Why Do Christopher Nolan Movies Feel Different

Nolan is the man! He's proven you that you can make epic blockbuster movies without sacrificing compelling storytelling. Studios can trust him and his artistry. He always gives you a unique movie going experience.

Nolan is the king of cross-cutting and slow zooms. I’m always on the edge everytime he does either

I don't get the whole inaudible dialogue complaint. Never in theaters or at home have I had any trouble understanding Nolan's films.

Thank you Mr Nolan for everything you have given to movie history and to us , audiences around the world. Cinema is not understood in the 21 st century without Christopher Nolan movies. There are not enough awards to thank your contribution to movie making . Thank you for so much. October 21, 2023.

Very high quality video. Nolan at the very least is an auteur. Love him or hate him you know his films when you see them.

Within the first minute, saying most of Hollywood relies on Hollywood tent pole movies using previously established intellectual properties, and showing Batman, then calling Nolan an outlier. He directed three Batman movies. I love Nolan movies and this was a good video. Just thought that was funny.

Superb analysis! Especially inclusion of his weaker aspects which usually gets blurred out in the light of his movie's success.

The editing is beautiful!

Tenet remains one of Nolan’s best movies, endlessly questioned by people who didn’t pay enough attention to it. The Protagonist from the very first mission we see him in, is established that he will divert from the mission for the sake of saving people. He does succeed in the main objective in the Opera, but he also takes it upon himself to save the civilians in the crowd as well. As soon as he returns from his coma, the first thing he asks is whether his team made it out. When he hears they didn’t, he cries. From the get go we realize he will do whatever is necessary for his missions, but that he also cares for people and will deviate from his main objective to save lives. Nolan doesn’t have an exposition problem. Audiences have simply proven themselves to require spoon feeding information, and Tenet’s unfair backlash is a prime example.

The amount of work on this video is appreciated. Thank you

those last lines were cool; and pretty much summarizes the magic behind his movies

Inception restored my faith in film

love nolan

Great video, but I feel like it is missing out on one of the key aspects that elevate Nolan's movies to the next level: his exceptional, mind-bending plot writing. His stories are incredibly detailed, original and planned out to perfection, almost always containing at least one unexpected twist that so many movies nowadays lack. Complaints about his stories being too complex are simply a result of a lack of attention during his movies imo.

This was a fantastic video. Broke down what makes Nolan great with clear examples and also showed with examples the legitimate criticisms people have with his work. Outstanding stuff. Educational, entertaining, and informative.

I like Nolan, more as a film creator than a film director. You praised things about him that make him weak as a director, in my opinion. The comparison between The Dark Knight's fighting scene to the 2022 fighting scene was a fail, the latter being the better.

awesome video! very insightful and informative. In regard to his sound mixing... I do agree that it is very hard to understand at times, but he made a great point in an interview a while ago. He basically said that it's intentional because he considers dialogue to be not the focal point of his scenes, he prefers all other sound over the dialogue. What I gathered from him saying that was it is basically a "you'll figure it out" situation. And I usually find that upon rewatches I understand it way more. Denis Villeneuve works similarly with (lack of) dialogue in his movies. All that to say, I totally still understand why people are annoyed by not being able to hear haha it's totally valid. The other thing I've noticed about his storytelling is that a lot of his plot points are very subtle. For example the motivation of Sator in Tenet that you mentioned... he has a line directed toward his wife in the movie "If I can't have you, then nobody can". I think that line right there mostly explains his motivation for ending the world (as odd as it may be, but alas, he's the antagonist).

I'm not overly impressed with that VOX article you quoted. It mistakenly assumes what the film Tenet is trying to say, and then criticizes the film for failing, rather than even considering whether the initial assumption might be wrong. I feel like there's a phenomenon in modern film appreciation that I think amounts to jumping on bandwagons. There's so much discourse, so many emotionally charged hot takes, that once an opinion takes hold in the public arena, a veritable mob emerges, ready to die on that hill. When The Last Jedi came out, critics for the most part thoroughly enjoyed the way it examined and deepened the Star Wars universe. But once the mob took over the discourse, no one wanted to discuss it in the face of emotional "fans" coming out of the woodwork to proclaim, yet again, it had destroyed Star Wars. So discourse vanished, leaving the least considered, most emotionally reactionary opinion as the last word on the subject. The same seems true for Tenet. After it proved to be its own thing, and not the new Inception, everyone had a hot take on what they think it's supposed to be, and how it fails. In particular, it's assumed that the connection between the protagonist and Kat is romantic in nature. Of course, because it's Nolan's take on James Bond, what else should it be? But in fact, this is anything but the case. Everyone is wrapped up trying to follow all the details of the dialog, and getting frustrated when it's unclear, while simultaneously criticizing Nolan's reliance on dialog-heavy exposition rather than character development. Meanwhile, the real story plays out in the actions. The protagonist cockily appears in Kat's life as a savior, and then promptly puts her in mortal danger. But he doesn't really seem aware of how cavalier he's been with her life while playing his spy games. Not until she rakes him over the coals for it, shattering his self-image as a smooth action hero. Suddenly, he's no longer strutting around as he did earlier in the film. He's trying to fix his mistakes, taking risks to protect her, and ultimately, rebuilds his whole mission around saving her life, because after all, he's the one who put it in danger. Ultimately, the point of the whole story is "What does it mean to save the world if you don't care about the people?" As for Sator's threat to destroy the world, that's not the real stakes. The stakes come down to Sator's philosophy that the world is meaningless, vs the protagonist's desire to find meaning in it. If no one matters to the protagonist, if he's only saving a hypothetical whole world and not a particular person, then saving the world doesn't really matter to him anymore than it matters to Sator. The whole film is a philosophical debate about the need for faith in the real, objective existence of other people. Sator's stance, stated plainly at the end, is that he doesn't believe in anything or anyone beyond his own experience. So it doesn't matter to him that it all ceases to exist. "If I can't have you, no one can." That's the philosophy of solipsism, the belief that the universe can't be proven to exist beyond one's own experience of it. It's the ultimate narcissistic belief, the locked room from which there's no escape, because it can't be disproved. To escape it requires faith, and true empathy. Ultimately, the protagonist's determination to save Kat is his expression of empathy for her, something he didn't give thought to in the beginning. So in the same way, it doesn't matter that we don't know Kat's son, whether he's a good kid or a bad one. Kat's motivation isn't about his qualities. It's about Kat's absolute love for him regardless. That's what motherhood means, but it's also a demonstration of faith that inspires the protagonist. She models for him the love without judgement he should feel for humanity as a whole, especially if he's going to lay down his life for it. All this is right there in the film if you stop worrying about timelines, stop trying to tease out the puzzle. That's the point of the film, to be presented with a complex problem that's nearly impossible to unravel, until you realize that unraveling the puzzle was never the point. The point is to save the Kat.

There he goes, finally a well deserved Oscar.

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