Christopher Nolan is the most impressive director of his generation. His films are immensely popular, artfully made, and unflinchingly complex. This rare combination proves that not every blockbuster has to be mindless or disposable.
He’s much more than the thinking man’s Michael Bay. Who else could turn Oppenheimer into a billion-dollar phenomenon? It’s a film about a scientist, not a superhero. But because Nolan’s name was on the poster, people flocked to it. Even without the Barbenheimer meme momentum, it would have been a hit.
The secret to his success isn’t rocket science. It’s all about emotions. Take a step back from the knotty stories he tells, and it’s characters we care about who keep us onboard. Generally, this is a very good thing. We don’t need to remember every detail about what’s going on in Interstellar or Inception. The human characters help us stay grounded.
Unfortunately, this skill is also a weakness. It softens the hard sci-fi edge that could elevate his most ambitious movies to the level of all-time greatness. Let me explain where he falls short, why this matters, and which other movies do better.
Sappy Trails
There’s a lot going on in Interstellar. Earth is becoming uninhabitable. Humans are planning an exodus. Wormholes, time dilation, tesseracts. All these concepts are floating around together. They trick us into thinking we’re seeing something seriously high-brow. Then, the sentimentality takes over.
Midway through the movie, there’s a scene where the characters are trying to make a decision. They’re in a distant galaxy looking for a potential new home for humanity. They have to pick one of two planets to land on. One is promising because an earlier solo mission to it is still broadcasting positive news. The other has no broadcast coming from it. But it is now home to someone that a member of the crew is in love with.
That crew member is Dr. Amelia Brand, played compellingly by Anne Hathaway. She tries to convince her two crewmates to pick the planet where her former partner is stranded. Her argument hinges on this line:
“Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that even if we can’t understand it yet”.
This doesn’t convince her crewmates. But it is the cornerstone of the movie’s overarching message. Love is the ultimate solution to humanity’s existential crisis. Sure, it involves a black hole, an old watch, and a dusty bookcase, but the message is plain. Love is more important and powerful than the space-time continuum. And you know what, it is. But it’s about the blandest, most overused theme in movie history. It feels like a copout in a film with so much interest in genuine scientific concepts.
Dream Team
Inception is Nolan’s other high-concept hit, and it has its issues with sentimentality and emotion. He said at the time that he aimed to make a heist movie with emotional stakes. The flippant fun of Ocean’s Eleven didn’t fit a film about dream theft. That’s undoubtedly true, but perhaps Leonardo DiCaprio’s Dom Cobb goes too far in the other direction.
From the start, Cobb is a man haunted by his wife’s death. This nearly derails the entire heist. It makes sense as a plot point in a movie about dreams, subconscious, and memory. But again, it’s a well-trodden trope. A main character with emotional baggage from losing a loved one is the starting point for so many other stories.
I want Nolan to take that next step. He wants to connect audiences to his films emotionally so that they’ll stick around for the silliness. Surely there are options beyond ‘love is all-powerful’ and ‘my marriage problems interfere with my work’? I don’t think it’s a result of his lack of imagination. It might be the fear that audiences will abandon him if the emotional heart of his movies gets more complex.
A Different Way of Doing Things
Christopher Nolan isn’t the only director who has stumbled by making sci-fi too sentimental. The Matrix is just as guilty of this, with special effects and simulated realities hiding a simple story about love and destiny. But other films find new angles, push audiences down different paths, and aren’t afraid to leave love out of it.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Stanley Kubrick is one of the most revered directors of all time, and this classic is full of big ideas, sparking our imagination and emotions. The claustrophobia of a spacecraft, the eeriness of the AI that controls it, the combination of scientific accuracy and abstract imagery. It all comes together to make us feel things we’ve never felt before. We become emotionally engaged but at the level of our entire species. Where did we come from, where are we going, and who’s in charge? The film asks immense questions and still lets us empathize with individual characters. Kubrick trusts all this will be enough to maintain our interest.
Primer (2004)
Primer is a puzzle box of a film made for just $7,000. It wants you to leave confused, then come back and try and crack it on future viewings. It also stands out for being deliberately mundane. The plot is about the invention of a time travel device. The people who create it are very normal, and the device is a bland box. Even the initial scheme they come up with is low-stakes. This amplifies the impact when the plot goes off the deep end. I’ve seen it four or five times. I still tie myself in knots, trying to remember what happens and in what order. It’s glorious.
Moon (2009)
Sam Rockwell’s semi-stranded spaceman initially seems like a cookie-cutter character. He’s stuck in an energy capture facility on the dark side of the Moon. All he has for company are pre-recorded messages from his pregnant wife. So far, so standard. But as Moon unfolds, we discover that a corporation is exploiting his emotions in cahoots with an AI. It’s refreshingly murky and morally ambiguous.
Event Horizon (1997)
Alien is as good as any movie in Christopher Nolan’s canon. But there’s enough critical acclaim to its name already. And there’s another sci-fi horror with a similar vibe that is a better comparison to Interstellar and Inception. There’s even an Event Horizon homage in Interstellar. So Nolan’s clearly a fan. Combining portals to hell, demonic hallucinations, and AI does result in a film that’s a bit messy in places. Even so, it’s a thrilling and surprisingly original ride.
Total Recall (1990)
Inception ends with the spinning top wobble. Total Recall ends with a blue Martian sky. In sci-fi, an ambiguous ending is a popular option. But these are two very different films. Total Recall is more about escapism. It’s over-the-top and immensely entertaining. There’s a love interest, but this doesn’t get in the way of the central themes.
Akira (1988)
Psychic children, motorbike gangs, and secret government labs collide in a hugely influential bundle that is Akira. There’s emotional weight here, but it comes from teenage male friendship more than anything else. And that’s not a common source of gut-wrenching moments in the cinema. It’s a film that could be the antidote to sentimentality – bleak and brilliant.
High Life (2018)
High Life is a hard watch. Its characters live on the edge, at the limits of what humans can endure. It is a gritty and unpleasant take on space travel, black holes, and the mechanics of colonizing the universe. We’re forced to confront the dark side of human relationships, including themes that can’t feature in big-budget blockbusters. There’s even a non-linear plot, which is also common in Nolan’s movies. However, it’s used to magnify the horror rather than bring hope. If you’ve got the stomach for it, the film rewards you with an unforgettable afterglow.
What’s Next for Nolan?
Christopher Nolan is an exceptional filmmaker. His work in sci-fi matches his success in other genres. With Dunkirk and Oppenheimer, perhaps he’ll permanently pivot into historical epics over high-concept fantasies. The lukewarm critical and commercial response to Tenet might have sealed the deal. But this would be a pity.
Relatable human emotions and relationships will likely remain central to whatever he does next. Whether he will be bold enough to move beyond his comfort zone is another question.
