The marketing campaign for Inception has pitched the film as “James Bond meets The Matrix [plus one of the only original ideas you’ll see this summer],” and as it turns out, that’s not just a catchy logline: At last night's London première, director Christopher Nolan told the BBC that the Bond influence was “very intentional,” and part of his lifelong love of the series—a love so deep that Nolan himself says he’d love to direct one. Of course, this is all just “I’d love to” pillow talk; no one’s making any offers, and as we all know, the Bond franchise is in a serious quagmire right now at parent company MGM, who somehow can’t even find a way to make a Lord Of The Rings spinoff and another installment in the world’s most popular movie franchise profitable. And should James Bond ever find his way out of MGM’s insidious trap of fiscal insolvency, he’ll most likely still be guided by Sam Mendes, who’s said (along with star Daniel Craig) that he’ll be waiting.
Then, of course, there’s the fact that Nolan still owes us another Batman film, and according to comments from co-star Michael Caine at the same première, the next Batman is due to beginning shooting in April of 2011. Still, it’s fun to speculate about what a Nolan version of Bond would look like, isn’t it? Let’s close our eyes and do that right now, using the powers of our imagination.