Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ Oscar Win Is for His Safest Film Yet

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer walked into the 96th Academy Awards and blew everyone away, winning seven Oscars on the night. It capped off a highly successful awards season for the biopic about the “father of the atomic bomb,” J. Robert Oppenheimer, but it was also a monumental moment for the film’s architect and director. Despite Nolan’s impressive body of work featuring some of the most seminal films of the 21st century, Oppenheimer marked his first wins for Best Picture and Best Director. That said, the accolades poured in for arguably his safest picture yet.

‘Oppenheimer’ is Oscar bait at its finest

Take nothing away from Oppenheimer. It’s an outstanding dramatic film containing rousing performances, powerful themes, and masterful execution. It’s also a biopic on an important figure in human history, and if there’s something Hollywood loves more than stories about Hollywood, it’s biographies. A quick peek at the Best Picture category over the past few years shows films about everyone from Elvis Presley to Venus and Serena Williams’ father, Richard. The Academy members love these types of movies as much as they adore Jimmy Kimmel’s cringy jokes.

Unless Oppenheimer somehow channeled the spirit of 1995’s Showgirls in its production, there was no way it would be ignored in the nomination process. And it rightfully received its flowers on the big night too, since it is an exceptional film. However, it’s also a mixed blessing, reinforcing the message to filmmakers about what the Academy wants to see more of every year (anyone want to place a bet on how many Einstein movies are in the pipeline right now?). There was a time when the film industry used to appreciate pictures that showed creativity, and imagination, and risked it all rather than the Oscar-baits dangling in front of everyone’s face. Ironically, all hallmarks of Christopher Nolan’s filmography in the past.

Other Christopher Nolan films should have resulted in a Best Director or Best Picture Win

While Christopher Nolan had made notable films before 2005’s Batman Begins, it was the reboot of the Caped Crusader’s story that brought him to prominence. A year after swinging into Gotham City, he delivered a thrilling feature about the deception and rivalry of two stage magicians based on Christopher Priest’s novel, The Prestige. Surprisingly, Nolan didn’t receive a Best Picture or Best Director nomination for this effort, even though it’s an engrossing period piece rife with twists, turns, and an all-star cast.

In 2008, Nolan changed the course of comic book movies with The Dark Knight. For the first time in the genre’s history, this picture felt like cinema rather than a colorful marketing ploy to sell toys and horrible-fitting shirts. The Dark Knight received several Academy Award nominations; however, Nolan was excluded from the Best Picture and Best Director categories. Despite the game-changing nature of the film, the Academy likely felt hesitant to select a director of a comic book movie for those major awards. It was simply too soon for the genre.

Nolan would receive his first Best Picture nomination for 2010’s Inception, and it should have secured him his first Oscar in a major category, too. It’s a film that captured the pop culture zeitgeist as audiences and critics debated the ambiguous ending and the unique concept of infiltrating other people’s subconsciousness. More impressively, it’s an entirely original movie that wasn’t based on any pre-existing IP or adaptations. It came straight out of the mind of Nolan to $839 million at the global box office. But what did Inception lose Best Picture to at the Oscars? The King’s Speech. A biopic.

After 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan returned to original filmmaking to co-write and direct 2014’s Interstellar, a sci-fi story with a strong theme about sacrifice. Again, it proved to be another hit for Nolan, as it raked in $731 million at the box office and received five nominations at the 87th Academy Awards. However, the filmmaker was shockingly excluded from the Best Picture and Best Director categories that year.  

Nolan would be nominated for the two major Academy Awards for 2017’s Dunkirk, a war film depicting the Dunkirk events of World War II. It also proved to be the director’s first venture into movies based on actual events and people, so it shouldn’t be too astonishing to consider he would try again in this field, especially after seeing the Academy’s reaction. Did Nolan deserve Best Picture or Best Director for Dunkirk at the 90th Academy Awards? Debatable, since Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water deserved all the plaudits for daring to put a fish-man sex scene on screen.

Nolan’s next effort, Tenet, arrived during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and was released in theaters in August 2020, so it will always have an asterisk next to its name because of world events at the time. Nonetheless, no one could understand a single word in the film because of the awful sound mixing, so how could it be nominated for any awards? Even so, it’s another highly inventive story where Nolan once again plays around with the concept of time – something that’s part and parcel of nearly every film of his.

Nolan is still laughing all the way to the bank

For Christopher Nolan, it’s unlikely he cares too much about the fact he didn’t win the major Oscars for his earlier films. Especially since he’s reported to have made around $100 million for Oppenheimer, according to Variety. Add to this that he’s won more awards than anyone can count and the phenomenal financial success of the film at the global box office ($960.9 million), Nolan won’t struggle to find suitors for his next picture. He might need to swat away Warner Bros. Discovery when the executives inevitably beg him to do another superhero film for the studio.

Yet, now that he’s reached the pinnacle of Hollywood and received enough trophies to decorate his bathroom, Nolan has a serious choice to make. Either he follows in the footsteps of Oppenheimer and continues to deliver Oscar-bait blockbusters or he gets back to making imaginative and thought-provoking movies that break new frontiers. For the sake of creativity, let’s hope he picks the latter because that’s where he’s at his majestic best.