12 Christopher Nolan Movies (Inception), Ranked by Tomatometer
(Photo by WB / courtesy Everett Collection. INCEPTION.)
The latest: The dream is still real: Inception, Nolan’s mind and city-bending sci-fi action/adventure, celebrates its 15th anniversary!
Christopher Nolan had such a perfect outsider journey into Hollywood filmmaking, he makes transforming into one of the world’s foremost A-list directors look simple. First, you make your requisite black-and-white feature debut for less than a half-million dollars (Following) in England. Then you come over to America, put together an inventive, almost revolutionary indie (Memento), which gets you invited into the big studio system for Insomnia, where two seasoned pros like Robin Williams and Al Pacino can recognize an up-and-coming talent and agree to star. Then, boom: You’re good to go in your new career as a rising director.
For Nolan, the next step up was a surprising move at the time: Resurrecting Bruce Wayne for Batman Begins, whose big-screen reputation had been trashed by Batman & Robin. With The Prestige, he really began to establish himself as a brand and icon whose pictures you can rely on to feature slick-as-ice style, heavy dollops of science fiction, mind-warping concepts and resolutions, and a growing repertoire of actors to fulfill his vision. Inception and Interstellar certainly fit this mold, while The Dark Knight (and its Rises sequel, to an extent) revolutionized comic book movies and pop culture fandom. And lest we think he forgot his roots, Dunkirk was a worthy movie monument to the WWII military evacuation’s inspirational stature within British society.
2020’s Tenet was a bellwether to test the lockdown winds. Its release was controversial and helped sever Nolan’s working relationship with Warner Bros. Now, he has his Oppenheimer biopic at Universal, which would go on to win Best Picture.
His next film is an adaptation of Greek bestseller The Odyssey, out July 17, 2026! —Alex Vo
94%
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87%
87%
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77%
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