All 3 Christopher Nolan Adventure Movies, Ranked

For someone whose directing career – at least in terms of feature-length movies – has lasted fewer than three decades, Christopher Nolan has honestly made a rather high number of movies. Plenty of his movies feel a lot bigger and more ambitious than not just your average movie, but your average blockbuster, so steadily pumping out a movie every two or three years, on average, has been quite the feat. Also, his movies have consistently felt like events with each new one since maybe The Dark Knight, or even Batman Begins. And things didn’t begin with Batman Begins, because before then, you’ve got the underrated Insomnia, the excellent Memento, and the quite fascinating Following. Even Tenet felt like something of an event, even if it was a slightly lesser effort from the director, and even with it being released at an uncertain time in history for the film industry (during the second half of 2020).

That’s covering some sci-fi, superhero, and psychological stuff, but Nolan has made a few genuine adventure movies to date, too. As of 2026, with the release of his 13th feature film, there are three, and you can kind of rank something once you have more than two of the things in question, so that’s that. The ranking’s happening, and it’s hard, because all the Christopher Nolan movies that can be labeled as adventure films are all really good. One is kind of right on the line of feeling like an adventure movie, but if Letterboxd and IMDb list “adventure” as one of the genres, that’s enough. One is a psychological/sci-fi adventure movie, another is more of a traditional sci-fi/space adventure film, and then the last is largely a fantasy adventure sort of thing. All deliver immense spectacle, and maybe not coincidentally, they’re probably the three most moving and sentimental of Nolan’s movies, too. It’s difficult, because one really good one has to be singled out as the “least really good” of the bunch, but as long as you’re prepared for that ahead of time, it should all be okay… right?

3

‘Inception’ (2010)

Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

Maybe the best way to justify Inception being the lowest-ranked film here is to say that it feels the least like an adventure movie of the three Nolan movies that do get marked with the “adventure” genre. Corny as it might sound, it’s like an adventure into a mind, but there are also layers of dreams that are infiltrated and navigated one after another. There is more by way of discovering new and unusual areas than something like Tenet. That one jumps around a lot, being kind of globe-trotting, but it’s a bit less about discovery, and certain scenes don’t really need to happen in certain places. It’s just nice to have different scenery for all the various set pieces. But in Inception, each layer is important, and there is a steady journey through the mind, and all these dreamscapes, plus a handful of unexpected obstacles that show up and have to be dealt with more on the fly.

That sense of spontaneity is also what you can find in most good heist movies, and Inception succeeds at being a very good (and unusual) heist movie. The comparisons to Paprika are tempting to make, and kind of understandable to some extent, when they’re made, but that one’s more of a chase film where some of the chasing takes place inside dreamlike situations. Inception is a heist movie where someone’s mind is the target, instead of a bank vault, and there has to be something left there for the mission to succeed, instead of stealing some kind of valuable item (or items). Inception is incredibly satisfying and extremely well-paced. The action scenes deliver, of course, but it’s always surprising – in a good way – to revisit the movie and find all the exposition-heavy scenes still move at a pretty good clip, and see Nolan finding ways to make the delivery of necessary information exciting. You anticipate seeing all the stuff talked about play out, and the rules and stakes are well-established so that it does become easy to care about much of the explosive chaos that plays out across the film’s second half.

2

‘Interstellar’ (2014)

Like Inception, Interstellar is a sci-fi adventure movie, but with a bit less action than Inception. There aren’t nearly as many shootouts or fight scenes, for instance, but there are more scenes of traditional adventuring, since the premise here involves a search for a new planet that humanity might be able to live on, leaving behind a dying Earth. That sounds like a very straightforward premise for a big sci-fi/adventure movie, and Interstellar does feel reminiscent of some other movies for a good chunk of its runtime. It’s technically proficient while being narratively and thematically a little familiar, but things do become more interesting when Christopher Nolan starts playing around with time a bit more. That whole sense of time being experienced differently by different people was present in Inception, with time experienced in different ways in different layers of the dream, but then in Interstellar, the effects of extreme time dilation because of one planet’s gravity end up being explored.

It’s more a source of drama than a way to showcase some extra spectacle, the way the slow motion in Inception kind of felt. The stuff done with time in Interstellar does serve to make certain parts of the already high-stakes journey into space feel all the more important and time-sensitive. There is one further layer that Interstellar adds that, if you’ve somehow not seen it yet, does prove unexpected. The real sentimentality of Interstellar comes through there, and it feels jarring at first, in a movie that otherwise feels quite along the lines of hard science fiction. Also, it clashes with what Nolan typically went for tonally and stylistically in quite a few movies leading up to Interstellar. It’s this 2014 film, more so than any others up until that point, which can be pointed to as an example of Christopher Nolan not merely being a cold (and nothing but calculating) sort of filmmaker. Interstellar has a potentially strange amount of heart, but it works. Things do click here, and much of the film falls into place better than you might expect.

1

‘The Odyssey’ (2026)

Image via Universal Pictures

There will always be concerns of recency bias in effect, when you go ahead and pick the most recent movie out of all the candidates for some kind of ranking, but for now, The Odyssey. It feels like Christopher Nolan’s best adventure movie, and also pretty close to the ultimate adventure movie. Nolan tackled the fantasy genre for the first time in his career here, too, and it’s pretty phenomenal how he rides the line between making this version of The Odyssey feel somewhat grounded, but then also going off and fully embracing certain fantasy elements when/where it’s suited. There is some ambiguity here regarding the gods, and just what they’re capable of doing, but all the mythological creatures are here in full force, and they’re brought to life on screen in spectacular fashion. Nolan sometimes limits himself with his focus on not using digital effects, but The Odyssey doesn’t really have that problem. To focus on just one sequence, with the Cyclops, it can be hard to tell whether you’re looking at a puppet, a person with prosthetics, or some kind of computer-generated image. It’s almost at the level of the original Jurassic Park, in the moment, in terms of it not always being clear just what kind of special effect you’re looking at.

And other scenes have this kind of technical proficiency; it’s just most noticeable with the Cyclops, and also, that’s one of the earlier “big” scenes, with it honestly feeling like you could ruin some of the other big scenes. Sure, it’s one of the oldest stories ever being told here, but it helps to go into it not knowing what – if any – changes will be made to the source material… and it matters what the source material is, since different translations of Homer’s Odyssey can reinterpret or emphasize/de-emphasize certain things. Christopher Nolan embraces one of the ultimate stories here – and a story about storytelling – and uses it as a foundation to make what feels like the ultimate movie. He speaks to, and references, the films he’s already made, and does the same for a wide range of movies he didn’t make; that have existed throughout cinema history. You can argue about what from the text was included narratively, sure, but as an adaptation capturing the spirit – or a spirit – of The Odyssey, it’s remarkable. There is much to be swept up in here, and it’s a maximalist and overwhelming experience in the best of ways.

The Odyssey

Release Date

July 17, 2026

Runtime

172 Minutes