Why So Serious? Ranking the films of Christopher Nolan

You may have seen, but that Oppenheimer movie was pretty good? As we approach the Academy Awards, the film is already sweeping awards season. Oppenheimer is also the odds on favorite for Best Picture and Best Director. Who is that director? Why, it\'s Christopher Nolan! While you may not have seen Oppenheimer, Nolan has created quite the filmography and following for himself that if you haven\'t seen a movie on this list, I would be most shocked. Along with myself, Steve Jacot and Matt Conte, we have special guest Maddie Campbell joining us for this ranking! Lets get into it...

12. Following Jason - 12, Steve - 12, Matt - 12, Maddie - 12

Jason:

This isn’t a bad movie, but it is clearly Nolan’s worst of his filmography. It is always interesting to watch the very early works of your favorite directors to see what “signatures” are present that have proceeded to highlight through their entire career. The story isn’t all that interesting, but it is wonderfully shot and the acting isn’t too laughable.

Steve:

Following is a fine first feature. If I had seen this without knowing anything else that Nolan had made, I would have been really impressed. I saw this after having seen Memento, The Prestige , and The Dark Knight , so, yeah, it didn’t have the same oomph. Always nice to see a director’s roots!

Matt:

I haven’t seen this movie since I was in college and I thought about re-watching it, but life gets in the way sometimes. I recall it being a fun, no-budget piece of black-and-white filmmaking that serves as a good proof of concept for Nolan’s entire career to come. I don’t know how I’d feel about it if I saw it divorced from that context, because I obviously watched it as a cultural curio, so I don’t know how well it blueprints out what was to come the way that you can watch something like Alien 3 , La Pointe Courte , Who’s That Knocking At My Door , This Is My Life etc. and say “I can see how this filmmaker became the filmmaker that they are”—at least not as much as you can with his studio debut just one year later. But it at least paints its creator as someone who is capable and talented.

Maddie:

I think the guys already really hit the nail on the head with this one. I enjoyed this movie and I think it’s good, but I came away from it feeling like it was more a good window for me into Nolan’s process and growth as a creator, seeing some of his sensibilities come through in his earliest work than a piece that I want to keep revisiting, like some of his later work.

11. The Dark Knight Rises Jason - 10, Steve - 11, Matt - 11, Maddie - 10

Jason:

I don’t have proof of this (or care to look it up really), but this feels like a movie that had a bit too much studio interference. I refuse to believe Nolan made some of the story decisions in this film given his directorial track record preceding this. Besides all of that, I think we get probably the best portrayal of Bruce Wayne by Christian Bale in the trilogy. I love Bane (even with the goofy voice) and Catwoman surprisingly works even if I don’t care for Anne Hathaway much as an actress. We’ll never know what this movie COULD have been given the obvious plans for the late-Heath Ledger’s Joker to be involved in the trilogy’s finale.

Steve:

Maaaaaan, I wanted to love this so bad. Nolan and Bale’s Bat-trilogy had built up beautifully. The promise of a showdown with Bane for Gotham City incorporating parts of “Knightfall”, “No Man’s Land”, and “The Dark Knight Returns” sounds amazing on paper. Unfortunately, Nolan made some baffling choices (Joseph Gordon Levitt is a police detective whose first name is Robin???) and the movie never quite meshed.

Matt:

I would like to see Nolan take another crack at this one. Good, but not quite up to his standards; much shaggier and messier and more overstuffed than almost all of the rest of his movies. The death of Heath Ledger and the deviance from any original plans while still sticking to a fairly compressed production window made the ultimate product feel somewhat rushed. I love Tom Hardy in the movie and Anne Hathaway is one of my few automatic watches for any movie, but there’s just way too much here to really feel like this movie is about any one thing and is simply a series of plot points involving Batman and this cast of characters.

Maddie:

I think it really speaks to the strength of his catalog as a whole that I had this one this low, because I really did enjoy this film (and honestly felt like I even enjoyed it more than seemed to be the consensus when it came out). I found it engaging throughout and thought it wrapped up the trilogy nicely.

10. Tenet Jason - 11, Steve - 10, Matt - 10, Maddie - 9

Jason:

This film and concept had some much potential and still offers a good ride despite not sticking the landing. As others mentioned, it tries so hard to piece everything together and still doesn’t make any sense after reading numerous reviews and explanations of its time traveling concept. I don’t think the movie would have been as good as it was if it wasn’t for the excellent cinematography and the performances of John David Washington and Robert Pattison.

Steve:

I saw Tenet for the first time in a drive-in and barely understood what was going on. I had hoped that maybe it was just the circumstances under which I saw the film. I watched it again later on with my phone set aside and gave it my full attention. Nope, still didn’t work. Tenet is needlessly confusing. The stakes never properly manifest as the viewer spends most of the time trying to figure out just how things work in this world.

Matt:

There is definitely a pretty big wave of support for this one and as much as I would like to ride it, I can’t. I think that all of the seems of this one are so obvious and it still struggles to actually make any sense. When you look at those ambigrams (like this , this , or even this ), they serve as pieces of art that read legibly as something going forward and then—surprise!—they read as something going backwards, too. Oftentimes it’s the same word but it can also be something new, creating a new meaning out of something that we’ve already seen before in a different context. It makes sense both ways, and the fact that it can be read in different ways reveals something about the art, the way the audiences engages with it, and hopefully the world. Tenet attempts this, but all the stuff that happens in the first half that then comes back in the second half doesn’t have any explanation until we see it in the other direction. There’s no “aha!” surprise moment because the complete lack of coherence in the first half signalled so obviously that anything that didn’t add up there would simply be something going in the opposite direction later. I get that many defenders preach the “don’t think too hard about it, just vibe” philosophy, but I can’t turn my brain all the way off like that when the movie (and the rest of Nolan’s oeuvre) is trying so hard to explain things as if they fit together like a perfect puzzle.

Maddie:

There was… a lot going on with this one. And I loved the concept for this and I am such a sucker for a time travel/play with linearity situation, but this one did fall a little flat for me, still. I have to give Nolan credit for the ambition that came with this project (and that’s probably why it landed a smidge higher on my list than the others’), but it often felt like it was trying to spin too many plates in the air at once, and that kept it from reaching what should have been its pretty high potential.

9. Insomnia Jason - 9, Steve - 9, Matt - 8, Maddie - 11

Jason:

This feels like the least-Nolan movie in his filmography, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Al Pacino and Robin Williams (as a baddie!) deliver Oscar-worthy performances for their roles in this murder-mystery caper. Though not written by Nolan, I love the setting and the story keeps you engaged the entire time. Nolan does a tremendous job of making you feel Pacino’s character’s physical and mental struggles as he tries to unfold this bizarre crime.

Steve:

My memory of Insomnia matches the setting found in most of the film - foggy. It is a solid remake with solid performances from Al Pacino, Robin Williams, and Hilary Swank. It is by far the least personal film for Nolan on this list (even compared to Batman!) as this was a remake and he did not write the script. Insomnia is not a bad film by any means, just not high up in the Nolan rankings.

Matt:

There is where—for me—the really high quality movies begin. The bottom three are ambitious but don’t fully hang together for different reasons, while the rest from here on out are all really bunched together. This is a criminally underrated film, both in the filmographies of its main players (Nolan, Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hilary Swank) but also in the crime drama sphere of the last two decades. The whole eternal sunlight thing and the way it supports the movie turning from police procedural to psychological drama is excellent.

Maddie:

There’s a lot to like in this film — the construction was excellent and the performances were very strong, and all in all it’s a very solid film. I certainly don’t want to take anything away from it in that regard. But I think I also felt what Jason mentioned, that it felt the least Nolan-esque of any film on this list, which is why I dropped it in my ranking.

8. Batman Begins Jason - 6, Steve - 5, Matt - 9, Maddie - 8

Jason:

It initially shocked me that the guy who did Memento and Insomnia was going to be doing a superhero movie, let alone Batman. My experience of Batman up to that point was Adam West’s, Tim Burton’s and The Animated Series’ interpretations. What we got was a more “gritty” adaptation that exceeded all my expectations. Having more grounded traditional villain’s didn’t hurt either and Liam Neeson/Cillian Murphy were PERFECT in their roles as Ra’s Al Ghul and Scarecrow, respectively. Nolan had completely written the standard of on-screen Batman going forward.

Steve:

The Bat-geek in me really adores this film. It was the Batman film that I had been waiting for my whole life. Bale’s balance of Bruce Wayne and Batman was so refreshing after two straight movies of Joel Schumacher camp. Batman Begins is the gold standard for reboots, totally changing the tone of Batman and successfully adapting Batman Year One into a compelling film.

Matt:

It’s funny to think back to when this came out and how grounded and realistic it felt and then rewatch it now; it almost feels closer to Tim Burton’s Batman than it does to Matt Reeves’ The Batman , even though Reeves is taking so much inspiration from Nolan’s take. A good movie, a good Batman movie, and the beginning of a number of key relationships with frequent Nolan collaborators, including Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy, Hans Zimmer, and Lee Smith.

Maddie:

Though I’m not super familiar with the source material for these, and I wouldn’t say I’m a huge fan of comic book adaptations broadly, the whole Dark Knight trilogy is great and I’m such a fan, and this was an excellent beginning to it. As Jason said, this felt pretty grounded and I think that approach really worked for someone like me who wasn’t going to be an automatic yes on a superhero movie.

7. Dunkirk Jason - 8, Steve - 8, Matt - 7, Maddie - 2

Jason:

This is such a TENSE movie given that it jumps around to different points of view, but still has you on the edge of your seat. I had known very little about the Dunkirk Evacuation and seeing it portrayed from multiple angles gave me a whole new perspective and led me to reading about this operation more. The most terrifying story to follow in the film was Fionn Whitehead’s army private as he tries to evacuate from the beaches and lengths at which he has to survive seemingly endless obstacles are thrown at him.

Steve:

Jason certainly hit the nail on the head with the use of tense to describe Dunkirk. This film, much like Oppenheimer , falls into the camp of technically very impressive but not necessarily my favorite. Dunkirk is definitely an accomplishment for Nolan - a bold use of practical effects to tell a war story in a digital world. It’s sprawling to a degree that hurts audience connections with any one character. That’s not to say that there isn’t a human element (poor Georgie…) but there are just so many human elements. There isn’t a moment to breathe. The claustrophobic effect makes for a fascinating war film, but not one that I eagerly revisit.

Matt:

There have been times where this was much higher on my list and I salute Maddie for having the stones to put it at #2. It plays with time and tension in a way that really ramps up from Nolan’s previous obsessions and has me on edge for all 107 minutes. This is a pretty good example of how consistent a majority of the director’s career has been, because I think on a different day or following a recent rewatch of this, my list could be entirely different. I don’t even know that I could replicate it now without looking.

Maddie:

I love this movie, that’s probably obvious. I think from a technical standpoint, this is one of Nolan’s strongest films, and I really appreciate that while The War Movie has been done time and time again, that for his first foray into a film based on something historical, he approached it in a way that was fresh and interesting, with that nonlinear timeline. So much was accomplished with this and the attention to detail was so great (this feels granular, but I remember being so struck by the way the film’s coloring felt true to the look of WW2 archival footage that’s been colorized) and the fact that it was so “short” with such sparse dialog and packed such a punch felt like a real accomplishment.

6. Interstellar Jason - 4, Steve - 7, Matt - 7, Maddie - 5

Jason:

I am certainly the “high-man” on Interstellar and will still find myself watching it when I see it playing randomly on TV. The journey of Matthew McConaghay’s (perfectly casted btw) character as he travels across both space and time is so emotionally fulfilling for me that it left a lasting impression. Do I actually truly understand the science/math behind the apex moment of this movie? Not really, but you feel his connections to both his family and crew that it doesn’t even matter. I still remain blown away by the “black hole planet” sequence.

Steve:

This is a tough one. It is indeed the most emotional of Nolan’s films, being about having one’s career interfere with seeing their children grow up. It is a big film with big ideas that perhaps falls prey to living up to those lofty expectations. Regardless, the effects are spectacular in what might be the most grounded futuristic movie of all-time. I really liked Interstellar a great deal, but I wanted to love Interstellar .

Matt:

Nolan’s most emotional film and for that, I love it. It’s a big, ambitious, original sci-fi story and while those were becoming sparse in 2014 when it first came out, they’re even rarer since then. The number of non-superhero science fiction movies released on the scale of Interstellar that actually work as well as as Interstellar can be counted on my fingers and almost none of those actually do both (stuff like Arrival , Ex Machina , Okja , Nope , and The Creator are all half the budget and none of Jupiter Ascending , Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets , Tomorrowland , or Ready Player One reach the same heights). It’s a little timey-wimey in the end, but it’s all in service of genuine character connections and emotionality.

Maddie:

I’m personally a bit fussy when it comes to sci-fi films, and the fact that this one hit for me as much as it did is really a testament to its strength. Truly, I think this is the Nolan film that stuck with me the longest after the first viewing. Like Tenet , this has a lot going on, but it pulls it off wonderfully. The emotional beats hit every time and it ties up all of its threads really nicely.

5. The Prestige Jason - 7, Steve - 3, Matt - 5, Maddie - 6

Jason:

Clearly the “low-man” for The Prestige that would indicate that I didn’t like it, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. For a grounded mystery film, the initial twist didn’t fit right to me (though the latter involving Bale’s character was quite good). The acting is brilliant and I can never get quite enough of Hugh Jackman in just about anything. This came out at the same time as Neil Burger’s The Illusionist (classic “twin-movie”) which I actually liked quite a bit more.

Steve:

The Prestige is the film that made me a Christopher Nolan fan. The twists and turns are so thrilling. David Bowie plays Nikola Tesla! The rivalry between Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) enthralled me and made me care about magic in a way that I didn’t think was possible. Maybe bitter relationships between one-time partners just falls into my wheel house, I am a huge X-Men fan after all, and the relationship between Charles Xavier and Magneto is one of the great rivalries in the comics medium. It’s this love of comics and the supernatural that makes the shift at the end of the movie into “real magic” feel just right to me. I am the highest of the group on The Prestige and damn proud of it.

Matt:

The Prestige was probably my favorite for a while after it came out and for a few years later. At this point in his filmography, it was really unique: a period piece that applies all of the magic tricks of Nolan’s typical filmmaking to a completely different setting and story and in a completely different way. It’s also a really interesting moment in his career because it starts one of the truest and most successful runs of parlaying success into personal passions. No one has ever done a better one-for-them, one-for-me than Nolan doing three Batman movies, each individually followed by a big-budget original ( The Prestige, Inception , and Interstellar ), each of which was also wildly successful and helped propel Nolan into this current phase of his career where he can basically do whatever he wants.

Maddie:

There are a lot of Nolan films that I tend to revisit with some degree of frequency, but this is one that tends to get lost in the shuffle for me. And for no good reason, because it’s a very good film! Really engaging with excellent performances, what’s not to like!

4. Memento Jason - 3, Steve - 5, Matt - 3, Maddie - 7

Jason:

I watched this film for the first time in college, probably a couple years after its release. It was my introduction into Nolan and was blown away by what a filmmaker could do with storytelling. It wasn’t conventional, but what was instead intentional given the “condition” of its central character Guy Pearce’s amnesiac investigator. It was stylistically brilliant, marking the first collaboration with cinematographer Wally Pfister, who has since worked on a majority of Nolan’s films.

Steve:

Like Jason, I watched this in college. It was a mind-blowing film at the time. It’s still great, it’s just been surpassed by other films in Nolan’s catalog since then. What a twist! Memento really showed me just how damn cool a film could be back then. This is always the first thing I think of when I think of Guy Pearce and Joe Pantoliano (and Joey Pants was Ralph on The Sopranos !).

Matt:

Really the one that started it all. I remember watching this in dorm rooms over and over again, even before really developing an understanding of who Christopher Nolan was as an artist. This is sort of the Rosetta Stone for his career—timeline shenanigans, a dead wife, questions about the nature of existence.

Maddie: I actually hadn’t seen this one until a few months ago and I don’t really know how that happened? I really enjoyed it though, and it was very cool, once again, to see so many of Nolan’s creative sensibilities solidly in place relatively early in his career. This is a really excellent film, and I think the only reason it’s so low for me is because so many of his other films have been kind of solidified towards the top of my list of favorites for much longer.

3. The Dark Knight Jason - 1, Steve - 2, Matt - 4, Maddie - 4

Jason:

It might be silly to think a director with this acclaimed filmography’s best film to be a superhero movie. Hot take: this is the greatest superhero film ever to grace the screen. That alone pushed it to my number one spot. Heath Ledger’s performance as Joker is an all-time portrayal and 100% deserved Oscar winner. We see Bale flourish as Batman in this one and the grounded portrayal of Two-Face was refreshing. I’ve watched this Nolan film more than any on this list and one of the few movies I’ve actually seen in the theater three times.

Steve:

The Dark Knight was absolutely electric when it came out. There were so many times where you would walk into a room, look at someone, and say, “Yoooo, have you seen The Dark Knight ?” It is a high water mark that gritty superhero films have been attempting to recapture ever since. It’s hard to believe that there was a time that people questioned the casting of Heath Ledger. They should just give up on trying to portray the Joker on film because of how damn good Ledger is in the role. His insanity and penchant for chaos is unmatched. Wanna see a magic trick?

Matt:

It’s actually crazy how much this movie has influences American culture since it’s release. Even if you just look at the Best Picture nominations moving from 5 to 10 the year after following outrage that it wasn’t nominated: more nominations means more opportunity for studios to chase one of those prestigious spots means more of the type of movies that sneak into the final few spots are getting made (if we look at just 2023, that’s stuff like The Iron Claw , American Fiction , All Of Us Strangers ). At the same time, this movie also created a change in the way that audiences view comic book adaptations. The grounded and gritty take on an inherently and historically silly story led to a series of copycats: similar approaches to comic book movies, mostly concentrated within the DC Extended Universe of movies and mostly of pretty poor quality. The more dour those movies got, the more the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies became comedies as a contrast. It’s a sketchy and faint line but you can definitely draw one from this movie to multiple huge trends throughout Hollywood over the last decade and a half. Oh yeah, and the movie rips, too. None of that stuff would be possible if it didn’t. (My top five Batman movies in chronological order: Batman: The Movie [dir. Leslie Martinson, 1966], Batman & Robin [dir. Joel Schumacher, 1997], The Dark Knight [dir. Nolan, 2008], The Lego Batman Movie [dir. Chris McKay, 2017], The Batman [dir. Matt Reeves, 2022])

Maddie:

This really is the gold standard for superhero films, and with so many being or having been made and so many directors getting in on that action, I really can’t overstate how much credit I give Nolan for not just hitting that mark, but sustaining that spot at the top of the list. Don’t let my “low” ranking fool you — I think this movie is excellent and I can’t help but put it on whenever I see it playing on cable. The films above it are just a bit stronger for me, but it’s so so close.

2. Oppenheimer Jason - 5, Steve - 4, Matt - 1, Maddie - 1

Jason: I loved this movie, don’t let the ranking fool you. Maybe with another viewing it moves higher. Could this be his best film technically? Absolutely. Cillian Murphy should win all the awards, along with Robert Downey Jr. I went in knowing very little about Oppenheimer himself and to see his journey of discovery and regret was something else. I never thought of Nolan as a biopic director, because that felt too restrictive of his creativeness. This film has me rethinking that.

Steve:

I feel like Oppenheimer is low on my list. It feels low! I adore the other three films I have ranked above this, but damn, is Oppenheimer impressive. It might actually be the best directing that Christopher Nolan has ever done. Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. deliver some of the best performances of their careers. Christopher Nolan found a way to make physics thrilling.

Matt:

It’s actually kind of wild to for a filmmaker to make a movie this good at this point in their career. According to Tarantino’s 10-film theory, Nolan should be cooked by now, but he buckled down on a big, serious, “adult” topic and made a big, serious, “adult” movie—something that it pains me deeply to imply about science fiction and other genre filmmaking. But I do think that having to adhere to the rules of reality as we know them while still being able to question them and twist them in presentation really helps him make a film that coheres logically while still having something to say. The fact that his magnum opus is his 12th film and comes 25 years into his career seems like a sign that Nolan’s legacy may end up being a tier above the guys like Ridley Scott, Robert Zemeckis, Tim Burton, and the fact that it made a billion dollars is very exciting for the shape of his career moving forward.

Maddie:

I gave Nolan a lot of credit for approaching a genre that can be a bit stiff and tired with Dunkirk and making something really fresh and interesting, and with Oppenheimer it feels like he took what he learned from that and supercharged it. The performances from everyone involved were, dare I say?, perfect, and what Nolan was able to do with the structure of the film to set them up for that was really remarkable. To me this is the highest technical achievement of his career, and makes me so excited to see what he’s going to do next.

1. Inception Jason - 2, Steve - 1, Matt - 2, Maddie - 3

Jason: It is rare for a film to leave me blown away each time I watch it. The thought process and story design is stunning and provocative. If it wasn’t for Oppenheimer, this would be his most mature film to date. Leo DiCaprio’s only collaboration with Nolan to date is one that makes me wish they would partner again. This is likely all-time top ten film for me.

Steve:

People who don’t understand this movie are lying. Inception is Christopher Nolan at his best: complex, fun, layered, and amazing. The entire hotel layer sequence of the dream heist is stunning and shows that practical effects still have a place in modern filmmaking. Inception gets to be so many things - heist, noir, spy; it is all about how many things that can be done with the medium of film. This is my favorite Nolan film as well as my favorite DiCaprio role. Cobb is a perfect part for Leo - cool and confident yet somehow also sleezy and insecure. Marion Cotillard and Tom Hardy are outstanding. Frankly, everyone is good and this film rules. I have never been able to look at a top spin and not question my existence since seeing Inception . Easily one of my favorite films of all-time.

Matt:

It still feels like the honeymoon phase with Oppenheimer , but at this point I believe it to be Nolan’s masterpiece. That doesn’t mean I have beef with it placing second here to this movie. Inception really accomplishes the science fiction puzzle that locks together all while telling a compelling and engaging pop story that, for me, movies like Tenet and even to some extent Interstellar just miss on. I remember when this trailer was playing all the time and I was a little goofy college freshman thinking about majoring in philosophy and obsessing over dreams and how they work and what the heck and felt like this was extremely my shit before it even came out. Then I actually saw it and felt like it actually lived up to what I thought it was going to be. The memory of seeing this and the whole level of discussion it sparked that I could actually have with regular people in my life and not just English teachers or film nerds on the internet or the kids in my philosophy classes is inextricably linked to the quality of the movie in my mind.

Maddie:

Despite being the lowest on it of the group, I really love this film so much and don’t have any nitpicks that I could bring to it. The storyline is so fresh and despite being a bit maximalist (if you will), it still remains so focused. The performances are great all around and in rewatching it recently for the purpose of putting together this ranking, it’s still as gripping as the first time I saw it in theaters, which is really cool.

Talking Points