Maybe the definitive way that Nolan crafts his films marks a significant change in the way we think about movies and what kind of questions critics and interviewers ask directors about their projects. I will always love physical media, but the peak era of DVDs and special features was left in the rearview years ago. The idea of deleted scenes always sounds exciting and it can help reveal how certain filmmakers think about how they put their films together, which in turn acts as a kind of film school for cinephiles willing to sift through all the added extras.
The problem is, those extras don’t really exist anymore for most new releases. When “Oppenheimer” hits shelves and the Blu-ray ships out to millions of homes, there will absolutely be a bevy of features about the making of Nolan’s epic. But there won’t be any additional footage that could have ended up in the finished film. It’s all up there on the screen. Knowing this makes “Oppenheimer” even more of a cinematic triumph that was just as carefully put together as the A-bomb itself.
Nolan also continues to shoot on film and in IMAX, which is incredibly cost prohibitive. That means every shot-making decision comes with an even greater price tag. Nolan spoke to this point back in 2012 on the heels of “The Dark Knight Rises,” telling MTV:
“I tend to try and weed things out on paper because it’s crazy expensive to shoot things that aren’t going to be in the film. It also takes up a lot of time and energy. Pretty much with all my films, there are very few deleted scenes, which always disappoints the DVD crowd.”
For the sake of art, maybe a little disappointment isn’t such a bad thing.