has to manually reset his automatic watch after lying in cryosleep.
17. In The Dark Knight, Batman is wounded by attack dogs. In The Dark Knight Rises, he still has the scar.
18. The fateful room where Cobb and Mal spend their anniversary is #3502. The train that barrels through the street in the dreamworld is a Fillmore & Western Railroad GP35 #3502 model.
19. To show the bus crashing through the wall of the bank (which was actually a post office) in The Dark Knight, the bus had to be taken apart and then rebuilt inside the building.
20. Ariadne wears a tight bun in Inception because animating long hair in zero-gravity is a lot of work.
21. Inception is essentially a heist movie where "your mind is the scene of the crime." It's fitting that the first letters of the characters' names spell out "DREAMS PAY."
22. Victor Zsasz, serial killer from the Batman comics, appears briefly in Batman Begins.
23. The Joker writes an obituary for the mayor to announce him as his next target in The Dark Knight. The author of the obituary is "Joe Ondrejko," who is the construction coordinator for many Christopher Nolan projects.
24. Teddy's number in Memento is the exact same number as Marla Singer's from Fight Club
25. A magician shown in The Prestige pretends to be differently abled to further impress people with his tricks, never breaking "character" in public. This is based on real-life magician William Robinson, who pretended to be "Chung Ling Soo" for years until his death on stage.
26. Cobb's name in Inception is based off a major character in Christopher Nolan's debut film, Following.
27. Kenneth Branagh, who acted in Dunkirk, stated that the WWII veterans who attended the premiere in London were impressed by the film, except for the sound design. They said "the film was louder than the battle."
28. When the semi-truck gets flipped in The Dark Knight, that's not CGI trickery or miniatures. They really flipped a semi.
See how they did it here.
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29. To prepare for making Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan made the journey from England to Dunkirk in a boat with his wife and a friend.
30. While filming The Dark Knight, the crew accidentally broke an IMAX camera. At the time, there were only four of the cameras in the world (three after Chris was done).
31. Christopher Nolan used cardboard cutouts to flush out the crowds on the beach in Dunkirk.
32. The script for Tenet calls for a plane to crash into a building. So Christopher Nolan used the classic film trick of taking a real plane and...crashing it into a building.
BTS footage
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33. Dr. Kip Thorne helped keep the science in Interstellar accurate, but it wasn't his first foray into Hollywood. Carl Sagan based some parts of his novel Contact on Dr. Thorne's work, and he was consulted for the movie adaptation. Both films starred Matthew McConaughey.
