The Big Picture

  • Christopher Nolan's films explore the theme of brilliant minds creating technological advancements that are inadvertently used as weapons.
  • The Dark Knight trilogy and films like The Prestige and Tenet demonstrate how scientific achievements can be manipulated for selfish and destructive purposes.
  • Nolan's latest project, Oppenheimer, delves into the real-life story of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his involvement in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II.

Since The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s films have been an event. His latest project, Oppenheimer, highlights how physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy), the development of the atomic bomb, and The Manhattan Project. Although Nolan already made a biographical World War II film in Dunkirk, Oppenheimer will follow the development of the American weapon that ultimately ended the war with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But Oppenheimer isn’t the first scientist in Christopher Nolan’s films whose contributions to scientific and technological advancements have led to weapons of mass destruction. Nolan’s filmography is full of brilliant minds with the resources and knowledge to save the world, but because of outside forces with ulterior motives, their achievements are inadvertently used as weapons. From his take on Batman to his more convoluted science fiction plots, Nolan has been interested in these stories that parallel the real-life creation of the atomic bomb.

Science in The Dark Knight Trilogy

Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy explores these themes in the guise of a superhero movie adapted from a comic book. Specifically, the films explore how a billion-dollar science and technology company can be easily manipulated by corruption and criminality. In Batman Begins, Wayne Enterprises develops a powerful machine designed for war and is capable of evaporating an enemy’s water supply. The prototype machine goes missing, stolen by Ra’s Al Ghul (Liam Neeson) and the terrorist organization, The League of Shadows. Their plan is to use the “microwave emitter” to disperse a fear toxin throughout Gotham by polluting the citywide sewer system with the poison and releasing it through the air. Although Ra’s almost successfully envelops the city in the toxin — with Arkham Asylum’s worst patients causing havoc in the streets as everyday citizens witness scary hallucinations as a symptom — the Batman (Christian Bale) defeats Ra’s, destroying the machine by crashing the train that housed it into the ground. And with the help of trusted Wayne employee and scientist Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), the billion-dollar company is able to provide vaccines to those affected by the fear toxin.

It is also in Batman Begins that Cillian Murphy first collaborated with Christopher Nolan. He plays Dr. Jonathan Crane, a psychiatrist who works at Arkham Asylum. But rather than use his talents, knowledge, and expertise to help remediate his patients, he uses them as test subjects for his own fear toxin, which ultimately garners him the title of Scarecrow. Although Batman ultimately defeats Scarecrow with a “taste of [his] own medicine,” Crane would appear in the next two films as a minor antagonist still causing chaos in Gotham City. Murphy would go from one scientist to another, playing the titular nuclear physicist who was deemed the "father of the atomic bomb" in Oppenheimer.

RELATED: 'Oppenheimer's Science Is Put Under the Microscope by Christopher Nolan & a Real Particle Physicist

In The Dark Knight Rises, the League of Shadows returns to destroy Gotham, this time led by Bane (Tom Hardy) and Ra’s Al Ghul’s daughter, Talia (Marion Cotillard). Talia has spent years working her way into Wayne Enterprises, using the alias of Miranda Tate. Since Bruce Wayne’s absence from the company, she and other investors with ulterior motives, such as John Dagget (Ben Mendelsohn), have been planning to make use of Wayne Enterprises’ money and resources, especially for mass destruction. One project has specifically sparked the interest of Talia, Bane, and the League of Shadows — a nuclear reactor designed by Dr. Pavel as a sustainable power source.

Bruce, believing Talia to be Miranda Tate, entrusts the weapon to her, fearing that if the machine were brought to the public’s attention, “Someone will figure out a way to make this power source into a nuclear weapon.” In fact, Bruce has this same fear with all of his company’s technological advancements. When his butler, Alfred (Michael Caine), asks him why he doesn’t give the police the same gadgets and weapons he uses as Batman, Bruce says, “one man’s tool is another man’s weapon.” Ironically, Bruce’s fears come true. Bane infiltrates Wayne Enterprises, uses his weapons and technology to take over Gotham and turns the power reactor into a nuclear bomb. But as with Batman Begins, Batman is able to defeat Bane and the League of Shadows and save Gotham City, but not without disappearing in the bomb’s nuclear blast over the ocean

In both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Rises, the advancements in science and technology produced by the minds at Wayne Enterprises are turned into weapons of mass destruction. While the intention is to use these devices to ensure the safety of everyday citizens, they ultimately become tools for the “bad guys” so that they can carry out their nefarious plans. But Bruce Wayne isn’t the only one who fears that these machines will be used for the wrong reasons.

Nolan, Tesla, and 'Tenet'

clemence-poesy-tenet
Image Via Universal

In Nolan’s The Prestige, the fictionalized Nikola Tesla (David Bowie) creates a machine that can copy whatever is placed in it. The ambitious magician Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) commissioned the machine to compete with his rival Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and his “Transported Man” act. But whereas Borden uses his twin brother for the act, Angier commits to using the machine by creating copies of himself, which are essentially clones. After each show, the newly copied Angier lives on while the previous Angier is drowned in a box. After one such act, Angier uses the machine to pin his murder on his rival magician, leading to Borden’s death sentence. However, this twisted plot eventually leads to Angier’s tragic death — all of the Angiers’ deaths — as Alfred Borden’s twin brother orchestrates the end of the long and fraught rivalry, burning the machine and Algiers’ corpses with it. As Tesla previously warned Algier, “Such a thing will bring you only misery. I add only one suggestion on using the machine. Destroy it.”

And in Tenet, a scientist’s discovery of time inversion leads to an all-out war in a battle between past and future. Rather than straightforward time travel, time inversion allows someone or something to go in reverse and move backward in time. But with the creation of a new machine, the “Algorithm,” which can invert time itself, the whole world is at stake. As an arms dealer explains, the scientist is “her generation’s Oppenheimer – she devises a method for inverting the world, but becomes convinced that by destroying us, they destroy themselves.” In order to prevent the Algorithm from falling into the wrong hands, the anonymous future scientist disassembles it into parts and scatters them into the past. The actual mechanics behind how time inversion works is a little muddy, but it’s clear that if someone were to find all the pieces to this machine, everything and everyone would be destroyed. That is precisely the goal of Russian villain Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh). In order to beat him, the unnamed Protagonist (John David Washington) and newfound partner Neil (Robert Pattinson) learn how to use time inversion to their advantage. The Protagonist and Neil ultimately find the Algorithm’s parts and decide to divide them and go their separate ways.

All these films involve a new scientific achievement that is ultimately used for all the wrong reasons. From the microwave emitter in Batman Begins, the nuclear reactor in The Dark Knight Rises, the cloning machine in The Prestige, and the time inversion Algorithm in Tenet, technological advancements in Christopher Nolan’s filmography have been a cautionary tale. Even though the world’s best minds might have the best of intentions, there are always others — be them bad guys or supervillains — who want to use technology for selfish and destructive reasons. But while these stories have remained in the realm of superhero and science fiction, Nolan’s latest venture explores the original cautionary tale of a scientist’s contributions to weapons of war.