All 13 Christopher Nolan Movies, Ranked

Every Christopher Nolan Movie, Ranked Image via Universal Pictures Published Jul 21, 2026, 12:45 PM EDT Jeremy has more than 2600 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows. His favorite directors include Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, John Woo, Bob Fosse, Fritz Lang, Guillermo del Toro, and Yoji Yamada. He's also very proud of the fact that he's seen every single Nicolas Cage movie released before 2022, even though doing so often felt like a tremendous waste of time. He's plagued by the question of whether or not The Room is genuinely terrible or some kind of accidental masterpiece, and has been for more than 12 years (and a similar number of viewings). When he's not writing lists - and the occasional feature article - for Collider, he also likes to upload film reviews to his Letterboxd profile (username: Jeremy Urquhart) and Instagram account. He has achieved his 2025 goal of reading all 13,467 novels written by Stephen King, and plans to spend the next year or two getting through the author's 82,756 short stories and 105,433 novellas. Sign in to your Collider account Introducing Christopher Nolan… uh… you know, like, he’s Christopher Nolan. He’s made a bunch of movies and tackled a bunch of different genres while making all those movies. His earliest films were small in scale and not exactly spectacular in a blockbuster way, but they had interesting visual and storytelling choices that stood out. And then when Nolan got a bit more recognition, and the budgets he was given to work with increased, he started putting those interesting trademarks of his – and creative decisions – into mammoth-sized movies. So, he’s developed something of a reputation for being a maker of great blockbusters, and someone willing to be innovative while delivering spectacle and movies that are, for the most part, broadly appealing. What follows is an attempt to rank every Christopher Nolan movie from worst to best (though even the “worst” movies here are still very good overall). 13 'Batman Begins' (2005) Image via Warner Bros. Pictures Batman Begins was pretty cool 20+ years ago, but it’s the opinion of the person typing all this that it hasn’t held up all that well. The dark tone and relative seriousness of the Batman origin story were interesting, when tackled here initially, but so many superhero movies since have been better, and Nolan’s later two Batman-related movies were (arguably) more interesting, too. You can also see some of Nolan’s early limitations, as a director of blockbusters, here, and that is somewhat understandable, given this was only his fourth movie, and proved considerably larger in scope than anything he’d done before. It was a warm-up of things to come, for Nolan, so in that sense, it certainly has its place. As an origin story, it’s solid, but some of its pacing and technical qualities (like the poorly choreographed action scenes) let it down. 12 'Following' (1998) Image via Momentum Pictures Easily the smallest of Nolan’s films, Following is also technically one of the weakest, but you do have to acknowledge that it’s really good for what it is, and also that it was made with very little money, and at a time when Nolan was still in his 20s. As a proof-of-concept movie, in effect, it’s got a lot to offer, and it does really succeed at showing potential. There are plenty of little things throughout that the filmmaker would build upon later on, with subsequent films. The premise of Following is also very straightforward, because it’s about a guy who really does just like following people. Eventually, he starts following someone he shouldn’t have, and it’s only from there that things get a little more complicated. It delivers a well-paced and intriguing mystery/psychological drama sort of thing in under 70 minutes, and also proves well-worth a watch if you're a fan of other low-budget mind-benders from around this time, like Pi and Primer. 11 'The Dark Knight Rises' (2012) Image via Warner Bros. You can’t deny the fact that The Dark Knight Rises is an epic, but what might be in contention is how successful it is, as an epic. It’s perhaps the least consistent of all the Christopher Nolan movies, since it does a bit of everything and occasionally showcases Nolan’s filmmaking skills at their best, all the while revealing some of his weaknesses when the film’s at its worst. And it just keeps fluctuating wildly in quality for an impressive runtime that nears three hours. It rounds out a trilogy, for better or worse. There is finality here, and Nolan has so far made five non-Batman films since the release of The Dark Knight Rises, so the idea that he’s done with the series feels like a pretty sure thing. It was good while it lasted, and at least some of The Dark Knight Rises is good. If you can take all the good with the decent amount of bad (or at least the not-good stuff is baffling), then this does still end up being a worthwhile epic. 10 'The Prestige' (2006) Image via Buena Vista Pictures This is the point where the movies start getting genuinely really good, and that’s saying quite a bit, because the three movies already mentioned are still good (more just a bit flawed). So, The Prestige being this low might look alarming at first, but Nolan’s filmography is just so good that you're going to have some borderline-great movies closer to the bottom of a ranking like this than the top. Sorry about that. The Prestige is about two magicians who have an odd sort of rivalry, and they keep pushing the other to go further and further, with alarming consequences… eventually. The unpredictability of this one is its best attribute, so to say anything more about The Prestige would feel wrong, even with it being as old as it is. It’s the kind of thing you'd hope someone arriving at it 20 years later would still be able to experience without having anything ruined, you know? 9 'Tenet' (2020) Image via Warner Bros. Pictures It’s not the easiest thing in the world to get on the same wavelength as Tenet, but once you do, it’s great. It’s a lot of fun, as an action/spy movie of sorts, and if you try to engage with it in other ways, it stands a chance at letting you down. Like, it is genuinely quite hard to follow everything Tenet puts down narratively, or seems to put down narratively. The vibes, for lack of a better word, are where it’s at, with Tenet. That creativity within its best moments – and all its massive set pieces – proves to be enough. If you can engage with Tenet as almost an arthouse blockbuster/action movie, it’s a good time, and plenty thrilling. Nolan might overdo some things, and if it had a bit more of a narrative or emotional punch, perhaps it would be better… but for exactly what Tenet is (and seemingly tries to be), it’s pretty darn good. 8 'Insomnia' (2002) Image via Warner Bros. Pictures While Tenet might be a little over-hated, Insomnia feels more than a bit underrated. Is there a difference between those terms? Maybe! But it’s hard to outline here. There’s no time. Nolan’s movies are often all about time. There isn't any to spare. Insomnia is about a murder investigation that gets weird and psychologically harrowing for the main detective tackling the whole case. All the while, Nolan’s also directing something he had no involvement with writing, which is unusual for him. There’s a real novelty to seeing Christopher Nolan direct the likes of Al Pacino and Robin Williams, and both of them are very good here, and all the while, Nolan’s also directing something he had no involvement with writing, which is unusual for him. Seriously, he’s credited as a writer or co-writer on every one of the 12 other movies he’s directed. But he tackles what he’s given here well, and if you're a fan of his subsequent movies without having seen this one yet, it’s very much worth going back to and tackling. 7 'Dunkirk' (2017) Image via Warner Bros. Pictures Dunkirk is potentially Christopher Nolan’s most visceral movie, and it’s also the one that feels least concerned with telling a conventional sort of story that hits all the beats you'd ordinarily expect while developing characters and all that. There are beats, and there are technically characters, but Dunkirk is more about following how those people survive the Dunkirk evacuation, which took place during World War II. The most complex thing about Dunkirk is its structure, and the way it plays around with time, since you see the whole evacuation from three different perspectives, and each of those perspectives plays out over a different span of time. It’s miraculously edited, above anything else, and then it’s got plenty of spectacle, intensity, and ambition on a technical front, the way you'd expect from a Nolan movie made around this time. 6 'Oppenheimer' (2023) Image via Universal Pictures Now, Oppenheimer is technically the most Oscar-friendly movie Christopher Nolan has ever directed, and it did end up being his most successful movie at the Academy Awards to date, but calling it Oscar bait wouldn’t be fair, nor accurate. It is a biographical film about J. Robert Oppenheimer and how he contributed to the creation of the atomic bomb, yet it goes a bit beyond just being a recap or straightforward sort of biopic. Oppenheimer manages to be about history and then it also speaks to the paranoia that the invention of the film’s center has caused decades on from when it was first created. The film also covers ground before World War II and then quite a lot by way of events that happened after it, and then on top of being epic in that regard, it’s also ambitious with its non-chronological storytelling. Everything adds up to make for a rather overwhelming movie, but at least it’s overwhelming in a (somehow) good way. 5 'Inception' (2010) Image via Warner Bros. Pictures The heist movie about dreams, instead of bank vaults or valuable pieces of jewelry, Inception really does succeed at doing novel things with the conventions of that whole genre. A team of people have to infiltrate one person’s subconscious, manipulating a dream world and traveling deeper into it to maintain the complex illusion, all the while finding more unusual – and dangerous – things the further they go. There’s a very complex but ultimately understandable plan set up in Inception, and then the way it – and the characters – go about following that plan, with a few things going wrong along the way, ends up being incredibly thrilling. You can point out various things in Inception that might feel familiar, or even borrowed from other heist-related stories, but as a psychological action movie (if a movie can be a “psychological action” one), it’s excellent. 4 'Memento' (2000) Image via Newmarket The leap in quality from Following to Memento was staggering, even if, narratively speaking, Memento might not sound a whole lot more adventurous than Following. There’s a small cast of characters, and it feels like a psychological drama/thriller with the way it focuses on one protagonist going through a very dizzying experience, but the way this one’s assembled is what makes it special. Basically, Memento is about a man with a kind of short-term memory loss trying to solve his wife’s murder, and then get vengeance on the killer, but he keeps, you know, forgetting things. And everything’s presented in a way to replicate the confusion he’s constantly in, so it’s all incredibly clever on a writing and editing front. It’s best not to say too much more about a movie like Memento, owing to how twisty it is. The important thing is that it’s thrilling and mind-blowing in a unique sort of way, and even if it’s one of Nolan’s earliest/smallest films, it still sticks out as one of his best.