In the modern era of CGI, the decade-old recipe of a perfect blockbuster — consisting of two ingredients: an impeccable plotline and a befitting cast ensemble — seems to have turned obsolete. Indeed, alongside these traditional elements, state-of-the-art computer graphics is becoming a staple to attract viewers. For instance, billion-dollar-grossing movies like Avengers: Endgame, Avatar, and Spider-Man: No Way Home are few in the ocean of CGI-packed movies that revolutionized the cinematographic experience. Naturally, movies and shows are receiving an increasing technical makeover to keep up with this trending formula.
That said, British-American filmmaker Christopher Nolan is known in Hollywood for steering away from computer-generated imagery culture (if and when he can) and leaning, instead, towards practical effects. Of course, some of his work unavoidably incorporates CGI magic, but that is mostly restricted to enhancing the elements captured by his camera. Naturally, with such creative pursuits, it comes as no wonder that Nolan has received several major awards nominations for his work. In 2018, he earned his first Best Director Oscar nom for Dunkirk. Next, the director’s upcoming biopic Oppenheimer, based on theoretical physicist J. Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy, will hit screens in 2023. What’s more, true to his style, Nolan has reportedly used a real atom bomb for his feature. As we await the release, here is a list of moments from Nolan’s other movies that aren’t CGI.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
5 Inception — Rotating Hallway Fight Scene
Warner Bros.
Inception, to date, remains a movie with one of the most unconventional and mind-bending narratives. It finds Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) possessing the rare craft of stealing and implanting ideas in his target’s subconscious for minting quick bucks. In one such near impossible mission, his right-hand man Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is tasked with infiltrating Robert Fischer’s (Cillian Murphy) subconscious. Here the catch is: Fisher’s subconscious is trained to defend against such attacks, setting the stage for a visually aesthetic hallway fight scene. The sequence sees Arthur going toe-to-toe against Robert’s guard in a rotating hallway with zero gravity. To achieve this unusual setup: a 360 rotating vertical set was assembled in an airship hangar outside London. Furthermore, Gordon-Levitt and the other cast were attached to various wires and harnesses in this set. To truly deliver a zero-gravity sense to the sequence, per Screen Rant, the cameras were fit at the bottom of the assembled set, creating a falling illusion.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
4 The Dark Knight — Pencil Trick
Warner Bros. Pictures
When it comes to cinema enigma, The Dark Knight trilogy has no shortage of it. Even the simplest appearing, though no less deadly, sequences in the film involve practical effect. One such iconic scene features the Joker (Heath Ledger) performing a “pencil trick” for his fellow felons, resulting in a skin-crawling death for one of the henchman. Stuntman Charles Jarman broke down the sequence, revealing how the pencil disappeared with the appropriate hand movements. He said, “We did a couple of half-speed rehearsals just to get the hand action of my right hand sweeping across, taking the pencil as my body was going down, and my head striking the blank surface.”
3 Dunkirk — Extras in the War scenes
War epics, though visually appealing, are usually known to harbor many technical challenges, such as the requirement of massive amounts of extras for the battle scenes. In the age of CGI, many films and filmmakers simply digitally add bodies on the battlefield to relay the maximalism of war. Notably, however, Dunkirk, approached this problem traditionally rather than skewing towards much-adopted computer graphics. Per Cinema Blend, the production team crafted fences of cardboard cut-outs of human beings, creating almost 400,000 extras, and erected them along the beach for far-off shots. Essentially, photographs of hundreds of soldiers in different poses were taken, then printed and glued on the mesh to fill the large background canvas for the movie’s various battle sequences.
2 The Dark Knight Rises — Midair Airplane Hijacking Scene
The opening sequence of The Dark Knight Rises finds Bane’s (Tom Hardy) mercenaries infiltrating the CIA plane midair to kidnap Dr. Pavel. What might appear as CGI magic was, in fact, shot practically, first using a prop plane and then a simulator for several days. To achieve the complex midair hijack scene, a mock South African EMB-110 plane of the CIA was towed by the real Lockheed C130 Hercules meant for Bane’s mercenaries for the infiltration sequences. Once these shots were filmed, as per the requirements, the mock plane that was suspended from Hercules was dropped in the Cairngorm Mountains to capture the shot of the destroyed plane. Additionally, for the scenes happening inside the plane, a simulator was created, offering Nolan full control of the environment. The setup was done in England, quite similar to the one employed in Inception for the rotating hallway sequence.
1 Interstellar — TARS and CASE
The sci-fi drama Interstellar depicts several uncharted physics concepts like spinning black holes, wormholes, artificial gravity, and gravitational time dilation, among many other things. As intriguing as they are on a narrative level, what’s equally creative is Interstellar’s cinematographic approach to robots, TARS and CASE specifically. As revealed in the documentary Interstellar: Beyond Time and Space, pivoting from the stereotyped portrayal of robots, the inspiration for TARS and CASE came from balsa wood and chopsticks. Fundamentally, these robots were puppets weighing 200 pounds created by the practical effects team. These monolith-like structures that were so aptly designed required minimum digital effects for several shots and got carted by comedian Bill Irwin (voice of TARS) during the sequences.
