Christopher Nolan of course helped redefine the superhero genre with his Dark Knight trilogy, but what if he had signed on to the Marvel Cinematic Universe instead? In a recent conversation with one of his Oppenheimer stars, Robert Downey Jr, the pair imagined what it may have been like if Nolan directed 2012’s The Avengers, and their responses are too much fun.
The Dark Knight trilogy happened nearly simultaneously, with RDJ starting off the MCU with Iron Man in 2008 before it became the massive interconnected universe of films and TV shows it is today. Here’s what the filmmaker and one of Hollywood’s highest-grossing actors of all time had to say about the “what if” of Nolan’s The Avengers during an installment of the WIRED autocomplete interview:
Nolan: "Wow, that is the multiversal conundrum. Having worked with you on Oppenheimer, there would probably be a lot too much of Tony Stark. You’d be running away with the movie a little bit."
RDJ: "Like I didn’t?"
Nolan: "Even more. Not letting you use CG, would you be prepared to get on one of those jetpacks, the ones they make for real?"
RDJ: "If Christopher Nolan had directed the Avengers, we would still be shooting it."
Now, if you haven’t heard, Christopher Nolan goes real old school with his filmmaking, in that he's always shooting on film and not using CGI if he can help it. For his latest movie, Oppenheimer, which critics are loving already, he sought to recreate the Trinity Test, which is the first ever nuclear weapon detonation without the use of computer graphics. The filmmaker instead made a bomb miniature and filmed that using forced perspective.
Christopher Nolan Interview | Retirement, 'Oppenheimer,' Ridley Scott Stories & More
So as the pair joked, there would have been some serious shifts in how he did things on The Avengers without the use of CG. For example, Nolan asked RDJ if he’d be willing to shoot with an actual jetpack on his back before the actor remarked that perhaps it’d take a decade to accomplish The Avengers sans CG if Nolan had taken up the reins.
We have to imagine The Avengers would have been a lot darker and grittier too considering Christopher Nolan is the man behind 2008’s The Dark Knight. As Nolan recently told CinemaBlend’s ReelBlend podcast, he had to make specific choices in order to keep the movie PG-13 rather than R-rated, and The Dark Knight Rises famously was almost NC-17 had he not cut one violent death in the film.
Regarding their conversation, I'm most interested in what Nolan and RDJ might accomplish together with an Iron Man film if they had the chance. Of course, all this is in good fun. You can really see Nolan and RDJ collaborating in Oppenheimer, which is among 2023 new movie releases now in theaters this weekend.
