How to Watch Christopher Nolan's Movies In Order

Nolan’s first movie is a little-known, British neo-noir film called Following. The understated crime thriller centers on an author struggling to find inspiration. His resolution is to start following strangers on the street to learn about their lives. But before long, he's caught in the middle of a crime scene that involves a dangerous mob boss and his lover.

If you love Nolan movies because of their immense scale and devotion to ambitious practical effects, Following is unlikely to be one of your favorite Nolan movies. But what it lacks in scale, it makes up for in intrigue and suspense.

Like with many directorial debuts from popular directors, it's fascinating to see what Nolan—who is known for huge spectacle movies that are among the most expensive of all time—can do with a much smaller production. By watching his debut, you can enjoy the thrills of an indie mystery flick while also seeing the director's promising talents as an up-and-coming talent.

Nolan’s follow-up to Following came two years later with the release of Memento. Although this is another indie neo-noir, Memento became a much bigger hit than Nolan's directorial debut—launching his career as an exciting Hollywood director.

Memento follows a man suffering from amnesia who is determined to find his wife’s murderer. If you love mind-bending noir movies like Hitchcock's Vertigo or other 2000s noir thrillers like Rian Johnson's Brick, this one's for you.

Remembered fondly by Nolan fans today, the movie was also a hit on the festival circuit, and picked up an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. More importantly for fans, Memento is the first example of Nolan's use of time as a prominent storytelling device—something that would become a staple of his filmography with later releases such as Dunkirk, Tenet, and Interstellar.

In Nolan's third movie, Insomnia, an L.A. detective follows a murder suspect in a remote Alaskan town. It's another noir thriller that owes a debt to Hitchcock's works such as Vertigo and Rear Window.

While Memento had two well-known leads, Insomnia marks a step up in terms of recognizable stars. In fact, the cast included three of the biggest names in Hollywood—Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank. So if you loved Al Pacino in Heat or Robin Williams in serious roles such as One Hour Photo and Good Will Hunting, don't sleep on Christopher Nolan's Insomnia.

Before Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan was known for noir and crime thrillers alongside directors such as David Fincher. Instead of another Hitchcockian movie, Nolan tried his hand at one of the biggest superhero franchises of all time.

Eight years prior, the Batman franchise has hit a bump in the road with the ultra-saturated, critically bashed Batman & Robin, which starred George Clooney and was deliberately goofy, light-hearted and extremely child-friendly. In what was a huge risk at the time, Nolan's Batman Begins was designed to reinvent the franchise as a more realistic, high-stakes action drama. It focuses on Batman as the manifestation of Bruce Wayne's trauma and completely downplaying the franchise's fantastical elements.

Batman Begins is grounded in reality in a way that was completely unprecedented for a blockbuster superhero movie at the time. Kickstarting the Dark Knight trilogy, it follows Bruce Wayne as he dedicates his life to ridding Gotham City of corruption. In comparison to every movie in the franchise before it, this movie goes much deeper into the symbology and psychology behind a figure like Batman.

The risks Christopher Nolan and his team took when adapting Batman Begins paid off, as it was a critical and commercial success and laid the foundations for an even more ambitious sequel, The Dark Knight.

After collaborating on Batman Begins, director Christopher Nolan and the movie's leading man, Christian Bale, joined forces once again for The Prestige—a thrilling period drama that doesn't get the credit it deserves, in comparison to Nolan's other movies.

Set in 1890s London, The Prestige follows a bitter rivalry between two magicians who are determined to best each other. Their escalating feud pushes them to the limits of what they're willing to do to come out on top.

One of the film's greatest strengths is the energetic, determined performances by Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, who do justice to a script that cleverly pits two very different characters against one another. There are several twists and turns through the film, which always keeps you guessing what will happen next and which Magician will have the final laugh. The Prestige also cuts deeper into the magicians' psyche as to why they are so desperate to succeed at all costs.

It's one of Nolan's most criminally underrated movies, so don't miss it!

Following on directly from the events of Batman Begins, The Dark Knight pits Bruce Wayne against a new foe: the Joker.

Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine all reprise their roles for the Batman Begins sequel, but Heath Ledger is remembered as the star who elevated the franchise to new heights with his performance as the iconic Batman villain.

The Dark Knight built upon everything that worked in Batman Begins, bringing Bruce Wayne into a superhero-crime thriller that feels even more grounded in reality. Ledger's Joker, who seems to always be one step ahead of Batman and his allies, raising the stakes to a new level. The movie does a great job at exploring the DC villain's philosophy and how that plays into Gotham's troubled society.

In addition to having one of the best superhero villain performances of all time, The Dark Knight's sequences are a level above the first installment. This is, and always will be, a Christopher Nolan classic—and the movie that made him a household name.

Two years after the immense success of The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan released an ambitious, original action adventure movie that is now one of his best known features.

Inception is an expansive action thriller with an usual sci-fi premise. It centers on a thief who uses a dream-sharing technology to steal corporate secrets. The thief, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is recruited for a dangerous assignment that could—if successful—reunite him with his children.

While this may sound like a sci-fi heavy plot, it's actually quite light on the details for how the movie's key technology works. Instead, the movie focuses on how characters choose to manipulate dreams as part of their schemes, and ultimately how they navigate the volatile subconscious to achieve their goal.

Rather than an in-depth science fiction story or an exploration of the human mind, Inception is most fun if you watch it just like any other action adventure. Because at its core, Inception is a thrilling heist movie that uses the human mind as an environment—a setting that offers limitless possibilities for great action sequences.

In 2012, Christopher Nolan returned to the Batman franchise one last time to complete what is now known as "The Dark Knight trilogy." The third movie takes place several years after The Dark Knight, with Bruce Wayne living in isolation in Wayne Manor.

The Dark Knight Rises introduces a new villain, Bane, a powerful DC villain played by Inception star Tom Hardy. While his exact motives are unclear at first, Bane wages war against Gotham's elites by rallying for a brutal, populist uprising.

Although the movie isn't as popular among Batman fans as The Dark Knight, the third and final movie in the trilogy still has a lot to offer—delivering another Nolan superhero movie that has something unique compared to what else can be found within the same genre.

I especially like how Bruce Wayne's biggest challenge is cleverly connected to his origin story in Batman Begins. In this way, it's a satisfying conclusion to one of the best superhero trilogies of all time.

It's also interesting to see how the events of The Dark Knight broke Bruce Wayne's spirit, meaning he has to rebuild his mind, body and the Batman mythos in order to save his city. It's the first time in live action we got to see such a dramatic rise, fall, and rise again from the Caped Crusader.

After immense success with Interstellar, Christopher Nolan opted to bring a true story to life on the big screen as his next movie. More specifically, he decided to show the rescue mission of Dunkirk during WWIII in his own unique way.

The story of the miraculous evacuation of Allied soldiers from Belgium, Britain, Canada and France, who were cut off and surrounded by the German army from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk between May 26th and June 4th 1940 during World War II.

While this might sound like your run-of-the-mill WWII drama, Nolan's depiction of the events is far more unique than what you might expect. He uses the different experiences of soldiers and allies on land, sea, and air to tell the story of Dunkirk as only Nolan would; bending time to show the collective experience of those historic days.