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Sat 25 January 2025 9:30, UK
Few directors have been as influential over the past three decades as Christopher Nolan. The British auteur, who was knighted in 2024, has produced a wide range of memorable and beloved movies since he truly burst onto the scene with 2000’s Memento. Oppenheimer, Interstellar, and ‘The Dark Knight’ trilogy all followed, and while he doesn’t always get it right – his female characters (or lack thereof) aren’t usually given the best treatment – the box office numbers and fanboy accounts speak for themselves.
With someone as important to the cinematic ecosystem as Sir Chris, people like to speculate about which directors have influenced him. From viewing his body of work, it’s clear that the great David Fincher has had a huge impact on Nolan, and he has confirmed as much in interviews. In one conversation he had with The Independent, he revealed his love for a Fincher movie that very rarely gets any sort of attention – Alien 3.
Fincher became the third director to join the ‘Alien’ franchise after Ridley Scott – one of Nolan’s heroes – and James Cameron. This was the American’s feature debut, following a successful career making music videos for the likes of Madonna and Paula Abdul. He took the franchise in a wildly new direction, kicking the film off with the deaths of two beloved characters from the previous film, Bishop and Newt. Alien 3 is much darker than the two previous instalments, and whilst it does have some nice ideas, it was also a case of way too much way too soon.
“It’s the Alien 3 lesson, the Fincher one,” Nolan explained. “You can do it, but it’s not gonna make anybody happy even though personally I love that film – I love it more than he does, I think.” He’s certainly not wrong in that last assessment, as Fincher has gone out of his way to distance himself from the project, even going as far as to say he regrets doing it.
“I’ve never dared mention [Alien 3] to him,” Nolan stated. “I think he’s very aware of the flaws and he’s very aware of the appalling experience he had making it, and how put-upon he was, and I truly can only imagine. But his talent shines through in that movie. I came out of that film and had a conversation with a guy I was with and I said, ‘I’ve just seen the new Ridley Scott. I know who the new Ridley Scott is, it’s David Fincher,’ and I wasn’t wrong. It’s there in the movie, whether he knows it or not.”
The ‘Fincher lesson’, as Nolan puts it, clearly had an effect on his own filmmaking philosophy. He is a director who does things his own way, even if it goes against conventional wisdom. His preference for high-concept, plot-heavy stories and refusal to follow a linear structure in most of his films would have sunk lesser names, but because Nolan believes in his own vision, and has brought millions of people onboard to his views.
Alien 3 might not have gotten Fincher’s career off to the best of starts, but in a way, it set the stage for everything that was to come from the infamous disruptor. Also, if it helped inspired one of the most accomplished directors of his time, then it is worth far more than its shortcomings.
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