Christopher Nolan’s next movie will come out on July 21, 2017, as per Variety and THR. That’s all we know. I bet it’ll be pretty good. Insert pithy remark about hoping the sound mix will be better than it was on his last big movie, Interstellar, but then counter that pithy remark by ultimately praising Interstellar for its ambition and strengths as a cinematic experience. Point out how although Interstellar made a lot of money, it wasn’t quite on the same level as Nolan’s Batman movies or Inception. Frame that as making the box office prospects for his next movie an interesting thing to keep an eye on. Throw in a link to a review of Nolan’s recent documentary short about the Quay Brothers. End story. Publish.
That’s how quick and easy this kind of story should be. So, why did both SlashFilm and ScreenRant devote seven small paragraphs and BirthMoviesDeath four long paragraphs to reporting this story? Vulture has it about right with just a single paragraph, and DenOfGeek is not far behind. I noticed the variance in article lengths as I was swiping through my Flym News Reader app on my tablet this morning, and the ones I mentioned are just a couple of many potential examples.
Every site knows its audience and how much information they’ve come to expect in news stories, and they have to respond accordingly. Is your readership the type that will pretty much already know just as much about Nolan’s career as you and thus doesn’t really need any further reminders of how he’s the guy who made those Batman movies? Or are they the type that might not have even seen Interstellar yet or saw it but can’t remember what the critical consensus was at the time?
These are the types of questions I wrestle with all the time. So, I ask you – how much backstory do you really need for a story with no concrete details or even rumors but instead a mere release date, especially when the release date in question is for a new movie from a director whose movies have grossed over $4 billion worldwide? Because one sentence just about covers this whole thing – Christopher Nolan’s next movie will come out on July 21, 2017, but as per usual with the secretive director we know nothing more about it and probably won’t for quite a while.
We Minored in Film 
How much information do I need? None. I don’t even need a release date. All I need to know is that Nolan is at the helm. That is enough information to guarantee I’ll be planting my bottom directly in front of a screen that I paid an ungodly amount of money view his newest cinematic experience. When I say cinematic experience I mean it because his movies are on another level then anybody else in the business right now, I truly believe.
I loved Interstellar..perhaps to a fault? I find myself defending it all the time, or trying to persuade someone on the theoretical science, but the truth is that that movie just hit directly into my wheel house. I love space, I how much is actually unknown about our universe, and I love Nolan, so I’m willing to admit that I am biased. However, I will disagree with the sound mixing point. I realize it’s not for everyone and that Nolan obviously has 2001 A Space Odyssey on repeat, but the sound very much makes you feel as though you are in deep space, and we progressively get less and less noise the further from home we are… but I digress.
I’m convinced that I’m not alone in my mindset that if Nolan is directing- I’m there. I’m sold, however I can’t wait to find out more.
-Dave
Yeah, I agree…it doesn’t matter what they say beforehand, most of us will have made up their mind one way or another. If Nolan is involved, I will firmly stay away until I see the reviews and then maybe – maybe I consider watching it. Because while I like Inception, Nolan in general is too melodramatic for my taste. I prefer it when people in movies talk like, well, people.
I actually liked the soundtrack of Interstellar….what I didn’t like was the soundmixing. I was constantly adjusting the volume while watching the movie.
Yeah Nolan appears to be one of those directors that you either love or hate the work. I haven’t experienced the same issues with sound while viewing Interstellar, but perhaps my ear is not as finely tuned as others.
The issue with the sound was really just that a lot of people had trouble hearing some of the dialogue. Theaters got tons of complaints about it. SlashFilm summarized it all here: http://www.slashfilm.com/christopher-nolan-interstellar-sound-problems/
The biggest offending scene was when Michael Caine’s character tells Jessica Chastain the big secret from his deathbed. I could not understand his final line, and there were plenty of audible whispers in the theater, roughly all, “What did he just say?” I had the same issue with The Dark Knight Rises when Bane reads Gordon’s letter on live TV, and then Gordon tries to explain himself to Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character (I saw the movie in theaters twice and both times I could not make out what the heck Gary Oldman said in his final line of the scene).
That’s really it, for me, though. I haven’t had any other issues with Nolan’s sound design/mixing. I adjusted to Tom Hardy’s Bane voice fairly quickly in Dark Knight Rises, and was not as bothered by the sound in Interstellar as some.
I’ll see it, at some point (still haven’t seen Interstellar), but this is like 2 years off, and we know literally nothing. I’ll be more interested when a basic plot synopsis is released.
The sheer amount of reporting all over the interwebs about this very subject astounds me!
That was kind of my point. Is there really anything worth talking about here? Or should we just use this opportunity to reassess Interstellar?
Personally, I think it’s great that they’ve given us a release date, but that’s not in the slightest worthy of these proportions. I’m one of those people who haven’t seen Interstellar yet so I think I’m just gonna go ahead and watch that before I get excited about this next project of his =)
A wise move, I’d say.
I love ScreenRant but they always write these ridiculously long articles with backstory and speculation off of the tiniest detail, sometimes half a sentence from an offhand remark in an interview. Now that takes serious skill 🙂
Sometimes with my own articles I have actively tried to write like ScreenRant, and, geese, it’s a pain in the ass. You just pad and pad and pad with so much backstory and idle speculation, assuming that your reader knows next to nothing about the topic. You habitually make a mountain out of a mole hill, and as a ScreenRant reader I quite often simply jump to the part with the quote they’re blowing out of proportion and move on because I realize they’re not really writing that type of article for someone like me. They seem to write more for an audience that has a passing interest in everything but does not obsessively pay attention to all of the details and could benefit to have that filled in. That being said, I still really like ScreenRant because a lot of its editorial content is top notch, and sometimes there are news stories where in their endless background section they’ll link to some other story I had somehow missed. But, generally, I agree with you – it takes a certain skill set to write forever about next to nothing, and the ScreenRant people have those skills.
And they write about nothing so much better than most people write about something!
Isn’t that how Meg Ryan’s character describes all of her conversations with Tom Hanks in “You’ve Got Mail”? – something like “All of our conversations about nothing added up to something” – I dunno. I’m misquoting, and even then it’s not really the same thing as what we’re talking about. Just the first thing to came to mind.