A Definitive Ranking of the Christopher Nolan Filmography

Now Including The Odyssey!

By Jacob Barlow-Jones

​Greetings, all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! With Christoper Nolan’s modern reimagining of The Odyssey now crossing the billion dollar worldwide threshold not even one month after its initial release, the time has finally come to definitively rank every single one of the great auteur’s directorial efforts, from all the back on Following in 1998 to this new iteration of Homer’s original epic. Having just re-watched the entirety of the Nolan filmography over a period of several days, and following a third viewing of The Odyssey in IMAX, it nonetheless remains a somewhat difficult task to place all the director’s films in order from worst to best, no matter how thoroughly one examines each film or commits oneself to the task. While it’s true that some of Nolan’s work remains subpar, even for his usually reliable output, the answers as to what rises above become less clear the further along the list one gets; what works about Inception for some is exactly what drains others’ enthusiasm for the film, whereas initial audience trepidation around Tenet has all but faded from the collective memory but for a few minor specificities. In revisiting many of these films, my own perception of them has changed drastically from their initial viewings; I remember seeing The Dark Knight Rises in theaters as a teenager thinking it was the greatest conclusion to a story since The Return of the King. Now, as will no doubt soon become evident, there’s little about the film I still consider to be worth revisiting except as a window into Tom Hardy’s utterly fascinating post-Inception career trajectory (like Chris Ryan before me, I remain a Bane apologist). As to the rest of the list, now seems as good a time as any to – as Sir Michael Caine would put it – Batman Begin.

​As always, this ranking is one hundred percent correct as sanctioned by the movie gods themselves and supercedes all others in visual, written, auditory, and all other forms of media wherein these rankings take place, so good luck trying to top that, Variety.

​13. The Dark Knight Rises
 
As previously noted, The Dark Knight Rises – though held aloft by a few choice moments in Hans Zimmer’s score and a marvelously scenery-chewing villain performance – is easily the weakest of Nolan’s entire filmography. It’s the one of the director’s ambitious swings that feels most at war with its own nature, attempting to answer a question to which one may never know a definitive answer: how do you conclude a Batman trilogy a) without the Joker in any capacity and b) when your previous film more or less concluded the narrative arc of the character in spectacular fashion? Where else is there to go? The answers Rises offers are generally less than satisfactory, despite its earnest attempts at turning the story inward towards Bruce’s own pain from the deaths of his loved ones and pseudo-suicidal ideations. Thematically, the film - and its third act specifically - are such a radical departure from the previous two that it feels like a whole other director took over the project. Miranda Tate remains a poorly-written inclusion in the story, and her twist unveiling as Talia Al-Ghul leaves a great deal to be desired both in its novelty and in how the character is deployed post-reveal. Structurally, the film is also one of Nolan's longest, and there's a fair bit of fat on this one that The Dark Knight also has, but the difference is that The Dark Knight knew what to do with it and how it served the story by reenforcing its thematic point. This one isn't even sure what its thematic point is supposed to be.

​12. Following
 
Despite being Nolan’s first foray into the world of feature filmmaking, one couldn’t imagine a more indie-feeling film than this one, especially given who made it. Full of hand-held camerawork, dusty-looking production design, roughshod characters, and shoddy-at-best sound mixing, Following distinguishes itself as a Christopher Nolan movie the second it jumps from the current moment to a flashback structure as its protagonist narrates his adventures during a police interrogation. It seems silly in retrospect not to have assumed so, but Nolan has been using non-linear storytelling from the get-go, and despite Following’s feeling of the behind-the-camera storyteller lacking the proper confidence, it’s still a remarkably engaging watch. Alex Haw and Lucy Russell’s supporting performances can still be counted amongst some of the best in Nolan movie history, and even if the second twist is a bit too clever by half for the kind of filmmaker Nolan would turn out to be, the first of them still packs a wallop in its fists.

​11. Insomnia
 
The only one of Nolan’s films which he didn’t have a hand in writing, Insomnia remains nonetheless a thrillingly-directed crime thriller which features both Al Pacino and Robin Williams in two of their finest and most under-appreciated performances. The cat-and-mouse story, Pacino’s internal struggle and unorthodox policing methods, a villain who uses the hero’s internal struggle against him so that he’s forced to put his persona to death to set things right; these are all things Nolan would use to much greater effect far later, but it all starts right here. Also, not for nothing, it’s one of the most underrated-looking movies of Nolan’s career so far; Alaska’s never looked as good on film as it has here thanks to Wally Pfister’s patient photography, and if that was all the movie had going for it…well, it wouldn’t be worthwhile per se, but it wouldn’t be the worst spend of a couple of hours either.

​10.  Batman Begins
 
Batman Begins had a lot riding on it in order to be considered a genuine success. Joel Schumacher’s final adventure with the caped crusader was…let’s say “less-than-well” received, and Batman needed a hard bounce-back on the silver screen in order for the character to be truly resurrected in the cultural zeitgeist. Luckily, a young up-and-comer with a good head on his shoulders and a bold idea for the IP – what if an ethical billionaire wasn't just a fantasy – had just the right sauce to carry the flame and put the character back on top. In retrospect, Nolan was exactly the perfect director to resurrect the public’s interest in a comic book property like this at the time of Begins’ release, but that doesn’t make the movie perfect; the script is, at times, overly expositional (has anyone asked that guy in Wayne Tower what happens if the train reaches them? Has he forgotten? The whole water supply across the city is gonna blow!), the casting of Liam Neeson – an otherwise remarkable actor – as Ra’s Al Ghul is certainly a choice given the cultural origins of the character, and the Rachel Dawes character as played by Katie Holmes does feel a bit too cutesy for the world she supposedly inhabits. Plus, the editing of the film’s action sequences – apart from the rip-roaring Tumblr chase – is pretty poor, especially for the man who would eventually go on to direct Tenet. That said, Wally Pfister’s shot of the Batman standing on top of a Gotham City building like a Gargoyle remains one of the Dark Knight Trilogy’s most iconic shots, Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard’s score still hits all these years later, and the other supporting cast assembled for the film is one of Nolan’s finest-ever ensembles, to the point that all but two of them stuck around for almost an entire decade. Now that’s vision.

​9. Interstellar
 
Well, if I wasn’t in trouble with this ranking before, I certainly will be now. If The Dark Knight Rises is Nolan's film most at war with itself, this could easily be counted as the film most at war with him as a filmmaker. Interstellar – to my generation and at least half of the one that comes after – is widely considered a foundational work for the interest of moviegoers in Christopher Nolan as a director, and given its immense scope, it’s not hard to determine why. By far Nolan's most impressive craft work to this point in his filmmaking career, it nonetheless struggles to fully come together, largely due to a script that feels at odds with Nolan's filmmaking style. There are plenty of jaw dropping visual and sonic moments – the docking sequence, Gargantua's orbit, Dr. Mann's planet, mountain-sized waves – and even all these years later, I can still recall being dazzled by them on my local IMAX screen, surrounded by loudspeakers blasting Hans Zimmer’s instantly iconic organ score. That said, when it comes to engaging with the emotional core of these characters, the film can't seem to manage to stay true to most of them past the first 45 minutes, McConaughey’s Cooper being its central exception. That's not to say the characters can't express authentic feeling, but for Nolan at this stage of his career, they feel more like obligations of an undercooked script rather than deliberate choices (for the most part), as evidenced by the sudden switch-up assigned to Anne Hathaway’s character once the Endurance is pushing on to Mann’s planet. Originally, this film was under Steven Spielberg's tutelage and as it strains under the weight of its own ambition – stretching just far enough not to break – one can easily identify that friction. The script also doesn't know how to get around the idea that love can't be explained by "quantifying" it, but because Nolan's experience with that kind of emotion is...strained, to say the least...he has no choice but to turn it into a solvable equation in order to make it fit into the movie he clearly wants to make.

​8. Inception
 
At the time, Inception felt like the most mind-blowing piece of filmmaking one could witness, and at the time, it probably was for mainstream audiences. The editing is top-notch, Hans Zimmer’s score once again boasts arguably his most iconic track with “Time,” the debate on the film’s ending continues to this day (that top was going to fall though), and as plain as some of the action sequences feel compared to what came later on, they still feature some crazy cool imagery (train on the street, anyone?). Nevertheless, there’s just something about it that still feels a little distant. The performances all range from good to great – Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, and Cillian Murphy end up being the MVPs here – but the writing for the characters runs a little thin when it comes to most of the other supporting players, and DiCaprio's performance feels like his real chops and endless depth as a performer are being underutilized (you can see them start to pop up during the limbo sequence). The script, too, is juggling so much expositionally in setting up the world the film inhabits that it begins to strain under its own weight; luckily, Nolan as a director is well seasoned by this time, so it's in no danger of toppling, but one can start to see seams in the writing a bit. Still, with visual effects this impressive and photography to match, plus genuinely thrilling practical sequences, it's hard not to remain charmed by the film's relentless ambition and boundless creativity.

​7. Tenet
 
Tenet is a film I'm not sure is designed for anyone to fully understand, and if I try to think about its mechanics for too long while watching it, my head starts to hurt, but as Clémence Poésy so eloquently puts it while explaining said mechanics: “don’t try to understand it – feel it.” And boy, does one feel every single moment of this thing rip-roaring action spectacle. It's insane that this is what Nolan letting go looks like, as if the director woke up one morning and simply decided he just wanted to do this now without a second thought or much in the way of deeper consideration. That’s not to say the film doesn’t have pertinent themes on the nature of warfare, intelligence shared and guarded, how secrecy works, or whether humanity owes posterity survival, but this all comes second to seeing a truck heist done in a way no one’s ever seen before, only for that to be followed by an inverted car chase, a turnstile scene, The Protagonist’s inversion, and then the same inverted car chase but backwards, and all set to one of Ludwig Göransson’s greatest scores (in my eyes, he should have won his second Oscar for this). True, the characters aren't necessarily the most three-dimensional, but when was the last time you saw a James Bond movie pre-Casino Royale that was more interested in him than it was in all the cool spy stuff he was doing? Or a Mission: Impossible film that treated Ethan Hunt as a fully three-dimensional character rather than a stand-in for Tom Cruise to exorcise his death wish demons? There are moments when Kenneth Branagh goes a little over-the-top or John David Washington can't quite nail a line read that's meant to be more emotive, sure, but then there's Robert Pattinson's Neil becoming a great supporting character, Dimple Kapadia kind of stealing the show with only three scenes, Elizabeth Debicki being seven feet tall, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson showing up halfway through so the film can up the ante as Nolan puts you on the back foot and into reverse. And that’s not even counting the Kiev Opera Siege, the two Freeport sequences, or the film’s absolute nail-biter of a finale. Nolan simply happens to be the filmmaker in a long lineage of spy thriller directors with both the skill and the ambition to pull off using his own Memento gimmick as the literal backing track to his own ruminations, and whether I'll feel the same on an eventual fourth watch as I do now is anybody's guess, but like Neil so wisely says: "what's happened's happened, which is an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world." Cowboy shit.

​6.  Memento
 
Although following is Christopher Nolan’s first official feature film, Memento was the one that truly put the director on the map, and having rewatched it now, it still exists as some kind of quiet miracle that he was able to pull this off at all. Telling a story in a non-linear fashion is one thing, but having part of that narrative literally move in reverse while the black-and-white sequences move forward, only for the two to eventually blend until the viewer begins to doubt their own recollection of some events the way Leonard is always doubting his own, each piece becoming more jumbled as time flows onward? Christopher Nolan has always been one of the great magicians, obsessed with the lies we tell ourselves just to get through the next day, to the next problem, and it all starts right here with this; to this day, it remains one of he and his brothers Jonathan’s smartest scripts. The film is also unexpectedly quite funny at times, the sharp editing lending genuine comedy to a film which otherwise may feel somewhat tedious for all the brain work involved. Guy Pearce and Carrie-Anne Moss are both excellent in the film, but it’s Joe Pantoliano’s performance as Teddy that really stuck with me this time around, and if I had to choose one supporting actor from early in Nolan’s career to bring back, I’d love to see what he could do with a Nolan script now.

​5. The Prestige
 
Immediately following Batman Begins, it would have been easy for Nolan to go straight into the sequel and get ahead of the game, but instead, he decided to exercise a little patience in order to gift us the first of his films where the self-insert themes are crystal clear if one knows where to look. “I don’t care about my wife; I care about his secret” is a miraculous line, and it’s that line that is the key to unlocking The Prestige in its entirety. The film is all about missing the forest for the trees, becoming so obsessed with the "secrets" of something that one fails to see the bigger picture spread plainly across the canvas. Angier seeks so desperately for Borden's trick that the only thing he fails to see is how hard the work of pulling it off is, despite its ultimate simplicity. In Christopher Nolan's case, that picture is the act of storytelling, of filmmaking. No matter how many bells and whistles audiences or critics or studio execs think the director needs to pull off his films, the answer to his success is really quite simple: he just works harder than anyone else to make them succeed. But it's not enough for him to show people that he knows how to make a good movie, in the same way he was able to do with his previous feature or the one before; he has to bring back his trick by doing it again, and again, and again. Audiences aren't looking to the bigger picture of his methods because the magic he pulls off by using them is infinitely more interesting. In many ways, Prestige is about Nolan's career trajectory, and his next film after this one left no doubt as to where that trajectory would lead. As to the bones of the film itself, there’s a lot to admire beyond the script or the film’s themes; it's interesting that this is the first time Nolan tries a period piece and it seems like he definitely got a taste for working with all the design elements. It's also the last time one could conceivably call one of Nolan's films "mid-budget," although the salaries for the cast alone had to be pricey. And speaking of the cast, if anyone doubted Christian Bale’s ability as an actor before this (a rare occurrence, I’m sure), all those doubts are squashed here, like a bird in a cage, especially when he and a truly underrated Rebecca Hall share the screen together. The only things that don't quite work about this one for me are the Scarlett Johanson performance and some of Hugh Jackman's performance, mainly in the first half. Once the true rivalry starts and Jackman gets to be a little seedy, he improves quite quickly, and the final moments between him and Bale are some of the best work either of them has ever done.

​4. The Odyssey
 
Could there be any more perfect or fitting material for the maker of epics, Christopher Nolan, to tackle – immediately post-Oscar dominance – than the epic? I've now seen The Odyssey no less than three times, a sprawling reinterpretation of one of the oldest and most widely known stories humankind has ever conjured, and yet I feel as though I am still discovering layers upon layers of meaning and depth buried underneath its surface. In fact, interestingly enough, this is the first time many filmgoers have felt the limits of what shooting on IMAX can do, as a longer runtime may have given those layers a chance to breathe by rising to the surface and more fully fleshing out the world; I, for one, could have watched another hour of this and never gotten bored. Despite its immense popularity, historical memory, and the ancient feeling of the film's production, Nolan somehow makes Homer's poetry feel new again by re-framing the very thing for which its protagonist is most famous not as a triumph of conquest, but as a perversion of the sacred. Sure, he's basically doing Oppenheimer in a broader register, and the Trojan horse is to Odysseus as atomic fire is to that American Prometheus, but it's how Nolan frames the subject's willingness to accept the world he helps create that differentiates the father of the atomic bomb from the Great Tactician. Oppenheimer sees what humanity can do with his new weapon and becomes despaired it may never be pulled back from the brink, whereas Odysseus knows what humanity can do to each other with this new power he's used and chooses to hope that it not only can come back, but will all the stronger. The "people of the sea" subplot – if somewhat predictable – remains a delicate touch within the narrative, a consequence that must be accepted as the end product of a catastrophic decision, but it need not be the final note. The film's final note is one of hope. And from the cacophony of great performances – Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Himesh Patel, John Leguizamo, Samantha Morton, Elliot Page – to the immaculate work of editor Jennifer Lame, DP Hoyte van Hoytema, and composer on the heat streak of his life Ludwig Göransson, to the incredible work of the production crew, to the man at the top of it all, the movie earns that hope from its audience and then some. It may not be the best of Nolan’s films from a pure filmmaking perspective, or even my personal favorite, but the confidence in its direction is so brazen, it's almost impossible not to become attached to it as a myth of its own. To date, it’s by far the "Most Nolan" movie the director has ever made, and I can certainly see myself returning to it over and over again in the coming years. For that, it deserves its flowers. Not Lotus ones, but flowers nonetheless.

3. The Dark Knight

​I've gone back and forth on this and The Odyssey being #3 and #4 more times than I can count; in all honesty, which one takes which spot just depends on how I'm feeling that day. I may wake up tomorrow and feel that the previous entrant is a more assured work despite the minor issues I have with it, but for now, this is where the ranking stands. As Nolan's filmography goes, this – so far – is his most iconic work. "Best" is up for debate depending on who you ask, but not that. The Dark Knight's continual presence and influence – for good or ill – on both superhero filmmaking and filmmaking as a whole cannot be overstated. As a crime thriller led by the Caped Crusader, it's an undeniable great: full of razor-sharp editing, near-perfect pacing, some jaw-dropping set pieces, gorgeous cinematography (this is where Nolan's love affair with IMAX first becomes visible to an audience), and a supporting performance for the ages so iconic it's still being chased by and compared against every new iteration of the Joker character. As a post-9/11 movie, though, The Dark Knight takes on a whole new life, and might be the one with the clearest vision of all as the titular hero voluntarily loses himself and his own integrity to uphold the ideal of the home he knows whilst hunting a madman he regretfully underestimated. This is Nolan's grand statement on the "war on terror" and he makes his argument so well and so precisely that no matter how much the viewer disagrees with the idea as a whole, there's no denying the film's perspective ably carries a sizable weight. Some people might say that the film itself is overrated or so buoyed by the Heath Ledger performance that people think it's better than it actually is, but given the intrigue of everything that happens before the Joker is truly introduced to the narrative, as well as the fact that Ledger's performance is as much part of the film as everything surrounding it – despite its mastery – I'll have to heartily disagree. I’m still a believer in the Batman.

​2. Dunkirk
 
Don’t get me wrong, I already liked Dunkirk when it came out, but I’ve never fully understood it until now. When I first saw it in theaters, the deliberate distance from the characters threw me off so much that I considered it a weak point the film just couldn’t get past, but upon rewatch, I came to realize that it wasn’t simply not a weak point; it wasn’t one of the film’s points at all. That was never the movie Nolan set out to make, and given how he can sometimes struggle with more expository dialogue in his scripts, a film that doesn't zero in on any one person having to explain the situation at hand is a ripe project for him to explore. Nolan's marriage of skill with narrative here is nothing short of pure magic. Having just come off of the somewhat messy but undeniable technical leapfrog of Interstellar, he shifts focus from a single or set of characters onto the totality of the event, bringing some old friends along for one last ride as he sets upon a new era with others. This is the last time he works with editor Lee Smith and composer Hans Zimmer, two mainstays of his ever since he took on Batman all the way back in 2005, and it's a bittersweet end (so far) to those working relationships as Nolan lifts the whole curtain at once rather than peeling it back bit by bit on the events at Dunkirk beach. The film itself works like a Swiss watch of technical mastery, especially in the editing, sound, and photography departments; Hoyte van Hoytema demonstrates in no uncertain terms that he's going to be around for a while, and to rewatch his immaculate photography here in all its perfectly color-graded glory is truly breathtaking (Roger Deakins still deserved to win though). It's in this way that Nolan also frames the evacuation, as a finely tuned piece of absolute precision where everything that occurs must occur at the exact time it's meant to, and as things go wrong again and again, even knowing the history, one questions how all of this is meant to come together in the end. Somehow, it does, and when it does, when Fionn Whitehead finally lays down his head, and the literal ticking clock stops, the mission is accomplished. Suffice it to say, I was entirely and unexpectedly bowled over by this rewatch, and I can’t wait to eventually revisit this one again.

1. Oppenheimer 
​
Although Dunkirk is still – for me – the most “perfect” of all of Nolan’s films, it’s Oppenheimer that has much greater emotional and mental effect on me personally. By far the director’s most ambitious work pre-Odyssey, this take on "American Prometheus" remains one of the most scintillating and invigorating biopics ever conceived, largely due to Nolan’s innate skill behind the camera, the makeup of the film's technical departments all working at the top of their game, and a sprawlingly talented ensemble led by a career-best turn from one of the most underrated and brilliant actors of his generation. Truthfully, my only real issue with it is that its third act is a bit overdrawn, even if it does end with one of the greatest final shots in cinema history: a man so disturbed by what horrors he has wrought on the world that the only thing left to do is shut his eyes to it and accept its being. Whether one reads this as Nolan’s apology for The Dark Knight and how it affected superhero storytelling forever, or whether this is simply him reckoning with the idea that humanity cannot be trusted with any godlike power, both reads offer a sort of horrifying despair of what’s been done and what it all means going forward. What Nolan and company accomplish in the film's construction, too, is nothing short of astonishing; both the Trinity Test and Oppenheimer's subsequent victory speech remain all-timer sequences only a filmmaker like Nolan could have put together, but the production's prowess extends even beyond that as Jennifer Lame's perfect cutting style, Hoyte van Hoytema epic IMAX photography, and Ludwig Göransson's note-perfect score for this specific movie are all what lends the build-up to those moments their power, resulting in a metaphorical explosion of not one but two climactic sequences so bright they will never be forgotten and their maker will never be denied again. And yes, the 70mm IMAX print of the film is just as gorgeous as one could ever hope for it to be; I’m desperate to see it again in such a setting one day.

​And that is my definitive ranking of every movie directed by the one and only Christopher Nolan! How would you rank these movies (bearing in mind that this ranking is one hundred percent correct as sanctioned by the movie gods themselves and supersedes all others in visual, written, auditory, and all other forms of media wherein these rankings take place)? Let me know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading!

- The Friendly Film Fan