Christopher Nolan is one of the most well-known directors in cinema, but you may not know that he was heavily inspired by a 1982 movie he loved as a kid. Christopher Nolan has become a legendary director since his debut feature film in 1999. All of Christopher Nolan’s movies have something great to offer, and he’s arguably never written or directed a bad film. From mᴀssively profitable blockbusters like The Dark Knight to critically acclaimed, Oscar-winning films like Oppenheimer, Nolan seemingly can’t miss. Though he’s become a larger-than-life director, even Nolan started somewhere.

Nolan has crafted an instantly recognizable style through the years, but that style was informed by other movies. He’s certainly been inspired by other creators in the past; Nolan’s Batman trilogy almost entirely uses characters and worlds created by others, while his upcoming film The Odyssey is an adaptation of a text written thousands of years ago. Still, many fans of Nolan may be surprised to learn that one of his biggest inspirations as a filmmaker was Blade Runner, the seminal 1982 cyberpunk film with 89% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Blade Runner Is One Of The Movies That Impacted Christopher Nolan The Most

Nolan Cited Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner & Alien As Some Of His Favorite Movies As A Child

There’s no telling how many films have had an effect on Christopher Nolan, but he has singled out one in particular that may come as a surprise. Nolan has noted that Ridley Scott’s 1982 cyberpunk masterpiece Blade Runner – along with Scott’s other sci-fi classic, Alien – was one of his favorite movies as a child (via Media Factory).

“I have always been a huge fan of Ridley Scott and certainly when I was a kid. Alien and Blade Runner just blew me away because they created these extraordinary worlds that were just completely immersive. I was also an enormous Stanley Kubrick fan for similar reasons.”

Additionally, in an interview for the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Nolan mentioned that he watched Blade Runner endlessly on VHS because he was too young to see it in theaters. It’s not necessarily surprising that Nolan would love Blade Runner – it is widely praised as a timeless classic and a pillar of the sci-fi genre as a whole – but it is surprising that it has had such an enduring impact on him. Even now, decades later, Nolan still cites Blade Runner as an inspiration, and offers his opinions on the film.

Christopher Nolan Has A Controversial Opinion On The Different Versions Of Blade Runner

Nolan Believes The Theatrical Version Of Blade Runner Is Better Than The Director’s Cut

Yet another interesting part of Christopher Nolan’s relationship with Blade Runner is his opinions about the best way to watch it. Blade Runner famously has seven different cuts that all vary in significant ways, like changing the ending entirely or adding narration. Generally, either the Director’s Cut or the Final Cut are considered the definitive way to view Blade Runner, as they both maintain the film’s moody feel and are closer to Ridley Scott’s original vision for the movie. However, Nolan prefers the theatrical cut of Blade Runner, which is a sentiment very few people share.

“It is the best version of the film. It’s imperfect – and it seems presumptuous, and I’m a huge fan of Ridley Scott, so I don’t want to go up against his view in a sense – but the reality is, that tension between the marketplace, between the studios, between the fights, the creative stuff that happens when a film goes out, unless they literally pull the film out of the director’s hands and recut it, and bastardize it in some way, I think really the authoritative version of the film tends to be the one that goes out there in theaters.”

As Nolan explained, he valued the collaborative nature of the theatrical version of Blade Runner more than the other cuts, which served to preserve Ridley Scott’s vision for the movie as its “sole” creator. There are countless people who contribute to a movie, like directors, writers, actors, editors, and many more, and Nolan clearly values their input. Nolan does provide a caveat for films that are “bastardized,” but he views the version that makes it to theaters as one that dozens or hundreds of people pored over and agreed was the best. It’s hardly a conventional opinion, but Christopher Nolan is hardly a conventional person.

How Blade Runner Has Influenced Christopher Nolan’s Career Over The Years

Most Of Nolan’s Movies Have The Same Ambiguity & Immersiveness Blade Runner Is Known For

It’s clear that Blade Runner had a mᴀssive effect on Christopher Nolan, and it’s also fairly plain to see in his films. Arguably the biggest hallmark of Nolan’s movies is ambiguity – both in terms of morality and endings – which he likely got a taste for from Blade Runner. Blade Runner is a movie with endless questions and almost no answers. The film doesn’t tell audiences whether replicants are people or how to interpret its multi-layered world. It’s easy to see how Nolan was striving for the same ambiguous effect in films like Memento, which questions the nature of memory and time without offering any definitive conclusions.

The other mᴀssive effect Blade Runner has had on Nolan’s filmmaking career is through its immersive world. With each of his films, Nolan strives to take extraordinary situations – like dream infiltration in Inception or time inversion in Tenet – and make them feel completely natural to viewers. Nolan’s films are decidedly fantastical, but the way he presents the worlds he’s created feels just as grounded and realistic as a documentary. Blade Runner is the same way: while watching the film, viewers immediately accept the existence of advanced androids as fact rather than high-concept science fiction.

In a more broad sense, Blade Runner is likely responsible for the very kinds of movies that Christopher Nolan makes. Part of the allure of Blade Runner is the fact that you don’t really know what’s real and what’s a lie. Nolan often takes the same approach to his films through tricks like unreliable narrators and nonlinear stories, leaving audiences to debate what actually happened. Everything from Inception‘s ambiguous ending to Tenet‘s confusing time travel can be traced back to the way Blade Runner made Nolan question reality. Unlike his films, it’s unambiguous that without Blade Runner, we’d never get the legendary director that is Christopher Nolan.