Since breaking through with his second feature “Memento” in 2001, Christopher Nolan has been one of the most critically celebrated and commercially popular filmmakers on the planet. He’s been nominated for eight Academy Awards (winning Best Picture and Best Director in 2024 with “Oppenheimer”) and currently ranks seventh on the list of highest-grossing directors of all time (not adjusted for inflation). Career-wise, you can’t do it much better than Nolan: he kicked off with two indies, dipped his toe in the studio waters before tackling a major franchise with “Batman Begins,” didn’t overstay his welcome with said franchise, and is now a brand name himself à la Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas. With his track record, he can make just about any film he wants at the studio of his choosing.
Now that he’s about to embark on feature number 13 (a currently untitled film starring Matt Damon, Tom Holland, and Zendaya), you’d think we could look back over his 26-year career and find at least one film that drew a smattering of critical and audience opprobrium. By this point in their filmographies, Spielberg had elicited critical disfavor with “1941” and “Hook,” while Lucas had taken the heat for being the producer of “Howard the Duck.” These movies all receive a splat at Rotten Tomatoes from critics (though users give “Hook” a favorable 76%).
So what about Nolan? Does he have a stinker in his oeuvre?
Tenet is Christopher Nolan’s least fresh film at Rotten Tomatoes
According to Rotten Tomatoes, Nolan’s most poorly reviewed feature is 2020’s “Tenet,” the sci-fi/action epic that is to date his biggest box-office disappointment — but with an asterisk considering that it was released amid the Covid pandemic. But at 70% fresh with critics and a 76% rating with RT users, it’s a far cry from the invective unleashed on films like “Hook” and “Howard the Duck” (or even “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace”).
If you look over the negative reviews for “Tenet,” you won’t find many pans. Just about everyone has to admit that Nolan’s gravity- and time-defying set pieces are mind-blowers, while his sense of scale remains unsurpassed amongst his peers. According to the naysayers, the sometimes cool-around-the-heart Nolan failed to fully engage the audience’s emotions this time out. The characters played by John David Washington, Elizabeth Debicki, and Robert Pattinson too often feel like chess pieces being moved in counterintuitive ways across the board. A.A. Dowd of The A.V. Club likened the experience of watching “Tenet” to the solving of a Rubik’s Cube that “reveals little more than the complexity of its design.”
While I agree that “Tenet” is definitely the most emotionally chilly movie in Nolan’s filmography so far, I believe this is by design. I actually like that it’s cut like a diamond, and so dizzyingly multifaceted that you need to watch it a second time to fully understand how it all fits together. Regardless of how you feel about the movie (/Film’s Chris Evangelista found it frustrating), if that’s what counts as a misfire for Nolan, he’s likely to remain in extraordinarily high demand for years and years to come.
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