While success in 21st century Hollywood is almost entirely driven by IP-based productions, there remains a small group of directors whose films can be sold specifically on their name and ultimately become massive box office hits. Along with Quentin Tarantino and Jordan Peele, Christopher Nolan is one of these filmmakers. It's obviously a privileged position – and it's one that the helmer of Oppenheimer doesn't take for granted. In fact, it's because of the resources that are regularly at his disposal that Nolan has dedicated the majority of his career to date to making movies with tremendous scale and big budgets.
The size of Christopher Nolan's films was recently a point of discussion during an interview with Time Magazine . The writer/director was asked about recent releases that he particularly favors, and he named two titles that are far smaller than anything he has personally done in the last decade-and-a-half: Charlotte Wells' coming-of-age film Aftersun and Celine Song's romantic drama Past Lives. The contrast in subtlety between those movies and Nolan's blockbusters was evidently highlighted in response, which led the filmmaker to explain why it is that he is drawn to making large-scale features like Interstellar, Dunkirk, Tenet and Oppenheimer. Said Nolan,
