Quote Originally Posted by Reznor2112 View Post
I think (at least for me as a male who went to film school to be a filmmaker) you write from what you know. And it can be difficult to write/direct a story about a strong female character IF you have never lived in those shoes. Not discounting it by any means, because Hollywood is over saturated with male lead roles, directors, writers, producers etc... and has been. Please do not confuse my comments as defending misogyny - simply saying that i wouldn't lean towards that opinion about a male director just for creating films that are male centered. But I do agree that it would be great to see a Nolan film with a female lead for a change. Cormac McCarthy finally did it with The Passenger/Stella Maris and it was great. Think some of these dudes need to dive into their feminine side and I think they will discover something cool.
I don't have a horse in this race, and I didn't take any time to think about Nolan specifically, BUT :

I don't think it's about writing strong female characters, in this instance, so much as writing poor ones. With Nolan, female characters are plot elements at best. They just don't matter much.

When I watched Villeneuve's Dune with my brother, we went to eat a bite afterwards and talked about the changes made from the book. One thing that was striking is that suddenly, the female characters had their own agenda, agency, a personality independent from that of the main character. You believed they had an inner life, their own thoughts and opinions, something that was relatively absent from the books (but old sci-fi didn't quite care about three-dimensional characters, and Herbert's not that bad in that context.)

Even though Villeneuve's a guy, he cared enough to give his female characters actual weight. Nolan doesn't seem to care much, but I think it's more of a reflection of how he treats characters in general. Even his main characters aren't that deep, their struggles and goals feel like strings that carry them along the plot, while Villeneuve has always made character-driven movies. Actually I think the comparison is apt, as they're both filmmakers interested in unique concept, while their priorities are opposite. Nolan uses characters to illustrate a concept, Villeneuve uses concepts to present his characters.

Nolan isn't probably interested in female characters, because he isn't very much interested in characters at all.