Christopher Priest Is Not The Biggest Fan Of Christopher Nolan's 'Batman' Series

Author Christopher Priest is not the biggest fan of Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy. Now, before you wonder why Priest is chiming in, I couldn’t argue that his latest novel ‘The Adjacent‘ has any weight on the matter but Priest does have intimate feedback on Nolan’s work as he is the author of ‘The Prestige’ which Nolan released as a 2006 feature film.

Even before Priest saw the cinematic take on his film he didn’t have much interest in Nolan. “I’ve only ever had one meeting with him, when [‘Prestige] was finished,” Priest said. “Because I wasn’t very interested in him. We all have different points of view on the world. To the world he’s this great, innovative filmmaker; to me, he was a kid who wanted to get into Hollywood.”

When he was originally in talks on ‘The Prestige’ it was actually Sam Mendes (‘American Beauty’) who was up for the director’s role.

“Word got back to Nolan or his wife, who is his producer, and I got a message, email or something, that said ‘There’s a motorbike on its way; don’t decide anything!’ And so an hour later a motorbike came to my house and gave me a VHS; that’s how long ago it was — a VHS of ‘Following’ — and there was a note on it that said ‘Watch this film, and try to imagine what the filmmaker can do with a Hollywood facilities behind him.’ So I watched the film, and I took a chance and decided that Nolan was probably going to be good, and so I selected Nolan over Mendes. I don’t think he knows that.”

Priest does admit that he thinks ‘Following’ was one of his best films along with ‘Memento.’ That being said, he has mixed thoughts on the subject of Hollywood when he says, “I find film adaptation a bruising and somewhat discouraging process. The shitload of money which is, after all, the rationalization of the whole process, is more often than not a distant dream.”

So what does he think about the take on Batman? While I would argue that the second film was amazing, I think we can all agree it was The Joker that made it that good. Priest, however, would seem to disagree:

“I don’t like his other work. I think it’s shallow and badly written. I mean, I’ve got kids who like superheroes, and they think the Batman films are boring and pretentious. They like things like The Avengers and Iron Man because they’re fun. What he’s trying to be is some kind of modern [Stanley] Kubrick. And I think he’d be better off being a modern [Alfred] Hitchcock, basically. A maker of well-made films like Memento and The Prestige. And these blockbusters are just embarrassing, I think. I haven’t seen the new one yet.”

Ouch. A little scathing but clearly not a fan of Nolan’s recent work. Guess he decided to pass on ‘Interstellar.’ You can check out the full interview below!