Obviously Christopher Nolan feels good about the state of movies after Oppenheimer

This may come as a shock, but Christopher Nolan—the guy who made a movie about science and existential terror and cheating on your wife and killing hundreds of thousands of people that made nearly $1 billion worldwide this year—feels “great” about the current state of the movie industry. Shocker! He probably also feels great about having that haircut, wearing a suit all the time, and never using a smartphone. Those are the things he loves most in the world!

This came up in a chat with Empire, which said that Nolan was “buoyant” about what the success of Oppenheimer and some other films this year means for the future of movies. He told Empire that “of course” he thinks movies are “doing great,” because he just made “a three-hour film about Robert Oppenheimer which is R-rated and half in black-and-white—and it made a billion dollars.” He seems to recognize that his experience is not the same as every filmmaker’s experience, since he did apparently say all of that with a laugh, but he also gave a general shoutout to “other movies” that got a big reception and helped bring audiences back.

He doesn’t specifically name those “other movies,” and while we’re all just going to naturally assume he’s talking about Barbie, the fact that he didn’t specifically say Barbie does kind of imply that he’s just happy his movie was a big hit—and that’s pretty darn funny. Nolan seems to take himself pretty seriously, so the idea of him being kind of petty and self-centered is a good gag. And why shouldn’t he be? The question was about how he feels about the state of movies, and his movie did well, so obviously he feels good. But if you were to ask, say, one of the people who made one of this year’s two Dracula movies, they might disagree. Those movies did not do so well.