Every Christopher Nolan film, ranked (including The Odyssey)

Ash Walker • 20 Jul 2026 Features

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Few directors generate as much excitement as Christopher Nolan. The beloved, be-suited director has established himself as one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of the 21st century, and whether he’s bending time, delving into dreams or exploring the farthest reaches of space, his films have become must-watch events.

So, with The Odyssey now sailing onto your nearest IMAX screen, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to rank the master filmmaker’s complete body of work, from his humble beginnings to his very latest blockbuster epic.

13. Following (1998)

Credit: Following - Original Trailer (CRITERION, YouTube)

Nolan’s first film is also probably his weakest - although it still manages to be a compelling noir-tinged psychological thriller. Filmed across weekends on a very limited budget, the film tells a relatively simple story of a writer who follows random people around London, looking for inspiration.

Harmless enough, if a little creepy, but wouldn’t you know it, soon enough our hero runs afoul of some insalubrious characters and finds himself drawn into the city’s criminal underbelly.

It’s a decent little thriller, but mostly interesting as the director’s starting point - you can see all of Nolan’s preoccupations with identity, crime noir and twisty narratives on display from the very beginning.

12. Dunkirk (2017)

Credit: DUNKIRK - OFFICIAL MAIN TRAILER [HD] (Warner Bros., YouTube)

They say that every great director has to make their war film - for Kubrick it was Full Metal Jacket, for Spielberg it was Saving Private Ryan - and Dunkirk is Nolan’s, for better or worse.

Not to say that this is a bad film. It’s suitably epic and full of tension, and it plays with time in a very Christopher Nolan way, but the director’s slick, slightly cold style feels weirdly ill-suited to such a down-and-dirty, emotionally charged historical story.

It also doesn’t help that we don’t really have a main character to grasp onto, instead flitting between the starry ensemble as they go about their fraught rescue mission, or simply try to survive on a besieged French beach. But it does get bonus points for its strict use of practical effects and real planes in its dogfight scenes.

11. Oppenheimer (2023)

Credit: Oppenheimer | Official Trailer (Universal Pictures, YouTube)

Nolan’s second foray into the major events of World War II is a very different beast. This is a far more straightforward biopic - albeit with a sprinkling of dreamlike sequences and, of course, multiple timelines - following the life’s work of theoretical physicist J Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the nuclear bomb.

It’s all very interesting and doom-laden, but Oppenheimer is, literally, a film of two halves, and the stuff at Los Alamos leading up to the Trinity test and subsequent bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is infinitely more interesting than the Robert Downey Jr-starring ‘sequel’ narrative about a congressional hearing.

It’s an odd choice to have half the runtime not actually feature your title character, but Nolan has never been one for predictability.

10. Insomnia (2002)

Credit: Insomnia Trailer #1 (2002) (Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers, YouTube)

Probably the Nolan film most often forgotten about, Insomnia seems like a bit of an outlier in the director’s filmography at first glance - it doesn’t help that it’s the only one of his movies that he’s not credited with writing - but it actually fits nicely in the more neo-noirish mode of his earliest work.

A remake of the 1997 Nordic crime thriller of the same name, Nolan’s Insomnia transposes the action from snowy Norway to snowy Alaska. It follows detectives - played by Al Pacino and Hilary Swank - investigating the murder of a local teenager in a town where it’s permanently daylight.

This is a dark, cynical psychological thriller, perhaps most famous now for being one of two films - released in the same year no less - in which the usually cuddly, beloved Robin Williams plays a homicidal maniac.

9. Tenet (2020)

Credit: TENET - Official Trailer (Warner Bros., YouTube)

Christopher Nolan fully admits that his films can tend to be a bit… cold. Clinical, even. And Tenet might be the movie most guilty of that; there’s not a shred of warmth or humanity in any of its nebulous characters.

That sounds bad on paper, but Tenet is actually a slick, stunning, globe-trotting sci-fi spy thriller that’s probably as close to a Bond film that Nolan will ever get. John David Washington plays the protagonist - literally credited as The Protagonist - a superspy bent on untangling a timey-wimey plot by future bad guys to destroy the present.

It’s a real headscratcher of a story, but its action scenes are truly something to behold, blending forward and backwards motion seamlessly to create some blistering - if slightly confusing - visuals.

8. Interstellar (2014)

Credit: Interstellar - Trailer (Warner Bros. UK & Ireland, YouTube)

Nolan is often compared to Stanley Kubrick - they’re both acclaimed British directors with an eye for precision and a seeming lack of interest in human emotion - and this is pretty much his take on 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Both feature epic voyages into the uncharted reaches of outer space, guided by a mysterious alien presence, and both even have an iconic robot companion. Although Interstellar’s TARS is a lot more friendly than HAL.

It’s a strange beast, this movie. When it’s focussed on the things Nolan’s good at - the high-concept sci-fi ideas, the granular realism - it’s stunning, awe-inspiring stuff, but when it tries to inject some heart into the plot, it tends to fall a bit flat.

Is love really a measurable force that we can follow across the universe? As nice an idea that is… probably not. And the movie doesn’t manage to convince us otherwise. But it does look - and sound - incredible.

7. The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Credit: The Dark Knight Rises - Official Trailer #3 [HD] (Warner Bros., YouTube)

The weakest - and also the longest - of the Nolan Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises is still epic entertainment.

Loosely adapting the infamous Knightfall storyline from DC’s Batman comics, in which the Dark Knight is ruined, mentally and physically, by an unstoppable enemy, before inevitably returning triumphant to take back Gotham, Rises manages, just about, to condense years of comic storytelling into one gigantic film.

And honestly… it’s better than you remember.

For every weird choice - Bane’s Kermit the Frog impression, Talia’s ridiculous death scene - there’s a stroke of genius - Scarecrow’s kangaroo court, the stadium sequence. And Bane is a truly intimidating villain.

Just don’t think too hard about the timeline of Batman’s recovery. I guess his back wasn’t all the way broken after all.

6. Batman Begins (2005)

Credit: Batman Begins | 4K Trailer (Warner Bros. Entertainment, YouTube)

Nolan had had hits before, but Batman Begins was the one that really kicked his career into high gear.

Taking a decidedly more grounded tone, Begins proved to be a breath of fresh air after the critically panned one-two punch of Batman Forever and Batman & Robin - which, people forget, was only a scant eight years before.

Adapting (again, loosely) Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli’s acclaimed origin story Batman: Year One, this is the story of how Bruce Wayne, rich grieving orphan, became Batman, brutal force of vengeance and source of fear for the criminals of Gotham City.

There are still fantastical elements, of course - hello, ninjas and fear-inducing gas - but this took the source material deadly seriously, and fans absolutely loved it.

5. The Odyssey (2026)

Credit: The Odyssey | Official Trailer (Universal Pictures, YouTube)

When it was first announced, the idea that Cristopher Nolan - Mr Cold-and-Clinical-Hard-Sci-fi himself - would be tackling literal gods and monsters in a sword-and-sandal fantasy epic certainly raised a few eyebrows. Now, having seen it, the whole thing makes a lot of sense.

Nolan is all about huge, monumental storytelling, and it’s hard to get much more monumental than Homer’s Odyssey, a story so big and foundational that it’s been inspiring artists, writers and filmmakers for literally thousands of years. The surprising thing about this adaptation, though, is that Nolan manages to find something new and relevant to say about such an ancient tale.

His version is a story about PTSD and guilt and, like Oppenheimer before it, one man’s role in the downfall of civilization. It’s heavy stuff, but it rollicks along from set piece to set piece like a proper adventure movie - and what set pieces they are! The cyclops alone will boggle your mind.

A truly epic, modern adaptation of a classic story, and Nolan fully back on form.

4. Memento (2000)

Credit: Memento (2000) Trailer #1 (Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers, YouTube)

The movie that put Christopher Nolan on the map. And with good reason.

Everything that Nolan would come to be known for is here, present and correct - neo-noir crime elements, killer hook, troubled protagonist, dead wife. And, of course, headache-inducing timeline shenanigans.

Guy Pearce stars as Leonard Shelby, a man with anterograde amnesia who tries to piece together the facts of his wife’s murder using notes, photographs and his own tattoos.

This is a movie about fragmented memories, that plays out multiple timelines both forward and in reverse at the same time… and yet it’s surprisingly easy to follow, and a really compelling mystery. Rightfully regarded as a modern masterpiece.

3. Inception (2010)

Credit: INCEPTION teaser trailer (Warner Bros. UK & Ireland, YouTube)

Speaking of multiple timelines… Nolan’s puzzlebox sci-fi masterpiece plays out over several deepening layers of dream, each one offering its own fantastical action sequence and twisty espionage storyline.

This one has another great high-concept hook - what if there was a device that allowed us to enter the dreams of another person. What would that look like, and what could we do while we were in there?

The answer, it turns out, is basically corporate espionage. Leonardo DiCaprio’s dream-diver Dom Cobb is tasked with not stealing company secrets, but implanting an idea into a businessman’s head. It’s a task once thought impossible, but a desperate Dom thinks it might just be achievable if only they could dive deep enough.

It’s another movie that, on paper, should be impossible to follow, but Nolan’s assured hand guides us through with ease, piling tension upon tension upon tension until it almost becomes unbearable. It really is a masterclass in intelligent action filmmaking.

2. The Dark Knight (2008)

Credit: The Dark Knight - Official Trailer 2 [HD] (Legendary, YouTube)

What is there left to say about The Dark Knight? At this point, surely everyone has seen, dissected and discussed the Internet’s favourite Batman movie a hundred times. You’d be forgiven for thinking it was a little played out. Maybe even a little overrated?

Well… it’s not.

Moving even further away from comic book cartoonishness, Nolan’s Batman Begins sequel takes an ulta-realist look at the Caped Crusader. This is a serious, grown-up crime thriller, through and through - essentially Michael Mann’s Heat, if Robert De Niro was wearing clown makeup and Al Pacino was dressed as a flying rodent.

And, of course, there’s Heath Ledger. It remains to this day a performance that exceeds the hype: funny, idiosyncratic, terrifying and absolutely magnetic. Whenever the Joker is on screen, you just can’t take your eyes off him.

He’s truly one of the greatest cinematic villains of all time, and the rest of the movie is pretty good too - even if the plot doesn’t exactly make much sense.

1. The Prestige (2006)

Credit: The Prestige (2006) Trailer #1 (Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers, YouTube)

Yes, the one about the magicians.

The Prestige, based on the novel by Christopher Priest, tells the story of rival illusionists in Victorian London, vying to outdo one another with a teleportation trick. It sounds kind of silly, but this is a dark, twisty psychological thriller that slowly becomes a sort of steampunk sci-fi horror by the final reveal.

And it’s Nolan’s masterpiece. A deeply affecting study of obsession leading inevitably to tragedy, set in a fascinating world of mystery and trickery. The film itself is structured like a magic trick, employing masterful misdirection to keep the audience guessing, right up to the very end.

Plus, it has David Bowie playing Nikola Tesla. What more could you want in a movie?

The Odyssey is out now in cinemas. See it on the biggest screen possible, and don’t forget - Sky Cinema subscribers get two free cinema tickets every month.