Every Christopher Nolan Movie, Ranked From Worst To Best

Christopher Nolan has released over a dozen movies now since his directorial debut in 1998 with noir crime thriller Following. In the decades since, he has gone from an indie director making movies on miniscule budgets to spending millions on capturing his singular vision on film with incredible flicks like Inception and the Dark Knight trilogy. The Odyssey, an adaptation of the ancient Greek poem of the same name, is the 13th film under his belt. How does it stack up to the rest of his powerhouse of a portfolio? With that question in mind, let’s rank Nolan’s films from worst to best.

Following

Everyone who has discovered Christopher Nolan’s movies has at some point gone back and watched his directorial debut. A black-and-white neo-noir crime thriller shot on a shoestring budget? It sounds promising, and it does have some clever ideas and serves as an interesting benchmark for how Nolan’s style and sensibilities would evolve in the future. But despite the twists and some interesting directing, the writing is pretty flat and the performances are forgettable. It’s the only movie on this list I wouldn’t recommend people go back and watch. – Ethan Gach

The Dark Knight Rises

Following up The Dark Knight would have been a daunting task for any director, and terrible circumstances got in the way of what the film might have been, as Joker actor Heath Ledger’s tragic death in 2009 changed plans for the third movie in Nolan’s Batman trilogy, but whatever the reasons, there’s no denying it never quite reaches the heights of the previous film. That’s not to say it doesn’t give it an earnest try. Tom Hardy is at the very least compelling as new villain Bane and Anne Hathaway manages to pull off a great Selina Kyle despite early criticisms that she seemed miscast. The Dark Knight Rises’ biggest crime is that it starts to cave under its own weight at the end, though it’s not without its own iconic moments, lines, and naturally, memes. — Kenneth Shepard

Batman Begins

Nolan’s first foray into the superhero realm is a refreshing watch nowadays. The 2005 Batman origin story is remarkably straightforward and cohesive, and rather than scrambling to set up plotlines for numerous other characters and films, it takes the time to establish a strong understanding of its own world and characters. Remember when superhero movies used to have the sauce instead of being springboards for eleven other movies? Nolan’s take on Bruce Wayne’s tragic beginnings is methodical and introspective; by the time we see Christian Bale put on the iconic cowl, we’ve already seen several of the Batman touchstones unfold, from the death of his parents to his training under the League of Shadows. Begins takes its time getting to the Batman of it all in a way that was just good filmmaking 20 years ago, but now, after years of superhero films that are busy trying to sell you tickets to a dozen other movies, it’s wonderful to watch one that’s more concerned with demonstrating a love of the craft than a love of the IP. — Kenneth Shepard

Insomnia

Insomnia is probably the least Christopher Nolan– feeling movie on this list, but it’s also arguably one of his most underrated. There are flashes of his kinetic filmmaking and editing in some of the chases and verbal duels, but for the most part it’s a platform on which to watch two iconic and incredibly different stars play off each other in irresistible ways. Al Pacino and Robin Williams turn the remake of a Norwegian psychological thriller into one of Nolan’s most personal, intimate, and human-feeling movies. – Ethan Gach

Dunkirk

Man, Christopher Nolan loves his non-linear storytelling. Can’t resist it even if the story doesn’t necessarily call for it, like in his 2017 anxiety-attack-inducing Dunkirk. Though the events of the movie’s three plot threads take place over one week, one day, and one hour, the way Nolan hops from moment to moment compresses the film into one long smear of action and panic for which Hans Zimmer’ s score provides no relief. Dunkirk is a brilliant movie for how it inverts the typical blockbuster war narrative. The movie’s biggest villain isn’t the German army, which is never given a face in favor of having them shoot from just off-screen or behind the anonymity of a submerged U-boat; it’s British soldiers letting their own fear cause them to make tragic choices. But for all the flashy dogfights typical of a war action flick, Dunkirk is a puzzle to the viewer. Nolan shows us events from one perspective, then changes our understanding of what we saw with another. It’s a quintessential Nolan move, pulled off here with less perfection than he’s managed in other films, but highly effective nonetheless. — Ash Parrish

Tenet

Tenet had a lot of elements working against it: a nonsensical plot that only comes together with successive viewing, and the covid-19 pandemic which shunted the film to streaming, reducing its reach. That said, Tenet is Nolan’s most fun puzzle-box movie, the apotheosis of his utter fascination with fucking with time. The film is full of inspired choices, from the unparalleled, cool-as-shit action sequences that we see both going forward and in reverse, to its excellent casting. Nolan hand-picked John David Washington—son of Denzel—to be the movie’s protagonist, an interesting move considering Nolan tends to stick with the same stable of actors. And while Washington tries but ultimately fails to deliver a performance evocative of his legendary father, his on-screen friendship with co-stars Robert Pattinson and Elizabeth Debicki is just as engrossing as all the backwards action. — Ash Parrish

Inception

One of Nolan’s most hotly debated works is 2010’s Inception. The Leonardo Dicaprio-led sci-fi film is a literal mindfuck of complex, made-up science about diving into dreams, mixed with several visual and cerebral action setpieces that try to bring the nonsensical logic of dreams to the big screen with cinematic cleverness. Inception’s mindbending visual showcase is met with equally mesmerizing performances and mysteries, so much so that, 16 years later, people are still arguing about the meaning of its final shot. — Kenneth Shepard

The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight is the kind of work that imprints itself on a pop culture phenomenon to the point that everything that came before and after is measured against it. Heath Ledger’s marvelous performance as the Joker has become one of the blueprints for portrayals of the clown prince of crime, alongside other heavyweights like Mark Hamill’s legendary voice performance. Like the other movies in the Dark Knight trilogy, The Dark Knight is a superhero movie that takes risks and that has something to say about both its heroes and villains as well as the world at large, grounding its superhero crime story in a landscape that feels tangible. It’s truly a shame we lost Ledger shortly before the film’s release in 2008. What a tragedy to watch a star shine so bright just before it goes out. — Kenneth Shepard

The Odyssey 

Nolan’s newest film is one of his most ambitious, attempting to condense Homer’s ancient Greek epic into one three-hour film. Though The Odyssey has some pacing issues, Nolan’s take on the story of Odysseus is one of the most viscerally grotesque (complimentary) adaptations of the original story to ever make its way to film. Its ensemble cast is made up of some of the best in Hollywood, many of whom are already established as being among Nolan’s favored actors, having appeared in previous films of his. Though The Odyssey is an ancient story, Nolan brings to it modern sensibilities that establish that the source material is not only timeless, but is also prescient, its lessons still ringing true centuries later. — Kenneth Shepard

Interstellar

Of all of Nolan’s work, Interstellar is the best comfort watch. It’s up there with the Lord of the Rings trilogy as a movie you might toss on while you’re sick or stuck inside during a snowstorm. It’s a good time, an emotional time. Maybe a bit melodramatic with its overarching theme of love transcending time and space, but even when Interstellar’s at its cheesiest, Matthew McConaughey’s space cowboy charm makes it work. And even if you don’t care for any of the human drama, Interstellar works really well as a space action flick. The sequence on the water planet and McConaughey’s risky docking sequence maneuver stick with us as exemplary action moments. Interstellar is my favorite Nolan movie, and even if The Odyssey dethrones it, it’ll still be way too good to be anything less than number two on my list. — Ash Parrish

Memento 

Memento is the peak of Nolan’s neo-noir arc, and also the introduction to his obsession with how movies can warp time to completely alter our perception of reality and how we judge it. Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Joe Pantoliano provide a tight, balanced ensemble to deliver on a razor-sharp, rewarding non-linear mystery that is not just satisfying in its conclusion, but revelatory, too. It’s the most grounded but also the most carefully calibrated of Nolan’s Swiss Watch puzzle boxes. What might feel like a clever one-off gimmick is only half the trick. The way it leverages chaotic time jumps to disorient the audience creates a split with reality so alarming and evocative that it continues to pay off even once you think you’ve unraveled its secret. – Ethan Gach

Oppenheimer 

Nolan is the modern master of making action sequences feel like locomotives. A chase or fight becomes a train barreling toward a station. Often he stacks multiple, disparate set pieces on top of each other. In Oppenheimer, he applies that energy to the arc of history at one of its most pivotal moments. Instead of Inception’s layers of dreams colliding, here it’s the trajectories of human desire, ego, and failure crashing into world-historical events. The New Yorker‘s Richard Brody called Oppenheimer a “movie-legnth Wikipedia article” and likened it to a “History Channel movie with fancy editing.” It is indeed both of those things, but directed by the guy who gave us the first 5 minutes of The Dark Knight. – Ethan Gach

The Prestige

All good magic is misdirection, and The Prestige is a movie that spends just over two hours making you look at one hand so you don’t see what it’s doing with the other. Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman are both exceptional as dueling magicians fighting over far more than an audience’s attention, and The Prestige’s blend of period-piece alternate history and genre-bending magical stunts brings out the best in everyone involved, in front of and behind the camera. Nolan’s ability to tell a story is on full display in all of the movies we’ve already talked about, but The Prestige is so immaculately outlined down to the finest detail that it’s able to pull the wool over your eyes multiple times as its setup coalesces into one final, incredible trick. — Kenneth Shepard