Why Christopher Nolan Refuses to Watch Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Aviator’

The Big Picture

• Christopher Nolan refuses to watch
  The Aviator
  due to how his script for the film was treated, a lesson he carries with him on every project.
• Nolan’s script for a movie based on Howard Hughes’ life was not produced due to Scorsese’s film already being in development, leading to Nolan’s reluctance to watch
  The Aviator
  .
• Leonardo DiCaprio worked with both Nolan and Scorsese, with each collaboration garnering critical acclaim.

Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorsese are among some of the most acclaimed filmmakers of our generation, thanks to their respective productions creating a nuanced layer within genres that blend spectacle with depth. With the two highly-acclaimed, award-winning directors boasting a vibrant roster of films that are distinctively unique in style and approach, they are true auteurs when it comes to narrative styles, genre preferences, and exploring the complexities of human nature. However, when it comes to the pair supporting each other, things are not as black and white. There’s one specific movie Scorsese made that Christopher Nolan, who recently beat out Scorsese for Best Director at the 2024 Oscars with Oppenheimer, refuses to watch.

Christopher Nolan Wanted To Make a Howard Hughes Movie

Though The Aviator was crucial in developing Leonardo DiCaprio‘s career, it is a movie that Nolan has since admitted he doesn’t care to watch, especially after how his script for the film was treated shortly before he was set to produce it. It’s a lesson the director has also taken with him on every project, hereafter. Before The Aviator premiered in theaters in December 2004, Nolan had spent a long time working on a movie based on the life of Howard Hughes with Jim Carrey in consideration for the lead role. During a recent interview with Variety, the director revealed that, by the time he had completed a draft of the script, Scorsese’s movie was further along in development, and there was simply no interest in developing yet another story based on the same person. After all, Nolan wasn’t the established artist he is today some 20 years ago, and getting a project approved was complicated.

Because his version of the story never had the opportunity of being produced, Nolan didn’t feel comfortable watching The Aviator, while still considering Scorsese to be one of the best filmmakers in the history of the medium. In the interview, he remarked on the experience, stating it was “very emotional to not get to make something [he’d] poured all that [work] into.” Eventually, Nolan began to work on Batman Begins, the grounded reboot featuring Christian Bale as the Caped Crusader in an origin story that would eventually lead to 2008’s blockbuster hit, The Dark Knight. But even as he talks about Oppenheimer in the present, he doesn’t seem to forget what happened almost 20 years ago, with a script he poured his heart into.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s Worked With Scorsese and Nolan

Leonardo DiCaprio, who played Howard Hughes in The Aviator, worked with both Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorsese at various points in his illustrious career, with each role garnering him critical acclaim and further proving the combinations are a match made in blockbuster heaven. But while on the set of Inception — Nolan’s drama about a heist that takes place inside the mind of Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy) — the director confessed to DiCaprio why he had never seen The Aviator.

In an interview with the New York Times earlier this summer, Nolan admits he “cracked” the script to his satisfaction over more than 20 years of thinking it over. Not getting to make it was a complete blow to his hard work and effort over those two decades. “[The film] never got made because I wrote it right as Scorsese was making his own film,” he said. “That [satisfaction] gave me a lot of insight on how to distill a person’s life and how to view a person’s life in a thematic way so that the film is more than the sum of its parts. So in some ways, the script, yes, it took me a few months, but it was really a culmination of 20 years of thinking.”

Meanwhile, DiCaprio has most recently starred in Killers of the Flower Moon, Scorsese’s gripping drama about how DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart and his uncle, William Hale (Robert DeNiro), planned to take the fortune of an Osage family for themselves. The story is a testament to Scorsese’s long and committed working relationship with DiCaprio, with the duo also working together on The Departed, Shutter Island, and The Wolf of Wall Street.

What Is Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Aviator’ About?

In the 2004 film The Aviator, Leonardo DiCaprio was in charge of portraying Howard Hughes, an eccentric film producer and engineer who loved to push himself to the limit while figuring out how to make his planes go faster. The main relationship explored in the drama is the one between Hughes and Katherine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett). Even if the inventor tried to distract himself with his work and with a love affair between himself and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale), he couldn’t ignore his feelings for Hepburn, and he paid a reporter to keep her latest relationship out of the press.

The Aviator earned $213 million at the worldwide box office, and it was nominated for fourteen Academy Awards, taking home Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress, Best Production Design, and Best Makeup and Hair acknowledgments. DiCaprio and Scorsese got along so well during the production of the movie that they immediately worked on The Departed afterward, continuing the story of success that has allowed them to work together for more than 20 years.

The Aviator is available to watch on Pluto TV in the U.S.

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