{"id":699064,"date":"2026-07-18T22:27:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T22:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/699064\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T22:27:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T22:27:19","slug":"christopher-nolans-5-worst-movies-according-to-rotten-tomatoes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/699064\/","title":{"rendered":"Christopher Nolan’s 5 Worst Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Warner Bros.<\/p>\n

Let me get ahead of something right now, okay?\u00a0None of Christopher Nolan’s movies are, by any metric,\u00a0bad. The British director, who’s been working in tandem with his wife and co-producer Emma Thomas for most of his career, has, as of this writing, made 13 feature films, and not a single one of them is an actual stone-cold stinker. I’m partly saying this because I have several coworkers whom I respect and who really love the number one entry on this list, but the main reason for this immediate announcement is that Nolan inspires very strong feelings, both positive and negative, in his audience members, fans, and detractors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why?\u00a0To my mind, it’s because Nolan’s films are uniquely his \u2014 sometimes difficult to parse and loud, overwhelming spectacles \u2014 but they’re also meditations on humanity, grief, memory, and time. There is, I genuinely believe, a Nolan movie for everyone if you try hard enough and engage with his admittedly challenging material, which I also believe is a viewing habit that makes you a better filmgoer.<\/p>\n

When it comes to Rotten Tomatoes ratings, though, you can’t “argue” with data. That’s why I’m here to “rank”\u00a0Nolan’s body of work in reverse, a framework that would probably delight the director. Here are Nolan’s five “worst” movies, from “least amazing” to “still better than most other movies you’ll watch on any given day.” Also, one last housekeeping note:\u00a0every single one of these is worth watching if you haven’t already seen them.<\/p>\n

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5. Following<\/p>\n


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Momentum Pictures<\/p>\n

It makes sense that Christopher Nolan’s 1998 feature directorial debut “Following” is on this list, because, all things considered, it’s Nolan’s least polished work; with that said, it still has a pretty astounding 88% on Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> decades after its release. Shot using natural light and on a shoestring budget, “Following,”\u00a0well,\u00a0follows a character known only as the “Young Man” (Jeremy Theobald), a young writer without a job, who’s tailing people on busy London streets to try and find something to write about for a debut novel. When he starts following a mysterious man in a suit, said man, who says his name is Cobb (Alex Haw), admits he’s a professional thief, and before long, the Young Man is involved with Cobb’s crimes. (Interestingly, Cobb is a name that Nolan would recycle in “Inception,” a much more popular film where he gives the name to Leonardo DiCaprio’s professional conman and thief.)<\/p>\n

Focusing on the criminal underbelly of London through the eyes of the Young Man, “Following” is basically the opposite of a typical Nolan blockbuster<\/a>, and it’s a genuinely fascinating look on just how far Nolan could stretch a miniscule budget before he made it big. “Following”\u00a0is, officially, not one of Nolan’s best movies, but it’s still worth a watch.<\/p>\n

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4. Batman Begins<\/p>\n


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Warner Bros.<\/p>\n

“The Dark Knight” is regarded as one of the greatest superhero movies ever made, and “The Dark Knight Rises,” while not quite as beloved, is still pretty well-regarded. That leaves “Batman Begins,” the first film in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and, sadly, the worst of the three \u2014 even though in this instance, “worst” means it has an 85% rating<\/a> on Rotten Tomatoes. Nolan’s 2005 trilogy-opener (that was conceived as a solo movie<\/a>) introduces us to Christian Bale’s taciturn, growling take on Bruce Wayne, who traverses Gotham by night as Batman, the Caped Crusader; we also meet his loyal butler and parental figure Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Caine), his longtime love Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes, replaced by Maggie Gyllenhaal in the sequel), and Gary Oldman as police commissioner Jim Gordon, just to name a few of the bad guys.<\/p>\n

Then you’ve got this movie’s villains. Cillian Murphy, years before winning an Oscar with Nolan for “Oppenheimer,” makes a pitch-perfect Scarecrow, a\u00a0psychopharmacologist working at Arkham Asylum who’s secretly making a fear-inducing toxin to poison Gotham. Liam Neeson is outstanding as a man who’s initially known as Henri Ducard and helps Bruce train in the League of Shadows; as it turns out, Neeson’s character is actually\u00a0Ra’s al Ghul, the evil mastermind who runs the League. Again, I cannot stress this enough. “Batman Begins” is pretty good. It just pales in comparison to a lot of Nolan’s other work.<\/p>\n

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3. The Prestige<\/p>\n


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Buena Vista Pictures Distribution\/Warner Bros.<\/p>\n

People ride\u00a0hard for “The Prestige,” which makes it pretty disappointing that it falls in the middle of this list and only has a 76% rating<\/a> on Rotten Tomatoes years after its initial release in 2006. The center of a box-office battle \u2014 specifically, between “The Prestige” and another magic-themed mystery, “The Illusionist”<\/a> \u2014 that it ultimately lost, “The Prestige” casts Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as rival magicians Robert Angier (actually a British lord named Lord Caldlow) and Alfred “The Professor”\u00a0Borden, respectively, both of whom are attempting to create a superior trick involving teleportation. Using a non-linear storyline (noticing a theme here?), Nolan weaves his way through Angier and Borden’s lives and careers, showing us specifically where the rift emerged between them \u2014 and harkening back to another favorite Nolan trope, it involves the death of Angier’s wife Julia (Piper Perabo), for which he blames Borden.<\/p>\n

With Michael Caine as a prolific stage engineer who works with both magicians, Scarlett Johansson as a magician’s assistant to both Angier and Borden, Rebecca Hall as Borden’s wife Sarah, and, incredibly, David Bowie as Nikola Tesla, “The Prestige” is a wild ride, and apparently, it’s not everybody’s cup of tea. Experience this one for yourself, though \u2014 and rewatch it if you need to figure out what the heck just happened.<\/p>\n

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2. Interstellar<\/p>\n


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Warner Bros.<\/p>\n

It’s a shame that “Interstellar,”\u00a0Christopher Nolan’s meditation about fatherhood that just so happens to employ a non-linear storyline and is set partly in space, has such a rough Rotten Tomatoes rating; after its 2014 release, it’s still sitting at 73%<\/a> on the review aggregator. Set in a bleak future where the Earth has been ravaged by drought, famine, and blight, “Interstellar” casts Matthew McConaughey as NASA pilot Joseph “Coop” Cooper, who, despite being a single dad to two children after the death of his wife, agrees to pilot a flight to attempt to salvage the Earth in some way. Alongside Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) \u2014 the daughter of Professor John Brand (Michael Caine) \u2014 and crew members Doyle and Romily (Wes Bentley and David Gyasi), Coop boards the Endurance, the spacecraft that ultimately makes its way through a wormhole by Saturn and emerges into a new galaxy.<\/p>\n

The twists and turns of “Interstellar” all have to do with the way that time passes \u2014 those two kids I mentioned, for example, are played by a series of different actors that culminates in Jessica Chastain as Coop’s daughter Murphy “Murph” Cooper, who follows in her father’s footsteps as a NASA scientist, and Casey Affleck as his son Tom \u2014 and while they can be baffling at times, they’re extraordinary to witness. Narratively, “Interstellar” is one of Nolan’s most difficult movies, which might be why it’s stuck down at the bottom of the proverbial pack.<\/p>\n

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1. Tenet<\/p>\n


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Warner Bros.<\/p>\n

Poor “Tenet.”\u00a0It brings me no pleasure to say that the weirdest and most ambitious film in Christopher Nolan’s entire\u00a0oeuvre, the 2020 time-travel flick “Tenet,” scored the lowest on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 70% rating<\/a>. While I cannot personally say that I put on “Tenet” when I’m home on a rainy Friday night or anything, this is a movie that demands your focus, attention, and respect, and it’s an absolutely wild swing from one of our best living filmmakers. It’s also\u00a0really confusing, which is probably why it scored so low with critics compared to Nolan’s other movies.<\/p>\n

“Tenet” stars John David Washington (yes, Denzel’s son) as a character simply known as “the Protagonist” \u2014 harkening back to “Following,” point in fact \u2014 who, while working for the CIA, is drawn into a bizarre experiment and ends up working with a different organization, simply called Tenet. What Tenet does, to put it as simply as I possibly can (which is tough in this instance), is find items with “inverted entropy” that allow one to move around in time; with his handler Neil (Robert Pattinson), the protagonist is able to track down a potentially dangerous arms dealer … who leads him to a more dangerous Russian oligarch.<\/p>\n

“Tenet” is basically a devilishly complex escape room in cinematic form, putting a frankly astounding amount of trust in its audience to figure out when and where they are in the story. With a supporting cast that includes Elizabeth Debicki, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Caine, and Himesh Patel, “Tenet” is a thrill ride from start to finish, but you have to fully give yourself over to the journey.<\/p>\n


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