Any filmmaker who wants to make a blockbuster has to find a new approach, within a frame of reference that the audience will accept. You’ve got to wow and provoke while maintaining mainstream appeal. That’s a steep, narrow, and risky path; ask “Blade Runner 2049” director Denis Villeneuve, who never wants to make an expensive art film again.

When it does work, you have the work of Christopher Nolan, who has gotten away with the time-twisting, low-budget claustrophobia of “Memento” to the ground-shifting, big-budget spectacle of “Inception.” That has given him — and his studio, Warner Bros. — reason to trust that audiences will go where he leads.

Even so, “Dunkirk” was a low-dialogue doozy. When he presented the 76-page script to the studio and asked for a blockbuster budget, he wondered, “Should I double-space it? I had no idea how long the film was going to be.”

Talking from...