Christopher Nolan’s upcoming movie, Oppenheimer, sets up the director to repeat a notable pattern in the career of accomplished director Steven Spielberg. Ever since his film debut in 1998, sci-fi director Christopher Nolan has been notable both for the awards acclaim and grandiose blockbuster pull of his 11 movies. While Spielberg has been in the game a lot longer, the Indiana Jones director is similarly remarkable for his split filmography of sci-fi or action blockbusters and dramatic Academy Award winners.
It’s well-documented that once a director achieves a certain level of status and acclaim, they’re better able to work in passion projects or genre pursuits amidst their more highly-anticipated award winners. Spielberg has been an incredible example of this pattern, as the director is able to boast Best Picture nominations for prestigious films in one year while putting out more widely accessible sci-fi or action-adventure blockbusters in the next. For instance, Spielberg’s directed movies in the last decade included Oscar-nominated Bridge of Spies (2015), animated fantasy The BFG (2016), Oscar-nominated The Post (2017), blockbuster Ready Player One (2018), and Oscar-nominated West Side Story (2021).
Nolan may not be as prolific as Spielberg, but certain aspects of their careers have followed similar trajectories. With Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer being projected as a frontrunner for 2023 awards films, the sci-fi director is taking a page out of Spielberg’s book in terms of his movie release patterns. Just as Spielberg has perfected the model of releasing a prestigious film, followed by a blockbuster or sci-fi movie, then back to an awards film (such as Saving Private Ryan, A.I., then Minority Report), Oppenheimer sets up Nolan to utilize this career pattern as well. The order of Nolan’s recent films includes the 2014 sci-fi blockbuster Interstellar (which Spielberg was originally supposed to direct), Best Picture-nominated war film Dunkirk (2017), sci-fi action thriller Tenet (2020), and now the 2023 biopic thriller, Oppenheimer.
Since Batman Begins (2005), the only Christopher Nolan movie to not get an Academy Award nomination in any category is The Dark Knight Rises, though this film was still massively successful and raked in over $1 billion at the box office. This is fairly comparable to the awards streak of Steven Spielberg–who recently broke his own Oscars record for Best Director nominations in the most decades–as even his non-prestigious blockbusters like Jurassic Park still receive Oscar nods. The more prestige that Christopher Nolan gains with his award movies like Oppenheimer, the more opportunity he has to take risks on action movies like Tenet. Spielberg knows this pattern well, though he notably began his career by epitomizing the blockbuster movie in the ‘70s before beginning his award/sci-fi pattern in the mid-‘80s.
While there is still well over a year before Oppenheimer hits theaters, the star-studded cast and dramatic subject matter guarantee prestigious awards recognition. If Nolan truly is repeating Spielberg’s career pattern as Oppenheimer’s release suggests, audiences can expect the sci-fi auteur’s follow-up to be a blockbuster along the lines of his Dark Knight trilogy or Tenet, which many have described as Nolan’s James Bond movie. Interestingly, Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg will be competing with one another in summer 2023 once Oppenheimer debuts in July, as the Spielberg-produced Indiana Jones 5 premieres shortly beforehand in late June.
