Why Christopher Nolan & David Cage Are The Same Person

- by Cherokee, 10 June 2015

I was playing "Beyond Two Souls" with my brother when I first noticed the similarities between the game’s creator, David Cage - famous for "Heavy Rain" and "Fahrenheit" - and director Christopher Nolan. We were near the end of the game as I controlled Jodie, played by Ellen Page. Everything had gone tits up. Absolutely tits up. The whole game was a complete mess at this point but we begrudgingly played on, knowing we’d nearly finished and wanting to see how many of our decisions actually had an impact on the outcome (note, they didn't really).

I made a passing comment about the utter catastrophe of the ending being like Christopher Nolan’s half-arsed attempts at tying up his films. "Why did everything have to be connected? Why try and tie up small story plots that don’t even make sense? Why does Cage have to do this every damn time? Why does Christopher Nolan do the same thing? Why have they been able to have careers because of it?"

The more I thought about the comparison, it dawned on me that a lot of the themes in their work and their characters are eerily similar. I assumed others had spotted this too. So, I searched online to find a piece written about it and couldn’t find anything. Nada. The only conversation I came across was between two people disagreeing with comparing the two because they come from separate industries. (Um, okay then.)

It wasn’t just me who saw it, it couldn’t have been. I talked to people I knew had watched Nolan’s movies and played Cage’s games and they also echoed online opinion, not convinced with my argument. But I wouldn’t - I can’t - let this get me down. It’s time to bring this discussion to the internet and talk about how Christopher Nolan and David Cage are the same creatively attuned person, while trying to convince myself I’m onto something here.

Story? What’s that? It’s all about the experience, man. 

Cage, when discussing Heavy Rain, described it as a “very dark noir film”. Nolan has cited numerous times the influences that noir has had on his work, going back to his first feature film, Following. They like brooding, they like mysterious; they like refined, slick yet bleak cinematography. Without always using a black and white palette, they want you to feel like you’re watching a ‘50s noir updated for the modern age. Neo-noir kind of stuff. And that's what the two are about - creating an event; an experience which audience’s don’t get elsewhere. Testing how far they can take films and games is where their cross-over in style really begins.

Nolan post-The Dark Knight has been tapped as the ‘thinker’s blockbuster director’, the guy that won’t dumb down certain scenes or plots in his films and will treat the viewer with a slight bit of intelligence. Cage, while he hasn’t had as much exposure as Nolan, has also been placed in a similar regard. They are two men trying to show how their respective mediums can be pushed and challenged.

Many have commented on Cage’s lack of affinity for games and how quick he is to put down other creators and their work in the industry. (See his criticisms of L.A Noire and when he said that games haven’t progressed in 40 years and everyone making them is a juvenile tosser - in so many words.) You don’t need to read or hear his opinions on games to know that he considers cinema his true calling. Anyone familiar with his work will have clocked onto the non-game like qualities of his back catalogue, which has divided opinion within the game community. True that this can be seen as an achievement in itself -with three popular games he’s shown a different side to player choice and how film and gaming can mesh together. In doing so, though, he has become so engulfed in his pretentiousness and need to distance himself from the medium that, in return, he has lost who his audience is and what gamers enjoy about the experience of controlling characters and the world around them. Cage is basically a film director working in the gaming industry.

Nolan’s films can be viewed from a near-identical lens to Cage’s games, particularly when looking at the treatment of the people that populate both their work. What is seen visually on screen is far more interesting to them than characterisation and plots that actually make a slight amount of sense. The Dark Knight, according to the film’s press release notes, was the first major feature film to shoot segments in the IMAX format. Off the back of TDK, it’s safe to say that Nolan popularised the IMAX experience, giving audiences something they hadn’t seen on such a big scale before. Cage, on the other hand, brought back the visual novel style of gaming to a bigger audience than just otome players. Telltale, among other publishers, have continued this trend - and made it far better than Cage could -, understanding that gamers like to be involved in what they’re playing and feel as if they are making decisions, rather than just watch a story unfold for 12 hours. They give you the best of both worlds, but it is Cage that made it a thing.

Christopher Nolan, on a chair.

Because of their creative drive for the viewer or player to have an experience - one so tied to a visual narrative -, Cage and Nolan have changed their industries in a number of ways. Five years later, we’re still getting Inception copycat trailers, so much so that it’s become its own cliché. Cage’s motion capture obsession and demanding that everything look so creepily real has crossed over to a number of different titles outside of his video game development company, Quantic Dream. Sure, he may not have created this technology, but he sure as hell acted like it. (Again, see L.A Noire critiques, a game that was released a year after Heavy Rain which also used motion cap.)

They sometimes create new ways of tackling an approach to visually telling a story (Nolan more than Cage), but their true talent and shared ground is being able to make their style recognisable and a product people will buy into if replicated by other film or game directors. They don’t have to be the creators, only the ones able to master and tap into a shared interest of the public. 

Faux emotional masculinity

Take someone like Martin Scorsese, here. He has built a career on telling stories about flawed and damaged men. Manhood and the idea of masculinity is such an important theme to his movies, which ultimately backfires on his characters when faced with the consequences of attempting to reassert their manliness. It’s tragic. Scorsese gives men an emotional complexity that other directors find difficult to recreate.

Nolan and Cage try to apply this to their work, too. Bruised men are right at the front of their writing, when they actually pay attention to what the fuck is going on in the midst of plot holes and awful dialogue. Their leads are motivated by similar things - wives and girlfriends (usually dead, or about to die), children (possibly dead) and being the ultimate protector. Films like Raging Bull and Goodfellas worked because they flipped the script and focused on the devastating aftermath of trying to conform to stereotypically assigned male roles. They go deeper into questioning the male psyche and leave the viewer feeling conflicted about the actions of the films central players, unlike Nolan and Cage’s surface-level men.

Out of all of Nolan’s main protagonists, Bruce Wayne is probably the most developed; the majority of his characterisation being made in The Dark Knight. Bruce doesn’t really question his role as a protector until the death of Rachel Dawes - his maybe-maybe-not girlfriend from Batman Begins. In Inception, Dom Cobb is driven to near insanity because of the death of his wife, Mal. And it goes on. And on. And on. Nolan’s fridging of women has been written about before and it’s a persistent problem of his.

While women definitely have an effect on the outcome of Scorsese's characters, they aren’t the only triggers that culminate in the self-imposed destruction of the likes of Jake LaMotta and Jordan Belfort. They may blame situations on the women in their lives, but they know that they’re the ones responsible for their actions and have to deal with their insecurities. Cage and Nolan don’t give their male characters that privilege. Masculinity is refined to what cruel tragedy happens to the women they’re involved with and not much else.

Society tells men to suppress their emotions, to not be weak in fear of acting “like a woman”. Scorsese gets that and continues to honestly reflect those drummed-in attitudes with his characters and their arcs. This is the same way Nolan and Cage try to handle the narratives of men in their work, but with far less understanding and consideration of their characters motivations. It’s a disservice to both genders here - women are only good for dying or being sexual props, men are only driven to show any kind of emotion when something happens to said women (or children, who basically become a supplement for the wife/girlfriend role - see Heavy Rain and Interstellar). Everyone is affected by the writing.

Dealing with grief or potentially losing someone is a theme reflected in Cage’s games and Nolan’s films. We’re all affected by a loved one dying or the thought of a person you care about passing; it’s not an exclusive feeling to one gender or another. Films and games have looked at such tragedies, where women are the ones to emote and men have to avenge. Nolan and Cage are most guilty of this trope. Death isn’t approached with a nuance in their work, it’s entirely for the plot’s sake and all of the men react in the same way. Their supposed emotional intricacies are only brought out at the expense of women, never even touched upon prior as they are in Scorsese's filmography. Revenge. Revenge. Revenge. That’s not an interesting exploration of masculinity, it’s boring.

Are their characters seriously that oppressed emotionally, or is it just down to sucky writing?

So, where does this leave the women?

The film noir influences go further than just aesthetics. I’m a big fan of noir, but there are problems which are far more obvious now that society has moved on. Femme fatales can be empowering, but not when used in the wrong way or just as service to another character’s plot. Women really don’t fare well in the worlds of Nolan and Cage. Not one bit. 

Madison Paige, one of four playable characters in Heavy Rain, could have been an interesting character for the player to take on a journey. As a photographer and journalist, she had the opportunity to do so much cool shit. Instead, Cage feels the perverse need to sexualise her, because, fuck it, what else are women there for? The player’s first introduction to Madison isn't anything about her, it is her physicality. You can argue that her waking up and getting changed isn't sexualisation because we all do it, but it is how those scenes were approached which is why people were annoyed about her portrayal (Cage can't wrap his little pea-brained head around that one). She's just a body. Similarly, if you look at any other point where men are getting ready – Heavy Rain; Fahrenheit - there aren't a plethora of sexual undertones like the way Madison's scenes are handled.

Cage does have a one up here, if only slightly. He has actually featured a lead female protagonist – Jodie in Beyond Two Souls. That’s kind of where all my praise ends. It’d be easy enough to compare Jodie with Ariadne from Inception because they are characters performed by the same actress, written by the two dudes I happen to also be writing about. In this case, it’s more than that obvious comparison. I don’t think I have ever played as someone in a game - the main fucking person - who is nothing but exposition. Ariadne is the same. They’re like mouth pieces of dialogue with nothing but plot to reiterate.

How could Cage get it so damn wrong? How? This game realised my worst fears - he can’t write women for shit - and that is definitely something he has in common with Nolan.

They just have no clue, do they? Even when your main character is a woman, somehow, it goes so bad. The only defining thing about Jodie was who she ended up being in a relationship with at the end of the game (if you managed to keep her alive). Really. There were people on the list of selections I’d only spoken to a few times. I mean, fuck that. You had the option to be on your own, fine, but why did this have to be the last choice of the game? I didn’t give a shit about anyone that I came across, Jodie never acted like she did either, so why should I? I was practically forced to kiss Ryan for no apparent reason when he and Jodie were on a mission together. Just why? (Ryan is so dull you don’t even need to know what his deal is.)

As for women in Nolan’s films? Fridging happens everywhere. Why can’t women live in Nolan’s universe? What is wrong with women staying alive and at least one of them not dying? Some - like Selina Kyle - have survived, but he is not afraid to casually bump of wives and girlfriends, a few who didn’t even have names. He’s more under the radar with his treatment of women than Cage. Femme fatales, they are not. Even so, is it a good thing to be taking so much inspiration from a genre which has issues with the way women are portrayed? Cage is completely in your face with BOOBS and POTENTIAL NAKEDNESS and SEX and MORE BOOBS and doesn’t take the same side as Nolan when featuring female roles. That doesn’t make Cage any better or worse. Nolan has just as much of a problem with writing female characters as Cage, he just adopts a different “style” that isn’t so in your face with offensive representation. It’s still there, though, and still a problem.

Interstellar was a weird one in terms of its portrayal of women, or more specifically, a girl aging into a woman. Murph, the daughter of Cooper played by Matthew McConaughey, filled the slot for the “wife” part. The same tropes that Nolan is known for when writing women who are partners or potential partners of the main protagonist came back with full force in Interstellar. It makes it doubly creepy and uncomfortable that this had to be Murph’s role.

He was a terrible dad and the son (did he even have a name?) was the one person to address it because he had been on the receiving end of the lack of his father’s love. But it doesn’t really come up again. All of his attention was laid on the shoulders of Murph. Cooper barely even recognised he had a son. Why does Nolan have to miss these golden opportunities to actually say something important and more effective than terrible monologues about love not explaining science vs science explaining love? Ugh. Makes me a little bit sick, to be honest, though not as much as this last point.

The third act splurge and messy kleenex clean-up

This is the daddy of them all. This is where Cage and Nolan’s style became more apparent to me and harder to ignore. They have a similar aesthetic, approach to masculinity and can’t write women, but the biggest downfall - and clearest common trait - is their disastrous third acts. You know what I am talking about. Defenders of Nolan and Cage can’t deny that their ideas are grand. Maybe a little too grand. Or a lot. Or too much. (Definitely the last one.)

Chris Nolan, about to play the guitar in his all-grey apartment, so his depression level will lower.

Here’s the thing - I don’t really hate either of them. I do prefer Nolan to Cage, but they have moments that shine, honestly. They’re not frequent, but you watch Nolan’s films or play Cage’s games and expect at least one thing that isn’t as atrocious as everything else going on. It’s not all bad.

Cage and Nolan have been afforded some praise that is valid (visuals/cinematography look great) and others that aren’t so accurate (they’re intelligent storytellers). To address the latter one, they aren’t. The beauty of the look of their work is what is intelligent about it, not the writing. These are usually their stand-out moments – when a scene is shot nicely, or a cool action sequence happens. I like the way many of Nolan’s films and Cage’s games start out - they seem interesting and a little different (and yes, they look nice). The stories aren’t actually that bad in the first act. Cracks start to appear in the second act, but they’re not noticeable or really that off-putting. It’s in the third act, when everything that could possibly go wrong, does.

Cage and Nolan are like two teenage boys who can’t contain their excitement whacking one off. They don’t know how to end, so they just splurge everywhere hoping that it will all go in one direction. But it doesn’t. It goes all over the fucking place. When they realise, they grab some kleenex and hurriedly attempt to clean it up before their mum gets back. Or, in other words, third act syndrome. These guys have got it bad.

The Dark Knight Rises, for Nolan, is the pinnacle example. I’ve never been more frustrated watching a movie in the cinema. I came out fuming. There might as well have been steam blowing out of my ears. I went on for weeks about the awfulness of that film and three years later, I’m still wounded. The thing is, the plot holes are not anything new. They’re constant annoyances in Nolan’s films, as well as Cage’s games, some easier to ignore than others. I don’t think either of them could make something without a questionable bullshit ending. Why do they attempt to join all the dots together, even when it makes it so messy it is unrecognisable from how the film/game started?

No one knew Batman Begins would make enough money to get a sequel. The Joker was referenced at the end of the film, but when BB came out it, was a dark (pun intended or not, you decide) period for superhero films at the box office. It did succeed, and The Dark Knight went on to become a phenomenon, spawning The Dark Knight Rises. The point is, Nolan didn’t think that TDKR was going to happen, so why bring back the weakest parts of Batman Begins, parts that we all wanted to forget, and force a trilogy on us? The good thing about The Dark Knight was its separation - as much as possible - from Batman Begins. Rises just threw all that hard work away.

Inception, Interstellar and The Prestige all suffer from Nolan’s inability to end things in a way that makes sense. Why can’t things be left unexplained? (And don’t bring in the whole totem shot in Inception - that was only there to piss everyone off, further adding to this idea that it is a “super” deep movie.) His endings are also predictably laughable at this point. Annoyingly, all of those films started out great and paid the price for Nolan’s writing. (I actually like Inception, not the other two, but it doesn’t escape my criticism for the things that don’t really work.) For the love of god please don’t give Nolan any more sci-fi/supernatural stories to direct. Please.  

What about Cage? Pretty much the same. Fahrenheit descended into ridiculousness and produced one of the most hilarious fight scenes known to games. Heavy Rain, again, was fine to begin with before twists and turns enveloped it and just frustrated me by the end. Beyond Two Souls was a game only full of twists. Why can’t Nolan and Cage figure out, that twists don’t have an effect on the intelligence of the story when they’re only used for “shock value” purposes? Films and games don’t need twists to be smart and tell interesting, complex stories. It’s just not needed. I hope Nolan and Cage can learn that at some point. They’ll be better off because of it. 

 
So there you have it. Cage? Nolan? Same person. How does that make you feel? Tell us in the comments, please!

Tagged: movies & TV, video games.

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