The Dark Knight Director Chris Nolan Reveals He’s a Big Fan of Fast & Furious Movies

Though his frequent citation of the influence of directors like Michael Mann and Stanley Kubrick might lead you to believe that filmmaker Christopher Nolan only has a specific taste in movies, you’d surprisingly be wrong. Fans have long known that the director of The Dark Knight and Inception was a huge fan of James Bond movies, but in a new interview he confirmed another major film franchise that he’s seen every entry of, The Fast & the Furious movies. Speaking with Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Nolan was asked about a rumor that he’s a fan of the Vin Diesel led movies and he confirmed it while making a note on movie sequels getting larger.

“I’m sort of an original recipe (guy), I mean the Rob Cohen original…But I’ve got a very soft spot for Tokyo Drift actually,” Nolan said. “And then the skill as Justin Lin’s iterations, as they got crazier and bigger and crazier and bigger, they became something else, but something else kind of fun. The fun thing about those movies is even as they’ve gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, as sequels have to do, everyone always complains that sequels get bigger but we’re the people making sequels get bigger, we do want them bigger, you don’t want them smaller, it’s the Alien 3 lesson that Fincher learned. You can do it but it’s not going to make anybody happy, even though personally I love that film, a lot more than he does in fact.”

Nolan’s obviously no stranger to that ethos of bigger and bigger, having pushed the limits on his Batman movies with each new entry, not to mention adding more villains into the mix with each film.

In any event, Nolan will be happy to know that the Fast and Furious franchise is far from over. F9: The Fast Saga is currently set to premiere in theaters on May 28, 2021, over a year after it was originally scheduled to arrive. Though it had previously been confirmed that the series would end with the tenth movie in the series, plans were changed earlier this year when it was announced it would conclude with the next two movies. Director Justin Lin, who has helmed multiple entries in the franchise, is reportedly in talks to direct both films which we can only hope will see Diesel, Gibson, and Johnson all share the screen once again, with Christopher Nolan cheering in the audience.