All Christopher Nolan Films Ranked
Recently updated to include Oppenheimer and The Odyssey
NOTE: The following article has been updated from its original form as published in 2023 (on Medium), to incorporate a revised introduction plus paragraphs and a ranking for Oppenheimer (2023) and The Odyssey (2026).
Unless you’ve been living deep beneath the Earth’s surface with a colony of Morlocks, you’ll know that Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is currently gobbling up oodles of box office cash around the world. It’s particularly satisfying to see the financial success of this film, because it has provided an extremely important lesson unique to our times.
Before The Odyssey was released, there was a lot of social media noise, much of it extremely ignorant and alarmingly racist, about Nolan’s casting decisions and various other artistic choices. I wrote a response to this tedious nonsense (here, if you’re interested), but the main prediction of these nitwits is that the film would bomb. “Go woke, go broke” was their oft-repeated mantra. With The Odyssey approaching the billion-dollar mark at the time of writing this new introduction, those who made such proclamations are no doubt ingesting a substantial serving of humble pie (if they have any integrity, which I doubt).
For the rest of us, regardless of whether The Odyssey is our cup of tea, the success of the film is a reassuring indication that absurd racist idiocy is still a minority viewpoint, no matter how obnoxiously vocal it is. In pre-internet times, people of this sort were typically isolated. You’d find them in the corner of a pub spouting rubbish after a couple of pints and would ignore them. The trouble is the internet has given them an opportunity to find like-minded delusional twatbangles where they affirm one another’s weapons-grade lunacy and paranoia. As George Carlin once warned, never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. On social media, they can feel like a majority when in fact they are anything but.
The moral of the story? Always disregard the ravings of online mobs (all of whom had yet to see the film) and judge for yourself. Also, get offline and visit the real world. Most people are far more reasonable than online gangs. In the scheme of things, the latter are a tiny minority.
To the matter at hand: Christopher Nolan is one of my favourite directors, with an extremely impressive back catalogue. He is one of the very few singular artists within Hollywood making genuinely original, incisive, yet mainstream films. To celebrate the films with which he has blessed us, here are all Nolan films to date, ranked in order of personal preference. Please note, this list isn’t a blood oath and is subject to future change. However, for the time being, it is my official Nolan ranking.
