For me, the most exciting summer movies over the last 10 years have done exactly that. They’ve taken the genre as a metaphor for something real. There’s an element of fantasy, whether it’s a superhero with what Christopher Nolan’s done with the Batman series, or whatever - the idea of taking those ideas and then being ambitious with them, so it’s not about giving you the surface effect of the spectacle, but also giving you the story, that is a throwback to me. Back to the stories I loved as a kid growing up, like Spielberg’s movies. The movies that fulfilled the summer excitement quotient, but were also emotional stories about character.
That was definitely my intention on this, so I love that you say that.
I’ve no idea why [more films aren’t like it]. But I will say this: I do think that Chris Nolan’s films, and the films like them, are the ones that made this movie possible.