Leonardo DiCaprio starred in one of Christopher Nolan’s best movies, but when asked which Nolan film was his favorite, he went to a very different selection. DiCaprio worked with Nolan on the movie Inception, where he starred as a memory thief in what amounted to a sci-fi mind heist movie. It was a huge cult hit and even earned Oscar nominations, proving that Nolan was now a blockbuster filmmaker, even with his own original ideas. However, when DiCaprio and Benicio del Toro were talking about their new movie One Battle After Another, they were asked about their favorite films by big-name directors. Both men chose a different Nolan movie, rather than the expected answer of Inception.
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When speaking with Collider, both Leonardo DiCaprio and Benicio del Toro admitted that their favorite Christopher Nolan movie was The Dark Knight. When asked about Steven Spielberg movies, Del Toro immediately said E.T., while DiCaprio had to think about it before settling on Jaws. Up next was Christopher Nolan, and Scott Weintraub gave them a way out by mentioning Inception, but DiCaprio quickly said “Dark Knight” with Del Toro agreeing.
The last was Stanley Kubrick, and while DiCaprio said it was “tough,” they both said 2001: A Space Odyssey, although DiCaprio namedropped at least four other Kubrick movies, saying it was hard to choose. They threw out names like The Shining, Barry Lyndon, Clockwork Orange, and even Spartacus, saying that Kubrick was the toughest to pick out one great movie that was better than the rest. When it comes to 2001, DiCaprio also shared a story about how Christopher Nolan secured an original print with the original soundtrack and screened it for several people, including DiCaprio, a few years back.
Leonardo DiCaprio Is Right About Nolan’s Best Movie
While it might seem surprising to hear Leonardo DiCaprio pick out The Dark Knight as his favorite Christopher Nolan movie, he is right. Nolan has made some great movies, from his breakout Memento to his sci-fi mind-twister The Prestige to DiCaprio’s own Inception. However, with The Dark Knight, Nolan took a superhero movie and turned it into something more than typical genre fare. The Dark Knight was as much a crime thriller as it was a superhero movie, and it proved that comic book flicks could be more than bubblegum entertainment.
What is most interesting is that many people assumed that Leonard DiCaprio didn’t like superhero movies. Not only has he chosen not to appear in one, but he even advised his Don’t Look Up co-star Timothée Chalamet to avoid two things in Hollywood — hard drugs and superhero movies. However, this doesn’t mean that DiCaprio doesn’t like superhero movies. It just might mean that he didn’t want an actor like Chalamet to get trapped in a massive superhero franchise when he should spend this part of his career working on his art and doing interesting things.
Christopher Nolan made a lot of great movies and received a lot of Oscar attention for Oppenheimer. However, when he made The Dark Knight, he helped change everything about how Hollywood approached superhero movies. Warner Bros. and Zack Snyder took a lot of the wrong advice from what Nolan did in his films, but overall, The Dark Knight started an upward trend in filmmakers trying to turn superhero movies into something bigger than the genre. It all started with The Dark Knight, and very few comic book films have reached that level since.
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