Few movie franchises are as alien to the cinema of filmmaker Christopher Nolan as the Fast and Furious franchise. While Nolan uses action scenes to explore challenging ideas, Fast and Furious uses action scenes. Period. But despite how far removed the automobile-powered franchise starring Vin Diesel as Dom Toretto is from his filmmaking sensibilities, Nolan revealed during an interview for the Happy Sad Confused podcast that he is a big fan of the Fast and Furious movies.

"I'm sort of an original recipe (guy), I mean the Rob Cohen original...But I've got a very soft spot for Tokyo Drift actually. And then the skill as Justin Lin's iterations, as they got crazier and bigger and crazier and bigger, they became something else, but something else kind of fun. The fun thing about those movies is even as they've gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, as sequels have to do, everyone always complains that sequels get bigger but we're the people making sequels get bigger, we do want them bigger, you don't want them smaller, it's the Alien 3 lesson that Fincher learned. You can do it but it's not going to make anybody happy, even though personally I love that film, a lot more than he does in fact."

While Nolan's views on cinema, especially film vs. digital, have made many conclude he is a bit of a film snob, the man clearly has a lot of love for his fellow filmmakers, no matter what kind of movies they make. Praising David Fincher's Alien 3 is a particularly generous move since no one hates that movie more than Fincher himself.

This is not the first time Nolan has shared his love for cinema that is considered low-brow by critics. Earlier in the year, filmmaker Jorma Taccone of the Lonely Island crew had revealed that Christopher Nolan was a big fan of MacGruber, of his comedy action film starring Will Forte, which was a parody of the MacGyver television series.

Amusingly, Nolan seems to be appreciative of an aspect of the Fast and Furious franchise that has been criticized and made fun of for years. The franchise started out as a (relatively) gritty story about street racing criminals, and the lone cop sent undercover to gain their trust and break up their operation.

From there, the franchise went into new and baffling directions. The gang of street racers went from being small-time crooks to international men and women of mystery, teaming up with elite government agencies to save the world from cyber terrorists.

Just when it seemed the Fast and Furious franchise had reached the zenith of absurdity with drag racing submarines and tanks flying through the sky, it was revealed earlier this year that the next movie in the series will send the lead characters into space. While the news was met with incredulity by critics, it seems Nolan will be among the fans of the series who will be thrilled to see the space frontier breached by Dom and his crew of daredevils. This news comes courtesy of Happy Sad Confused podcast.