Christopher Nolan is ‘Mid’

A very good, yet massively overrated director

I’m expecting a lot of hate for this article, but there is a reason I am writing it beyond rage baiting, but I’ll get to that later.

The reason I expect it to incur such wrath is because I am committing modern age, pop culture heresy by criticising the Hollywood director Christopher Nolan. That’s a big no-no on many places on the internet frequented by people who’s movie going experiences started with Disney’s Frozen.

Nolan’s die hard fans are equally as puritanically sycophantic in their adoration for him and his movies as they are uniquely militant in their defence of him. To them, the man is above criticism. His films are beyond reproach. Even the slightest critique in a negative context about even the most insignificant detail of one of his movies is almost certain to land you in the midst of an online pile-on, courtesy of the basement dwelling bed-wetters who idolise this man.

To badmouth Nolan, Hell to even infer that not every last millisecond of his work put onto film is unimpeachable perfection, is blasphemy. Heresy of the highest order and against the almightiest of highs. You know… torches, pitchforks and burn all dissenters at the stake kind of stuff. How many of these devout acolytes frequent Substack, I know not, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to find out presently.

Now, I’m not saying the man is a bad filmmaker. In fact, he is incredibly talented and clearly one of the best working directors alive today. He is innovative, creative and a risk taker. All things he shares with the greats of years gone by.

But in my opinion, no one is above critique and Nolan’s filmography is far from perfect. In fact, I think it is decidedly hit or miss.

Inception is a wonderful film: trippy, engaging and entertaining. It is nowhere near as smart as it seems to insist that it is, but it is at a level of cleverness that all Sci-Fi should be and sadly rarely is. 9/10.

Dunkirk is a breathtaking recreation of an epic World War 2 event that makes you feel like you are there. I love World War 2 films though so I was the target audience. It’s a little meandering and slow in places though so it gets a 7/10 from me.

Oppenheimer is fantastic and easily my favourite movie of that year, but again it centres around historic events that I already have a vested interest in. World War 2, The Manhattan Project, Physics, Einstein, pre-Cold War espionage, political power plays: this movie was basically made for me. 10/10.

I remember enjoying Momento and Insomnia when I watched them years ago but I never felt the urge to revisit them and don’t remember much about them. Without watching them again, the best I can do is give them a charitable 5/10 because I can hardly recall them and only vaguely remember that I found them entertaining.

The Dark Knight is an excellent Heath Ledger performance attached to a very good film. It is endlessly rewatchable, cool, slick and satisfying. I always loved superhero stuff, especially gritty Gotham city stuff, so I was always going to be an easy mark for this one. 10/10.

So far, so good, eh? Two TENS, a NINE, a SEVEN and a couple of FIVES. It seems that I am quite fond of Nolan films at this juncture. Well, that’s because I wanted to go with the ‘good news first’ approach. We continue…

Tenet and The Prestige are both drab, pretentious and self-insistent slop fests, although some of the acting performances are excellent in both, particularly Christian Bale in the latter.

But The Prestige features a Bait and Switch plot point that never worked, but rather derailed the whole film for me. It was crying out for some clever answer to a central mystery that would work ‘in universe’ but instead answered it by changing the genre of film completely. It felt cheap, lazy and made the first hour or so (which the audience had presumably become invested in) feel like an utter waste of time. Like a character waking up halfway through a movie and telling you that none of the first hour you have just watched really happened, it was all a dream. Tacky. 3/10 (although I’m tempted to up it to 6 just because Scarlett Johansson is in it).

Tenet is just boring. Forgettable, pompous and breathtakingly pretentious. Just awful. 1/10.

Batman Begins has a lot of fans and is one of the films that the Nolan superfans swear unwavering fealty to, but I never understood why. I have tried to rewatch it half a dozen times and each time I ask the same question: ‘HOW THE FUCK DO YOU MAKE BATMAN BORING???!!!!’ This film is drab. Bland, uninteresting and dull. I have given it every chance and tried my hardest to see what all the fuss was about but I can’t work it out. I almost never bothered watching its excellent sequel The Dark Knight because I was so sour on this first film. Insipid crap. 1/10.

The Dark Knight Rises is infinitely more interesting than the first film of the trilogy but is also a sorry excuse for a sequel to The Dark Knight. Some interesting set pieces, great actors and some nice ideas are ruined by ridiculous narratives, a muddled & meandering plot and an exhausting runtime. So disappointing. 3/10.

I haven’t seen Nolan’s directorial debut The Following so I can’t review it. It got Nolan spring-boarded from obscurity and onto the express train to super stardom so it probably is pretty good. Still, I have not seen it so I can’t pass judgement… N/A/10.

But, oh baby, have I saved the worst for last…?

Interstellar. I hate this film. Never in my life have I had such a visceral reaction of vitriol when watching a movie. I was incensed that I had given two hours of my life to it that I will never get back. I was so seething after watching it that I vowed never to watch another big budget Sci-Fi movie again without reading spoilers to ensure that it doesn’t have retarded plot points like the ones that irked me in this one.

But after I saw it, everyone seemed to love it. They even liked the retarded plot points. I was perplexed… stunned. Did I come out of the cinema into another reality? Is the entire world playing some kind of sick joke on me? People cannot possibly love this movie as much as they claim to, surely? How do they not feel like their intelligence has been resolutely insulted?

For a long time I put it down to what I call the ‘firework show effect’. I have aphantasia and therefore visual imagery is mostly lost on me. I can’t imagine it, nor retain it in memory. I can walk out of the prettiest, most colourful, rollercoaster spectacle of a movie and all I will remember is the plot. Visual spectacle is useless, meaningless and superfluous to me. I walked out of Avatar having hated it because that movie is essentially a two hour kaleidoscope playing in 3D (‘Ooh, pretty colours’!). Story is the only thing that is useful to me and Avatar’s story is dull, vapid and skin deep shallow. Sure, it’s pretty… but little more.

Avatar and its recent sequel did exactly what I expected it to. It made a whole load of money and then disappeared from the pop culture discourse completely. The most successful film of all time at the box office and it has made zero cultural impact. It is a footnote in movie history. No-one talks about it. No-one references it. It faded into shadow.

And I expected Interstellar to do the same thing as it was also a very pretty but ultimately very empty shell just like Avatar was. But, alas, it seems I was wrong. I hear people talk about this movie all the time, and with great reverence still. Just this week, I have heard TWO separate people refer to it as ‘the greatest movie ever made’ and their ‘favourite film’.

It’s the same for many movie critics too, both in the mainstream and the alternative media. Droves of them seem to have been desperate to crawl over each other's writhing bodies to suck Nolan’s dick over this film. They can’t seem to blow smoke up his ass fast enough. The average score has levelled out a little over time, but it is still high.

I have only ever heard a few critics in the media who seem to share my ire at this film. CinemaSins lambasted it, but they do that to every film because that’s their whole schtick so I’m not sure I should count it. Likewise Honest Trailers (back when Screen Junkies was worth watching) and Pitch Meeting both picked holes in it wherever they could but again that is the whole point of those shows.

The YouTuber Mauler has expressed his distaste with it and his criticisms seem to match mine from what I have heard. He has on several occasions inferred that a video critique of it is on its way and will be in his signature lengthy, detailed and comprehensive style. But he has been saying that for years and it hasn’t materialised.

I know Mauler could articulate these criticisms better than pretty much anyone, let alone me. (That would also preclude me from having to do any of the intellectual work myself). But since it seems he is never going to get around to making that video, I feel I may have to find my own words to explain why I hate this film.

But, maybe I was mistaken. It’s been a decade since I have seen it. I have changed a whole bunch since then, matured, grown. Maybe I would feel different now when looking at it with my older, wiser eyes. I am always happy to revise my opinion in the face of new evidence or change my mind and admit that I was wrong if so proven. And it wouldn’t be fair for me to critique a film so harshly if I haven’t seen it recently.

So I am going to rewatch Interstellar, my most hated movie of all time. Against my better judgement I am going to give it another chance and a fair crack of the whip. That way, I can ensure that my knowledge of it is up to date and fresh in my mind.

Maybe I will come around to this film that is beloved by millions. Maybe I will ‘see the light’ and become another Nolan sycophant, waxing lyrical about it relentlessly. I dunno. I can tell you I am not looking forward to it. But if I’m going to write the critique of this dumpster fire that has been itching to get out for nearly a decade, the least I can do is my due diligence and rewatch it again.

I’ll watch it as objectively and dispassionately as I can. I’ll be taking notes, pros and cons alike, and finally write a review of the film that nearly killed my love of movies altogether.

Alright, alright, alright. Here we go.

Regardless of whether I change my mind about Interstellar, I still think Nolan’s batting average is okay at best. Four of his films, (about a third), I rate highly, and a couple are average. But about half of them are ‘a swing and a miss’. That’s my opinion, anyway. If you enjoy them, all the power to you. I still think Nolan’s ‘Mid’. A very good director who is overrated to Godlike status.

Thanks for reading and see you soon for my critique of Interstellar. (When I muster up the courage to sit through it again, that is).

The Common Centrist