Christopher Nolan is doing his press rounds for “Dunkirk,” his upcoming WWII film, which heads into cinemas next week with select theaters showing it in the director’s preferred 70mm format. Naturally, the subject of digital vs. analog has come up, and Nolan has made no secret that he prefers film stock over hard drives. However, it’s an uphill battle against an industry that continues to pursue a digital future, and it’s a lesson Nolan learned the hard way on “The Dark Knight.”
Back in 2008, part of the conversation around his followup to “Batman Begins” was that certain sequences in the superhero flick, including the opening heist by the Joker, were shot in IMAX. At the time, nobody was really doing that kind of thing for narrative cinema, and Nolan hoped that if audiences showed an interested in watching blockbusters in IMAX, the industry might at least pause their efforts in going digital. However, he was dismayed that little changed.
“I think I always believed that if we won, if we succeeded, that would enable more filmmakers to carry on working that way and that would go some way to stop the electronics companies and studios from chipping away at the technical way in which myself and a lot of filmmakers want to keep working,” Nolan explained to EW. “And it didn’t make a damn bit of difference.”
While the director himself may prefer film, he’s not against others going digital. However, he wants both options to remain on the table.
“If filmmakers want to work on digital, terrific. That’s their choice. I don’t want my choice to shoot on film taken away,” he added.
It’ll certainly be interesting to see if the 70mm showings of “Dunkirk” spark any renewed interest in the format on a larger scale. It should be noted, studios themselves could do a better a job of promoting when they do strike 70mm prints for films. You might not know, but both “Kong: Skull Island” and “Wonder Woman” (even though they weren’t shot in 70mm) did have small runs on the large format.
Whatever the future holds for analog presentations and production, Nolan is going to be leading the way to make sure those processes don’t fade away.