Christopher Nolan explains why Oppenheimer 'is the most important person who ever lived,' why his film needed sex scenes, and his feelings on 'Barbenheimer'

A Christopher Nolan movie is nothing if not ambitious. From "Memento" to "Inception" to "Dunkirk," his films have stretched the limits of narrative storytelling while delivering jaw-dropping, unforgettable visuals. 

While even Nolan couldn't resist getting a taste of the superhero genre when he revived the Batman franchise with "The Dark Knight" trilogy, his post-Batman career has molded him into something even rarer in today's IP-addicted Hollywood landscape: a blockbuster auteur.

In his latest movie, "Oppenheimer," about the father of the atomic bomb J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), Nolan is once again challenging himself, bringing his signature mind-scrambling flourishes to something closer to a biopic. It's also the first time he's ever had sex scenes in one of his movies, and they're explosive in their own right. It all makes for an epic that's filled with tension and suspense — classic Nolan properties, but imbued with novelty. This is Oppenheimer — and Nolan — as you've never seen him before.

Insider spoke to Nolan about why he decided to tell Oppenheimer's story, his thoughts on "Barbenheimer," and why the "Inception" ending still delights him.

When we last talked it was for "Dunkirk," and you said then that you love doing "aggressively human scale storytelling." I certainly felt that with "Oppenheimer." But I also felt there are choices you made with this movie that are unlike your others and will surprise audiences. Did you want to throw moviegoers a curve ball with this story?

Well, I think curve ball might be one way of looking at it. The simple truth is, coming to Oppenheimer's story, I just had never encountered a story as dramatic as that of J. Robert Oppenheimer and his involvement first in the Manhattan Project and then everything that happened after. It truly is a story that is stranger than fiction. I think it's more suspenseful and more unpredictable than anything I could ever imagine.

So I was very excited to put the audience into his head and take them through his story through his point of view. And then have the audience come to some kind of understanding of the man rather than a judgment of the man. But also get a hell of an experience. It's quite a wild ride, his life. 

I guess the best way to describe this is as the closest thing we would ever get to a biopic from you. What did you learn from making a historical war film like "Dunkirk" that perhaps prepared you to tell the story of a real person's life?

The difference with "Dunkirk," I was looking at a real-life set of events that I had known about and researched and tried to figure out, what's the way into the story? In that instance, I decided to use fictional characters to illustrate the historical truth of the situations. With "Oppenheimer," it was a very different approach. It was really about looking at the man himself, the story he went through, the paradoxical situations, the ethical dilemmas he found himself confronted by and the choices he made and say, okay, how can I make that accessible to an audience? How can I involve them in the drama, the excitement of his life?

And so it's the perspective of a real-life individual that takes you through this unbelievably important shift in the world that's taking place. Maybe the most important shift that has ever happened in the world. And he was at the center of it.

Did you find limitations in telling a story about real people and real events versus doing fictional work?

I think you would ordinarily, dealing with real-life events, find all kinds of restrictions on the construction of the drama, the balance of the drama and the tension, but that's not the case with Oppenheimer's story. Let me give you one tiny example: there's the incident where he tried to poison his tutor at Cambridge, that tutor later on becomes one of the first people to write and question the official narrative of the reasoning behind dropping the atomic bomb. Now, as a screenwriter, that would seem too fanciful. You would never write that. But that's the truth. And Oppenheimer's story is full of those kind of extraordinarily dramatic developments and relationships.

Really, it was a question of what to leave out, because the things that I've left out of Oppenheimer's story are things that will fuel other movies. It's a remarkable life. I was working from "American Prometheus;" it's over 700 pages long. It's beautifully told. And so I had to do a lot of picking and choosing and trying to get to the essence of what excited me about his story. 

The biggest revelation for me in this movie was that Oppenheimer was a ladies man. That opened the door for you to do something you'd never done before in your movies: sex scenes. Why that choice for this movie?

Well, when you look at Oppenheimer's life and you look at his story, that aspect of his life, the aspect of his sexuality, his way with women, the charm that he exuded, it's an essential part of his story. His very intense relationship with Jean Tatlock, played by Florence Pugh, is one of the most important things in his life. But not least for the fact that Jean Tatlock was very explicitly a Communist and his obsession with her therefore had enormous ramifications for his later life and his ultimate fate. So it felt very important to understand their relationship and to really see inside it and understand what made it tick without being coy or allusive about it, but to try to be intimate, to try and be in there with him and fully understand the relationship that was so important to him. 

Through the writing of those scenes, and the shooting and editing, were you ever nervous if the audience would accept you doing sex scenes?

I mean, I think any time you're challenging yourself to work in areas you haven't worked in before, you should be appropriately nervous and appropriately careful and planned and prepared. And I was very fortunate to be working with just a couple of actors who are at the absolute top of their game. I've worked with Cillian for 20 years and he's one of the greats. And we have a comfortable ease with communication. And then working for the first time with Florence Pugh, who is someone I've been wanting to work with, I met with her and immediately felt a creative connection. I felt this is somebody who could bring Jean Tatlock to life and have the audience understand the significance of this figure in Oppenheimer's life. And she was just fantastic to work with. That helped enormously, to have just two great respectful professionals. But with massive talent and spontaneity and emotional truth, that's all you can really ask for as a director and it makes my job a lot easier. 

So let me ask about "Barbie." Well, first, have you seen "Barbie"?

No. 

Here's my theory of the whole "Barbenheimer" thing: it's strictly pettiness by Warner Bros, the studio behind "Barbie," for you leaving the studio and leaving the way you did. Do you feel that the reason why "Barbie" never changed its release date and both these films have to battle it out on the same weekend is because this is Warner Bros. looking for payback?

[Laughs] Now, you must know I'm not going to answer that question, only to say those who care about the theatrical experience, we've been longing for a crowded marketplace with a lot of different movies. That's what theaters have now, and those of us who care about movies are thrilled about that.

Your endings are so memorable. Do you have a specific ending from one of your movies that stands out for you?

To be honest, it's hard to single one out because endings are very, very important to me. I don't fully commit to a film unless I know where it's going and how I'm going to end it. 

Certainly, from an audience point of view, in terms of sitting with a crowd and experiencing the end of the film, "Inception" was a very unique type of ending. If I would sneak into the back of the theater when it was playing and we would get to the end, there would be a tremendous sort of gasp, groans, frustrations — it was an incredible mixture and I would feel very much like I need to get out of here before anybody notices I'm there [laughs]. So that was a pretty remarkable ending to sit through with audiences over the years. But to single one out beyond that is like asking which of the films is my favorite and that's certainly not something I'm qualified to say. 

So are you saying you figured out the ending of "Inception" before you figured out the rest of the movie?

Saying it that extremely is not quite accurate, but certainly as I'm planning a project, as I'm starting to write, I spend months writing notes and thinking about the thing before I'm really ready to start the business of actually writing the script, and I certainly have always felt with movies it's very important to know the final destination before you really commit to the project.

For me as a writer-director, the commitment is really hammering on that first draft of the script and putting all of the months and months of work that has to go into that. I can go a certain way down the road, I can have a concept or a certain set of ideas, but until I know where that's going I don't feel that I can fully commit to that project and moving it forward. 

I don't want you to spoil the ending of "Oppenheimer," but you have said that the ending feels like a horror movie, and I felt that seeing it. Why go this route in closing out the movie?

I don't know if I can really talk about the ending yet. Not even for the point of view of spoils, but I don't even know if I'm ready to talk about that.

The ending was one of the first things that was defined for me in how I was going to write the script and everything in the film builds to that. I am on record as saying I view Oppenheimer as the most important person who has ever lived, and that ending is intended to reflect that. He is a person whose actions changed the world irrevocably. Like it or not, we live in his world and we always will. And the ending is designed to reflect that and make that clear to people. 

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.