Christopher Nolan recap: the story so far

No. 01 · 1998 · Film

Following recap

Following (1998) tracks a jobless young London writer who shadows strangers for ideas until one of them, a burglar named Cobb, notices and recruits him. Christopher Nolan wrote, shot and edited the black-and-white feature on weekends over a year, using 16 mm stock and friends' flats. Jeremy Theobald plays the Young Man, who calls himself Bill, and Alex Haw plays Cobb, a thief who cares less about the loot than about rifling through people's lives to shake them up. Bill starts breaking in alone, cuts his hair, wears a suit like Cobb's and takes up with the Blonde (Lucy Russell), whose flat they burgled. She says her gangster ex, the Bald Guy, is blackmailing her with photos, so Bill cracks the Bald Guy's safe and clubs a guard with a hammer. The story is cut into three shuffled timelines that slowly line up. Following is Nolan's first feature and comes before Memento.

How Following ends

Following ends with Bill framed for murder. The Blonde admits she and Cobb groomed him to copy Cobb's methods, supposedly so a body Cobb stumbled on would look like the work of another burglar. Bill heads to the police to confess. Cobb then reveals to the Blonde that he works for the Bald Guy, whom she has been blackmailing, and kills her with Bill's hammer. The police find Bill's fingerprints all over the scene, and Cobb disappears into the crowd. Nolan later reused the name Cobb for Leonardo DiCaprio's thief in Inception.

Post-credits scenes

No. Following has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 02 · 2000 · Film

Memento recap

Memento (2000) follows Leonard Shelby, a man who cannot form new memories, as he hunts the man who raped and killed his wife. Christopher Nolan adapted the story from his brother Jonathan's short story "Memento Mori". Guy Pearce plays Leonard, a former insurance investigator who keeps track of his world with Polaroids, notes and tattoos, including one that names the killer as "John G". Colour scenes run backwards, each ending where the previous one began, while black-and-white scenes move forward as Leonard talks on a motel phone and recalls Sammy Jankis (Stephen Tobolowsky), an amnesiac whose insurance claim he denied and whose diabetic wife died after Sammy gave her repeated insulin shots. Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), a bartender, uses Leonard to get rid of a dealer named Dodd, and Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), who claims to be a friend, keeps turning up. Memento is Nolan's second film, after Following and before Insomnia.

How Memento ends

Memento ends with the scene that starts the story in time order: Leonard kills Jimmy Grantz, a dealer Teddy led him to, then hears Jimmy whisper "Sammy". Teddy, an undercover cop, admits Leonard killed the real attacker a year ago and that he has been steering Leonard toward other "John G"s ever since. He adds that Leonard's wife survived the assault and was diabetic, implying Leonard gave her the fatal insulin and pinned the memory on Sammy. Leonard chooses to forget, writing himself a note that makes Teddy his next target, which leads to the shooting shown at the very start.

Post-credits scenes

No. Memento has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 03 · 2002 · Film

Insomnia recap

Insomnia (2002) sends Los Angeles detective Will Dormer to an Alaskan town under the midnight sun to solve a teenager's murder as Internal Affairs closes in. Christopher Nolan directs this remake of a 1997 Norwegian film of the same name, from a script by Hillary Seitz. Al Pacino plays Dormer and Martin Donovan his partner Hap Eckhart, who plans to testify against him. In Nightmute, local detective Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank) admires Dormer's work. A trap for the killer goes wrong in the fog, and Dormer shoots Eckhart dead, possibly by accident, then lets the death be blamed on the suspect and swaps the bullet. The killer, crime novelist Walter Finch (Robin Williams), saw the shooting and calls Dormer to propose a deal: each covers for the other and they pin the murder on Kay's boyfriend Randy. Unable to sleep in the endless daylight, Dormer unravels. Insomnia is Nolan's third film and his first for a major studio, coming between Memento and Batman Begins.

How Insomnia ends

Insomnia ends with a shootout at Finch's lake house, where Finch has lured Burr, who has worked out that Dormer shot Eckhart. Dormer arrives, and he and Finch shoot each other; Finch falls dead into the water and Dormer is mortally wounded. Burr starts to throw away the shell casing that would expose Dormer, to protect his reputation, but he stops her and tells her not to lose her way. He dies asking to be allowed to sleep. In the Norwegian original, the detective survives and leaves town with his secret kept.

Post-credits scenes

No. Insomnia has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 04 · 2005 · Film

Batman Begins recap

Bruce Wayne, who watched a mugger named Joe Chill shoot his parents, leaves Gotham and lives among criminals to understand them. In a prison in Bhutan he is recruited by Henri Ducard to train with the League of Shadows under Ra's al Ghul, but refuses to execute a man and burns down their temple, saving Ducard's life. Back in Gotham, he builds a suit and gear with the help of Alfred and Lucius Fox and becomes Batman. He targets the mob boss Carmine Falcone and finds that Dr. Jonathan Crane, the psychiatrist at Arkham, is importing a fear toxin and wears a mask as the Scarecrow. Bruce's childhood friend Rachel Dawes, now an assistant district attorney, is poisoned by Crane. Ducard reveals he is the real Ra's al Ghul and that the League means to destroy Gotham.

How Batman Begins ends

Ra's steals a microwave emitter to vaporise the city's water and spread the toxin through Gotham, loaded on a train to Wayne Tower. Gordon blows up the tracks with the Batmobile, and Batman leaves Ra's on the train as it crashes, refusing to save him. Rachel learns who Bruce is and says she will wait until Gotham no longer needs Batman. Gordon is made a lieutenant and shows Batman a new criminal's calling card: a joker playing card.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 05 · 2006 · Film

The Prestige recap

The Prestige (2006) pits two stage magicians in Victorian London against each other in a feud that starts with a drowning and escalates into sabotage. Christopher Nolan co-wrote it with his brother Jonathan from the 1995 novel by Christopher Priest. Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) blames Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) after his wife Julia drowns in a water tank escape, and the two spend years wrecking each other's shows, costing Borden two fingers. Borden marries Sarah (Rebecca Hall) and debuts The Transported Man, which Angier cannot work out. Angier's engineer John Cutter (Michael Caine) helps him fake it with a drunk lookalike, and his assistant Olivia Wenscombe (Scarlett Johansson) is sent to spy on Borden but falls for him. Borden's coded diary leads Angier to Colorado Springs and Nikola Tesla (David Bowie), who builds him a machine that does more than he expected. The Prestige comes between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight in Nolan's career.

How The Prestige ends

The Prestige ends with both men's secrets revealed. Borden is hanged for Angier's apparent murder, but another Borden then shoots Angier, who had faked his death and posed as Lord Caldlow. "Borden" was identical twins sharing one life, swapping places and posing as the assistant Fallon. Dying, Angier admits Tesla's machine made a copy of him at each show and one drowned in a tank below the stage every night. The surviving twin takes back his daughter. Priest's novel wraps the story in a present-day frame with the magicians' descendants, which the film drops.

Post-credits scenes

No. The Prestige has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 06 · 2008 · Film

The Dark Knight recap

A year on, Batman, Lieutenant Gordon and the new district attorney Harvey Dent are squeezing Gotham's mob, and Bruce hopes Dent can replace Batman. A criminal called the Joker offers to kill Batman for the mob and begins killing people until Batman unmasks. He murders a judge and the police commissioner and nearly kills the mayor, and Gordon seems to die protecting him. Dent claims to be Batman to draw the Joker out, and Gordon, alive after all, captures him. The Joker has already had Dent and Rachel Dawes kidnapped and placed in separate buildings rigged to explode. Batman goes to save Rachel, but the Joker has switched the addresses; Rachel dies, and Dent survives with half his face burned.

How The Dark Knight ends

Dent becomes Two-Face and murders those he blames for Rachel. The Joker rigs two ferries, one of prisoners and one of civilians, to make each blow up the other, and neither does; Batman catches the Joker. Dent holds Gordon's family at gunpoint and dies in a fall when Batman tackles him. To keep Dent's crimes from freeing the criminals he jailed, Batman takes the blame for the murders and flees as Gordon has the Bat-Signal smashed.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 07 · 2010 · Film

Inception recap

Dom Cobb steals secrets from people's minds by entering their dreams, but he cannot go home to his children in America, wanted for the death of his wife Mal. The businessman Saito offers to clear his record if Cobb can perform an inception: plant an idea in the mind of Robert Fischer, heir to a rival energy empire, so he breaks it up. Cobb assembles a team: his partner Arthur, the architect Ariadne, the forger Eames and the chemist Yusuf. They plan a dream within a dream within a dream, aboard a flight. Fischer's mind has been trained to defend itself, Saito is wounded, and Cobb's guilt brings a projection of Mal into the dreams to sabotage them. Ariadne learns that Cobb once performed inception on Mal, who could not let go of the idea that her world was not real.

How Inception ends

The team completes the inception on the deepest level, and Cobb lets go of Mal and finds the elderly Saito in limbo to bring them both back. Everyone wakes on the plane, and Cobb goes home to his children. He spins his top to test whether he is dreaming, and the film cuts before it falls.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 08 · 2012 · Film

The Dark Knight Rises recap

Eight years after Dent's death, Batman is gone, organized crime is broken under the Dent Act, and Bruce Wayne is a recluse. The cat burglar Selina Kyle steals his fingerprints for a masked mercenary, Bane, who uses them to bankrupt Bruce. Bruce puts on the suit again. Bane, once of the League of Shadows, breaks Batman's back in a fight and dumps him in an underground prison abroad. Bane turns a Wayne Enterprises fusion core into a nuclear bomb, traps the police underground, exposes the lie about Dent, and holds Gotham hostage for months while the city's elite are tried in kangaroo courts. In the prison, Bruce heals and makes the climb that only one person, a child of Ra's al Ghul, ever made.

How The Dark Knight Rises ends

Bruce returns to Gotham and frees the police. Miranda Tate, Bruce's ally, is revealed as Talia al Ghul, Ra's's daughter and the escaped child, and Bane only her protector. Selina kills Bane, and Batman flies the bomb out over the bay, where it explodes, apparently killing him. Bruce leaves the Batcave to the young officer John Blake, whose legal first name is Robin, and Alfred later sees Bruce alive with Selina at a cafe in Florence.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 09 · 2014 · Film

Interstellar recap

Crops are failing and dust storms cover the Earth. Cooper, a former NASA pilot turned farmer, follows a pattern in the dust in his daughter Murph's room to a secret NASA base, where Professor Brand plans to save humanity through a wormhole near Saturn. Twelve scientists went through to scout three planets. Cooper pilots the Endurance with Brand's daughter Amelia, Romilly and Doyle, leaving a furious Murph behind. On the first planet, near the black hole Gargantua, a tidal wave kills Doyle, and the time dilation costs them twenty-three years. Back on Earth, the grown Murph learns that Brand's Plan A to lift humanity off Earth was never real. On the icy world of Dr. Mann, Mann has faked his data and tries to kill Cooper and steal the Endurance.

How Interstellar ends

Cooper sends Amelia on to Edmunds' planet and drops into Gargantua, entering a tesseract built by future humans where he can see Murph's bedroom through time. He sends her the quantum data she needs as Morse code through her watch. Murph solves gravity and humanity leaves Earth. Cooper wakes up on a space station near Saturn, sees the elderly Murph one last time, and leaves to find Amelia.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 10 · 2017 · Film

Dunkirk recap

Dunkirk (2017) follows British troops trapped on a French beach in 1940 and the civilian boats and fighter pilots trying to bring them home. Christopher Nolan wrote and directed it, his first film built on real historical events. Three strands run at different speeds: a week on the mole, a day at sea and an hour in the air. On land, a young private, Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), joins a silent soldier, Gibson (Aneurin Barnard), and later Alex (Harry Styles), each attempt to board a ship ending in sinking. At sea, Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance), his son Peter and teenage deckhand George sail their yacht from England and pick up a shell-shocked soldier (Cillian Murphy), whose panic leaves George fatally injured. In the air, Spitfire pilots Farrier (Tom Hardy) and Collins (Jack Lowden) take on German planes, with Farrier's fuel gauge shot out. Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) oversees the evacuation from the pier. Dunkirk follows Interstellar and precedes Tenet.

How Dunkirk ends

Dunkirk ends with the little ships arriving and the bulk of the army lifted off the beach. Farrier, out of fuel, glides along the shore shooting down a German bomber, lands behind the lines, burns his Spitfire and is taken prisoner. Bolton stays behind to help evacuate the French. Tommy and Alex reach England by train, braced for scorn, and are greeted as heroes; Tommy reads Churchill's "we shall fight on the beaches" speech from a newspaper. Dawson sees that the local paper has printed George's photo as a hero of the evacuation.

Post-credits scenes

No. Dunkirk has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 11 · 2020 · Film

Tenet recap

Tenet (2020) recruits a CIA agent known only as the Protagonist into a secret war against the future, fought with objects whose entropy runs backwards. Christopher Nolan wrote and directed it. John David Washington plays the Protagonist, who after a staged siege at a Kyiv opera house learns of "inverted" bullets and is given one word, Tenet. With his handler Neil (Robert Pattinson), he tracks the inverted arms to Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh), a Russian oligarch, through Sator's estranged wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), an art appraiser trapped in the marriage. A heist at the Oslo Freeport, a highway robbery in Tallinn and turnstiles that send people backwards in time follow. Sator is collecting nine pieces of an Algorithm that, assembled, could invert the whole world and wipe out the past; he has terminal cancer and plans to take everyone with him. Tenet follows Dunkirk and precedes Oppenheimer in Nolan's career.

How Tenet ends

Tenet ends with a "temporal pincer" at the abandoned city of Stalsk-12, where one team moves forward in time and another backward while the Protagonist and Ives seize the Algorithm. On a yacht in Vietnam, Kat kills Sator before his dead-man switch can fire. Neil reveals he was recruited long ago by a future Protagonist, and goes back to die opening a locked door during the battle. The Protagonist realises he is the founder of Tenet and later kills the arms dealer Priya to protect Kat. Released in September 2020 during the pandemic, Tenet has no sequel.

Post-credits scenes

No. Tenet has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 12 · 2023 · Film

Oppenheimer recap

Oppenheimer (2023) traces physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer from his student years to leading the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos and his later fall from grace. Christopher Nolan wrote and directed it from Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin's biography American Prometheus. Cillian Murphy plays Oppenheimer, Emily Blunt his wife Kitty, Florence Pugh his lover Jean Tatlock and Matt Damon General Leslie Groves, who puts him in charge of building the bomb. The colour scenes follow his own account, framed by a closed 1954 hearing that strips him of his security clearance; black-and-white scenes follow Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, at his 1959 Senate confirmation hearing. In between come the Trinity test in the New Mexico desert, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Oppenheimer's growing opposition to the hydrogen bomb. Oppenheimer is Nolan's twelfth feature, after Tenet and before The Odyssey.

How Oppenheimer ends

Oppenheimer ends with Strauss exposed as the man behind the 1954 hearing; after the scientist David Hill testifies against him, the Senate rejects his nomination. A final flashback returns to a talk between Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein by a Princeton pond that Strauss assumed was about him. Oppenheimer reminds Einstein of their fear that the first test might ignite the atmosphere and says he believes they did destroy the world, as he pictures missiles spreading across the Earth. The film won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Nolan.

Post-credits scenes

No. Oppenheimer has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 13 · 2026 · Film

The Odyssey recap

The Odyssey (2026) adapts Homer's poem, following Odysseus, king of Ithaca, on his long journey home after the Trojan War while suitors circle his wife. Christopher Nolan wrote and directed it, and it is the first feature shot entirely on IMAX 70 mm film cameras. Matt Damon plays Odysseus, Anne Hathaway his wife Penelope and Tom Holland their son Telemachus, who sails to Sparta to ask Menelaus (Jon Bernthal) and Helen (Lupita Nyong'o) for news while the suitor Antinous (Robert Pattinson) plots to kill him. On Ogygia, the goddess Athena (Zendaya) orders Odysseus to leave the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron), and he remembers the voyage: the Trojan Horse, the Cyclops Polyphemus, the man-eating Laestrygonians, the witch Circe (Samantha Morton), a journey through Hades, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, and the slaughter of sacred cattle that drowns his last men. The Odyssey is Nolan's thirteenth feature and follows Oppenheimer.

How The Odyssey ends

The Odyssey ends with Odysseus back in Ithaca disguised as a beggar, saving Telemachus from the suitors' assassins and confessing to Penelope his crimes at Troy. When he alone strings his bow and shoots through the axe heads, he and Telemachus kill the suitors, Antinous among them. Odysseus then gives the throne to Telemachus and sails west into exile with Penelope. Homer has Odysseus keep his crown, and the soldier Sinon, whose ghost confronts Odysseus in Hades, comes from Virgil's Aeneid rather than the Odyssey.