The Big Picture - The Triumph of ‘The Odyssey,’ and the Christopher Nolan Movie Rankings

Episode Date: July 21, 2026

Movies are back! On today’s show, Sean and Amanda are joined by Chris Ryan to bask in the glorious commercial and cultural success of Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey.’ Before diving in, they react to myriad movie news headlines, including the first trailer for ‘Avengers: Doomsday,’ the Paramount and Warner Bros. merger being paused, some fall film festival updates, and much more. Then, they sort through the dominant opening weekend box office performance of ‘The Odyssey’ and break down the film at length by discussing some of CR’s main takeaways. Finally, they embark on the overwhelming challenge of ranking every movie from Nolan’s filmography. (0:00) Intro (0:54) Summer movie mailbag (1:52)  ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ trailer reaction (10:50) Paramount-Warner Bros. merger has been paused (12:40) Fall film festival updates (17:55) Ryan Coogler’s ‘X-Files’ reboot pilot shot on 65mm film (19:15) Edward Berger making the next ‘Bourne’ movie with Matt Damon (22:20) Rachel Cusk is writing a novel about Natalie Portman (24:30) ‘The Odyssey’ smashes its opening weekend, and CR’s takeaways (1:13:14) Our relationship to Christopher Nolan in 2026 (1:22:32) The Christopher Nolan movie rankings Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Chris Ryan Producer: Jack Sanders Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh It’s on Prime. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by FIFA World Cup, launch edition, on Netflix. It's a fast, fluid game where your phone is the controller, and your TV is the stadium. You just launch it on your TV, scan the QR code with your phone, and boom, you're shooting and passing in seconds. Plus, it's included in your Netflix membership

with zero extra costs. Go to the Games tab and play FIFA World Cup launch edition now, only on Netflix. I'm Sean Fennessee. Amanda Dobbin. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about The Odyssey. CR is here to share his thoughts on Christopher Nolan's extraordinary film sensation, and then he will help us rank the entire Nolan filmography.

But first, talk about some movie news right after this. This episode of The Big Picture is presented by Amazon Prime. One of the best things about streaming is that you never just pick a title, you pick a feeling. And Prime makes that easy. With great entertainment and fast shipping that brings the moment to life, Prime helps you experience the feeling you're craving, shows you can't wait for in deliveries you don't. Don't wait for. One click away from streaming to fast shipping. It's on prime.

Okay, CR, you knew today was going to be an important day. That's why I wore my A's hat because the A is for Menelaus. You know what I mean? I don't know what that means. I'm going to do a quick programming reminder, though, for the listeners, before we turn it over to your big feelings. Is this a reminder or announcement? It's an announcement that it will serve as a reminder for people who watch it twice on social media. That reminder is we're doing a mailbag later this week. We want to hear your crazy theories on The Odyssey, The Box. office the summer movie slate so far. Spider-Man? Spider-Man is coming. Yeah. B&D. Brand-new day. Where should people send their questions? Big pick mailbag at gmail.com. I'd like to amend very briefly what

he said. We want to hear your crazy theories within reason. And we'd like them to be phrased in the form of a question. Long essays will not be read on the big picture.com. Okay. Thank you, Amanda. All right. Doomsday. This is why you're here, actually. The gods knew. Athena knew that they would release

the Avengers Doomsday trailer, and it is here. Now, I'll preface this by saying the exact trailer that was released, Amanda and I watched four months ago in a giant Coliseum in Las Vegas. Twice. You've been sitting on this.

Yeah, I think we've said a lot of rude things in reference to it over the last four months. Or three, whatever. I said this, so I don't want to repeat. I don't want to beat myself, but I do want to bounce some things off of you. I don't want to beat myself from the Watch podcast, which isn't another show I do. What? You're on another podcast?

Do you think they meant to release this on the Monday after The Odyssey? Um, I mean, they, uh, probably. You think they were like, there's a lot of energy in the theaters now? Let's, let's get in on it. You got me tongue tied. I have been mystified by every single step of what is going on here. I mean, and you could say that about everything having to do with the Avengers since the, you know, the first one, which I thought was rather charming. But from the moment that we were in Vegas where there were a large number of fans, I have never been to Comic Con, which starts this weekend.

And which is, I think, the reason that they programmed this trailer. But there was what I imagined to be a Comic Con vibe in the room at Cinemicon, which is historically a trade. show for people who own movie theaters. And longtime goers all observed that this was a little weird. Sean and I did not respond to it in the room. I'm just saying

that the energy was different. It was more that they had invited a lot of influencers and a lot of a lot of friendly voices towards the Marvel product and those people responded in kind in the room and were cheering. And I'm sure that this morning there were some people who absolutely love Marvel who were cheering. However, the reaction is definitely

different than it was three years ago, five years ago, nine years ago for movies like this, just online, just online. And maybe you can say that's not real, but when we saw it, we were like, oh, this is kind of sad. Have they done a teaser? Didn't they play it twice?

They did show it twice, yeah, because Robert Danny Jr. was there in some sort of sparkle suit and was kind of like fake working the crowd. Like, do you want to see it again? And then all the influencers were like, yeah. And then I wanted to leave from my flight. But have they done a teaser for this?

Did I forget? There were four individual teasers that came to the movie. the end of last year where they showed sort of separate characters reflecting on wherever their lives are going. I mean, in this trailer, we see a large number of characters that people are very familiar with, a kind of collision of the most recent phase of Marvel storytelling, the more classic phases one through three Avengers characters. And then a lot of the Fox characters, especially X-Men characters,

all of whom will be meeting up to battle Dr. Doom, who is going to be portrayed by Robert Downey Jr. They went with the voice. They went with Count Chocula. They are doing... some sort of West German 1979 accent, you know, Werner Herzog is Dr. Doom and, you know, that's cool.

I guess if Downey's giving a performance, that's better than just running back. Tony Stark is Dr. Doom. But the movie itself, the reports on the ground have been not strong about the state of the script throughout the shooting process. Marvel feels cooked.

I don't know what to say. It just feels completely cooked. I was just say that, like, I'm joking about, the Odyssey thing, but I'm not because most people went and saw The Odyssey this weekend and then they wake up and they watch this on their phone

or on their computer or whatever, and they're probably like, that's not a movie. This isn't look like what we're capable of is people with cameras. This looks like you guys shot this in the back of a Lowe's and turn the lights off and...

Like backrooms? Yeah, but like, honestly, dude, you know what? Backrooms makes this look like shit. You know what? I mean. Visual, like, imagination of this entire project needs to be rethought and remixed

and redone. And we can keep doing Kevin Feigy really likes Lestrada and, like, all that shit. And maybe I'll be proved wrong or maybe, like, this is actually the lowest of expectations at this point. I don't really have a problem with necessarily the group of people

that they, like, presented as, like, stakeholders in this movie, like, Namor and, you know, Yelena and Shuri. Like, it's, it's, it's, it's, bracing because I think we're used to seeing the Hulk and Captain America who get like a brief moment with Thor and all these guys. But man, it just doesn't look, literally look good. You weren't bought in on the Gambit

versus Shang Chi Showdown that no one ever asked for. I really like Chaining Tatum, the Gambit thing is actually kind of sad to me. It's a little corny. Yeah, it's a little corny. It is kind of sad. I was thinking very gleefully this morning about the Odyssey's position in relationship to Comic-Con, which will be this weekend and how we already had our own Comic Con and it was this weekend

with people at 2 a.m., you know, bartering on the streets for their tickets to 70mm iMacs, which, you know, is its own thing. But the fan culture, the enthusiasm, the nerding out totally moved to the Odyssey in a way that I'm thrilled about.

Is there like three translations are in the top 10 of Amazon right now? Yeah. I think there's just a very simple, for the very apparent vibe shift, which is that the last of the first Avengers film, which was what, 2012, I mean, that's almost 15 years ago now. So everybody who was really young and excited about those movies at that time is just older. And presumably has matured beyond that being the center of their life culturally.

And so if that's the case, then I think the Avengers Doomsday is going to be very successful financially. I think I don't think it's going to be massive. And that's the, that will be the most interesting thing. Like if this is less than a billion dollar movie or less than a 1.5 billion dollar movie, maybe we'll make that the benchmark. That's fascinating because this is as big a movie as they can make. The problem that I had with it that I think I said at the time when we first saw, it was more like, what is the story?

Like what was so wonderful to me about Infinity War and Endgame was the incredible buildup over a decade of storytelling. We've never seen Dr. Doom. I think that they're just in a lot of trouble with the multiversal storytelling. I the the Bendis version of secret wars like all this stuff with like earth 616 like is really cool in comic book form as evidenced by Amanda's facial expression right now I was honestly just trying to remember if we've seen Galactus yet are you going to say Galactus is that secret wars I think it sounds like he's been vanquished he was in Fantastic 4 yeah oh I forgot that I saw that film yeah um this very much invisible woman like knocked him down because she put her hands out in the air Remember when that happened? That was how... You didn't see him eating any planets, right?

That's what he does. Or universes, galaxies? Galaxis. He eats planets. Yeah. The Silver Surfer is his arborger. Why are you so going to be for engaging with your content? No, I just think...

You talked to how Galactus once on the watch, like five years ago, and I heard you, and I listened, and I remembered. Why didn't you stand up for Julia Garner a Silver Surfer, the way that you set up for all of Nolan's work casting? I don't know where I was during the entire fan. fantastic fourth thing. Was I in Europe? What happened? I feel like I missed. Like, I didn't talk about it. I think Andy talked about it with Lindeloff on our show. Like, I don't, I never got to comment. You must have been on vacation.

That was a classic thing where I, when we saw that movie, I was like, it's over. Like, I know, and they really want this to work and they tried a couple of different things. And, you know, those super fans screamed at us after the first week of release. And then the movie just disappeared. It's like that movie never happened. Nobody cares about that movie. They don't care about the characters. Like, and those characters are pretty critical to a big movie like this. because you're supposed to get invested in the way that you're saying

with this new crew. There may be another trailer for this movie that comes out that everybody is like, oh, that's the one. Like this, now I'm excited,

but this feels like this movie will have to be the Infinity War to Secret Wars' endgame, right? Like, and that there will be a setup and a payoff, but I really liked Infinity War

because Infinity War had like this kind of like moment of shock and awe to it. Yeah, yeah. And I don't know if there... I don't know if... Name were in distress. is going to do the same thing that infinity worded.

But, you know. We shall see. And also, it's still dated for the same day as Dune 3. What is going on? It seems like they're just sticking to it. My tip line is open. If anybody wants to just call me secretly and explain what's going on, I don't understand. They have Infinity Vision.

Oh, sure. Okay. Will you be seeing it an Infinity Vision? I'll see it in whichever way Christopher Nolan tells me I should be watching it. I don't think he'll be commenting on Dune Day. I don't think so. You can't see the top of Eggman on his head. Okay. I mean, maybe we're varying the lead by talking about this next, but just before we started recording, there was an announcement that a judge was pausing the Paramount Warner Brothers merger and a temporary restraining order was instilled for 14 days by the 12 states that are attempting to block this merger. What do you think this means? Do you think that this means that there is a chance that Rob Bonta and the rest of the states that are.

attempting to block it or going to have any success? No, my district appellate Supreme Court knowledge is fairly rusty, but I assume there's an appeals process in this. And as I understand it, appeals processes ultimately end up at the Supreme Court. And as we all know, that's going very well in the United States. What's going on there? Yeah. It's good work, you know. Who's your favorite Supreme Court justice, Chris? Not all time currently. Gorsuch? Well, he's interesting. his, because like his whole thing with like Native Americans is really like, it's a curveball. He stands on business with one issue. Yeah.

I would say that I have learned not to get my hopes up over the last couple years. I would also say that I don't even know at this point what's best for Hollywood. You know, like is a Warner Brothers where like David Zazlov has taken like multiple payouts over the last nine months going to be able to function without Paramount at this point? Would Netflix need to come back in and save it? I definitely think it would just go back on the board and somebody else would buy it. That would be my guess. I don't think this means this is not going to happen, though. And I think you're right that if it starts going up the ladder, this is just a pause.

This isn't even a rejection. It's like 14 days for everybody to get like their documents in order. It's a cool off. It's a cool off. Yeah. It does seem to be delaying. Write the email, but don't send it till tomorrow. It's a dangerous move.

Okay. A few more items of news. Lots of festival stuff still coming down the Transom here. So Danny Boyle, the film that was announced to be the opening film of the Venice Film Festival,

which you were very excited about last week, was acquired by Netflix. You say what? I say Alberto knows where his bread is buttered. Yes, truly, truly. He runs the Venice Film Festival and they are historically, they unlike him,

except Netflix festivals and Netflix uses Venice very frequently as a launching pad for its glitzier awards-driven films. Alberto is kind of your Galacticist. Sure. Exactly. When will you go to the?

the Venice Film Festival? I don't know. I don't really know if that's in my future. You know, I'm more of a boots on the ground guy domestically. But, like, when I go to Europe, it's time off. You said until Toronto anyway, that you enjoy traveling with me.

And also, we have a travel business to get off the ground. I don't know if you remember this. Is this something that was discussed? Yeah, he's in charge of the history and the tours, and I'm doing the logistics. She does curation and, like, you know, where we should go?

You don't remember this on the walk home from Chinese food? I think I was very drunk. I was very drunk. I'm saying. I'm able to really, like, distill, here's what you need to know about Toronto into, like, a paragraph. Okay. I was too busy marveling at the Rivoli. That was what I was doing while you guys were on that walk.

I just wanted to mention, I give Netflix a pretty hard time when it comes to their film slate on this show. But I did take a look at the movies that I think are meant to come out this year from the studio. And it's a pretty cool list, and it dovetails a bit with some of this festival conversation. But Cliff Booth, obviously. Brad Bird's long in the making Raygon, which is an animated film. You have this written down as Bard Bird, which I think. would have changed his whole life. That's Travis Scott's film.

Yeah. La Bolinegra, which I saw at Cannes, which is one of the big awards contenders this year. Li Chong Dong's possible love, which it sounds like we'll be at Venice this year, in addition to premiering at other film festivals. Yeah, what's up? Your beloved Ben Afflex Animals.

Yeah. Sounds like it's happening this year. Roman Gavris's sacrifice, which was picked up out of TIF last year. Greg Kwiar's new movie, Saturn Return. He's the guy who made Sing Sing. Yeah.

Here comes the flood we've talked about a few times. The Patinson Denzel. movie. Bobby and Denzel. Yeah, Lena Dunham's Good Sex. Peter Berg's the Mosquito Bowl, which is a sports drama, your boy Pete Berg.

What is it about? I think it's a football game. Yeah. And you're also your boy Janice Metz Peterson's Unabomber biopic. Is my boy Janice Metz or a unabomber? I mean. Well, what do you think?

Could be both. I mean, those are all. Those are all. I was good. The same points were made. Janice and Peterson, you know, who directed a lot of episodes of Andor. That's a, that's a.

Yeah. A pretty sturdy slate from the studio is what I'll say. Tiff announcements, very quickly. I mentioned possible love. I play Rocky. We were right. We'll be world premiering there. Chris Rock's Misty Green.

That's his new movie. As a director world premiering there. What's the word on that one? What's the... I don't know. It's an 824 film. Okay. That's all I really know about it.

C.R. Takashi Meeke's Bad Lieutenant Tokyo world premiering. Lauren Miller Rogan's Babies, which has a star-study cast, including her husband, Seth Rogen. Your mother, your mother, your mother, your mother. the new Marjali movie, Anton Corbyn's A Talent for Murder, which is based on the place Switzerland that I've actually seen staged about Patricia Highsmith late in her life, which stars Helen Murrett.

Any opportunity. Was she quite mean? I'm Swiss, did you know? Well, I am. Patricia Highsmith was quite mean towards the end of her life. Yeah, and very bad politics. You don't want to get into that. The play is about that.

Yeah. Thanks so much for telling us. Much like Switzerland. How dare you? How dare you? non-world premieres of the debut Look Back, Elsinore, Long Winter A few other films that we'll end up talking about

when we discuss the Venice lineup, which is coming on Thursday. That's right. Some movies are missing so far. It doesn't mean that they won't be announced, but sense and sensibility, The Uprising, Wildwood, Claire on the Sun, we've heard nothing of Wild Horse

Nine. See the trailer. But just festival-wise. We've got to track this stuff on this show. Behemoth? Behemoth! You guys have to hit the exclamation point.

So you can either say behemoth exclamation point or you have to... I have to yell behemoth? Yeah. They can show me in the movie. I feel... I don't know her, Tony. She just shows up here every once in a while.

Tony, I love you. And I want to hear your beautiful dialogue. And also, does Pedro Pascal speak in movies? Yeah. I think behemoth is going to be a teller ride, and I'm pretty damn excited about that. We'll see.

We'll see what happens. A Place in Hell. The Christmas movie starring Michelle Williams and Daisy Edgar Jones. The Chloe Dumont movie, right? Chloe Dumont, yes. And animals. Yeah. We have not heard to tell of yet of the Affleck movie.

Is Matt Damon in that? No. Because you're just producing it. Okay. And Kerry Washington's in that? She is. God damn. Let's go.

It's about like a mayor, right? Keep going. Yeah. I think it's about like a kidnapping, but it looks okay. It sounded cool. And Ben Affleck plays the mayor. But I thought the instigators said. sounded cool, you know, like, you know.

The film, The Instigator? Yeah, like when you, when you read about one of the artist Equity movies. The Matt Damon and Casey Affleck movie? Yeah. Okay. Was it called The Instigators, right? Yes, it is. Right. You said The Instigator and I was like, what is the Instigator?

So yeah, Venice lineup on Thursday. Here's a cool one. Ryan Coogler shot his pilot for the X-Files reboot that he's been working on. And he shot it on 65 millimeter, which sounds very cool and very expensive. And that also suggests that the film was, the show was shot to be show. own on film in a theater and that apparently he is pushing the studio to make that so. However, the show has not been picked up yet for official release. I mean, so is this just a Ryan Coogler movie starring Himmish Patel and Danielle Deadweiler? If that's what winds up happening, then that's enough,

but I, this is Disney, right? I think so. You guys got to get on board with a winner. I mean, like, put this movie out and then put the show up and be like excited about it. Yeah, I It's a little strange because presumably the entire run of the series won't be shot on film. That would be very expensive and difficult to accomplish. So just this one, I don't know. But also, you know, Coogler gets to do what he wants, as he should. Yeah, he does. And shot by Autumn Daryl Darkapaw, who was the Oscar-winning cinematographer of sinners.

So fascinating thing. Be curious to see if it actually becomes a show. This is, like, astonishing. And then, like, episode six is, like, shot in Vancouver on the show. And then where's this? And you're like live blogging it once again. You're just like, okay. That's a great point.

Chris, I'm glad you're here for this news too. Amanda, no disrespect to you, but this is this is CR space. Edward Berger, Matt Damon confirmed that he and Edward Berger have been working hard on a born, a new born film. Not a reboot, not a new trilogy or anything. Just another movie that he wants to make sense in the Bourne story. How do you feel about that? the final Jason Bourne movie was quite poor, the titular Jason Bourne. Obviously, I'm very vocal about my love for the Bourne legacy.

The other rumor that kind of is pairing with this is the one about Zendaya possibly being looked at to take over the franchise at some point. And the idea of what, I don't know if these are two separate strands of development and whether or not, the obvious next logical move would be Damon going to save a younger spy and then bring them along in this Jason-born world. But Edward Burger is about as good of a choice as you could possibly make for this. And if he's not going to do Bond, you might as well do this. That's my take. Agree. You've just completely erased me from my love of the born franchise in the country house.

I haven't erased you. Oh, my God. The hair cutting. Yeah, come on. That's so hot. Is that your favorite one the first one? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And the second one has more has Joan Allen, which we know is important to you. And has some great Thailand stuff. Sure. Second one is supremacy. Yeah, and then ultimatum is three. Which is a little bit wonky, right? Supremacy is pretty sick. Yeah. One and two are good. It's weird because there have now been four of these movies.

Four, five, five of these movies, right? Three, Jason Bourne and Born Legacy. And a show. Redstone. Five movies in a show is a lot for this story. Is born Robert Ludlam? It is. What's your take on Ludlam?

I honestly have not read any Ludlam. Shocking. You know, Amanda is no longer reading male writers. I don't know if you read that. No longer thing. She made an announcement that she'd read enough men for her lifetime. That was just a statement

of what has been happening, a reflection of unplanned choices. be the next man story you read. I'll tell you what it's going to be because there's been a lot of talk about birthdays coming up. Yeah. And, you know, I turn 49, so it's not that big, but for 50. Yeah. What I think I'm going to do is have many men that I know gather. And Amanda is the only person in the audience. So we'll have, like, maybe the Disney Concert Hall. And all the men get on stage and we each read a story from John Cheever's collected short stories because it combines men and short stories,

are two of my favorite things. And listen, as long as it's not short stories. Maybe MJ Lenderman will play interstitial music. I like M.D. Lenderman! Okay. White Rappellar is kind of a great name for Achiever's story now that I think about it. They're all called Wife Reperriller.

Okay. Speaking of the female voice and fiction, why don't you break this one down for us? Chris and I were already talking about this. This was also covered on the watch. Rachel Cusk's next novel is apparently a thinly veiled book about Natalie Portman. And what is it sourced from?

From her life. They're friends. So they're friends. Did she seek permission? Well, she didn't tell us that. We don't know. This broke yesterday. This broke over the weekend.

You make it sound like it's like a new Iran deal. The news broke on Sunday afternoon. A Rachel Cusk novel. I had more text conversations about Rachel Cucks. Rachel Cucks. Rachel Cusk, and I am team Rachel Cusk. That's my novel about Rachel Cuck. Her book about Natalie Portman that I did about The Odyssey.

So, listen, the streets that care about this are alive. And I just, I have, it is real. People have read it. It is, it's happening. You're not a big Portman gal. Well, that's true. You know? I love it. Long Island forever.

I know. Long Island forever, man. I'm interested. I thought she was great in May December. I'm interested to see what this novel. Yeah. And how it comes out. How did she participate?

Did she know she was participating? Do you say to Rachel Cusk, write an auto fiction novel about me and it's okay if it's unflattering? Let me pitch you an idea. Uh-huh. You thinly veiled novel of Bill Simmons. No. Who says no? No.

I say no. First of all, I don't think I can write a novel. I'm supposed to write something that's like 5,000 words coming up and I'm like, I don't know if I got it in me. Wow. Yeah. What is it? Liner notes for some friends who are putting their workout on a box set. Oh, that's so nice.

But, like, I was just like, that's daunting. And they gave you the word count of $5,000? They were like, we have to fill out like this booklet. You know, like we have to, you know. You can't fill it out with drawings? You know. I asked about that. I was like, can we just do a really wildup?

K&A. Regardless, I will not do that. I would never write a thinly veiled novel about Bill Simmons. Okay. Who would you like to write a thinly veiled novel about? You. Yeah. I'd be a good book.

Who would you write a thinly veiled novel about? Chris Nolan. Pretty clearly. Speaking of, let's make a transition to the Odyssey. The Odyssey is a massive, massive, massive success. Just a fucking fat flip. Just an incredible success. We did it.

264.1 million dollar worldwide gross. It made $140 million overseas. It made $125 million in America over the weekend. In North America, I should say, this is the biggest debut since the Dark Night Rises when Chris saw it four times in two days. It's the third largest opening of the year, though. The two other films that opened in front of it this year are Toy Story 5 and the Super Mario Bros. Galaxy movie. This is a three-hour, R-rated movie that absolutely dominated, not just the film conversation, but I think a much more general conversation around the country, even around the world.

Save the World Cup final match. I think this is just about the biggest. I think they went hand in hand of being like we have two really exciting things to consume and talk about and think about and get mad about and get happy about. I saw a tweet this morning that tickets for the Odyssey at the BFI IMAX in London

are fully sold out from now until September 10th. So there's a long runway here for this movie, give or take a Spider-Man movie, to dominate movies for the next six weeks, which is totally fascinating.

Seeing it again tomorrow and my wife was like, why? You just saw it? And I was like, I just want to have the experience of seeing this way as many times as I want

or can because, you know, it'll be like five years or whatever until it gets back into a re-release. And this is really special. I mean, regardless of whether or not every part of the movie works for you, I think the experience of seeing it the way it's meant to be seen is really cool if you can manage to do it. What do you think about the reaction to it thus far? Aside from people behaving badly online, which is always the way and we don't have to acknowledge it, it's really exciting. And I, you know, I said earlier about, you know, I said earlier about, the Comic Con of it all and it feeling like this, you know, the fan culture and the, the gentle

insanity around a cultural product has, you know, been moved to something much closer to to high art, in my opinion, than anything that's been released in the Marvel franchise in the last 15 years. And that's really exciting. You know, I think, I think it's incredibly cool that Chris Nolan has turned nerding out about film stocks and projection to be a pop cultural thing. I think if you can't see the entirety of the helmet, it's fine. Me too. You know, you guys are going to be okay, you know? I agree.

Maybe we should just like borrow some helmets and wear them once and then you can see them. But what that indicates is that he has turned it into both a cultural phenomenon. and as your tweets and all the box office indicates like a box office, a financial phenomenon, which then means that the corporations that make movies will pay attention because they think that it's another way to make money. And like real movies filmed on film in real places, being a financially lucrative enterprise is just all you could want in life because that's the kind of movies I want to see.

Yeah, I completely agree. Echo all your sentiments. I love all the like apocryphal but fun anecdotes of people refusing to leave. You know, like they're at Lincoln Center and they're just like you're going to have to call the cops. I want to watch it again. It's funny. So my wife Eileen acquired a 6 a.m. ticket this morning on Monday morning to see it on 70 and IMAX at CityWalk. And she kind of like sat in the app and was refreshing to like try to find a ticket because she wanted to see it in this format. But, you know, truth be told, Eileen doesn't care about the format.

And she's not going to really be able to tell the significant difference in terms of watching it. So she just changed her mind. And then on Friday, just grabbed an 11 a.m. ticket to go see it in a Dolby room in Burbank. And she loved it. And it's like, it's going to play in any movie later, you know. It might not be exactly the experience that you want to have in the exact perfect way that you want to have it as intended by the director. But this has been true of movies for years.

It broke me of this fever in some ways was Tenet. Like, you guys watch Tenet in a smoky haze at a drive-in? I watched it on a, I think on a computer the first time I watched it. It's fucking rocks. We just screened it in Toronto. It rocks. Like, these movies will play everywhere, no matter, like, even if you're like, I want to be able to see the full height of these characters.

Like, you're going to be okay. Eileen also said something interesting Saturday about the experience of hunting for the 6 a.m. Citywalk ticket and sitting in the app. And she said at some point I was just looking for the adrenaline of actually getting this thing that everybody wanted. It was sort of whether it's like a Lubbubu or a ticket to the 70mm iMacs at Citywalk. And I was just like, wow, that is it. That's awesome. That's an amazing feat of marketing. And I think that normally we would, I would be cynical about that in terms of it making corporations money. But in this case,

if it incentivizes more people to want to see film and movies to end movie studios to make film, then like, good job everybody. Like, it's uncanny. The thing I love about it, that is sort of related to the point that you're making about films like this being successful and going into the cultures.

So I lean went to that screening on 11 a.m. on Friday, and they gave up posters. So she came home with an Odyssey poster. And then, of course, when my daughter got home from camp, we showed her the poster, and it's the image of the Legastronians facing down. Odysseus's fleet. And Alice was just like, what is that?

And then that took us back to the Deleir's book of Greek myths that Amanda got her for her birthday, whatever, a year or two ago. And now we just spent the whole weekend reading the Greek myths and listening to Myth Podcasts together. And now she's all into it. And she wants to hear about Artemis and Athena. And she wants, so I'm like, this is kind of cool that this went back into the culture this way. Like, this can now.

And when you start reading those myths again, I'm reminded. minded of like, well, everything is based on this. Every story is based on these stories. And all of these names, you know, the way that many screenwriters tend to use the names of the gods and the figures from those stories to represent corporations over time, like how they all are kind of these kind of reclamations of power over history. And it's just because this guy was like, I'm going to make this a movie. This should be a movie. It should be a movie at this scale. And now we can return to understanding what stories can represent. So I find that to be a wonderful kind of after effect. But,

C.R., you know, I don't know, have you gone on the record at length about your feelings with the movie yet? No, I mean, I talked with you a little bit about it on Bill's show last week, but it had yet to be, like, officially released. We were pretty circumspect with talking about any specifics from the film. I'll just say also one of the cool things, just as I'm getting into it,

has been, I think people understand when all the cast members who are doing their promotional duties and, like, they are so on book about, like, this is what we did to make this movie. This is like what it meant to us to make this movie. And this is like how much everybody kind of gave to this movie. It's rare that like people, people will say that about like making a Harlan Coben show.

It's rare that you're like, oh yeah, I can tell. Yeah, I can watch Matt Damon age. You know, like, if you're inside the horse and you're like, it was these guys, it was filling with water. And Nolan and Hoyt are in there with them. it feels that way. And he is the, he is really like the only game in town when it comes to like,

it's gonna, it's gonna feel the way it feels for these characters. You're gonna feel like you were on this beach. You were gonna feel like you were on this mountain. You're gonna feel like the Cyclops is that tall. And it's a, it's a gift that I don't even know how many filmmakers really have it,

but it is a really astonishing thing to see and especially the way it's, it's sort of projected on IMAX 70. There's a really, compelling making of featurette that is available on Peacock right now that you can watch called The Making of the Odyssey and it, you know, there's a lot of interviews

with all the cast members and it's, you know, it was clearly made during the production of the film. Yeah. Matt Damon looks tired. Yeah. He looks very, very tired in his interviews and he's giving it us all and he's been on the major charm offensive of all time the last six months and especially this month.

The best is like the juxtaposition of him with Pattinson who spent the entire time in a castle eating. You know, and he's just like, You guys seemed so tired when you got here. He's like, I was at the hotel bar by myself. That's very true. Okay, Chris, maybe Amanda and I can ping pong off of you as you go through some of your takeaways. What are the things that you wanted to talk about?

First of all, I thought your podcast last week was fantastic. Thank you. And one of the things that, you know, obviously leapt out at me was when Amanda was talking about how inception begins and the idea of, you know, this recurring energy that shows up throughout Nolan's body of work, but also these themes that show up throughout his body of work. And the Odyssey being not only like this incredible

adaptation of one of the central stories of Western civilization, but also like a skeleton key that unlocks this director that I think different people have different hurdles to get over at different points in his filmography. So maybe you're not a Batman guy or a comic book person. Or maybe you find some of the

temporal games he plays with storytelling to be a bit frustrating. Tenet may be inscrutable to you, inception may seem silly or whatever, but I think this movie can play as like the first movie and the last movie in a Nolan retrospective

and the entire thing makes real, real sense that in a way that even though with Oppenheimer having like incredible awards run and some of his films being regarded in the way that they are, I think now it's like, okay, like this 25 years of this guy,

let's really look at what he wants to say about being a person, how we tell stories and how we see things on screen in a way that I think is like pretty amazing and I was trying to think of like any comp like in a director's career where like at this point

we talked about this a little bit on Wednesday where like their 10th 11th movie and they make a movie that then makes all the rest of their work kind of come into focus in a different way I think it's probably Kurosawa is the only one because I think he's the only filmmaker

who has deftly managed the scale and screen of his storytelling with the hyper-personal. Yeah. And, you know, Ron was an inspiration for this movie and the idea of a great king coming back to power. But it's a short list. Yeah.

I mean, it's a short list. And I think the, like, the names that we reach for, like Kubrick or Hitchcock or, you know, even Cessal B. Mill or Spielberg, like, they're not an even match, I find, with kind of what Nolan is interested in. And I don't, you keep seeing the personal. I was wondering how you feel about this, too. because I find Nolan's films to be a little impersonal, but I find them to be like very much about consequences on the world at large.

You know, like he's very good to me about these were the stakes. And if we fail, everything goes belly up. Yeah. What do you think? Well, I mean, they are great men movies, which we have, you know, talked about. And in my case, occasionally ridiculed. And I was thinking about this morning, let's see, this morning I rewatched Interstellar and part of prestige. And I can't remember what else.

But this idea that he is taking on the fate of the world through one person is, I think, both the scale that you're talking about and the personal. And it is, I do sense an identification with the main characters or the person who is trying to keep everything together, whether it's to save the world or to get back to the family or all of the above. So in that sense, they do feel personal or at least, you know, identified to me. But I don't find that I'm reading them for biographical clues necessarily of, oh, is this person supposed to be, you know, your producing partner? And I, you know, I do think that they all have something to do with the act of making movies. And how could they not when you spend your life doing this? and they are all about storytelling and taking on, like, great works and often, like, commanding a large group of people.

But I don't read them as, you know, pure stand-in for, like, this is just about me and how hard it is to make a movie. I don't think they're even as close as, like, I would say, as Spielberg movie is, to both biography, for sure, but also what is it to be a filmmaker? Yeah, and I guess he doesn't really have the, like, hallmarks of child of divorce or I was making films

when I was eight in my backyard so this has always been my lens through which I view life. He hasn't allowed himself to be narrativized in that way. I drink tea and I'm a good dad and like these are the things

that interest me. But I thought it was interesting when you read interviews with some of the cast members and Lapina Niyango and John Liguizamo spoke about this incredibly vulnerable conversation that they had

when they did their like vibes interview with Nolan when he's like, okay, I'm going to bring you, we're going to hang out for a couple of hours, talk, then you can read the script, and then we'll kind of go from there. And they both talked about, like, you know, obviously, like this personal connection that he has to the story, but beyond that, like his anxieties and all these things that he expressed to them. And I think you can start to see that obviously come out in the kinds of stories he's interested in, but also the way his maybe his feelings have changed from say interstellar where you see a group of people coming together to save the world because science can do that to what he has to say about the world maybe

with Oppenheimer and um and and and the odyssey and whether or not he feels a little bit darker about like our prospects in the future i definitely think he does i do think since the dark night maybe even before that, but probably since the Dark Night, he has always been a little bit more of like an elevated political, literate filmmaker where he's kind of drawing like historical illusions, you know, like using a Tale of Two Cities to do Dark Night Rises, you know, stuff like that. You could critique him for ducking the smoke of saying what he means with his chest and be like... He won't ever put his finger on it and say, this is what I meant by this.

And maybe that's kind of what a noise... Is Batman activating all cell phones as surveillance devices? about, you know, like FISA, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's, I think in this film specifically, there are some, sometimes even heavy-handed, like, hey, this is about what's happening today, you know. Um, that I thought it was really actually, like, I think pretty provocative, pretty, pretty amazing to, to, to take that swing as, as brave as anything he does visually is like some of the, some of the inversions that he makes on what we traditionally understand is this story. Well, one of the things that I think is kind of an inversion of what he used to do is I found that he used to explain plot in a lot of his kind of long soliloquies from characters, and now he explains theme.

And there is like a pretty big difference there. The whole explication at the very end of the Odyssey before the final showdown, a conversation, I guess, between Odysseus and Penelope, is him kind of being like, here's why I made this movie. And here's what I think this story is really about to me. and that's really interesting to me. It might be a little bit too direct in on the nose for your most sophisticated filmgoer, but I found it to be very effective, and I didn't mind it becoming...

I didn't mind the theme becoming literalized. I think I... Because I saw it as this kind of attempt to fuse these two people who have been apart for a long time. And it was him essentially explaining to this person that he's been apart from... Spoilers for the Odyssey, by the way. That I had to be away this long,

Because this is something that I did and this is something I'm responsible for. And because I'm responsible for it, I participated in the end of a kind of civilization. And in order to kind of get back, I need to get this off my chest. And I also am happy to explain to the audience, like, what this filmmaker means by this movie. Do you know what I'm saying when I say that? Yes. I mean, a couple things there, he's able to do that in The Odyssey because, unlike most of his other movies, he doesn't have to spend that much time explaining the Plot of the Odyssey.

Because we all know. And it is also, it's very basic, right? It is just this person needs to get home. And then the emphasis on why he can't get home or where he's been or what he's experienced, you know, can be shifted according to the adaptation. So I think you're right. And it does mean then that he has more room to be literal about the themes. But that speech is paired with an absolutely incredible set piece. And it's the second time you see the sacking of torture.

from a totally different perspective. And I think there still is the grand visual element that I felt was really accomplished intertive. It wasn't just that they were setting things on fire and dudes were fighting each other. It was very moving. And I felt communicated those themes through the actions. So for me, I'm kind of like,

if you just want to make room for showing that, like, revisionist choice scene with some obvious... And not even that obvious. Like, I do think that that and the sire in speech were two cases where he is writing the themes and what he feels in pretty explicit voiceover in the voice of Odysseus. But the writing's really good, which is not what we always say about Christopher Nolan dialogue. But it's also, it's preceded by a moment that you would explain to a person. If you haven't seen your wife in 20 years, of course you would tell her what

happened. If you experience something that no one else on that ship experienced by hearing the song, of course someone would say, what did it sound like? So to me, that's like a great way to set up that expositional style that he usually writes through. Yes. There's also, it's interesting to hear you pair the writing with this sort of grandiosity of the visual set pieces that he's able to produce. Because I found myself more often than not with Nolan thinking about the movies and what they had to say rather than remembering what they looked like. And obviously there are these incredibly Hall of Fame sequences in his filmography, like the black hole in Interstellar and, you know, Oppenheimer's Trinity Test. And you can go on and on.

Every movie has something where you're like, what the fuck did he just pull off? But that's not what I think about Tenet. What I think about Tenet is like I'll either try and solve it or I'll try and figure out why he made the movie the way he did and what the movie is about actually. and I kind of feel that way about the Odyssey, the things that I've been thinking about while I was blown away by so much of it are all like the turn with the C people

and what that's about because that's a Nolan authorial addition to the canonical text. And... What do you think it's about? I mean, I think it's honestly about I mean, on a superficial

and perhaps headline-grabbing way, I think it's somewhat a commentary about the 10-dend- for right-wing movements to villainize mysterious foreigners from coming onto their shores when in fact the real poison

it lies within them and I don't know if you would agree with that but I don't think it's an accident that there is like a huge faction of like the English right-wing that calls people arriving across like the channel boat people and now we have to stop the boats

and that we need to like militarize the borders of England and obviously Nolan has English roots. We hear that a lot here, you know, like it's... And there's two different moments in the movie, the one when they first take that first island and they pillage that town and there's the man who's speaking in a foreign language

on his knee is being held by Himish Patel's character and he's trying to explain to them like, no, no, we're Greek soldiers from Ithaca. You know, we're not the sea people. But it's also, this is the cool thing about his storytelling style, which I think some people sometimes find a bit clever and this time I felt worked beautifully

is I can't wait to see this movie again thinking about that very scene it reads entirely differently when you know the end of the film and what happened to Troy Hemish Patel seems almost more threatening coming up on the shore and being like... They're the Marauders.

Yeah, of course, yeah. And also like the interactions between Odysseus and his crew read differently when you know that these people just sacked and destroyed a city and did probably much, much worse. This is what we talked about with casting Damon,

where it's like with Damon so inherently likable. They're like, but, you know, Odysseus is kind of a bastard, you know? Like, he does a lot of things in the story of the Odyssey

that is, you know, regrettable at best, you know? And Nolan adds the regret, you know? And that's not to say that some of these themes are not in the text. Like, so the Greek word

for Zeus's law is xenia, which is also where you get xenophobia. So, So it's like very basic in this fear of strangers and how do you treat someone else? Yeah. All they taught me in school was Zinia over and over and over again and I only put it together like last week. But so there is at least the societal idea within Homer's text or at least the translations I've read.

But that Odysseus even comes to the realization that he did something wrong, that we were the people from the sea, that we have created this other world. that is entirely Nolan's edition Yeah, we were talking on Bill's show about he's kind of like the Tony Soprano The originating Tony Soprano Or Walter White or something

The flawed protagonist But he does give him He gives him more sympathy Really by the end of this movie You know, this movie kind of gives you A satisfying ending of this guy Not only returns home to his wife But he sails on and is free to pursue

I don't know Civilization Rising again Or at least relaxation in Boca Raton, you know, like whatever it is he's going to. You know, honoring his men. Honoring his men, a healthy retirement. Yes. Which is, of course, not how his story ends,

for those of you who want to read further in the Greek myths. Some interesting fates for Odysseus as well. We can talk about that when the Odyssey 2 comes out. What other things, Chris? What else jumped out to you? I loved it being a story told as stories being told. So Odysseus is working through his memory with Calypso, on and off that lotus, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. The first promethazine. Yeah. Exactly. Manilaeus telling Telemachus about his father. You know, like this idea that many of the things that we're seeing are actually being told to a character by another character about a character who's not present.

I would love to go back and analyze the reliability of narrators at various moments. But it definitely, I think it made also a lot of sense of like, why he cast the people he cast in this movie. Because when you think about Leguizamo and Bernthal, they have a kind of oratory skill that's like, hey, man, come over here. I'm going to tell you about this thing that happened in our neighborhood. And it's awesome.

And if you were ever going to confess everything to anyone, it would probably be Charlie's thorough on a beach, you know, as she prepared like a beautiful squid dish, you know. Still don't know why he left that beach. So you would spend seven years on that beach. And also just beyond the stories, like, how much of what happens in the movie is because of people's fears, you know, and that they articulate. So, Circe talking about, like, he's like, did my men attack you? And she was like, not yet, you know, and the kind of paranoia that's starting to develop in the kingdom and then these islands and everything that's happening in Ithaca being like, we got to do something because something bad is going to happen and we can't just keep looming here.

You know, like we have to create a new seat of power because otherwise, like whether it's the sea people or the suitors, it's going to break soon. And this place won't function without that. So just the idea of not doing a, here's one of the most notable heroes in all of history,

let's just follow him. Like, let's not complicate this. Let's John Ford him and watch him. Yeah. It's funny, though, because the movie does complicate the story so much because of the way that it's structured through time and pairing it opposite to Lemicus' journey through trying to find out the truth of his father.

So even though, as you, I think you're completely right that this is such a simple story that doesn't need over-explication, but it keeps becoming this story of storytelling because he has once again, like, shattered a pocket watch on the floor. Like, that's my, the image I think of whenever I think of a Christopher Nolan movie. The top is still spinning. Yeah. Yeah. I just meant that people are familiar with, you know, the basic storytelling points as opposed to, you know, interstellar having to explain all of physics like five times and then being like, but actually in this universe, this is how the physics were. work. The other thing is that, but that fracture and the stories within stories and people telling things is also in the text. And so much of what we learn is from either, you know,

a traveler's tale or Odysseus, you know, posing as someone else or telling Randos who actually did let him into his home. So I was just still stunned going back and rereading the Emily Wilson translation after seeing this movie of just how Nolan the original is. Which, like, you know, and he's a very smart and accomplished director, so maybe he knew that. It's, like, not an accident that he picked this, but a lot of it's really there. Yeah. I don't know if this is real, but did you see over the weekend that Emily Wilson was like, I have some notes.

Yeah. About his movie. It was real, yeah. It was real. She did. I thought. She was like, settle down with the dog stuff. Yeah.

There were some issues with Argus, which was, I think she basically described this as just like a cheap ploy for audiences. Yeah. She's like a dog and a movie. Yeah. What were her other notes? Her notes were interesting to me and seemingly fair, although she strikes me as a wildly unsympathetic storyteller in general.

There's like a kind of directness in her translation that I find very fascinating. And, you know, he softens the text a little bit, even though this is one of the most savage stories ever told. It does feel... I don't think her Odysseus is very sympathetic. Agreed. And I, you know, again, that's...

that's her interpretation of the text and I can't read the original. But there is a lot more reading into his motivations and just feeling in Christopher Nolan's than there isn't hers. I wanted to ask you guys, you know, one of the... I mean, first of all, some of the memes coming out in this movie are just top-notch.

Between that and Argentina, like, you know, going like this, you know, like, it's just been an incredible weekend of content. But I thought one of the most fascinating debates legitimately, like, it's rare that this happens, but a conversation that was taking place online that I thought was really cool was, to what extent modern audiences

would be able to comprehend some of what now would be an anachronistic kind of behavior on the part of any of the characters. So, you know, like... The idea of a woman having agency? No, but you guys talked about, like, the Cyclops scene being different than it is in the text,

because in the text, there's obviously there's the I am nobody or no man thing. But it's also like he just can't fucking resist being like I'm Laerties his kid by the way. It does a real like Ben Affleck in the town like 155 Bonka Hill come by anytime

but there is some bravado in Odysseus I mean as a warrior and as a as a schematic thinker he's always kind of like plotting a scheme that will make him seem even smarter than everyone else. Yes. But he He likes to tempt the fates, you know? He likes to poke the cyclops, literally.

And I think that there's like where the line of how Nolan writes the character versus where Damon plays the character and everything that we bring to a Damon performance. Versus what maybe is in the script text. Like, this rendition of the sirens, you're like, you cocky asshole? You think you're the only one who can hear the song? It's so good. And even just like the glimmer of mischief on Damon's face as he's like, time me up. You know?

Just don't let me go. Yeah, we'll be good. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, you know, you're like, this is the guy being like, this shit is easy for me. You know? The thing that struck me on the second watch was how a lot of the culture war stuff was actually right. And it was like wonderfully right. Like every choice that Nolan made in that respect where he was like, I will cast Elliott Page as the bravest person in this film.

Yeah. I will put Lou P to front and center. And I will scar her face. and she still will be the most beautiful person in this film. Like, the fact that he is, I don't know if he's making a statement, but he's, there's... I will have Chapel Rhone before. So much Chapel Rone going in my house this weekend.

I already sold Amanda. Chappel Rone on James Blake on the remix with Travis Scott. You could see it. You could see it. I will make Travis Scott the bard, you know? I will give Travis Scott the first line in the audience. I mean, these are all, they're kind of light troll jobs. But they're also full of intent.

You know? Your choices. He made choices. He made choices. And there's something wonderful about that. And I think that the other thing I enjoyed this weekend was, sure, there were some bad actors online. Yeah. But most people were like, damn.

Right. That movie was good. Or they were big mad about the helmets. Right. Also bullshit. It's a movie. Come up with a new idea. Make something look different.

No, no, no. I meant that they couldn't see them. Not that there was. Listen, yeah, of course. That they didn't have the exact clothes, you know? Yeah. But Agamemnon, you know, he had that shit on. That's what they say about Agamemnon.

I'll throw out a couple of like notes of like dissent about the movies, right? Okay. I am not sure that he is a great action director. I was, I left, I found the John Wick scene with the suitors a bit flat. It's a bit silly. I don't know if that's how it has. I can't remember if like it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, like, dad, wait.

And then it's like, pick up the sword. Get the shield! Get the shields! Get the shields! I mean, it's great. It's a great dramatic scene for that Pattinson character, but I've all these sort of like faceless suitors getting got by him. And I think that might have been where like the IMAX camera, ironically, it doesn't

work well in these kinds of close up battle scenes. Especially after you've been outside and it's such large spaces for the whole thing. And it just didn't feel as well thought. through as every other sequence in the movie felt to me. I really liked it, but I do think it is an inevitable letdown after the lead up to Penelope's challenge, which I think is like, please, is the most predictable thing, and if you've read it, you know it, but still, it's like, the plucking of the bow. It's just such a satisfying movie moment.

Yeah. And that was like with the college basketball coach who's like, let's go! It was just awesome with the movie. So, so because you get... kind of wanted some of the fight that was commensurate with plucking the bow, you know? Yeah. I-suplexing guys. I think you asked the right question, which is like, is there actually limitation to what you can accomplish with this machinery that you're carrying around?

Because you can't be as elegant when you're carrying a gigantic camera and trying to shoot action this way. So, I don't know, he's had some thrilling sequences in the past. I mean, the bank robbery and Dark Night, the hallway fight and Inception. He's shot incredible action sequences before. But I do think that the mechanics of the way that he makes movies now maybe complicates this a little bit. I think I also have to be honest and say that sometimes what happens is Nolan will gesture at great violence but not show it. No blood. Never blood.

And I think that that's like appropriate in the case of say the, well, who Athena is being represented as in the movie. The Zendaya character's death. Obviously, you're not going to behead Zendaya in this movie and have everybody just be like, oh, okay. Yeah, Ty West's The Odyssey. Yeah. But like there is, well, Kurosawa would do it. He would. He would do it. He did it a little bit, a little bit more in Oppenheimer, just in the shot of this skin peeling up. But that's, but that was like as far as he was willing to go.

It's a good example of like, yes. Is he averting his eyes or is he making a concession to the idea that a mass audience is going to see this? And they do not want to watch arterial blood spraying all over the place. I don't think it's that. This is, we're in the time of obsession. session, you know, like, people like gore. I don't think it's, I think he's a dim-yro-brinish filmmaker, you know, I think he is like,

I don't show everything, basically, that's what it boils down. There's like a kind of class component to it, not class, wealth class, just like, and I don't want this movie to be casualties of war, but like, they take the beach and he's just like, and we did terrible things. And I'm like, well, you get to have a little bit both ways when you don't show the terrible things. I mean, think of Dunkirk

versus Saving Private Ryan, you know, like in Dunkirk, bodies are being blown off the beaches, but you never see a limb fly in the same way. A limb doesn't land on somebody's head, and then leak out blood onto somebody's face. So it's a different style of filmmaking. Basically, like, my reason I brought that up is because the last fight scene,

the Odysseus versus the suitors winds up feeling very Batman-y to me. Yeah. You don't like that. You'd prefer he have superpowers? I think I've had my fill. More of a Superman guy? I think it should just look more like the raid, too.

You think they should bring Gareth Evans in just for Nolan's fight scenes? So it's funny you should mention that because at this, people are probably at this point, or like, shut the fuck up. But I wouldn't be mad if he gets all of this stuff right. He's like, I got my script. I got all this stuff.

And then at the last second, he was like, Peter Morgan, would you like to just take a pass? Yeah, sure. And just like spruce the dialogue up a little bit. Like, he's got a lot of weight to carry through a lot of narrative. You know, everybody's got to basically, ah, Agamemnon, he's using this as a pretext because of trade routes and he wants to save and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And it's so fast. But, dude, play a solo. once in a while. Like, get on the sacks. Let somebody say something kind of... Like the, I think the height of beauty in this movie is the... Odysseus' description of what the Siren song sounded like. I mean, absolutely transcendent.

Yeah. But I would just... But I didn't expect that from a Nolan movie. No, I was just like, whoa, what's happening? I agree. I found it incredibly moving. I find myself more often than not in Nolan movies extracting cool dialogue out of what might be fortune cookies.

Well, sure, and doing it in a Bain voice. You're waiting on a train. You don't know where it's going to take you, and you're like, fuck, yeah, dude, that's good. You know, like, but it's maybe it's nonsense, you know, and maybe Bain is complete nonsense, you know? I mean, this kind of ties into my general feelings about him now, which is I just think he's a much more mature filmmaker

and a much more mature writer, and I think the things he's interested in are bigger and deeper than the kind of cool ideas that he was very famed for in the early stage of his career. PTA, why don't you take a pass on Killer with Flower Moon. You know what I mean? Like, it's just like... Well, maybe he does.

I mean, he said that he called his brother Jonathan to talk to him about this. That's not the guy I wanted to go. Yeah, ever. He did talk about that, though, and how he brought some things to it. And apparently Jonathan is the one who was even more into the myths and the histories. I believe Delos was the name of the corporation in Westworld, which is, of course, a critical part of the Greek myths. So, yeah, I, I, look, nobody has been more critical than me of this exact thing. Look, this is more.

Listen, I've really come around. Let's get Peter Morgan back in the paint, you know? I'm open to it. What's he doing right now? They're making a prequel, I think. Are they really? Yeah, like for the crown, but, you know. And they make that the king speech?

No, that's, yeah. Also, that happens in season one of the crown, but that's fine. That's too bad. Not the actual speech, but yeah, this would be post-Victoria pre-Elizabeth. Who is that? King Jimmer. It was George and Edward. There was an Edward and George, I think. King Ronald?

Yeah. Was he ever a guy? Yeah. King, Jimithy. don't act like that's stolen valor on your part you didn't know who jimothy was before this podcast if you don't sell every joke I make

you're not on the show anymore have they checked jimothy what's going on with him we're probably going to enter a flaco situation with jimith where there's now like people going to Seattle to like protect jimithy but also document him

but what if it's like a milkshake duck Jimothy situation like I just watched a video of him moving I only look at pictures Jimithy is a deformed raccoon that people are very He's that the preferred nomin A spinal condition

Based on what? What do you mean? Are you a raccoonologist? What are you talking about? Wait, was the first reference to Jimothy on this podcast or was it before? No, it wasn't. I'm sorry.

I only learned about Jimothy before recording while gossiping. We were doing so well making such a serious episode. I have a couple of more notes of, not concerned, but just like, topics.

It did. The Jen Lame cutting style, which is honestly, probably the most significant director-editor partnership, Nolan and Jen Lame since Corsese and Schumacher. I mean, you could argue.

Yeah, I mean, Soderberg and Mary Bernard, which is who is him. And also his director of photographer Andrews, which is him. Yeah, Joel and Ethan Cohen and Roderick Janes. I would say,

the feeling you get knowing, like watching movies that she didn't cut versus movies that she did cut. Yeah. It's like an evolution in his style that I think is very significant. I would say, literally,

Quentin and Sally Menke is a very similar, like, whoa, I've not. And another filmmaker who really messes with time, especially in those early movies where he's like, where are we in the story? Oh, we're here. And that feeling of like, when you get to the end, for me, the last couple of Oppenheimer movies

where you're like, wow, this fully paid off. Like that really, really satisfied feeling of every choice that you made led to something. And it wasn't just a tease of a bigger idea. It was about completing an idea. So I'm with you on that. And I love it. I, in my mind, was thinking about some of the sequences in the movie and if they had been given more room to breathe or if they had had more of a buildup. And, you know, this is where you get into, like, that movie would be four hours. This movie, maybe this movie could have been a trilogy, you know, like. We kind of tipped it

tip towards that last week as well. Sirens, Sillincredus, like, Leicogonians especially, which I think is kind of like almost

devoid of context in the movie. It's like another bad island they go to. It is. Some of that, I'm sure, is just like, I have a runtime

because my IMAX projectors can't show more than three hours. Is that the deal? Or what is it? No, no. I think it was more just

like, how do we make this legible for the audiences, basically, you know? Be that as it may there's a couple of sequences that I was like in, I would have liked to have like built up to this,

had it and then celebrated it for a minute, you know, like, and taken a breath. Just not you? No, just, I'll ask you both this question. I'm not necessarily advocating for this, but if he had announced that he was doing this as an Infinity War end game thing,

where it was part one and part two, and it was two, two and a half hour movies, liked it, not liked it, would you have balked out of without even seeing them? I always think constraints are good. You know, and I mean, and I think that's part of the reason that the, the Jen lame metronome that he is so helpful to him.

So I think once you expanded to five hours, like, you know, I'm sure there would be a lot more spectacle, but I think that's also room for a lot more dialogue that isn't as polished as the siren scene. Sure. You know, like part of, I think what is so powerful about both of those sequences is that like it happens. And you've been waiting your whole life to know what the sound of the sirens really is. and, you know, it's everything that you can't have anymore, and then it's out. You're just like, damn. My last takeaway is the Haiti scene is like one of the sickest things I've ever seen.

Yeah. It's just so awesome. You've been to Iceland? No. We... Shout out to James Raymore. Yeah. I mean, he was an Oppenheimer.

This is another person that he is recurring with. He keeps recurring with all of these actors. You know, could have been Tom Berringer, alas. I love that scene. me, that might be the best work that Ludwig Orinson does in the movie, that we were listening to that in the car with my daughter over the weekend. And it's so atonal and strange and experimental and so different from the bronze, gongs, and the

sort of the harmony and musicality of the woodwind instruments on the score that, like, it feels like Trent Reznor made it? Like, it's very strange. Are you prepared for the possibility that your daughter is going to be in like fourth grade and is like, I like Jean Dieleman and Ornette Coleman. No, no, because like she's still into all the basic kid stuff. Okay. You know, she's like I need to watch Tangled,

you know, like that's the best movie ever made. So she's normal, but she's getting some undergirding of taste. I love it. That's what we're going for. Those were my huge big takeaways. Those are my big takeaways. Anything that you've thought about since we last spoke? I've thought about the characterization

of Odysseus because I did go back and do more Emily Wilson. And I think it's interesting to me than I think in any other Nolan movie I would have given and have given the extra sympathy and the great manningness of a character who textually, you know, gets up to some questionable stuff. It totally works for me. And I don't know whether that's just because I get swept up in and everything else that's going on. I don't know whether that's because I think he does more with the other characters in the story to kind of to balance it out. And he's, you know, Odysseus is not totally heroic.

Maybe it's just that it's Matt Damon. When we talk about the other Nolan movies, I think casting really goes a long way in terms of whether I respond or I don't. So I think that's interesting. I also just, it's big year for puppets. And shout out puppets. Could Ryan Gosling have done this part? No. Could Ben Affleck have done it.

Different movie, but yes. It would have been a much different movie. Can he do period? He has, but can he? He could do, I think he could do this, but it would be different. Leonardo DiCaprio. I had this conversation with Bill yesterday. He bated you right into it.

And again, they created a bunch of fake categories to rate whether or not he was better. He was like, tomorrow we're going to talk about Damon versus Leo. And I thought we were going to be like, is Bill going to debut? Leo should have been Odysseus, and instead it was kind of like, let's look at the entire body of work and I guess who wins. I was thinking more along the lines of like Fassbender.

Yeah, that's a very different movie. That's no feelings at all. He codes rage and discontent. That's don't come home, big guy. That's right. And the two that I... Well, yeah. It's true.

Go to Amanda's house. The door is always over there. So you swing by Calypso's Beach. The two that are the most interesting to me in the context, actually the three that are most interesting to be in the context of the Nolanography is Killian Murphy, who I think is inherently sympathetic and quite sad as a performer. Tom Hardy, who is violent and rageful and mumbly.

But you'd be out there on the ocean and he'd decide he had a different voice for this part of the movie. Yeah, that would be very strange. And the one to me that is really, really, really interesting is Christian Bale? And is this a better movie? It's a different movie. Is it a better movie with Christian Bale? It's a ridiculous question to ask, but we're podcasting. I'm fascinated by it because he has the physical presence.

He has the age. He could play young and play old. He can play a warrior. He can play a very intelligent trickster figure. And he just frankly is like maybe one of the two or three best actors of his generation, pretty widely accepted. I don't know that this I love what wound up happening with the vernacular of this movie

and people speaking in this colloquial American and saying it 10 years on this fucking beach and you know the way that Hamesh Patel and him interact feeling like a war movie that was made two years ago about Desert Storm or Vietnam and there's no difference

bail God he would have been been good, but it would have been different. I don't think it would be hopeful in any way, in addition to there would be less sympathy, though I think Christian Bale can bring a little. But I think that Nolan gets away with 90% of the ending up to the last two lines because you believe in Damon and his essential goodness. And you really believe that that person would come back and feel regret and shame and have

introspection. And I think Bail would have all of those things, but I don't know whether he would turn it into even the possibility of civilization rising again. Yeah, he's not as inherently romantic figure. It's just an interesting thing because he's, you know, he's gotten great performances at a lot of

leading men over the years. And it's so funny to me that he chose the first Damon leading part in one of his movies to be this guy. Yeah, I think it's been interesting to hear the reactions to some of the central performances, I think especially Holland who I guess is very good to unremarkable to me in this movie, but that's exactly what he's

supposed to be. So I think if he had been allowed to speak in his native accent, I wouldn't have blanched out as much. But to me, I was just like. The ours are hard for him. Yeah. Yeah. I was a little just thrown off every time he was speaking.

It is true. There is, when he comes back and he enters the hall again, it doesn't have to speak, but he just looks like, you know, the golden boy returned home. And I feel everything I'm supposed to feel of his casting in that moment. And then he speaks in his American accent again. Yeah. Do you think you could take Logan Marshall Green one-on-one? I think there's a real reason why they saddled Logan Marshall Green with Spurs.

First of all, also, can I just say my favorite to the Terror Twins, Logan Marshall Green and Mia Gauth. Yeah. I'd love to party with them. You know who else I really enjoyed who we didn't mention on the first episode, Corey Hawkins, who is, you know, playing sidekick to Antonus. and just a lot of actors who really command the screen in this movie

in such a great way. There's been a lot of talk of Leguizamo I think is amazing and I think probably is going to get an Oscar campaign for him because he's somebody who's never really been recognized before and has done a lot of things like this where you're like, oh, John Leguizamo's in that

and you're like, oh, of course, John Leguizamo, he feasts on roles like this. I also really liked the guy who's kind of like third on the boat next to Odysseus and Hamish Patel. Yeah, what's that guy's name? Who's the one who in tenet, he feeds John David Washington He's torturing John David Washington.

He plays the Ukrainian. Yeah. Right, right. And he's been in a million things, but it is a great heavy. Okay, so we're talking about Andrew Howard. Yeah. Who plays, is it, is it Polites? Polites?

I don't remember everybody's name. How do you pronounce the name? You know, I don't know. I don't speak Greek. And who was, in fact, the driver in Tenet. Yeah. And it feels like he's been in 104 guy Ritchie movies, perhaps has been in none.

Yeah, he's great. Okay, let's talk just a little bit more about Nolan before ranking these movies. So I've been talking about how I see him differently the last few movies and I have a different relationship to his movies. Has your relationship changed? Probably, I think, because he's moved away from the Jonathan Sci-Fi and we have more movies in a row in the back half of his career that are not just mind-bent, total mind-bending. They have mind-bending elements, but they are more in the real world and more real actors doing real things. things and I respond to that. But probably not in terms of my assessment of, like, his competence or even what he does that I respond positively to. I think I have been pretty consistent

in what works and what does not work. What about for you? I'm a fan. So it's like, I don't think I, if you would ask me in 2008 with Dark Knight, I think I probably thought of him as like the best in class when it comes to IP. adaptation stuff, and there is like a weird sliding door where Man of Steel is like this giant hit, the Zach Snyder Superman movie, and Nolan is overseeing like a DC cinematic universe, and that might change the course of modern movie history. I don't know if he ever would have done that. And I mean, that's honestly a strike against Nolan, that his decision for the Superman movie

was to choose Zach Snyder. Sure. That's not cool. Like, that movie sucks. So, I think that movie is evil. So, yeah. I, uh, that's funny. Do you do not agree?

I haven't watched it in a very long time, but I'm not going to get mad at him for executive producing. I'm not mad. I'm just saying it's a strike against him. Don't put in the newspaper that I'm mad. I would say that there's something bittersweet about this because he has told everyone now that he is going to take three years off that this movie took everything out of him. And selfishly, I want more. Like, I want the best filmmakers to be prolific, and I know how hard this is, although I'm still trying to wrap my mind around doing this in Oppenheimer in the course of three years.

Like, yeah, it's pretty crazy. But this definitely feels like an end of a phase, an end of an era for him. I've been wondering that. Do you think that's true? I mean, what else could be bigger? What else can you do at this point? Where has he not filmed? The joke online this weekend was Moby Dick, that that is.

There have been adaptations of Moby Dick, but none that really rise. I think he wants to take a break from the water. Yeah. I wouldn't blame him. I mean, Moby Dick is kind of half unadaptable because so much of it is about, like, you know, sailing strategies around that time. But there's few people who can take on movies of this magnitude. What I'm kind of hoping for, personally, is that there is a generation of directors who see a movie like this and want to attempt it and can convince studios to attempt it. that we don't just reserve a movie like this

to the two or three living people who we know can make a movie like this. And that there are a few more chances taken because so much of the, like, CGI rot that we've gotten over the years with movies is because people don't trust people to make stuff like this practically. And I get it because like some of my favorite movies are things like Lost City of Z or Babylon

where you're like, if you were a studio head, you could be like, I fucking tried. You can't blame me. Yeah, it's true. went to see this. It's true. They're not easy to make and they're not easy to pull off. And they're not easy to get people to show up for.

And they don't always work. Even in our epic movie drafts that we had a lot of the greatest movies ever made. And then we're just like rooting around in the bargain bin for a third biblical epic that anyone wants to talk about. It's very true. Yeah. You know, you mentioned some of those forebearers. Like, do you think in 50 years or 100 years he will be studied as one of the great critical filmmakers in the evolution of. of the art form.

This is assuming there are still movies at that time. Certainly, at least from a sociological and, you know, and technical point of view. The IMAX camera of it all alone and what that has kind of introduced in terms of everyone getting freaky with their Vista vision and being like X, Y, Z, you know, I think will at least be worth like one day on a syllabus, right? but the films themselves also the role that he played in the superhero movement, which is, you know, part of 21st Century Cinema at this point. And box office wise, I think Oscars wise at this point, I think he already has more Oscars than Hitchcock and Kubrick. He does.

Yeah. Damn. Well, Hitchcock has zero competitive and Kubrick has one for visual effects. I think you have to look at it in a larger context than just like he's. a great director and he's in his prime. He's also, I think, like, a long for the movie business. And his, is, like, his sort of stepping into the void after COVID to, like, bring theatrical experiences back and his last few films. He held the fucking line on that. Yeah. Like, I personally will forever be grateful to him for being that person who was just like, this movie's going in

fucking theaters. I don't care. Yeah. And I think imagining a future for movies that doesn't feel like forgive me like, but what if it was more AI or what if it was like we've rendered this world inside of a new cool software engine? Like imagining a way to keep being like, there's a person, this is the real world, I'm going to shoot it and it's going to make you feel something. I think it's like a really invaluable contribution, maybe even a bigger one than any one film that he's made. Just as a counterpoint to the question earlier, is it possible that this is the end of an error, not just for him, but for movies, that this actually will be the last movie that is like that because of the

incursion of this new technology that more and more people are signing up to participate with? I mean, that's been Damon's talking point, right? That he said, you know, I took this as my last chance, maybe just because of where he is in his career and he's not going to do physical

stuff at this level probably forever. Though, you know, I believe, and we've made a lot of advancements in, you know, body hacking. And he went gluten-free, he said. So, yeah, he said that on the New York Times cooking interview. Couldn't be me. He did a New York Times cooking interview? With Tom Holland, they made pizza? Yeah, the pizza kitchen. Yeah. I think that's corny, but whatever.

Come make pizza with me. Okay. This is a movie podcast. What would you put on your pizza? Yeah. What would I put on my pizza? Right. Yeah. Gosh. You don't make the pizza. I lead this. Aline makes the pizza. High protein cottage cheese. You don't know he's mushrooms? Don't tell him about that. I like mushrooms. No. Yeah. Okay. You left all the mushrooms on that pasta. Well, bacon on there sometimes, you know? Some fontaine. The pasta out of the mushrooms.

Okay. But that was just two instances. It's like any kind of bolognese. Like there's just the bolognaise to pasta ratio is often off. I don't want to eat a bowl of ground beef at the end of my pasta. Okay. And so the same went for this mushroom bolognais that I had. I had lovely mushrooms with the rigatoni.

Okay. We are recording this. I just feel like I've gotten put on blast for this mushroom thing. Anyway, so I think, you know, Damon has said this. I took this in part because this was the last time I would ever get to do this. And that is a referendum on his career, but also the way that movies are made now. I'm just hopeful that the bonanza that is this movie and the bonanza in comparison with whatever sad eventor shit is going on. Dude Part 3, though, is similar to us.

Totally. It's similar. It has a lot more visual effects work because it's science fiction, but shot in real places on real landscapes and a way that feels like it's part of some natural world. Exactly. It's like, maybe what, like, maybe we won't be able to tell what this movie means for 15 years and we can reconvene then, you know. Three of us? Yeah. And just be like, did we see a wave of filmmakers?

Would you want to do that? Sure. Well, I'll be 64. Yeah, when I'm 60. Yeah. You give me a gold watch. You can say thanks for the bottom. Yeah.

Will you retire? I want to see where Bill goes. I want to see how Bill does senior, his, his, his. Because you'll follow him anywhere or because you just want to know how to chart the path. What's the appetite for an old version, like a really old version of me being like, ah, you know, this succession reboot didn't work for me. I'm 74. What's the absolute oldest age you want to be while recording a podcast? Is there video?

There is video. Okay. They're not going to take video away at this point. I don't think that's on the table. But you could be like the Charlotte Rampling of video podcasts. That's the nicest thing you've ever said. to me. Thank you. What do you mean? Just like, just showing...

Smoking hot at 70. Being like nothing else here makes sense, but I still look good. Sure, yeah. If I can look like Charlotte Rampling, then, you know, age has no limit. Good to know. What about you, man? This is it. This is the last episode. For me, I'm done. I'm just trying to get to the Odyssey.

You know, I'm done. You want to rank the movies? Sure. Now, I suggested should there be two separate rankings here? Yeah. Which is what? Should there be my weird scale and then you guys? But Amanda says she wants to have some friction here.

We're not, you know, at odds. This is a collective... Yeah, we're not at us. I agree. As we are advocating or are we doing three separate rankings? No, we're doing it together. Okay, great. So I don't have to have like my preordinated list.

No, no, no, we're doing it together. And what he wanted to do is that we would team up because we have similar tastes. And then he'd do his... We have some pretty clear... Trash inceptions. terms of I'm not going to trash anything. I don't think anything here is worth trashing. I think this is a very interesting filmography.

I think there are ups and downs, mostly ups. Yeah. Both financially, critically, all those things. You know, I think most people will look at following an insomnia as 13 and 12 in some order. Okay. Are there any insomnia heads out there? I rewatched most of it last night. Okay.

Honestly, I had a pretty good time It's pretty good I mean, it's pretty good. I agree. You know, if you're going to put it at the lowest, it's because it is not a screenplay by Nolan and it is like the least Nolan-y. It's such a studio job. Yeah, you can't use it as

a text to explain every other movie. But like the action sequences are pretty good when the log chase. Yeah. I think it's pretty good. I mean, I remember seeing this in theaters because I love Memento and I was like, okay, cool. We got one of these guys and he is not what I thought He was, like, he has turned into something I never would have imagined after watching that movie.

After watching Insomnia, I was like, okay, so he's going to be like James Foley or something, you know, like really good kind of genre, like down and dirty. Yeah, yeah. And he has obviously elevated beyond that. It's so wild because, like, if you watch, like, you know, if you're in that era and you're going up up until 2010, if you'd been like, a next Christopher Nolan is going to do James Bond or he's going to revive Indiana Jones or we're going to give him this. I kind of would have believed you. Like, it wasn't like, now I'm like, you know, like, I have like literally no concept of what he would, he could make next. But there was a safe pair of handsness to him back then.

Yeah. I think it was just that I was like, okay, he's a, he's a noir crime director. Because following Memento and Insomnia are all just crime movies in different ways. One's a serial killer movie. You know, one's a, a con man movie. One's a murdering, a memory murder movie. But I, it's weird because. like following is very remedial.

It's got a really great idea. It's made for a very small amount of money. Clearly over a long period of time as a de facto student film. But there are a lot of jokes about this now. But it's all in there. Like all the stuff that interests him and the way that he plays with time

and the way that he removes or conceals information and then shows it to you in a shocking way. There's a man named Cobb in the film. There's a Batman sticker on one of the doors. Like all the stuff is in there. you know, breaking and entering, slipping away, a blonde, poorly written female character. All of his... Stand in men who look and speak like Christopher Nolan?

Yeah, very much. So all of... It's suited men, by the way. So it's all kind of in there. It's pretty nifty as a first micro-budgeted feature. Would you still put it at 16? Well, I guess it's more like, is insomnia just a better movie, even if following is a more critical film for him.

So how do you see it? I think I just enjoy watching Alpchino, so I would have insomnia higher than the following. I think Pacino, Robill-Lam's are kind of like, and that's where he starts to like really start to move into like, I can kind of identify something in someone that people like, and I'm going to emphasize it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. What do you think?

I really like more Tierney, so we can put following a 13. Following 13. Insomnia 12. Yeah. I tell you what, if I was asked to sit down right now, I personally would rather watch insomnia than Batman Begins. I know that's crazy. I'm not saying it's better,

but just in terms of like what kind of movie watching experience I want to have, maybe that's because there are two other Batman movies I would much rather watch. It is nuts how much more I watch Dark Night and Dark Night Rises, and I just rarely am ever firing up Batman Begins. And part of it is because of the origin myth of Bruce Wayne stuff where I'm just like, I just feel like I've experienced this. many times. But did you feel that way in 2005? You know what? What I thought in 2005 was

in some ways what I thought with Oppenheimer, with Odyssey, which is like he's moving a little too fast. Like there's not, it goes from going to find Razal Ghoul to back to Gotham to, you know, like it's very fleet of foot. But yeah, like I am not a huge Batman Begins guy. I was and remain absolutely terrified by the scarecrow in a way that I think it like is speaks well of the movie that is an achievement that I basically don't want to watch it because I just can't see that on screen. I think it's a good call.

Yeah. So that recommends it. And I think I would probably rather watch any of the Batman movies more than the really hardcore sci-fi stuff. But that's just Amanda. Yeah, that's the issue is I have inception somewhat low. You have interstellar some. somewhat low.

I would rather watch Inception and Stellar, even if they're not my favorites over Batman Begins. It's why I'm kind of throwing it out there this early. I think you could put it at 11. Yeah, I don't have a problem with it. It's not bad. I don't mean to communicate that it's bad. It doesn't have a villain the way that the other two do.

And I think the counterweight of having Liam Mason's good. Yeah. But it doesn't have Joker or Baden. I mean, it has a real. Katie Holmes performance from this era. What do you think of that, Rachel? Well, I think it was better for everyone when Maggie Jalenhall showed up. Maybe not better for Katie Holmes, but she's a street style star now, so.

Is that what she is? Yeah, I mean, she's also, you know, making and directing films and, and I think. No, I don't think the new one with Joshua Jackson has been released yet. Wow. But I'll see it. what is the choice that that Batman has to make at the end of Dark Night? Is it you can either

Rachel blows up? Save Rachel or Harvey Dent. All right. And explain to me again what happens. He chooses Harvey Dent, but he thinks he's choosing Rachel and Joker flipped it on him. Yeah. I don't know.

It was spoiled for me. Yeah. By us just now. No, no, no, no. Where's Rachel? Okay, Batman begins at 11. at 10. Well, this is where it gets a little hard. I think this is, to me, this is where it gets a little hard. Are you guys going to say that you think Memento belongs here? No. Are you going to say that

you think Inception belongs here? If it were my list, Inception comes in around here. I think Inception is a superior film to Momento. I do as well. I completely understand. Again, this is why I offered the opportunity to have separate lists. Well, listen, we're talking about it together. So if Inception is a no, would you like to offer something else? Would you like us to offer a counter? Why have I taken the role of like couples therapists? Yeah, that's exactly. Yeah, you want to do it together.

Broker this piece between Chris and I. I just want to heal. I want this guy back. You know? From Toronto, you know, just the, from the van ride. We've been having such a good time today. I agree. I agree.

I just, you know. I just want to make sure that it's okay. Chicken. Yeah. Remembering the good times. Third item. I have a solution here for us. Okay.

So we're trying to decide, like, does Inception go at 10? Yeah. Does Momenta go at 10? What if we put Dark Night Rises at 10? Oh. Okay. I think that's right. That's big of you?

Now, Dark Night Rises... You're the number one defender. No, I am a Bain apologist. I think Dark Night Rises is often quite silly. Yeah, it is. It is. It's actually kind of amazing how bad it is at times relative to where he's at in his career at this time. But it's like a...

really good number 10. I think number 10 is the right place to put it and then we can say, but honestly, it goes hard when it goes hard. It basically saves us from having to be like hurt anybody's feelings because I don't, I love Bain as much as anybody else in his character universe. Okay. But the movie itself is, in fact, sometimes kind of bad, I think. It's kind of weird.

I mean, it's also so long. And this came out after Interstellar. Isn't that so strange? It did? No, it didn't. Dark Night Rises is 2012, Interstellar, 24. It came out after inception. He made inception in between Dark Night and Dark Night Rises.

Thank you. You know, it's kind of fascinating to think that a movie that has as much plot incoherence as Dark Night Rises is from the same filmmaker as Interstellar, who's like visually commanding the screen in such a profound way. Okay, I'm good with that. I have to be like a little bit of a jellyfish now. Like, you guys have to kind of tell me where you want to go. Okay.

Is that what you imagine a jellyfish experience is like? Well, don't get too close to me or I'll sting you. Oh, okay. Got it. I want you to have, we can have a safe distance. A brokered piece. Okay. Your understanding of the ocean is always evolving.

I'm from Long Island. I've always been surrounded by the ocean my entire life. And you refuse to visit it. I love the ocean. I hate the sand. This is a longstanding take. Okay. If we can remove the sand from the beach.

I have said this to him. Every single time, and he's like, did you know? I haven't been. No one would take us on a yacht in can. You know? It's a real Anakin Skywalker. I hate sand situation. I just don't like sand.

Okay. I don't like what it does. You know, I don't love the sun. Yeah. But I get it. Yeah, it's constitutional. I get it. If we could have an overcast hot day in the ocean, that's the best.

An overcast hot day in the ocean. Yeah. That's what they have when the worst of the worst is happening in the Odyssey. Yeah. And this is the man who wants to put Inception. at number nine. Okay. You gotta have a strong point of view on things.

That's how we get through life. Have you revisited? When's the last time you watched Inception? I watched it during COVID. That's not that recent anymore. That's true. 21 maybe? You can like check my logs.

I'll pass. Never say that to me again. Literally or... I have to admit. If I had a diary, would you read my diary? No. Yes. No.

My texting with you is probably... Until I write the novel about you, and then I will use it as, you know. That's right. That's right. I'd probably text you 8% less now because I used to be like, did you see this? And now I know I could just look at your letterbox. But that seems so impersonal. You know what?

Just come on over in my house. Ask me a question face-to-face like a man. Come to your house at 1145 p.m. And be like, have you seen the horror movie, The Passenger? I think that movie was just called Passenger. Sorry. The Passenger is an Antonio movie. Did you see Passenger?

I didn't see Passenger. Was it? There's some good stuff in it. Yeah. Classic. Two and a star is. Sure. Okay.

Look. Are you always giving stars? No, I only do hearts or no hearts. Yeah, that's what I thought. Well, you just threw out a star rating there. I know, that's like the general, like, review of people are giving it on Letterbox. Okay. Look, I think Inception is better than Momento.

It's fine if you don't. Do you think his inception is better than the prestige? Because the prestige is a cult of Nolan fandom that I appreciate from afar but do not subscribe to. Yeah, I appreciate it until those people try to say that it's better in an inception. It's like prestige is very good. It also just has a lot of your stuff. You know, it has Hugh Jackman and magic. So those are just two things that really speak to you.

Right. You know, again, we're getting to some black licorice issues for me. Prestige is really good, but don't be the guy that's like Nolan eh, but you know what's really good, the prestige. I've heard and I'm okay. Any Nolan list? Bowie as Nicola Tesla. I mean, come on. Yeah, he was cast

Yeah That's in the film It's in the text Hines Ward Who's in Dark Night Rises I mean we could just go through Hines Ward is a piece of shit Fuck him

Oh that's right AFC beef Yeah God damn it Stole Crackback blocks Is that what they call those Yeah it is

Yeah Gotta bring those back You think that'd be good For the NFL Yeah Start severely injuring men On the field I think the pro forma

Of move here Would be to do some combination of that, to do Memento 9, the prestige at 8, and then run through the... Figure out the classics from there. I love that. Okay. Now, that's not what I want, but I will do it

for the sake of getting through this podcast. I'm okay with it. I think that this is a filmmaker that for... Because he's so popular and because he has been popular for a very long time and because he has raised now two generations of filmmakers, filmgoers, you're just going to get a lot of variance in what people value.

Like, the Batman trilogy is amazing. Dark Night trilogy is incredible. it's not a huge it's not a grower for me like I think like I like it and I admire it but it's not going to like pierce the I'm not going to have Dark Night in my top four

people might you know I do I think I do I do it's interesting that he keeps stacking movies that I'm putting over the Dark Night now as time goes on which is really exciting I think the Dark Night it's not quite an innovation but it's a what I like about it is that it's him

taking great tools from older movies and applying it to a new, like a kind of movie that is very popular at the time and making those pieces fit together. Can I make a very strange suggestion? Suggestion. Yes. Is that while we're doing this list from the bottom up, should we now reverse and go from the top down?

Is it better for us to now from the second half of the list should actually be like, let's have the number one conversation? Should we do our own temple? I'm giving you guys a lot of room to move to me because to me, I think Oppenheimer and The Odyssey are his best movies. I think they're his best films. So, you know, I'm not sure. Most people, I don't think, feel that way.

And sure, maybe there's some recency bias, but I've talked a little bit about the things that he's doing now that I am connecting to more. May I ask you a follow up? I would love it if you did. Is Dunkirk in the top three? No. Okay.

I'm with him on Dunkirk. Dunkirk's number one for me. Dunkirk is top three for me. And I think we all, you know, know, know how I feel about the third hour of Oppenheimer and Interstellar. So we're going to have to start making some real, some group choices.

Interstellar, I think, is very good. But it's never been a personal favorite of mine. There's some of the sickest craft you'll ever see in a movie in Interstellar, but I find the plot to be very sentimental. I think it goes on and on. There's beautiful, beautiful passage of Interstellar, if you put it at seven, I think it's okay.

I also, the McConaughey. it when I was really, because I, I rewatched it again to try to give it a fair shot. And I know it means a lot to a lot of people, especially people younger than us, you know, who kind of, who saw it at the right moment in their career. McConaughey is doing too much for me. And it, like, tips it over too far into the sentimentality that you were referencing. Yeah. And that's the movie to me that is more, though, about my life spent making movies without my family. And then as the, as we go on and those themes recur, it's more like, well, my family can. come with me now to any movie I make

because I'm Chris Nolan. But that's almost like him remembering making the Dark Knight or the prestige or something and being away from a newborn. You want to put interstellar something? It's so hard because you guys are going to have to give me more if we're putting stuff

you know, like memento and interstellar to me are better than Inception. You know, they're... So let's do which one do you like more Memento or Interstellar? I like Memento, but I don't think that's not a common feeling.

Interstellar Inception Memento. Is that too high for Memento for you? Because that would put Memento at five. Yeah, that's going to be too high for her. No, I like Memento. It's the best of the Jonathan's. To me Memento is like a 1940s Warner Brothers movie in reverse. It's a really, really sharp crime movie.

I'm pro Memento. Memento is a subhead of the prestige of people being like, yeah, yeah. Remember before Nolan, you know, sold out and he made Memento? I get it. This is my version of coming. to meet you halfway. You know what I mean? Okay.

Well, okay. We'll follow along with your move. So you, number one for you would be Dunkirk. When you say top three, like literally, what would it be if you were making your own individual list? Because I'll roll with you guys on this if it's that high for you. I think, I don't know whether I have Dark Knight or Odyssey at number one. But I would go with number one because, and then let's see.

So, I mean, my top four is Odyssey, Dunkirk, Tenet, and Dark Knight. And I know that Oppenheimer has to be in the top four because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that's fine. Would you put Oppenheimer in your top four? If you wouldn't, then we're going to end up putting it as something like four or five because then it'll be just me. I go Dunkirk Inception, Odyssey, Tenet Dark Knight, Oppenheimer, I think. I think I also have Inception. I would tie Inception and Oppenheimer.

He's so mad. I'm not mad. This is just a chaotic act. Okay. I mean, this is a very hard thing. I don't even know where I am with myself. Right now I know that I'm not helping. I know I've brought the spirit of discussion and then I'm just discussing into.

Normally I have to be the decision maker, you know? Normally I have not. In your life, you mean? In my life. Yeah. And I have to be very clear. We are working on behalf of Dom Cobb, but then I think also Sean and I are working on behalf of men like Robert Downey Jr. I think, sure.

I think my rankings right now are. From the from one to five are Oppenheimer 1, Dark Knight 2, Odyssey 3, Monumento 4 and 10 at 5. Dunkirk is 6. And Dunkirk is 6. Because Dunkirk, I just always thought that the structure was a little too cute for its own sake because it doesn't really match chronologically. You think it's cute that all those men were stranded on the shore?

I didn't say the events on the beaches of Dunkirk were cute. You think it's cute when they were just practicing for the Trojan horse? Gary Keegan gets kicked down the stairs. Yeah. No, I didn't say that. And they're like, Peter. You guys hash it out. You guys figure it out.

Where do you want to go? So, Dunkirk's your number one, and yours is number six. And I'm in the, well, we're nowhere. So I guess that we act, then we meet where Amanda is. This is like the third hour of Oppenheimer. No, no. I'm saying, I would give you Dunkirk at two, but I can't. You can't have the bomb.

Like, I can give you Dunkirk's two, but I can't give it at one. Is Oppenheimer. And your number one is the Odyssey? And the Odyssey could be number one in six months. Or I could do Darkman. Night or I could do... Dark Night is not his best movie. Okay, all right, okay.

The first hour and a half is... And also, so here's the thing. The first an hour and a half of Dark Night, electric. First two hours of Oppenheimer transcendent. Trinity Test Check. Like, absolutely. And then it keeps going. And then all the men are around rooms and they're just like, you know, having flashbacks

to two seconds ago being like, does the treaty say this? Watch the last 10 minutes of Oppenheimer this morning. Sure. Yeah, it's up on his face and he's like, what did I do? Yeah. My genius. When Alden Errorich is like, boom, gotcha to Downey. Yeah, some senator named Jonathan. No, not that part. No, no, no.

When he's explaining to Downey that, of course, those two men were not having a conversation about him. They were having a conversation about more important things. And then we cut to the Tom Conti, Killian Murphy scene, which is an amazing way to end a movie. And my big hang-ups on a bunch of these movies is like, these endings don't work. The endings of the last two movies works so well to me. I remember when Romney Malik had a clipboard? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

He was working on that project With the other scientists And then he was there in the room Being like it was you Mr. President or whatever I don't know what was happening Do you know it's a sixth scene in Oppenheimer Is when Casey Affleck is like

That's so good It's so good Yeah He's like his what do you say he killed Russians With his bare hands Yeah It's good shit There's a lot of really good stuff in Appanamo

Should we move prestige down to 9 And Memento back up Since we've been speaking so glowingly Of it lately Because right now Memento's at 9 prestige Maybe just flip Memento to 8 and prestige to 9. Okay. Okay.

Just as a salve for me. Then I will give you Inception at 6. I know apparently it is more and more of a like... You're saying it's number two for you? And it's top 5 for you. So then that's not fair. Well, hold on. What are my...

I'm just going to make a separate note with my top 5. This is going really well. Odyssey. For the sake of... A unified theory of Christopher Nolan. Let's make Inception 5. Okay. Because most people...

We'll want to see it in that space. And you guys both really like it. I'm okay with it at five. I would put interstellar. I would put interstellar with seven if I had to. Okay. That would be my choice. I don't think we could put your number one movie at six, though.

That's not fair. What's your number one? Oppenheimer. Oh, yeah, because we have all these other. So I think. Tenet. I think Tenet goes at six. That's, you know what?

That's like, I think if we had tenet in the top three, people would be like. People would be mad. And not that I care. It's not about that. It's about what is just. 10 and 6, inception and 5. I think this is right. And then this means that Oppenheimer

is probably going to 4 here. Based on your takes. I think Dunkirk's better than Oppenheimer. I do too. So what's left here? And then it's Odyssey and Darkland. It's crazy. Well, we're missing a...

What are we missing? We're like 98 out of 100 on stuff. Odyssey, Dunkirk, and the Dark Night. It's actually quite fascinating to me when we depart in that kind of way. We depart that kind of way all the time. I think the reason why I love Dunkirk is because everything with Dunkirk is what he is showing you rather than what he is telling you. And I think in Oppenheimer, it's a lot more of the reverse, even though obviously incredible spectacle.

But like it's a lot more of like, and we had no idea what power we had unleashed. And like in Dunkirk, it's like, I think that's not important? It's survival. To not speak that into the truth of the world. No, but I think Dunkirk is like, like, I really liked it when he said it in The Odyssey, you know? Yeah. A third of Dunkirk is silent, you know, or there's no dialogue. You know?

Yeah. Okay. So you want Dunkirk at what? Three. But then that means Darkness going to two. And Odyssey is going to one, which is a recency bias. This is a mess. Well, fine.

Then, then change something. This is a mess. This is Deacon's all over again. Do you want to put Dark Knight at four? Dunkirk at three, Oppenheimer. I mean, nobody wants Oppenheimer at one, but you. I'm not, and I'm not pushing for it. And I'm fine with Oppenheimer at four.

I don't think... I mean, I agree that it's too soon... It's too soon for the Odyssey to be number one, even though I do think that it is my number one. And he said Dark Night No Chance. So he's only allowing Dunkirk to go to number one. That's the argument that he is making. Now, you are, of course, a guest of this show,

and a crucial member of this team and community. So I respect your point of view, but you have to show a little bit more flexibility. I'm being flexible. You have to tell us, what's another film that could be number one that isn't Dunkirk. And you're saying there isn't one. No, I didn't say that.

I said Dunkirk is my favorite Christopher Nolan movie. I didn't say it has to be at number one. What should be a number one that isn't Dunkirk? I think that the Odyssey being number one is a little bit cringe. I agree. We all agree with that. We all agree. But we do have to find other solutions, you know?

We got to find a problem. Do you live your life worrying about appearing to be cringe? No. You don't. You don't. I agree. I just mean like I meant more like, do you?

Let's be bigger than that. No, I'm never cringe, but I do witness to sit everywhere that I go. I worry about other people being cringe all the time. I just got the name of my novel about you on the board, which is called I'm never cringe, a satirical novel.

Because cringe is all about self-confidence, you know? And I've got it. But like other people, all those moms at the pool on Friday, that was the definition of cringe. That's what they were. Like Jimenez, I don't think they made it to the pod. Yeah.

Well, I know, but now I found the word that I was looking for. They weren't mean. They were just really cringe in their own ways. All right. And they were not confident. So much. I'm gonna pulling lore from off mic into hour three of pods on mic. Because it's hour three.

And much like a Christopher Nolan film, I don't remember where I am. Okay. Well, there's just no good solution here. Okay. So we're not doing Odyssey at number one because we all agree. What about the dark night? No. Chris is not doing that.

Chris says no. I mean, I mean, This is how we wound up with Oppenheimer on 25 for 25, which I still feel frustrated about because there are many other movies made in this century that are better than Oppenheimer. It's very, very good. Well, maybe now I'm coming around to the idea that The Odyssey should be number one just to stiff arm Dark Knight out and to make sure that, like, The Odyssey is perhaps his greatest cinematic achievement. Dark Knight's biggest commercial success to date. How about that?

Tenet number one? Zag? Even I can't make that case Okay, yeah We tried in Toronto Everyone was like Plate golf clap Yeah exactly

You sure guys We wish you brought Inception Yeah I don't know what to say What do you think of this list Can we move up? What else can we move up? The inevitable solution to this

Is that you guys will get to have Dunkirk at number one And then everything else slides down the spot And that that's what's That gets to be the way that this gets solved And Dunkirk would be your personal six It would And it would be your three

That's by no means bad. It would be my three or my two. It's very good. Consider this my early 50th birthday present to you. 16 months in advance. I would do Dunkirk won Oppenheimer 2. Ooh. I like that.

I'm okay with Oppenheimer at 2. I like that. Well, now, now you're helping me out. Yeah, that's really good. That's what I appreciate it. But also Sean, yeah, I think that's great. It's called confidence. And is Dark Night going to three?

And Odyssey at four? Or is Odyssey going to three and Dark Night to four? I think Odyssey three, Dark Night to Four, personally. I think I probably... That gets closer to how I feel about his career. Okay. I think that's it. I got to rewatch Dunkirk. Dunkirk 1, Oppenheimer 2, Odyssey 3, Dark Knight 4, Inception 5,

10 at 6, Interstellar 7. The Interstellar boys are going to cry. Listen, they shouldn't listen to this podcast anymore. If you expect us to ever let Interstellar fully into our hearts, that's cool. I think it's good. I'm not saying it's bad.

I'm happy for everyone. And there are. Does it make you cry? I feel nothing when I watch Interstellar. I mean, I'm like, ooh, you know, space. I'm into it. Is it elevated at all? because it's early Timothy Shalomey?

No, I mean, I'm happy for him, but I kind of forget that he's in it. Is that a Hans movie? It's a Hans movie. Yeah, Hans blacks out with that black when they go into the black hole. Do you think you could be friends with a theoretical physicist? Sure. I can be friends with somebody.

I've noticed that about you. That is nice. One of your superpowers. Could you? Sure. I'm a curious person. Okay. I'm assuming he's a good hang or she's a good hang.

Absolutely not. I don't have a lot of page. Physics is just where I check out. I appreciate all the work that they've done in making our planes fly and, you know, other stuff. Okay. Other stuff such as? I was not good. My mind doesn't work that way.

Shall I read this lineup? I don't know if this is amazing or terrible. Well, it doesn't have to be. It's not locked yet. I think it is. Okay. I think it's good. you guys got to give me one next time.

That's how I feel about this. We gave you one. No, you got Dunkirk at number one. So you got to give me one next time. What's next time when we do the PTA ranking? We have to let you say what? Well, last time we did that, I told Amanda stand down. I got this.

Yeah, it's true. I was just there to haze him when he put boogie nights at number three. And I was like, you're not being true to yourself. That's right. You know, you're betraying your own principles. Your own might be number one now is Magnolia. Yeah, you've entered that phase of your life. It's really good.

I've really watched you twice in the last two years. It's so fucking good. Yeah. And it's so free and insane. God. All right. Anyway, number 13 following. Number 12, insomnia.

Number 11, Batman begins. Number 10, the Dark Night rises. Number nine, the prestige. Number eight, Memento. Number seven, interstellar. Number six, tenet. Number five, Inception. Number four, the Dark Night.

Number three, the Odyssey. Number two, Oppenheimer, and number one, Dunkirk. This is kind of like, Everybody gets what they want, but nobody gets what they want situation. That's what compromises. That sure is. If only the United Nations knew who had a cook like we do, we'd be in a much better place. We wouldn't have to make the Odyssey.

Put us in charge. That's true. Yeah. We are the civilization that rose again. If there were to be something we could literally be in charge of. On a national global level? He doesn't care. I care.

But that's where the best ideas come from, you know? Someone who's totally checked out on something. He just, he brings, you know, the magic sprinkle. We'll make sure all of the important stuff happens. And then Chris is like, okay. And then what if Chimacy runs through? Okay. Thanks to our producer Jack Sanders for his work on today's episode.

Thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for his production support. Thank you to Chris Ryan. My pleasure. Playing along with another silly game. I thought this was great. I'm so glad. It's nice to be back. It was a good discussion.

Yeah. Was it good? Well, I just think these movies bring out the absolute best of this show. I just think when something is serious and big, but a lot of fun and everyone is watching it, it is my favorite time to be making this podcast. So I appreciate you guys doing the same and everybody listening along later this week.

We are doing a mailbag, big pick mailbag at gmail.com. Send your emails in the form of a question. Send questions. That's right. Just think of it this way. Jack has to work on this. He has to sift through emails.

He is taking out time from his day to bring the best questions to us. Yeah. If you waste his time with long disquisitions on CR's hat choices, then you're wasting our time. Don't waste it. We'll see you later this week. Hey, y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair.

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