I’ve given him a pass up till now. There was a lot of good in his Dark Knight trilogy and Memento was genius. So, I didn’t cast him into the halls of Michael Bay after the amazingly imagination-free Inception (how do you get that little out of the concept? And Eugie rolled her eyes and sighed audibly on that dumbass top spinning ending) or the mindbogglingly stupid Interstellar that pretends it is clever. (Can we all get over Interstellar now? If your ending is a straightforward statement that love is the literal answer, then make The Fifth Element).
Yeah, Nolan’s movies are highly sexist and he’s got an eye for diversity that places him comfortably in 1954, but still, I let him off the hook. I blamed his protégé for for the garbage pile that is the DCEU (or was pre-Wonder Woman). But Zack Snyder simply learned his lessons well from his master. Sure, he took it to a new level, but that’s just a change in degree, not of kind. Dialog which is a collection of speeches, not actual human conversation? Nolan did it first. Using the wrong color pallet and incorrect shooting style and art design for the material? Again, Nolan did it first; Snyder just perfected it. Sacrificing story and sense for a “cool” moment? That’s all Snyder does, but yeah, Nolan was there first. And yeah, all those white dudes being super white dudes while the entire purpose of the one or two women who exist is to fall down, that’s pure Nolan. As for anyone being non-white… Move along.
Damn, I’ve been unfair to Snyder. He is horrible, but he’s just passing on what he was taught.
It was The Prestige, that I’ve finally watched, that broke the illusion that Nolan isn’t a hack. It’s an odd film that gets a strange amount of praise while also being on every list of worst twists ever. And yeah, its twist(s) is up there with “it was all the trees” and “the village is now.” But it isn’t the stupid (oh God, so very stupid) twists, but Nolan’s lack of ability—no, that’s wrong; it is lack of interest with character that pulls that film down. He just doesn’t give a damn if a character is any kind of human as long as he can point toward whatever “clever” idea Nolan wants to show off. Thus we have a Batman who is angry, but otherwise stable and speaks with cancer voice. Thus we have Matthew McConaughey giving endless speeches while yelling “Murph” around 50 times. Thus we have Brand (Anne Hathaway) crying in a corner because she’s a girl and that’s what girls do. And thus we have Angier and Borden, who are vague outlines of humans, who show no signs of human behavior, who again make speeches, and exist to point toward twists.
Snyder, gave us a dull Lois is falls down a lot and a single black man with no personality. He gave us a grim Superman who’s entire existence is being an unhappy Jesus image. Snyder was just following.
So yeah, just because Nolan has some films (some cinematically flawed films) that aren’t bad isn’t enough reason to let him off. He is what’s wrong with film at the moment. His stench lingers.