Christopher Nolan vs David Fincher

Tools    





Hard to choose. I liked the films from both directors, but I did not love any of these films. Indeed, there isn't any film from both directors in my top 100 favorite films.

Fincher's movies like Fight Club, Seven, Benjamin Button, The Social Network, Zodiac and Panic Room were good fun, but they are not art (for me at least). The same applies to Nolan's films, like Inception, the Batman movies, The Prestige and Memento. They are good fun, but I wouldn't watch any of these movies more than once and never did.

For instance, take Nolan's Batman movies. I watched them and they were good, but I never understood the fuss that the population made about these movies.

Overall, they are two competent directors who made some effective entertainment. I guess that Nolan is slightly better because of Inception and Memento, which reached a slightly higher level that Fincher's films.

My ratings for some of their movies that I remember having watched:

Finch
-- Se7en (1995)

-- Fight Club (1999)

-- Panic Room (2002)

-- Zodiac (2007)

-- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

-- The Social Network (2010)

-- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)


Nolan
-- Memento (2000)

-- Insomnia (2002)

-- Batman Begins (2005)

-- The Prestige (2006)

-- The Dark Knight (2008)

-- Inception (2010)

-- The Dark Knight Rises (2012)


My favorite out of all these movies would be Inception. Though I do not feel like re-watching any of these movies, as there are tons of better movies that I have watched (such as Kobayashi's The Human Condition).

Overall, for me none of the two deserve to be called "great". That's a term that should be reserved to the likes of Stanley Kubrick and Akira Kurosawa. Among living directors, I would say that Miyazaki and Scorcese would be the top two.



I've seen four from Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and three from Nolan (The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises and Inception), and based on these movies I like Fincher more.



David Cronenberg on Nolan and superhero movies:


David, you’ve done drama and horror. Some fairly formidable directors have branched out into superhero movies pretty beautifully —is that something you would consider doing?

DC: I don’t think they are making them an elevated art form. I think it’s still Batman running around in a stupid cape. I just don’t think it’s elevated. Christopher Nolan’s best movie is “Memento,” and that is an interesting movie. I don’t think his Batman movies are half as interesting though they’re 20 million times the expense. What he is doing is some very interesting technical stuff, which, you know, he’s shooting IMAX and in 3-D. That’s really tricky and difficult to do. I read about it in “American Cinematography Magazine,” and technically, that’s all very interesting. The movie, to me, they’re mostly boring.

Do you think the subject matter prohibits the elevated art form?

DC: Absolutely. Anybody who works in the studio system has got 20 studio people sitting on his head at every moment, and they have no respect, and there’s no…it doesn’t matter how successful you’ve been. And obviously Nolan has been very successful. He’s got a lot of power, relatively speaking. But he doesn’t really have power.

So that’s a no.

DC: I would say that’s a no, you know. And the problem is you gotta… as I say, you can do some interesting, maybe unexpected things. And certainly, I’ve made the horror films and people say, “Can you make a horror film also an art film?” And I would say, “Yeah, I think you can.”
But a superhero movie, by definition, you know, it’s comic book. It’s for kids. It’s adolescent in its core. That has always been its appeal, and I think people who are saying, you know, “Dark Knight Rises” is, you know, supreme cinema art," I don’t think they know what the f**k they’re talking about.

http://www.nextmovie.com/blog/robert...olis-interview
There I would disagree with Cronenberg's assertion that "superheroes are comic book things for kids and hence anything based on that cannot be real art". Movies are all about execution. In theory you can make a great movie featuring super heroes. The studio system doesn't allow it, though, and there I agree with Cronenberg: 200 millon dollar franchise movies cannot attain greatness due to their commercial nature and hence to the artistic limitations imposed over the director and writers.

Also, Cronenberg appears to think that graphic novels are some inferior medium. That's the result of it's underdevelopment in the United States, where the art form cannot truly flourish (a situation analogous to animation's underdevelopment in the US): In the US the graphic novel always is inferior to the novel and the animated film is always inferior to the live action film. Though, despite these limitations, there is Watchmen and Wall-E. In Japan, by contrast, graphic novels are 50-60% of all books sold in the country: the majority of fictional narratives are written in graphic novel format and not in the traditional book format. There are hundreds of thousands of comic book writers in Japan and their work isn't hindered by genre conventions, therefore, the best of it rivals the best literature in traditional form.

The medium is not a limitation in principle: in theory one could do something comparable to Citizen Kane and Rashomon out of The Green Lantern. They just don't do it in real life because of two main reasons: the whole studio system and the fact that only one out of a thousand films is a masterpiece (since there have been around 50-60 superhero movies, there has been little chance for a masterpiece to appear).



Sorry if I'm rude but I'm right
Both of them I consider pretty good Hollywood filmmakers, who make films for entertainment. I've seen all Nolan movies except Following and the one I enjoyed the least was Insomnia. I liked Memento the most.

Unfortunately, I've seen only 5 Fincher films, of which Seven is the one I like the most. It's followed by Fight Club. I didn't like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but I admit I saw it few years ago, so today I might like it more, or even less...

I'd have to watch more Fincher films to be able to say which director is better. As for now I like them both the same.

Bonus! Look at this hilarious Satantango trailer in the style of David Fincher:



I like both these filmmakers quite a bit, I'll start by listing what I've seen by each my favorite to least.

Fincher: The Social Network 5/5 Nolan: Dark Knight 5/5
Fight Club 4/5 Dark Knight Rises 4/5
Zodiac 4/5 Inception 4/5
Seven 4/5 Batman Begins 4/5
The Game 3/5 Memento 4/5
Panic Room 2.5/5 The Prestige 2.5/5
Benjamin Button 2/5 Insomnia 2.5/5

In fairness to my rankings the bottom 3 by Fincher and bottom 2 by Nolan I have only seen once each, and for each it was when they were first released. Hard for me to decide because while Nolan is probably slightly more re-watchable for me, on any given day either The Social Network or Dark Knight would be my favorite film on the list.

I'm gonna start by saying that while both these directors make big budget films I do find their films to have an artists touch. There are plenty of thoughtful themes running through almost all of these films. Both directors also make visually stunning movies. While Nolan is doing much more with CGI and what I would call artificial scenery, if I had to pick a director right now to shoot a film and give me a real sense of tone and atmosphere I would no doubt choose Fincher.

I really enjoy films that are well written and develop their characters enough to tie me in emotionally. If you can do both these things and then give me a twist in the third act that I didn't see coming you have hooked me as simple as that may be. When I think of the movies that do that to me 4 of them are on these directors list. What separates Fight Club, Seven, Inception, and Memento from films like The Sixth Sense and The Sting for me is re-watch ability. I have seen all 4 of these films at least twice, some 3, and even upon repeat viewing they are still engrossing. This to me is a strong testament to their handling of the scripts and characters.

I guess I have droned on long enough and need to make a choice. I would say Nolan by a hair, simply because I am most interested in what he will do next. However don't ask me again tomorrow.



Fincher is more technically perfect, and is probably better but i tend to favor Nolan due to having more fun and rewatchable films and comparable highs.

Fincher gets better performances from the actors, but i have no interest in ever rewatching Button, Mank or Alien 3.

So yeah, I'm leaning towards Nolan here.



Fincher is a stronger director on a technical level, but I find his worldview frequently off-putting. I've enjoyed his work greatly in the moment, but with a few exceptions, my opinion has soured greatly after the fact.


I suppose with Nolan's rough edges a similar thing should happen for me, but he's also one of the few filmmakers working with his level of budget that committed to putting cool **** on screen and giving it a personal touch, so I cut him a lot of slack.