I've been aware of and following Nolan's career for quite some time now. Of course, I remember when The Dark Knight came out and everyone was loving it and talking about it, but I hadn't seen it at the time and didn't watch it until a few years later. I did watch Inception, and that one was also pretty popular in High School, and I enjoyed that one at the time. He is probably the first filmmaker I've known, even before I became a movie buff/cinephile.
I have mixed feelings about Christopher Nolan; there are things he does very well, and there are things he does poorly. It's one of those things where his strengths are very strong, but his weaknesses are pretty glaring.
His Strengths
One of the things he is very good at is production designs and scale. The worlds that he builds for his films feel very real, grande, and they fit his stories very well. The production design is the main thing that suspends our disbelief and keeps us invested in the story. I'm sure we've all seen a film where everything felt artificial, and you couldn't help but feel disconnected.
His concepts and ideas are also good, a lot of people complain that Hollywood is only doing sequels and reboots, but that's not the case with Nolan, not really. It seems hard to be original these days without it feeling like it's similar to something else that's already been done. Just look at Bio-pics. Nolan does deserve to be praised for his ideas. If he was strictly a producer, I feel he would do very well at that.
His weaknesses
His weaknesses are his writing, dialogue, and characters for sure. I just said he has good ideas and concepts, but that's all his films generally focus on. Throughout his filmography, I have never felt a connection with any of his characters or felt what they were going through. His characters feel artificial, like they are characters in a movie and nothing more. This works in a movie like Dunkirk, where it focuses on many different soldiers and people, and they're supposed to represent the every man in crisis and war, where the situation is what matters the most and not necessarily them as a person. But it doesn't work in his other movies where something sad is happening, and I'm supposed to feel something, but I don't.
Overall
I do mostly enjoy watching his movies, he is one of the better mainstream blockbuster directors working today. I mostly watch or revisit his movies when I want mindless entertainment. Which is kind of ironic, since all of his movies try so hard to be big-brained, and he wants us to think and dissect his films. But to me, they don't offer a lot to think about.
Anyways, I'm always interested in seeing what he's gonna do or make next. I hope he continues to make original movies and make movies with over the top production designs.
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