Director Report Card: Christopher Nolan (2023)

12. Oppenheimer

Other directors could have made “Oppenheimer.” J. Robert Oppenheimer is a pivotal figure, not just in science, but in modern history as we know it. He's already been the subject of many different biographies, a BBC serial, a play, and a few previous films. This is the kind of respectable topic that you'd expect any number of stately, award season-friendly biopics could be made about. Other directors could have made “Oppenheimer” but only Christopher Nolan could have made it a blockbuster. Nolan is one of the few directors you can sell a movie on and Universal knew it, selling the hell out of the film to general audience. When paired by the buzz generated by the “Barbenheimer” meme, a serious, R-rated drama about the niche topics of history and nuclear physics ended up becoming one of the highest grossing films of 2023. It might also be one of the highly lauded films of Nolan's frequently praised work.

In 1954, J. Robert Oppenheimer is interviewed by a security hearing for his possible communist connections and for rumors he might've been linked to a Russian spy that reported on the Trinity program. He recounts his professional career, beginning his studies at Cambridge and how a meeting with  Niels Bohr encouraged him to study theoretical physics. He's questioned about his relationship with known communist Jean Tatlock and how he met his wife, Kitty. Eventually, after becoming the head of the physics department at Berkeley, he's recruited to help create a nuclear bomb for the U.S. military. The further away from these events Oppenheimer grows, the more he comes to regret his actions. Meanwhile, in 1959, Lewis Strauss gives his opinion on Oppenheimer to the Senate while awaiting confirmation in the president's cabinet. 

Christopher Nolan would first come to most people's attention thanks to “Memento,” a movie that gained praise for its non-linear story structure. Timelines that leap around have continued to become a lauded part of Nolan's future film, in the flashback heavy structures of “The Prestige” or “Inception's” multi-layered narrative. Yet it feels like it's been a while since a Nolan movie has gone back-and-forth like that. “Oppenheimer” does something very similar to “Memento,” in the way it follows two separate timelines that are differentiate by one being in black-and-white. That Oppenheimer telling his story to the security hearing also triggers extensive flashbacks, that make up the bulk of the movie's runtime, is another example of Nolan's favorite storytelling trick. This structure resembles the way memory works while also creating of chances for narrative ironies. 

Lots of movies attempt to sum up a prominent person's entire life, within a few hours. Yet “Oppenheimer” really does set out to synthesize a man's professional, political, and personal lives. It's a lot more than just a summing up of J. Robert Oppenheimer's career, starting with his school career, following throughout the creation of the nuclear bomb, and the aftermath of those events. Nolan – working from script he wrote himself – finds thematic links between all sectors of Oppenheimer's life. His political beliefs influence his career choices and the judgements made on him later in life. His tumultuous love life effects his professional decisions. It's all linked, no action existing in a vacuum. “Oppenheimer” is a movie of chain events – visually symbolized in the first shot being of ripples forming in a puddle – and, likewise, everything Robert does echoes through every other aspect of his world. 

Ironically, as much as “Oppenheimer” is a movie about one event triggering another, it zeroes in on J. Robert Oppenheimer's greatest flaw (at least in this telling): His inability to see the consequences of his action, to perceive what might follow from the events he triggers. He womanizes, juggling Jean and Kitty without guessing that this might effect both women negatively. He's well aware that his communism connections will be scrutinized by the government. Yet he doesn't report it when a colleague suggests sharing information with the Russians. Of course, the biggest example of this is the bomb itself. Afterwards, he feels remorse and regrets for all his mistakes, breaking down or wringing his hands about it. However, that's only after the fact. Oppie says early on that he's not great at the math side of physics, seeming to represent his inability to predict the fallout of his own actions in every corner of his life.

Of course, it's not like Oppenheimer was alone in his tendency to disconnect his actions from his consequences. When the film was first released, there was an exhausting round of Discourse about the film not showing the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some where offended that a movie about the mass death of thousands of Japanese people centered on a white guy feeling bad about it. This seems to overlooked a key scene. When deciding what cities to drop the nuclear bombs on, Secretary of War William L. Stimson rules out Kyoto partially because he honeymooned there with his wife. It's such a callous, telling line. An American has been to this place and therefore disqualifies it from annihilation. The rest of Japan is fine to be destroyed though, in his eyes. Not showing the bombing just further illustrates Oppenheimer's disconnect from his own actions and what happens because of them. 

It confirms all the clichés we have about the Academy that the only time they've given Nolan a Best Director nominations have been for his “serious,” non-genre films. This is all the funny, because “Oppenheimer” has more in common with his science fiction and superhero films than it at first appears. The scene where Oppie puts on his famous fedora for the first time feels a lot like Batman putting on the cowl for the first time. Similarly, the script makes drops references to future events the same way a comic book movie includes shout-outs to famous future characters or events. The famous quote from the Bhagavad Gita is highlighted long before it'll become relevant to Oppenheimer's life. Los Alamos is whispered in a hushed tone long before Robert is recruited to help build the bomb. John F. Kennedy gets a name-drop that recalls the Joker's appearance being teased at the end of “Batman Begins.” Considering some people have entertained the (unlikely) theory that “Oppenheimer” is a metaphor for Nolan's own feelings about birthing the ubiquity of the superhero genre, this becomes all the more ironic.

No matter how much “Oppenheimer” resembles Nolan's previous movies, you can feel him attempting to stretch himself too. Another similarity with “Memento” is, much the same that film primarily took place in Leonard Shelby's mind, everything in the “Fusion” timeline is told from J. Robert Oppenheimer's perspective. (To the point that the screenplay was written in the first person.) Setting this story in Oppenheimer's own memories allows Nolan to indulge in a kind of visual symbolism that isn't typical of him. It's not exactly subtle. When recounting his sex life to the security hearing, Robert imagines himself naked before them. At the same time, he feels responsibility for Jean's death, her body weighing down on his chest. After reluctantly trying to celebrate the bomb successfully falling, he steps in a pile of ash. This visualizes him realizing just what he's unleashed. Think of this as Film Theory 101 for the kind of Reddit Bros that venerate Nolan as one of the greats. That's not wrong. Yet it is interesting to see the director blend some of his past styles into something new for him.

Maybe the movie's visual signifiers arise out of its desire to make the invisible world Oppenheimer observes visible. This is evident through a number of visual effects shots, of strings of atoms and molecules, of stars burning out in space. Moments like this is when “Oppenheimer,” to me, feels like its really pushing towards something bigger. The film is not made for physicists and I'm absolutely not one either. Yet the steps Nolan and his team took to illustrate the scientific concepts beyond our physical world impresses me. You also see this in the thundering sound design, that piles on otherworldly bursts of noise and corresponding walls of silence to further show us the strength of these unseen forces on our world. 

That sound design is also excellent at building suspense. Whenever Oppenheimer feels overwhelming, there's a cavalcade of stomping noise on the soundtrack. This can't help but make your heartbeat rise, in fearful anticipation of what might happen... Which is pretty surprising, since we do know what happens. “Oppenheimer” pulls off a neat trick, of leaving us feel suspense over foregone conclusions. We know that the nuclear bomb won't start a chain reaction that destroys the world. We know that J. Robert Oppenheimer is ultimately dismissed of any un-American activities. Yet the film is so brilliantly assembled, so tightly edited and so beautifully photographed, that it all comes together fantastically. All the craftsmen involved in the making of “Oppenheimer” were operating at the top of their game.

At the center of the film is a career-best performance from Cillian Murphy. Murphy's deep blue eyes convey so much emotion, most painful during the scenes where he's barely holding himself together under the consideration pressure of what he's done. Such as when he's grappling with Jean's suicide or the consequences of the bomb. It's amazing how much Murphy can tells with just a look or the angle of his face. He carries the entire movie on his shoulders, making even the most melodramatic dialogue – such as the final line – come off as mythic and profound. 

Murphy is supported by an incredible cast, composed largely of some of the best character actors of our modern age. Basically every part has a recognizable face in it, from a bellowing Jason Clarke as Roger Robb or a suitably sweaty David Dastmalchian as William Borden. Robert Downey Jr. is fantastic as Strauss, a man whose petty grievances and resentments boil under the surface until finally overflowing in the last act. If you look at Strauss as the movie's antagonist, he's not the most sinister part in the film. In just a few scenes, Casey Affleck projects a deep sense of malevolence. Dane DeHaan is also coldly calculating as Kenneth Nichols, seeming to glare at other humans with an alien gaze. The heart break and erratic moods of Jean are brought to life with a real depth by Florence Pough. 

Ultimately, “Oppenheimer” is likely to go down in cinema history as one of the best biographic films ever made, that grapples with the complexities of the man at its center while also giving us a holistic understanding of this figure. It handles the heavy meaning of the nuclear bomb, how it changed the world forever. On a technical level, it is a massive achievement, its music, sound design, cinematography, and editing all operating on a top level. A massively talented cast and a director playing with his own styles and themes in fascinating ways insures it's a strong watch, every single time. Sure to be discussed and debated for years to come, it's another masterpiece from one of the great commercial filmmakers of our time. [Grade: A]

Director Report Card: Christopher Nolan (2020)

11. Tenet

A new Christopher Nolan film inevitably brings with it a huge degree of excitement and hype. I guess directing one of the most successful and critically acclaimed superhero movies of all time earns someone that level of fame. From its announcement, “Tenet” was shrouded in secrecy. The trailers were mysterious, never giving us a clear idea of what the movie was actually about but providing plenty of hints to Nolan's puzzle-hungry fans. Of course, now we all know that this hype was a bit premature. Nobody could have predicted COVID-19 completely changing the world we live in and bringing the movie industry to its knees. Whatever merits “Tenet” may have as a movie have been totally overshadowed by the ramifications it will have on the future of cinema. 

But let's not talk about that right now. What is “Tenet” about exactly? A CIA agent participates in an undercover operation at a Kiev opera house. He prevents a terrorist organization from seeking a mysterious object. During the attack, he's saved by a bullet magically firing back into someone's gun. Afterwards, he's drafted into a secret organization known as Tenet. The group is tracking weapons with “inverted” entropy, that go backwards through time. The government has become increasingly concerned that a super weapon from the future is attempting to end life in the past. Teamed with an operative named Neil, the new agent tracks down a weapons dealer who may be driving the world towards total destruction.

The majority of Christopher Nolan's movies have worked in established genres, often pairing them with flashy narrative gimmicks. “Following” and “Memento” were film noirs, paired with twisting, non-linear stories. “Inception” was a heist movie set within the human mind. “Interstellar” drew from previous sci-fi epics and applied time-altering scientific principals to them. From this perspective, “Tenet” is essentially Christopher Nolan finally making his James Bond movie. It follows a blunt instrument super-spy, working for a secret organization, trying to thwart a villain's plan to end the world as we know it. If Nolan's riffing on Cold War ideas couldn't have been more obvious, he even has the characters reference a new Cold War and makes the bad guys Russians.

Added to this espionage structure is a far-out sci-fi idea. “Tenet” is not a time travel movie in the traditional sense. Characters don't go back in time to previous periods in history. Instead, characters and objects who are inverted in “Tenet” eventually have to become un-inverted. People run through events twice, backwards and forward. There's more than one long scene in the movie explaining the far-out science behind this. These exposition dumps get even more convoluted as the movie goes on, the script talking about more ideas like events from the far future affecting the present and discussions of algorithms. 

To be totally honest, I did not really understand the logic behind “Tenet's” time-bending gimmick. As the film starts talking more and more about events that will happen in the future – that are not depicted in the actual movie – it starts to become harder to wrap your brain around. When you have multiple characters moving in opposing directions through time, and vague MacGuffins being pursued, you start to require a mental flow-chart of what exactly is happening. It's not just the movie's science that's hard to decipher. The standard A-to-B plotting is tricky to follow sometimes too. Names and ideas are referenced before we understand them. There's a subplot about art forgery that is very important until it isn't. So many story points are being thrown around so often that I required the Wikipedia page to keep abreast of the film. 

Ultimately, what is all this convoluted exposition and interacting timelines meant to build upon? “Tenet's” particular type of time travel attempts to be paradox free. If something happens while one “inverted” person or object is traveling backwards through time, mirrored events must happen as time flows forward. In other words, the movie is going to show you the same events backwards and forwards. It's a cinematic palindrome, which is hinted at from the title on-down. Once you realize this, “Tenet” actually becomes less interesting. A man the protagonist fights is revealed to be the future version of himself. A minor player in the climax, we soon learn, is actually a major supporting character. Small events glimpsed in the past are given greater significance later on. 

In Nolan's better movie, this kind of narrative preciseness was satisfying. In “Tenet,” it only proves disappointing. This might be because the movie shrouds its own story in so much exposition and mysterious foreboding. Or it could be because we aren't given nearly enough reasons to care about what happens. There's not much of an emotional “in” into “Tenet's” story. The lead character has few relationships, very little in the way of bonds or interpersonal connections. We know so little about him that he's literally never given a name. The end credits refer to the protagonist only as... The Protagonist. The idea of someone being swept up into a confusing, time-bending secret organization could've been relatable but the Protagonist goes about everything with a stern sense of duty. 

The lack of character depth and increasingly convoluted story makes “Tenet” seem more and more like a formal exercise as it goes on. Was Nolan more interested in Big Scientific Ideas and the far-out set pieces he could engineer with them? Perhaps. However, it must be said, those set pieces are pretty cool. The high-light of the movie is a car chase, in which cars going backwards smash into a car going forward. The way that scene unravels, with a hand being pressed down on a brake pedal, is pretty novel. The twitchy, reversed motion action provides a really interesting visual. The scene that follows, where a conversation that has two different meanings depending on which direction it goes in, is also a clever sequence. The reverse motion melee, that we see play off from two perspectives, also takes advantage of that unique style.

As you'd probably expect, Nolan makes sure to engineer some very large stunts, to further play with this premise he's invented. That cool car chase climaxes with the very cool sight of a flipped vehicle righting itself. More than one explosion is shown both unfolding and de-folding. One of the film's most elaborate set pieces concerns a grounded airplane being crashed into a building, which we naturally see rewind as well. Yet, as “Tenet” goes on, this trick looses its panache. The film's climax is a blurrily depicted combat sequence. Watching army guys in face-concealing mask scramble through a gray desert can only generate so many thrills, even if there's a cool shot of a collapsing building reassembling itself.

The Protagonist is a tricky character to get invested in, largely because we learn so little about him. His history is left a complete blank. He's utterly devoted to his task of saving the world, though we never learn why. He forms one major friendship through the film but his connections to other people are kept largely professional. Even if our unnamed hero is intentionally kept blank, one thing is certain about this Protagonist: He's cool. John David Washington plays him with an almost unflappable sense of certainty. While fighting off a trio of thugs in a kitchen, he's casually smashing heads into plates. Washington strikes the right attitude for a role like this, using his clear movie star charisma to turn a blank at least into someone we can root for.

Another role that is similarly thin on paper but brought to life by an electrifying actor is Neil. If the Protagonist is Nolan's weirdly sexless riff on Bond, then Robert Pattinson's Neil is the equivalent of sorts of Felix Leiter. That would be a frequent partner that is more wily than his brute force companion. Pattinson gets all the movie's best lines, producing most of the film's laughs, and enlivening every scene he's in. Kenneth Branagh plays Sator, the film's Russian villain with a global death wish. It's cool to see Branagh utilizes his aristocratic presence for an intimidating villain, someone determined to do absolutely anything to further his own goals. Michael Caine and Fiona Dourif appear for small roles. It's nice to see them. 

The closest thing “Tenet” has to an emotional through-line involves Elizabeth Debicki as Kat, Sator's estranged wife and the Protagonist's primary contact. Her embittered relationship with her husband, and the desire to protect their child, is the closest thing to an identifiable human element driving “Tenet's” story. A major theme running throughout the movie seems to be what you are willing to sacrifice for whatever you believe the greater good to be. Though Debicki does everything she can to bring this idea to life, her performance can't prop up the entire heart and soul of this movie. (Though we've gotta give Chris some credit for not including another dead wife in the story.)

Ultimately, the quality of “Tenet” is almost besides the point. Christopher Nolan's insistence on getting the movie in theaters, in the middle of a global pandemic, forced cinemas to reopen prematurely. Not only did this lead to “Tenet” having mediocre box office, it may have ramifications on the entire medium. Because “Tenet” did not keep movie theaters alive single-handedly, Warner Brothers will be releasing their entire 2021 slate on their streaming services. Which will bleed business from whatever theaters remain open. Nolan has been pissed about this, which is rich considering the shit show is partially his fault. But I won't let that color my opinion on “Tenet.” While the film might play better on a second viewing, a script that is structurally dense but emotionally shallow leads to a largely frustrating experience. All the bad-ass stunts in the world can't make up for characters or a story you don't care about. [Grade: C+]

Director Report Card: Christopher Nolan (2017)

10. Dunkirk

I'll admit, my enthusiasm for Christopher Nolan has waned over the years. Once one of my favorite directors, I now greet a new Nolan film with a somewhat resigned feeling. It's not because he's stopped making good movies. I was one of those folks that really liked “Interstellar,” after all. Maybe it's just because the director receiving constant praise from especially enthusiastic – and at times insufferable – fan boys. My growing disinterest, as difficult to explain as it is, actually kept me from seeing his latest film in the theater. Considering Nolan shot the movie with a widescreen theatrical viewing in mind, it's probably a shame I'm only just now getting to it on Blu-Ray. Then again, from early on, “Dunkirk” was pegged as an Oscar contender, so I knew I'd be watching it around February.

The year is 1940 and World War II rages on in Europe. Germany has recently taken France, trapping a huge number of Allied soldiers behind enemy lines, in the town of Dunkirk. Rescue missions are on their way but the stranded men must survive constant attacks by the enemy. Tommy waits with hundreds of others on the beach, a handful of men being carried off at a time. By sea, many different boats – including a civilian vessel operated by Mr. Dawson and his sons – hope to arrive in time to help. In the air, planes cross the English channel, hoping to protect the endangered men. Among them are two British fighter pilots, Farrier and Collins, who are low on fuel and under attack.

The war movie genre brings with it certain expectations. World War II still carries heavy enough historical significance in America that a large deal of seriousness is expected from films about it. Yet there's enough distance from that conflict that many war movies become macho action fantasies as well. With “Dunkirk,” Christopher Nolan completely avoids either direction. His film  re-frames the war movie totally as a thriller about survival. The soldiers aren't action heroes but men desperate to make it out alive. Nolan never undersells the sacrifice of the men who actually died at Dunkirk. However, he tosses off the weight of stuffy historical drama by turning the story into a quick-paced thriller. It's a successful spin on a difficult to tackle genre.

If he's not directing an adaptation of some sort – and even when he is, some times – Christopher Nolan sure likes to throw in stories with twisting narrative gimmicks. “Dunkirk” isn't non-linear or especially hard to follow. However, the director's love of multi-layered stories appears in the multiple perspective from which he tells the tale. “Dunkirk” quickly introduces the three corners of its narrative early on, giving each a title card – The Mole, the Sea, and the Air – and, as is always the case with Nolan, hopes the audience can keep up. The three stories play out on their own before coming together in the last act, in a way that feels especially satisfying.

Splitting the film's narrative in three directions also serves another purpose. “Dunkirk” is, pointedly, not a character driven film. There's very little dialogue in the movie. Tommy, as played by Fionn Whitehead, is our default protagonist and he barely talks throughout. The Germans are never portrayed on-screen, only appearing as enemy bombers or boats, acting like a partially unseen malevolent force out of a horror movie. Nolan's focus is, instead, on creating the maximum amount of suspense and visceral intensity as possible through sound design and visuals alone.

By dropping the audience directly into the story, Nolan accomplishes something else. The first scene shows a group of soldiers fleeing down a street, each of them being picked off by enemy fire, until only one survives. From there, the Mole portion of “Dunkirk” remains focused on soldiers running through a war, trying to survive. Nolan's camera remains tight on the men through one tense situation after another. Bombs explode down the beach as they hit the ground, ducking. Two soldiers struggle in the water, as a wayward boat floats towards them, threatening to crush them both. Later, the ship taking them away from Dunkirk is torpedoed. From there, the same group of men are left in a hull, slowly filing with water. By remaining so focused on this perspective, Nolan gives the audience a good idea of what life during wartime actually is like. It's a constant, terrifying struggle to survive.

If the Mole portion of “Dunkirk” keeps its characters intentionally vague, the Sea sections are the film's most personable part. This element zeroes in on a small group of men, civilians heading into a war zone. Here, “Dunkirk” grapples with the personal sacrifices made during war time in a more psychological sense. The Dawson family picks up a soldier, who is shell-shocked and terrified of heading back towards Dunkirk. He quickly gets into a conflict with the Dawson family. The father, we learn, has already lost a son. Throughout the course of the story, he will loose another. Here, we see the heart of a film that sometimes comes too close to being chilly. “Dunkirk,” when not focuses on visceral tension, is equally willing to show how the weight of the war hovers over normal people.

With the sections in the sky above the sea, “Dunkirk” zeroes in on another element of the war. Much like the boys on the beach, the Air section shows men right in the middle of the conflict. Their planes are shot at. They are slowly loosing fuel. One of the two men is shot down, landing in the water, his cockpit flooding while he struggles to escape his seats. Yet there's also an odd isolation to these scenes. The men are miles above the sea. They are alone in their cockpits. They are only accompanied by disembodied voices from their radio and the roaring sounds from outside. They have to make hard decisions, counting only on themselves. This is an interesting approach to aerial combat, creating tension by zeroing in on the alienation the men feel in their flying vehicles.

“Dunkirk's” determination not to explore its characters' back stories extends to its casting. There are very few big names in the cast. Perhaps the film's most recognize performer, Tom Hardy as fighter pilot Farrier, spends most of his screen time with an oxygen mask covering half his face. (Though I suppose Harry Styles, formerly of boy band One Direction, is better known to some people. Styles actually does pretty well, by the way.) So most of the actors have to show their skills more in their faces and body language. Fionn Whitehead shows his youth and inexperience. Hardy is all steely determination and unspoken doubt.

Still, the film does contain some more typically showy performances. Kenneth Branagh, as the voice of authority on the beach, has to make difficult choices during the hardest time possible. The Sea portion features some strong acting. Mark Rylance is great as the patriarch who quietly holds his family together as they cross the sea, keeping his personal pain inside. Cillian Murphy goes in the opposite direction, playing the traumatized soldier as someone who is shaken apart by his experiences. Barry Keoghan is also very good as the teen boy who accompanies the Dawsons on their voyage, an idealistic young man in a film who's depiction of war is anything but.

Visually, “Dunkirk” represents Christopher Nolan at his most Kubrick-ian. He keeps his camera close on his performers but without going inside their heads. This makes a film that sometimes feels quite cold, a bracing experience focused on creating thrills, showing us how everyone is feeling through their actions, not thoughts. This sometimes extends to dropping below licking waves or into burning fires. Matching this approach is Hans Zimmer's score. Similar to his work on “Interstellar,” ticking clock sounds and rumbling noise is employed to create a film that feels as taunt as possible.

Yet “Dunkirk” shows that it does have a heart, and a big one, in a most unexpected way. Towards the film's back half, a fleet of ships arrive on Dunkirk to rescue the stranded soldiers. Some of the ships are military but many of them are personal crafts. At this point, the score swells with feeling and emotion. The supporting heroes cheer. It should be hokey but, somehow, this plea to wartime patriotism – of a country's population putting their own lives on the line to save their soldiers – is quite effective. “Dunkirk” may keep its heroes at arm's lengths but its certainly not cut off from the feelings a military conflict can make people feel.

“Dunkirk” is also excellently paced. If people complained that “Interstellar” was too long, it seems Christopher Nolan took that criticism to heart. “Dunkirk” runs an economical 106 minutes, making it one of the shorter Best Picture nominees this year. It's a story constantly on the move, leaving little room for slow periods. Maybe that's why the film, a chilly thriller about a very specific point in time without any big stars, managed to become a huge box office success. Some have called it one of the film's best years. Some have even gone so far to say it's one of the best World War II movies ever made. I don't know about that. “Dunkirk” is a bit too impersonal for me at times. However, Nolan certainly succeeded at his goal of making a bracing experience, a top-notch thriller that puts the viewer in the place of a scared solider. [Grade: B]

Director Report Card: Christopher Nolan (2014)

9. Interstellar

Christopher Nolan is a high-minded filmmaker. His early noirs were psychologically complex and used unconventional dramatic devices and non-linear storytelling to add extra layers to his films. His Batman trilogy elevated the entire superhero genre, turning guys in spandex into high art and taking comic book movies to unprecedented levels of critical acclaim and popular success. “Inception” was simultaneously the most conceptually complex heist flick ever made and an epic set entirely inside the human mind. For his next trick, the director looked to re-popularize “hard” science fiction, a genre that went out of popularity in the early seventies. While “Interstellar” has not been a phenomenon on the level of “The Dark Knight” or “Inception,” it’s still been a hit internationally. Nolan continues to be the rarest of creatures: An intellectual and a hit maker, a guy who makes complex, challenging films that are also really popular and make lots of money.

"Interstellar" is set in a near future where an unnamed ecological disaster has plunged Earth into chaos. A dust bowl grips the planet, eliminating all crops except for corn. Humanity is facing extinction. Cooper, a widower, former aero-space pilot, and current corn farmer, lives an unsatisfied life. He fears that mankind is focusing too much on survival and dismissing dreams of reaching the stars. A strange gravitational phenomena in his precocious daughter’s bedroom leads him to a secret base in the mountains. The remnants of NASA, hidden from the public, prepare a dangerous mission, launching astronauts into a black hole outside of Saturn, in hopes that inhabitable planets will be on the other sides. After a highly qualified pilot walk into their lab, the scientists in charge have to offer Cooper the job. He has to make the hard decision to leave his family behind, to an uncertain future, to go on a mission he may never return from… And one that might save the human race.

“Interstellar’s” goal is nothing less then to make a “2001: A Space Odyssey” for the new century. Like Kubrick’s epic, both films share a fascination with big ideas and plausible science. “Interstellar” never specifies what future year it is set in. However, it’s a world not far removed from our own. The film endeavors to portray interstellar space travel in as realistic a manner as possible. Ships spin through the stars, propelled by their own motion. Traveling from planet to planet takes years. Special attention is paid to relativity, to time passing different for those on Earth compared to those traveling across space. The focus on plausible science extends to the film’s hugely heady concepts. Space, gravity, robotics, black holes, eternity, time travel, other dimensions, and humanity’s place in the universe are just some of the ideas explored in “Interstellar.” It’s a film with no shortage of far out ideas and huge concepts.

Because “Interstellar” deals with such large conception, it’s a film packed with impressive spectacle. Rarely has the massiveness of space been better portrayed. Space is immense, black, and empty. No sound travels through space, giving the environment a sterile, cold feel. Yet there’s something wondrous about it too. The film fills its wide, wide frames with huge, impossibly big images. As the character approaches Saturn, the ship seems tiny in front of the massive, orange planet. This is only the film’s first, unforgettable image. The second comes when the crew nears the worm hole. When shown in previous films, black holes are always portrayed as a sucking rabbit’s hole in space, a tunnel leading down deeper. “Interstellar,” instead, shows the black hole as a spherical shape, a reflective object in the vastness of space. The space ship entering the worm hole, infinite space being reflected above and below, all the cosmos spiraling around them, is an indelible image. These are fantastic images, unlike any other ever put on cinema before.

For all its high-minded ideas, “Interstellar” is also an adventure film. It contains good old fashion thrills too. After breaching the worm hole, the astronauts first land on a dank, watery planet. The entire world appears to be covered with water yet it usually floats tepidly at ankle level. Until, the characters notice too late, that the mountains in the distance aren’t mountains. They’re waves. This leads to the action high-light of “Interstellar.” Nolan’s camera places the viewer in the cockpits of the space ship. The sound design rumbles, giving the viewer a great idea of how dangerous the situation is. The film shakes and stutters, carrying every rough bump and shutter through the theater. On the water planet, a massive wave barrels down on the astronauts. Barely, they escape its wake, rushing up the side of the water, the ship’s fins splashing across the surface. It’s an intense moment.

For all the wonder the film assigns space travel, it never understates the danger of the mission. “Interstellar” is incredibly grim at times as well. The situation on Earth seems hopeless. Apocalyptic dust storms tear through the countryside, blotting out windows and busting into homes. How grave the situation is must be stated clearly, to give the film’s mission even more resonance. That grimness continues into the middle section. The conditions on Earth grow worst. Families flee their homes and towns, desperately looking for safety anywhere. Meanwhile, in space, Cooper and his team touch down on the film’s second alien world. This one is inhospitably cold. So cold, in fact, that the clouds are frozen. The space ship navigates huge frozen expanses of ice. The surface isn’t any more greeting. The ground is grey, rough, and extends past the horizon. The characters walk across stone bridges, above more grey, unwelcoming ground. The images are stunning in their hugeness. Yet this is not a planet we’d ever like to visit. It’s no mistake that “Interstellar’s” darkest moments take place on this hellish, frozen ice world.

Nolan has been accused in the past of being cold, of uninterested in the trials of its human characters. It’s not entirely inaccurate to say he’s a director more interested in ideas then people. “Interstellar” is obviously emulating the works of Kubrick, who could be accused of many of the same flaws. This movie, in particularly, is modeled after “2001,” which was perhaps Kubrick’s coldest, most scientific film. However, the Nolan brothers smartly provide an emotional heart into the crazy, huge world of “Interstellar.” Beyond its massive ideas, this is a movie about family. The early scenes focuses heavily on Cooper’s relationship with his kids. Son Tom is more practical and seems content with his future of being a farmer. Daughter Murphy, however, follows in her father’s footstep, of being scientifically minded, of wanting to solve the mysteries of the universe. Before leaving for space, Cooper has to assure his daughter that he’ll return someday. He holds her as she cries on her bed, uncertain of his return. It’s not treacle, the emotions instead being honestly earned. The film frames its epic story not in terms of Cooper saving humanity. Instead, his goal is to return to his kids, to ensure a future for his children. It roots a very big story in something personal, small, and understandable.

Of the many reoccurring themes in “Interstellar,” a case can be made that the enduring power of love is its most important. At the halfway point, Anne Hathaway’s Dr. Brand assures everyone that love is a constant. That we love people who are dead or gone, that it transcends time and space. That’s a potentially gooey, overly sentimental expression. However, “Interstellar” is practical in its application. The downsides of the theory of relativity are rarely explored in science fiction, if they’re acknowledged at all. “Interstellar” builds most of its conflict around the idea. While Cooper and the others are exploring space, the clock is always ticking back home. Hours on the other side of the worm hole are years back home. While Cooper is gone trying to save his family, his family is growing up without him. The film brilliantly illustrates this by having the crew receive scrambled, far-off messages from Earth. Within minutes, on a fuzzy monitor screen, Cooper watches his kids grow up. He watches his son fall in love, get married, have his first child, and loose that child to the harsh realities of a declining planet. How this makes Cooper feel isn’t expressed through words. Instead, the camera focuses on his face as he weeps. Along with its big ideas, the screenplay reaches for big emotions too. By approaching those emotions sensitively, they never feel cheap or manipulative.

In the final hour, these twin themes of exploration and the power of love intermingle. “Interstellar” saves its most far-out ideas for its finale. Family and love prove to be the answer to the film’s biggest concerns. Throughout the film, references are dropped to fifth dimensional beings, entities so advance that time is a physical concept to them. This promise is paid off at the climax. The film illustrates what time as a place might look like. It’s another impressive image in a film full of them, a sprawling, unending cavern of time. Without spoiling too much, here the film comes full circle. The tiny concerns of a family breaking apart are connected with the fate of the human race and our potential as a species. Amazingly, “Interstellar” does not stop there. Instead, it travels further ahead, showing how mankind might survive the problems of the future. The grimness of the first act builds towards unbridled optimism. Love connects everything. The film ends on a note of exploration and closure.

Further anchoring such a conceptually advanced film is a sturdy cast. We are knee-deep in the McConaissance. Matthew McConaughey’s graduation from shirtless pop culture punchline to Academy Award-winning actor is well established by now. Nolan cast the man for his all-American persona. McConaughey plays a scientist but not as a stuffy egghead. Instead, Cooper is an adventurer and a dreamer, another way to make the film’s huge ideas more accessible to the common folk. The supporting cast is full of Nolan regulars doing good work. Anne Hathaway plays Brand, a serious scientist who, unexpectedly, masks a deeply feeling heart. It’s a cliché by now, especially since her undeserved Oscar-winning turn in “Les Miserables,” that Hathway makes the world cry when she cries. But, hey, it works. She’s an actress capable of summoning up great emotion and passing it on to the viewer. 

“Interstellar’s” supporting cast features smaller but equally strong performances. I left the film a fan of Mackenzie Foy, the actress who plays Murphy as a young girl. She’s a powerful performer with an innate likability. Hopefully, she has a rich career ahead of her. Jessica Chastain plays Murphy as an adult. It’s the harder part, as the adult Murphy has been hardened by disappointment and sadness. However, Chastain brings her own strengths to the role. Watching her regain hope is one of the biggest joys of the film. Underrated actors like Wes Bently and Topher Grace do their best work in years here, finally given parts worthy of their talent.

And one of the biggest surprises of the film is its robots. The robots aren’t much more then abstract shapes. Their resemblance to “2001’s” monoliths was no mistake, I’m sure. Yet those simple rectangular shapes prove surprisingly dynamic. The robots unfold in multiple ways. They waddle back and forth, stiff legs moving mechanically around. Spindly arms unfold from the blocks, reaching for switches and controls. As stiff as they appear, the robots can move surprisingly fast. Another scene from the movie I won’t soon forget is one of its automatons cartwheeling across the surface of the water planet. Fantastically, the robots have a personality. They’re programmed with attributes like humor and honesty. Bill Irwin and Josh Stewert voice TARS and CASE, the two robots most featured in the film. TARS proves rather lovable. He has a quiet sense of humor and, more importantly, drives the plot several times. The finale would not be as affecting without TARS’ warm, comforting voice.

“Interstellar” is not flawless. A surprise appearance from Matt Damon is the film’s biggest problem. Damon’s performance is fine. Instead, the character’s role is more problematic. In the middle of a huge epic about many complex ideas, “Interstellar” pauses for more routine elements. The movie attempts to link the subplot of a lying, murderous scientist desperate to return home with the film’s reoccurring theme of man’s drive to survive. Instead, it seems a bit like a lesser film interceding on a more cerebral story. A fist fight between two guys in clunky space suits will not change the opinion that Christopher Nolan is a director that doesn’t know how to film action scenes. The guy can pace and set-up a thrilling sequence fantastically. Yet the grittier business of two people slugging it out appears beyond his grasp.

I’ve also heard some complaints about the film’s sound mix. It is, indeed, sometimes deafening, blotting out even the dialogue. Nolan says its intentional and I’m inclined to agree with him. Dialogue being overshadowed by the booming sounds of the universe fits into the film’s cosmic ideas. It also doesn’t happen very often, preventing it from becoming tedious. It helps that the film features the best Hans Zimmer score in years. While on the water planet, the film emphasizes that an hour down there is a year back on Earth. The score, meanwhile, simulates a ticking clock, never letting the viewer forget what is at stake here. Zimmer’s deafening, throttling bass frequently gives way to sorrowful or lovely melodies. Compared to his thudding work on the Batman films, it’s like an entirely different composer made this elegant, longing, exciting score.

As in “Inception,” Christopher Nolan has managed to build a hugely compelling film out of complex, difficult to digest ideas. However, “Inception” was more about narrative juggling. It took big ideas into the smallest place, the human mind. “Interstellar,” meanwhile, plums deeper ideas on a far more cosmic scale, spreading huge concepts across the biggest place known to man, outer space. The film packs in far more “wow” moments then any other mainstream Hollywood film in recent memory. It’s a great Christopher Nolan film, a great science fiction, a great space epic, and a great movie, period. [Grade: A]

Director Report Card: Christopher Nolan (2012)

8. The Dark Knight Rises

Considering my dislike of “The Dark Knight” but my enjoyment of everything else Nolan has done, I went into the midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” uncertain of what to expect. Honestly, I kind of wanted to hate it. Just because I’m stubborn. I left the theater mad all right. Not out of frustration or disappointment but because I had to eat a whole lot of crow. Goddamn it. He pulled it off. Light spoiler alert for the review ahead.

The movie had me pretty much from minute one. Bane’s aerial escape from his airplane prison is a hugely dynamic action sequence, especially the shot where the camera launches out of the falling airplane. Gotham is in peace and Bruce Wayne lives in solitude, his company slowly falling apart. Once a terrorist with a vendetta and a smart-ass thief enter the picture, a complicated series of plot lines begin to fall into place. Some have called the movie convoluted. No doubt, there’s a lot going on here. Like many of Nolan’s films, it demands your attention. However, unlike “The Dark Knight,” the various subplots and concurrent storylines never falter around needlessly. Watching all the story threads come together is amazingly satisfying. Every scene has importance. This is a very tight ship and, even with a nearly three hour long runtime, expertly paced.

The plot can pretty clearly be split into two halves here, much like “Batman Begins.” The first half is the most fun, as it concerns Bruce being pulled back out of his shell, a new threat emerging, and introducing fascinating new characters. After a serious plot turn, some major characters are waylaid and the story becomes almost oppressively grim. Gotham is turned into an isolated police state, governed by a mad warlord, the threat of nuclear annihilation looming over it constantly. Normally, in a superhero movie, you don’t have to worry about the good guy loosing or lots of innocent people dying. But Christopher Nolan is an auteur. If anybody was going to cross those lines, it would be him. The grimness of the second act makes the hero’s triumphant return and the action-packed finale deeply satisfying.

I frequently joke about the supposed political subtext in the Nolanverse, especially the reading that “The Dark Knight” is an allegory for the War on Terror. (And the less said about Rush Limbaugh’s typically misinformed interpretation, the better.) However, it’s pretty much impossible to ignore the political subtext in “The Dark Knight Rises.” This is a movie about the haves vs. the have-nots. Bruce Wayne starts the film out as a millionaire, protected from the problems of the street, a fact Catwoman is all too willing to point out. Class warfare erupts and the poor and downtrodden raid the mansions and homes of the rich and protected. There’s a deeper, more sinister level to the images of people marching on the streets, since it’s all being engineered by a madman determined to destroy the city. Nolan’s outlook is downbeat. Given a chance to govern themselves, Gotham City quickly descends into a violent state with a kangaroo court system. (Which provides the film’s most amusing cameo.) Bruce’s arc is essentially that of a one-percenter learning to become part of the 99%. Imagine the college term papers that will be written about this one.

Tied into these themes is the character of Bane. I’ve always considered Bane, in the comics, to be a highly gimmicky character with a silly Luchador mask, not much more then the Batfamily answer to Doomsday who quickly suffered villain decay after his initial appearance. Aside from Gail Simone, most writers haven’t been able to do much that’s intriguing with him. Nolan and his team actually make him an interesting character. Bane is the ideological opposite of Batman. He is just as strong, just as smart, as Bruce, even benefits from the same training. While Bruce was raised in privilege, Bane was raised in poverty, in the worse prison on Earth. When he tells Batman that the shadows obey him, you believe it. As the film goes on and the villain establishes his rule over Gotham, he becomes a truly threatening figure. It’s so effective you can easily overlooked Tom Hardy’s muffled, Sean Connery impersonation. His monologue delivered in front of Black Gate Prison is destined to go down as an iconic, lingering moment in film history.

None of this would mean much if the film wasn’t as damn successful as an action movie as it is. I can’t say this Batman is a pussy. He kicks so many asses. Bats and Selina are quickly established as a fantastic battle couple. The rooftop battle when the two first become acquainted is fantastic. However, it doesn’t compare to when the two of them descend into the sewer, picking off henchmen one by one. That’s just two solid minutes of ass-kickery. The one-on-one standoff with Bane is incredibly effective, just as punishing and brutal as it needs to be. (I wasn’t sure if Nolan would use the classic lifted-over-shoulders-and-down-on-the-knee pose, but he did and it’s awesome.) The Bat, the new vehicle which is halfway between the Batcopter and the Batwing, is incredibly versatile. Its extensive use in the second half of the film leads to some fantastically exciting moments. Nolan has finally learned how to direct an action scene and all without compromising his usual style.

Another leveling element is Anne Hathaway as Catwoman. The character adds so much energy and humor to the film. There are several laugh-out-loud moments involving her. I’m a Hathaway fan but I wasn’t immediately sold when I heard her cast in the iconic part. But she really is the perfect Catwoman. If Nolan took lots of liberties with Bane or previous Bat-villains, he hews shockingly close to the source material when it comes to Selina. She’s a criminal but has her own moral code. Her intelligence and attitude has her standing toe-to-toe with Batman, making them a perfect couple. (They even got Holly Robinson in here.) Sassy, intelligent, strong, masking a dark past without letting it define her, she’s definitely one of the best female characters to ever appear in a Nolan film. Not to mention that Hathaway wears the cat suit fantastically. She’s hot on a level that I honestly have trouble putting into words. There are several moments that are jaw-dropping. My only complaint is that she never gets to use a whip.

The rest of the cast stands up. Christian Bale actually expands pass his typically intensity here. The eight years of isolation has changed Bruce Wayne and when he decides to get back into the game, you can actually see him having fun. The movie establishes just how much Alfred cares about him, especially in two heart-breaking scenes. He’s certainly more then just a wise advice dispenser this time. Kaine is wonderful. Commissioner Gordon kicks a lot of ass, essentially filling the hero role while Bruce is exiled during the second half. Along with John Blake, the other new character played by Joseph Gordon Levitt, who proves to be just as intuitive and strong a character as Batman is.

I might make fun of his accent but Tom Hardy is imposing and intimidating as Bane, embodying the character’s cunning and crushing power. Marion Cotillard is not as interesting a love interest as Hathaway is. (And the movie seems to drawl a lot of attention to the previously unnoticed mole on her forehead.) She just isn’t giving as much to, at least until the final sequence when a fire blazes up behind her eyes. Hell, even Morgan Freeman is given plenty of stuff to do. Luscious Fox is an active character all throughout the film. You can definitely tell the changes happening to the city are affecting him negatively.

As damn good as the rest of the movie is, I do have a handful of complaints. The most major of which is a last minute plot twist that more or less sells out Bane as a character, undermining pretty much everything that was interesting about him throughout the film. It’s a good twist but I’m not exactly sure it was worth it. The rest of my grievances are pretty much just petty bitching. I still hate the Batsuit. Hans Zimmer’s score, despite making good use of the main characters' theme, is still rather dull. Alfred disappears for a large portion of the story and I do miss him. Liam Neeson’s much publicized cameo comes off as a little silly. Let's just say it brings the phrase "Force Ghost" to mind. It’s fair to say the film drags a tad bit in its latter half. Also, Batman mopping for eight years over a woman who obviously didn’t even love him seems possibly out of character. Nolan continues to not show much skill for giving his villains awesome death scenes. Also, the movie should have been called “Batman Rises,” which is obviously the superior title that rolls off the tongue much better then the somewhat awkward “The Dark Knight Rises.” (I guess if a movie makes a billion dollars worldwide, you’re inclined to make sure people know this movie is a sequel to that one.) I'm willing to forgive most of these.

The ending does some incredible brave things that I can’t imagine any other summer blockbuster daring to do. Everything is wrapped up perfectly. You feel a real sense of loss and awe just when you’re supposed to. Like in “The Prestige” though, Nolan has one more magic trick up his sleeve. I don’t want to spoil anything and I certainly don’t expect another sequel set in the same universe but… At the very least, the adventure continues.

I don’t envy the director who gets the next, inevitable Batman reboot. Nolan is going to be a hard act to follow. My complaints about “The Dark Knight” still stand but the trilogy is certainly wrapped up in spectacular fashion. Is “The Dark Knight Rises” the best Batman movie ever made? Perhaps it’s too soon to tell. I'm awfully close to saying it though. [Grade: A]

Director Report Card: Christopher Nolan (2010)

7. Inception

“Inception” is the perfect movie for Nolan. It combines the mind-bending and the psychological, with thrilling shoot-outs and action set-pieces. It is equal parts “Batman” and “Memento,” an epic that takes place completely within the human mind.

Being the sole person on the planet who hated “The Dark Knight,” I was expecting Chris to screw up. Namely, that premise, of sneaking into a person’s dreams to steal or implant ideas, is tricky. “Dreams never make sense,” I was telling myself. However, the movie plans for this but introducing the idea of the architect, someone who literally builds the dream. The writer/director is an architect himself and his quest to make the story work is equally as perilous as the quest of the characters.

This script is so tightly constructed. Nolan is juggling so many different balls here that it’s amazing he pulled it off. Five or six different scenarios are going on at the same time. In the first act, the concept of dream extraction and inception are brilliantly laid out for the viewer. Pay close attention, this stuff will be important later. The movie never feels expositionary though. Ellen Page’s character needs to be introduced to this world so, by showing and explaining things to her, the film is also explaining things to its audience.

It’s not just story aspects that are being set up, but character back story. Leo’s character has a traumatized past that he hasn’t exactly dealt with, as well as legal problems keeping him out of the country. These tantalizing morals are dangled in front of us before becoming vital later on. All of this works as a summer blockbusters too, because of the amazing visuals and the intense Mubai chase scene.

Once the crew is together and all the ground rules set, we head into the real story. Now things get complicated. The idea of the subconscious being taught to defend itself's is slightly gimmicky but it makes sense. Like I said, this is a thriller too. And though the characters all ready have a time restraint to work under, actually having them being perused makes the tension that much more palatable.

And soon we go further down the rabbit hole, experiencing dreams within dreams. It really is a brilliant juggling act. Somehow, despite being completely involving the entire time, the film never lets us forget about the layers, how something else is always going on at the same time in a different place. Moreover, it does this visually but having what’s happening on one layer affect what happens on the other. (The zero gravity scenes in the hotel are one of the highlights of the film.) By the time we go racing into the climax, the film perfectly ties its subplots and emotional charges in with the story at the end, satisfyingly wrapping things up on both a plot and an emotional level. If all of this wasn’t complicated enough, the movie even throws extra wrenches at you, like the Mr. Charles gambit or the fate of Ken Watanbe’s character. Amazingly, it never slips. The whole thing is kept together the entire time.

I don’t know if it’s Nolan himself or his choice in second-unit directors, but the action scenes here are some of the best of his career. Gone are the shaky-cam of the Batman films, replaced with an concentrated, confident focus. The visuals and imagination on display is incredible and shows that Nolan is both a great writer and visual dreamer.

This is an ensemble piece through and through and the cast is appropriately solid. DiCaprio continues to play his tortured loner bit but the film packs that thread with actual emotional, making it work. Joseph Gordon-Levitt really shines here. All the bad ass action theatrics are given to his character and he performs them admirably. I’ve heard some people complain that Ellen Page is distracting but I don’t see it. Maybe it’s just because I’m a huge fan of the actress, but she comes off as whimsical but wise. Because the story is so focused, her character doesn’t get the investment she might merit but it’s still a good performance. I get the impression that Tom Hardy’s part was originally written for Heath Ledger (They even look similar.) but he also does well, being the trickster of the film and often providing some much needed comic relief. Cillian Murphy is mostly puzzled, amazed, or embittered but he ends up saying a lot with only a look or gesture. The best performance goes to Marion Cotillard. I’ve never seen her this pissed off in a movie before. She is a purely emotional character, a physical embodiment of rage, guilt, and loss. The character is ferocious and the performance is fantastic.

Despite being such a brain-scratcher and a crowd-pleaser, the movie doesn’t compromise. I was really afraid they were going to screw up at the end with some “It was all a dream” twist. It doesn’t do that but instead ends on an ambiguous note. Yes, this is a summer blockbuster that actually asks its audience to interpret something. Amazing, right? It is amazing. “Inception” is a high-light for everyone involved. [Grade: A]

Director Report Card: Chirstopher Nolan (2008)

6. The Dark Knight

Three years after its release, I think we can finally separate “The Dark Knight” from the hype. It’s a movie about Batman and a sequel to a well-received film, so it was all ready going to make WB a gazillion dollars. Heath Ledger was an up-and-coming actor when he took the role of the Joker but his death before the film’s release transformed him into an icon, like Bruce and Brandon Lee before him. The film went on to be embraced by critics, beloved by fans, won an Academy Award, and become one of the highest grossing films of all time. I stepped into the theater having all ready being told by hundreds of people this was a great movie.

I hated it. I knew I was going to hate it. I don’t consider myself a contrarian. I’ve enjoyed plenty of popular films. The months of hype and praise and WB’s manipulative viral marketing blitz told me I was destined to love the film and that just made me skeptical. I knew going in I was probably going to hate it after reading so much about it. But I wasn’t passing final judgment until I saw the film. The film I saw was frustrating and annoying. There’s a new Nolan Batman movie coming out in a couple of weeks though and I decided that I need to give “The Dark Knight” a second chance. Two million movie goers can’t be wrong, right?

I still hated it. Where do I even start? The first twenty minutes are solid. The Joker is given a dynamic entrance that peaks your attention. Batman and Commissioner Gordon are kicking some mob ass. Batman actually uses his skills as the World’s Greatest Detective. The fight scene with the Scarecrow provides continuity to the first film as well as being a solid fight scene in its own right. There’s some humor with Bruce’s interaction with Alfred and the relationship between Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent. I wasn’t real crazy about the copycat Batmen concept but it was still early. On this second viewing, I even found the scene where Heath Ledger’s Joker confronts the mob bosses, really that character’s proper introduction, to be pretty effective.

And then some stuff started to happen. Batman goes to China. Why? To get that one guy and bring him back to Gotham. Okay, sure, but did that need to be a huge globe-trotting adventure? Couldn’t this have been one scene in a back aisle? Liu, the character in question, doesn’t appear again until the film is almost over. His total screen time measures in around five minutes.

This is the first sign that Nolan’s love of complicated, non-linear storylines have transformed into a bunch of narrative wheel-spinning. Further example: The copy-cat Batman plot line leads to one further scene. Joker’s threat that someone will die until Batman reveals himself seems like it will lead to juicy scenes of Joker reaping random chaos. Instead, he kills two characters that help out the mob and that plotline is promptly forgotten until it’s needed again. Admittedly, the death of the Judge and the first Commissioner being intercut is a pretty effective scene.

The Joker targets Harvey Dent and the Mayor. He reveals this plan in a particularly convoluted way, which I guess makes sense seeing as how he is a super villain and all. The movie spending that much time on it is just burning runtime. The scenes of Batman reconstructing bullet fragments in a grossly overcomplicated way in order to figure out a minor plot detail I can no longer remember is just plain unnecessary.

In the comics, Batman frequently makes complicated plans that might seem morally objective at first but work out okay in the end. The film employs this during its first major action sequence, which I’ll remind you is over an hour into the film. Nolan’s hand-to-hand fight scenes throughout the film slip into the similar theatrics of Batman blocking a punch and then making his own blow. He handles the car chases much better. The underground tunnel chase and the flipping semi-truck are cool. It’s also the first time Batman is a badass in the movie. Instead of failing to predict his enemies’ schemes, beating up defenseless goons, or just catching someone in mid-fall, he actually does something proactive. Even then, the central crux of the gambit involves him pretending to be knocked out. It’s more then an hour in before Batman does something badass. In a Batman movie. Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this?

All of this is before the film’s big second act turn, when things really fall apart. Nolan indulges his Dead Wife Fetish. (She’s not actually anybody’s wife, but a fiancée and a love interest is close enough to count.) Rachel Dawes wasn’t that much of a character to begin with but any development she received was time wasted. She exists to die and inspire angst and other emotions in the more important male characters. The heroes are soundly defeated by the villain. They compromise their morals to get stuff done. That’s fine, fascinating even. What isn’t fine is that the film shows this action through needlessly convoluted plot machinations and talking. Lots and lots of talking. “The Dark Knight” is fifty-five percent monologue.

The movie builds up lots of tension with scenes of Batman dragging people out of buildings and the entire bomb on the ferries stand-off. Hans Zimmer’s score pounds away, letting everyone know they should be getting excited by this. Batman has his final confrontation with the Joker and… It comes down to him getting outmatch by three dogs, the second time that’s happen in the film, and getting whacked in the head with a lead pipe. Instead of any sort of resolution between those two characters, the audience is literally left hanging. “You and I are destined to do this forever!” Except you’re not because you fucking died in real life. Out of all the directors in the world, I wouldn’t have expected Nolan to write for the sequel.

And don’t even get me started on how the ferry subplot resolves. The day isn’t saved by Batman but by a random guy on a boat. After all that build up and talk about bombs, there’s no boom at all. The film throws out resolving plotlines in a satisfactory way in favor of more philosophical lecturing. None of this mentions the numerous plot holes lying around.

I wish the narrative issues were my only problem with the film. Batman sucks in this. With the exception of the one scene I mentioned above, he is outwitted at every turn, failing every time. Batman’s entire shtick in the comics is the fact that he’s ready for anything. I can’t accept an incompetent Batman. All of this ignores Christian Bale’s awful three-packs-a-day smoker’s voice, the goofy new costume, or that the inherent coolness of the Batcave is traded out for a plain white parking garage.

Heath Ledger maybe gives a good performance. But he isn’t my Joker. This Joker doesn’t tell any jokes. He laughs about murdering people and making chaos but is never actually amusing. That makes sense but it isn’t very interesting. He has no Joker venom, no caulk white skin, no killer joy-buzzers, acid flowers, razor playing cards, mallets, or anything else you actually associate with the character. This is like Batman without the ears on his mask, bat-a-rangs, a Batcave, or a Batmobile. (Oh yeah, the film doesn’t have two of those things either.) It might be an interesting character, but it’s not the Joker. This ignores the fact that all he really does is make huge speeches that lazily spell out the film’s themes. Or that he claims several times to not have a plan despite obviously having a very specific plan. I think Nolan read “The Killing Joke” and some parts and stopped there. Ledger’s constant lip licking is distracting.

Alfred is reduced to a wisdom-dispensing siege. Lucious Fox does whatever Wayne tells him to do, despite bitching about most of it. Commissioner Gordon’s family life, the character’s entire emotional core, is pushed to the sidelines until the film needs a damsel-and-some-kids in distress for its last act. Barbara Gordon, the future Batgirl and a hugely important character to the Batman mythos, is given one minor mention in the dialogue and stays completely off-screen.

Harvey Dent isn’t the actual character from the comics. His friendship with Bruce doesn’t exist. Two-Face is transformed into a vigilante, not a crime boss. His split personality, inner darkness, and his obsession with duality are ejected. His obsession with his coin, with imposing strict moral rules on a universe he sees as chaotic, which would have made a perfect juxtaposition with the Joker; are downplayed, barely featured at all. Two-Face is given the most inglorious death to a super villain imaginable. Changing aspect from the source material when adapting to the screen is fine. Removing the things that made the character memorable in the first place is not.

And what exactly is the movie’s point? Vigilantism is bad, except when it isn’t? Sometimes you have to sacrifice personal freedom in order to catch the bad guys and save the day? But, wait, people are inherently good and, despite telling us that chaos reigns for two hours, we find out it actually doesn’t at the very end. Maybe people need a hero they can believe in some times, even if isn’t true? And that hero somehow isn’t Batman? Except it is? What the hell does any of this have to do with comic book superhero blockbuster filmmaking?

Disorganized thoughts: Nolan’s direction is fine, I suppose, even if he has a sudden obsession with Michael Bay round-a-round shots. Hans Zimmer’s score is a bland collection of pounding noise. The performances are beholden totally to the script. Bale’s intensity is restrained and Maggie Gyllenhall is underused. Gary Oldman does okay. There are times when I really think Aaron Eckhart would have made a better Bruce Wayne. He’s got a killer cleft in his chin, if nothing else. The film also makes the crime of putting Black Dynamite in the movie and not doing anything with him. The subplot about the Wayne Enterprises employee who figures out who Batman is just adds more stuffing to the story and, again, has no real payoff. The blue visual tone is sort of pretty. The movie deflates all of the awesome sequel hooks introduced in the first movie.

Say what you will about David Goyer. (Really, go ahead.) Without him adding a proper comic book sensibility to the script, the Nolan brothers indulge their worst tendencies. Feel free to call me a nit-picking comic book nerd but I swear I wanted to like this movie. I really did. Far too serious, “The Dark Knight” isn’t the Batman movie we need, but the one the majority of the public apparently believes we deserve. [Grade: C]