There isn’t a filmmaker in Hollywood who has either the will, desire or creative freedom to craft completely original blockbusters on the same sort of scale as Christopher Nolan, who used the success of the Dark Knight Trilogy as a springboard to tell grand narratives packed with big ideas and even bigger action on the largest possible canvas.
Warner Bros.’ golden goose has earned that right, which makes him even more of a rarity in an era where the franchise is king. When you think about the most notable directors in Hollywood who operate in the big budget realm, most of them are still beholden to IP first and foremost. Think James Cameron’s Avatar obsession, Steven Spielberg’s literary adaptations like Jurassic Park and Ready Player One, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, Michael Bay’s Transformers, and the list goes on.
That makes Nolan’s back catalogue all the more unique having delivered Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk and Tenet in the space of a decade. Having endured a brief absence from Netflix, the reality-bending Leonardo DiCaprio thriller is now back on the world’s biggest streaming service, looking to recapture its place at the top end of the most-watched list.
One drawback of Nolan’s singular vision is that the scripts are often laden with reams of exposition to set the stage and establish the rules, which makes Elliot Page‘s Ariadne a handy audience surrogate. A lot of fans are of the opinion that Inception is the best film Nolan has ever delivered, and it’s certainly his most commercially successful effort that doesn’t feature Batman, and it remains as re-watchable now as it was eleven years ago when you left the theater with Hans Zimmer’s ‘BRAAAM’ ringing in your ears.