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

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I'm Amanda Dobbins. 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, we'll 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 and deliveries you 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 an announcement? It's an announcement that 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 out soon. BND. Yeah. BND. Brand new day. Brand new day. Where should people send their questions? BigPickMailbag 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 TheBigPicture.com. Okay. Thank you, Amanda. All right. Doomsday. This is why you're here, actually. Yeah. 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. 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 myself, but I do want to bounce some things off of you. I don't want to repeat myself from The Watch podcast, which is another show I do. What? You're on another podcast? Do you think they meant to release this on the Monday after The Odyssey? You think they were like, there's a lot of energy in the theaters now? Let's get in on it while we can? 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 it was, 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 CinemaCon, which is historically a trade show for people who own movie theaters. And long-time CinemaCon goers all observed that this was a little weird. Sean and I did not respond to it in the room. You think they were plants? I'm just saying that the energy was different. It was more that they had invited a lot of influencers and a lot of, like, 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, ooh, this is kind of sad. Have they done a teaser? Didn't they play it twice? They did. Yeah, because Robert Downey 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 for my flight. But have they done a teaser for this? Did I forget? There were four individual teasers that came at 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 would 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, this doesn't look like what we're capable of as people with cameras. Like, this looks like you guys shot this in the back of a Lowe's and turned the lights off and. Like Backrooms? Yeah. But, like, honestly, dude, you know what? Backrooms makes this look like shit. Like, the visual, like, imagination of this entire project needs to be rethought and remixed and redone. And we can keep doing Kevin Feige really likes La Strada 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 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 honestly, like, I really like Channing 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, um, how we are 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 IMAX, which, you know, is its own thing. But the fan culture, the enthusiasm, the, um, the nerding out totally moved to the Odyssey in a way that I'm thrilled about. Is there, like, three translations that are in the top ten of Amazon right now or something like that? I think there's just a very simple explanation for the very apparent vibe shift, which is that the last of, the first event was the 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 biggest thing. benchmark. That's fascinating because this is as big a movie as they can make. The problem that I had with it that I, I think I said at the time when we first saw it was more like, what is the story? Like, there, what was so wonderful to me about Infinity War and Endgame was the incredible buildup over a decade of storytelling. We've never seen Doctor 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-6-1 6, 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? He's, I think it sounds like he's been vanquished. He was in Fantastic Four. Oh. I forgot that. You completely forgot about that. I saw that film. Yeah. This very much feels like Invisible Woman, like, knocked him down because she put her hands out in the air. Remember when that happened? That was how I didn't see him eating any planets, right? That's what he does. Or universes. Galaxies. He eats planets. Galactus eats planets. The Silver Surfer is his harbinger. That's right. Why are you sending that to me? engaging with your content. No, I just think You talked about 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 as 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 Fantastic Four thing. Was I in Europe? Like, what happened? I feel like I missed. Like, I didn't talk about it. I think Andy talked about it with Lindelof on our show. Like, I don't. I never got to comment. You must have been on vacation. That was a classic thing where 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's 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 War. Secret War's 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. That's an incredible ending. I don't know if Namor in distress is going to do the same thing that Infinity War did 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. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If anybody wants to just call me secretly and explain what's going on, I don't understand. They have Infinity Vision. Oh, sure. This will be releasing an Infinity Vision. Will you be seeing it in 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 3. 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 are 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. What's been happening? 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 Zaslav 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, it's a cool-off. It's a cool-off, yeah. It does seem to be delaying the inevitable. 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 we 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's Alberto. He runs the Venice Film Festival and they are historically, they, unlike him, accept Netflix festivals and Netflix uses Venice very frequently as a launching pad for its glitzier, awards-driven films. Alberto is kind of your Galactica. Sure, yeah, exactly. When will you go to 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. But you said, until Toronto anyway, that you enjoy traveling with me. I love traveling with you. And also, we have a travel business to get off the ground. I don't know if you're 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 and the planning. 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. And you're 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. Ray Gunn, 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 Bola Negra, which I saw at Cannes, which is one of the big awards contenders this year. Lee Chong Dong's Possible Love, which it sounds like will be at Venice this year in addition to premiering at other film festivals. Yeah, what's up? Your beloved Ben Affleck's Animals. It sounds like it's happening this year. Roman Gavris' Sacrifice, which was picked up out of TIFF last year. Greg Cuidar'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 Pattinson-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. Let's go. And also your boy, Janice Metz, Peterson's Uniball. Unibomber biopic. Is my boy Janice Metz or are you a bomber? I mean. Well, what do you think? Could be both. I mean, those are all. I was going to say points were made. Janice Metz-Peterson, you know, who directed a lot of episodes of Andor. That's 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, will be world premiering there. Chris Rock's Misty Green, that's his new movie, is a director, world premiering there. What's the word on that one? What is it? What's the. I don't know. It's an A24 film. Okay. That's all I really know about it. C.R. Takashi Miike's Bad Lieutenant Tokyo, world premiering. Lauren Miller-Rogan's Babies, which has a star-studded cast, including her husband, Seth Rogen. Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother, the new Mahershala Ali movie. Anton Corbin's A Talent for Murder, which is based on the play Switzerland that I've actually seen staged about Patricia Highsmith late in her life, which stars Helen Mirren. Any opportunity. She quite should be 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, Clara and the Sun, we've heard nothing of Wild Horse 9. Mm-hmm. See the trailer. I mean. Just festival-wise. Okay, we got to track this stuff on the show. Yeah. Behemoth. Behemoth! Yeah. 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 the movie. I feel. I don't know her, Tony. She just shows up here every once in a while. Tony, I love you. 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 telly 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 he's just producing it? Just Ben. Okay. Yeah. And Kerry Washington's in that? She is. God damn. Let's go. Yeah. It should be interesting. 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 Instigator sounded cool. You know, like. The film The Instigator? Yeah, like when you read about one of the artist equity movies. The Matt Damon and Casey Affleck movie? Yeah. Okay. Is it called The Instigator, 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. On 65 millimeter. 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 shown 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 Himesh Patel and Danielle Deadwater? If that's what winds up happening, then that's enough. But I. This is Disney, right? I think so. You guys gotta get on board with a winner. I mean, put this movie out and then put the show up and be like excited about it. Yeah. It's just, 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 Durrell-Darkapaw who was the Oscar winning cinematographer of Sinners. So. 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. Where's this alien? And you're like live vlogging 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, this is CR space. Edward Berger, Matt Damon confirmed that he and Edward Berger have been working hard on a, on a born, a newborn film. Not a reboot, not a new trilogy or anything. Just another movie that he wants to make sense in the born 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, what, I don't know if these are. 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 Bourne world. But Edward Berger 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 Bourne franchise and the country house. I haven't erased you. And the haircutting. Oh my God, the haircutting. 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. It has more Joan Allen 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. Two is when it ends in Moscow, right? Yeah. One and two are good. Yeah. It's weird because there have now been four of these movies. Four, five. Five of these movies, right? Three. Jason Bourne and Bourne. Legacy. And a show. Threadstone. Five movies and a show is a lot for this story. Is Bourne Robert Ludlam? It is. What's your take on Ludlam? I honestly have not read any Ludlam. No. Shocking. You know, Amanda is no longer reading male writers. I don't know if you've read that. That's not a 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. Who will 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 turned 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, you know, 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, which are two of my favorite things. Yeah. And listen, as long as it's not short stories. Maybe MJ Lenderman will play interstitial music. I like MJ Lenderman! Okay. White propeller is kind of a great name for a Cheever story. Now that I think about it. They're all called white propeller. Okay. Speaking of speaking of the female voice in 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. But they're friends. So they're friends. And 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 Cox. Rachel Cusk. Rachel Cusk. And I am team Rachel Cusk. That's my novel about Rachel Cusk. Her book about Natalie Portman than 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 her. Long Island forever. Long Island forever, man. I am interested. I thought she was great in May, December. I'm interested to see what this novel. Uh, yeah. And how it comes out. Like, how did she participate? Did she know she was participating? Right. Do you say to Rachel Cusk, write an auto fiction novel about me and it's okay if it's unflattering? Like. Let me pitch you an idea. Uh-huh. You thinly veiled novel of Bill Simmons. No. Who says no? No. I do. 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? Uh, liner notes for some friends who are, who are putting. They're working their workout on a box set. Oh, that's so nice. Um, 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, we have to, you know, um. You can't fill it out with drawings. I asked about that. I was like, can we just do a really long Q and A? Uh, it regardless, uh, 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. That'd be a good book. Who about you? Who would you write a thinly veiled novel about? Um, Chris Nolte. I think that's a good one, Colin. Pretty clearly. Speaking of, let's make a transition to the Odyssey. The Odyssey is a massive, massive, massive success. Just a fucking bat flip. Just an incredible success. We did it. Uh, $264.1 million 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 Knight Rises when Chris saw it four times. 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 thing. 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 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, you know, I said earlier about the context. Comic-Con of it all and it feeling like this, you know, the fan culture and the gentle insanity around a cultural product has, you know, been moved to something much closer 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 it's incredibly cool that Chris Nolan has turned nerding out about film stocks. The projection to be a pop cultural thing. I think if you can't see the entirety of the helmet, it's fine. You know, like you guys are you guys are going to be OK, you know, and 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 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. 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. You know, 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 City Walk. 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 theater. 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. You know, it actually 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 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 the full height of these uh of these characters like you're you're gonna be okay eileen also said something interesting saturday about the experience of hunting for the 6 a.m city walk 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 lububu or a ticket to the 70 millimeter imax at city walk um and i was just like wow that isn't that's that's awesome that's an amazing feat of marketing and i think that normally we 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 to add and movies to and movie studios to make film then like good job everybody so it's 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 culture is 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 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 delaires 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 yeah 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 this can now and when you start reading those myths again i'm reminded 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 um screenwriters tend to use the names of the gods and the figures from those stories to represent like corporations over time like how they all are kind of these um 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 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 cr you know i i don't i don't know have you gone on the record at length about your feelings for the movie yet uh 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 so we were pretty circumspect with talking about any specifics from the film i'll just say also one of the things that i've been doing is i've been one of the cool things just as i'm getting into it has been uh 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 coban show it's rare that you're like oh yeah i can tell yeah i can i can watch matt damon age you know yes if you're inside the horse and you're like it was these guys it was filling with water and nolan and hoyta 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're 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 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 uh featurette that is available on peacock right now that you can watch called the making of the odyssey um 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 his all and he's been he's been doing a lot of work on it and he's been doing a lot of work on it and he's been he's been on the major charm offensive of all time the last six months especially this month is like the 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 you know he's like i was at the hotel bar by myself it's very true uh okay chris maybe amanda and i can ping pong off of you as you go through some of your takeaways but what are the things that you wanted to talk about first of all i thought your podcast like last week was fantastic 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 uh body of work but also like 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 and i think that's what i'm trying to do and i think that's what i'm trying to do and i 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 in 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 he's 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 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 focus in a different way i 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 scope of his storytelling with the hyper personal yeah and you know ron is was an inspiration for this movie and this is the idea of a great king coming back to power but it's a short list yeah i mean it's a short and i think the like the names that we reach for like kubrick or hitchcock or you know even cecil b demille or spielberg like that 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 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 you if we fail everything goes belly up yeah um what do you think well i mean they are great men movies which we have you know we've seen a lot of you know talked about and in my case occasionally ridiculed and i was thinking about this morning let's say this morning i re-watched interstellar and part of prestige and and i can't remember what else but this idea that he is taking on the state 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 i do sense an identification if with the main characters or the person who is trying to keep everything together to 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 identify identified to me um but i don't find that i'm reading them for biographical clues necessarily um of oh this 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 the act of making movies um and and how could they not when you 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 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 i don't think they're even as close as like i would say a spielberg movie is to um 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 you know in my backyard so this has always been my lens through which i i view life he hasn't like 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 lapida niango and john leguizamo spoke about like this incredibly vulnerable conversation that they had when they did the like vibes interview with nolan when he's like okay i'm gonna bring you we're gonna hang out for a couple 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 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 and his feelings are expressed in the story and i think that's where the 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 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 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 Knight Rises, you know, stuff like that. And you can critique him for ducking the smoke of saying what he means with his chest. And that's the thing is 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 annoys. Is Batman activating all cell phones as surveillance devices about, you know, like FISA, I don't know. But like, 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? That I thought was really actually like, I think pretty provocative, pretty amazing to take that swing as brave as anything he does visually is like some of the inversions that he makes on what we traditionally understand as 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, that 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 and on the nose for your. 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've 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 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 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 this acting of Troy from a totally different perspective. And I think there still is the grand visual element that I felt was really accomplished internally. 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 action. So for me, I'm kind of like, if you just want to make room for showing that revisionist Troy scene with some obvious. Not even that obvious. I do think that that and the siren speech are two cases where he is writing the themes and what he feels in pretty explicit voiceover in the movie. And 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, and 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 sea 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 like headline grabbing way, I think it's somewhat a commentary about the tendency for right-wing movements to villainize like mysterious foreigners from coming onto their shores when in fact the real poison lies within them. And I don't know if you would agree with that, but I don't. I don't think it's an accident that like 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 knees being held by Himesh 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 some 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. Like, Himesh Patel seems almost more threatening coming up on the shore and being like. - They're the marauders. - Yeah, marauders. 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 Daemon, where it's like with Daemon, 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. - Right. And Nolan adds the regret, you know? And that's not to say that some of these themes are not in the text. So the Greek word for Zeus's law is Xenia, which is also where you get xenophobia. So it's like very basic in this fear of strangers and how do you treat someone else? Yeah, and all they taught me in school was Xenia over and over and over again, and I only put it together like last week. But so there is at least the societal, you know, 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, there's 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. - And honoring, 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 in a, when "Odyssey 2" comes out. What other things, Chris, what else jumped out to you? - I loved the, 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, Menelaus 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 or 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'd probably be Charlize Theron on a beach, you know? And she prepared like a beautiful squid dish, you know? - Yeah. - 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 Cersei 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 everything that's happening 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 this place won't function without that so just the idea of not doing a here's the one of the most notable heroes in all of history let's just follow him like let's not complicate this let's 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 and pairing it opposite telemachus's 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 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 top is still spinning 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 work um the other thing is that but that fracture and the stories within stories and people telling these is also in is in the text yeah 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'm i was just still stunned going back and rereading um the emily wilson uh 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 this movie it was real yeah it was real she did uh i thought she was like you settle down with the dog yeah right there were some issues with argus uh which was i think she basically described it as just like a cheap ploy for audiences that everybody likes a dog in a movie yeah um what were her other notes her notes were interesting to me and seemingly fair although she strikes me as a wildly unsympathetic um storyteller in general like she there's like a kind of directness in her translation that i find very fascinating um and you know he he he softens the text a little bit even though this is one of the things that i think is really interesting about emily wilson's most savage stories ever told it does feel i don't think her odysseus is very sympathetic agreed um and i and i you know again that's that's her interpretation of the text and i can't read the original but there is there is a lot more reading into his motivations and just feeling in christopher nolan's than than there isn't hers this episode is brought to you by the autographed journey credit card from wells fargo the autographed journey credit card from wells fargo is built for travel you can earn rewards wherever you book your favorite hotel site your go-to airline and more you get five times points with hotels four times with airlines three times on restaurants and other travel and one point on other purchases whether it's a big vacation or a quick getaway from booking your stay to that first meal when you arrive you're turning your trips into rewards with the autographed journey credit card from wells fargo learn more at wells fargo.com slash autographed journey terms apply this episode of the big picture is brought to you by amazon prime what pairs with a good comedy the cozy blanket arriving with prime what pairs with the nail-biting thriller snacks arriving with prime what pairs with the big game on prime video that new couch arriving with prime whatever feeling you're after prime helps bring it to life with great entertainment and fast shipping that delivers what the moment calls for from streaming to fast shipping it's on prime this episode is brought to you by state farm every episode we break down what's worth your time what to watch what to skip what to put on the list but some things on the list aren't exactly fun to get to like sorting out your coverage it's not a blockbuster just one of those things that matters that's where state farm comes in one of their 19 000 local agents can walk you through your options in person over the phone or through their easily accessible app and help you get the coverage that's right for you so you can get back to the fun stuff like arguing about movie rankings like a good neighbor state farm is there i wanted to ask you guys you know one of the i mean first of all some of the memes coming out of 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'm not sure if you're going to be able to get that coverage if you're going to be able to get that coverage if you're going to get that coverage if you're going to be able to get that coverage but i thought one of the most fascinating debates like 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 um i 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 yeah yeah but it's also like he just can't fucking resist being like i'm i'm laird he's his kid by the way it does a real like like uh uh ben ben affleck in the town like one five five bunker hill come by anytime you know but there is some bravado in odysseus i mean as a as a warrior and as a as a like 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 likes to tempt the fates you know he likes to poke the poke the cyclops 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 of the sirens you're like you cocky asshole you think i know but 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 tie 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 this is the guy being like this shit is easy for me you know like the thing that struck me on the second watch was how um 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 elliot page as the bravest person in this film yeah i will put lupita 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 roan before so much chapel wrong going in my house this weekend i already told amanda um uh i travel run on james blake on the remix with travis scott you could see it i will make travis scott the bard you know i will give travis scott the first line yes in the end of the movie and i will have travis scott the first line yes i will give travis scott the first line yes i will give travis scott the first line yes i will give travis scott the first line yes i will give travis scott the first line yes i will give travis scott the first line yes i will give travis scott the first line yes i will give travis scott the first line yes i will give travis scott the first line yes i will give travis scott the first line yes i will give travis scott the first line yes i will give travis scott the first line yes i will give travis scott the first line yes i will give travis scott the first line yes i will give travis scott the first line yes i will give didn't have the exact clothes you know yeah um agamemnon you know he had that shit on uh i'll throw out a couple of like notes of like dissent about the movie right okay i am not sure that he is a great action director um i i was i left i found the john wick scene with the suitors a bit um a bit silly i don't know if that's how it how i can't remember if like it's like dad wait and then it's like pick up the sword get the shield get the shield uh 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 uh 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 i 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 is the most predictable thing and if you've read it you know it but still it's like yeah plucking of the bow was yes it's just it's such a satisfying movie moment yeah and that was like with the college basketball coach who's like let us go it was just awesome so so because i kind of wanted a fight that was commensurate with plucking the bow you know yeah i'm 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 knight 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 and no blood and i think that's like appropriate in the case of say um the well who athena is being represented as in the movie the zendaya character's obviously you're not gonna behead zendaya in this movie and have everybody just be like oh okay 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 like the shot of the skin peeling off but that's but that was like as far as he was willing to go it's a good example of like is he 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 you know like people like Gore I don't think it's I think I think he's a demure British 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 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 so 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 you know yeah you don't like that I think I've had my fill of that more of a Superman guy I think it should just look more like the Raid 2 you think they should bring Gareth Evans in just for Nolan's fight scenes so it's funny you should mention that because people are probably at this point are like shut the fuck up but I wouldn't be mad if he gets all of this stuff right you know 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 Agamemnon is using this as a pretext because of trade routes that he wants to save and blah blah blah and it's so fast but dude play a solo every once in a while like get on the sax 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 I didn't expect that from a Nolan movie 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 Bane 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 but maybe it's nonsense and maybe Bane is complete nonsense 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 of the Flower Moon you know what I mean like when it right 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 talk to yeah ever he did talk about that though and how he brought some things to it and apparently Jonathan is the one who is 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 about this exact thing 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 of the for the crown but you know didn't 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 it's a couple of pre-king speeches who was that King King James it was George and Edward there was an Edward and a George I think King Ronald yeah was he ever a guy that's him yeah King Jimothy don't act like that's stolen valor on your part you didn't know Jimothy was 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 Jimothy where there's now like people going to Seattle to like protect Jimothy but also document him but what if it's like a milkshake duck Jimothy situation where Jimothy actually is bad I just watched a video of him moving I only looked at pictures Jimothy Jimothy is a deformed raccoon that people are very excited is that the preferred nomenclature a spinal condition yeah he does 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 we only learned about Jimothy before recording while gossiping look at him we were doing so well making such a serious episode I have a couple more okay sorry notes of not concerned but just like you brought it up topics I 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 you could argue um yeah I mean Soderbergh and Mary Bernard which is who is him and also director of photography Peter Andrews which is him yeah Joel and Ethan Cohen and Roderick James so who is them 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 very similar like whoa I'm 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 that really really satisfied feeling of every choice that you made led to something and it wasn't just the 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 build up 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 towards that last week as well sirens uh solo solo encryptus like uh lystergonians 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 run time because my IMAX projectors can't show more than three hours is that the deal or what is it like no no I think it was more just like how do we make this um 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 endgame thing where it was part one and part two and it was two two and a half hour movies liked it not liked would you have balked at it 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 expand it 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 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 Hades scene is like one of the sickest things I've ever seen yeah it's just so awesome you've been to Iceland? no no we shout out to James Raymore yeah I mean he was 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 to me that might be the best work that Ludwig Aronson 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 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 Dielman and Ornette Coleman no no because like she's 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 those were my huge big takeaways those were 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 and do more Emily Wilson and I think it's it's interesting to me than I think in any other Nolan movie I would have given and have given the 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 I don't know whether that's just because I get swept up in in 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? A different movie, but yes. It would have been a much different movie. Can he do period? He has, but can he? Uh, he could do, I think he could do this, but it would be different. Leonardo DiCaprio. I had this conversation with Bill yesterday. He baited 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, um, Fassbender. Yeah, that's a, that's a very different movie. That's, that's no feelings at all. He codes rage and discontent. That's don't come home, big guy. That's right. Um, and the two that I, Well, yeah, that's true. Go to Amanda's house. You know what? Yeah. The door's always open. Yeah, so you swing by Calypso's beach. Um, uh, the two that are the most interesting to me in the context, actually the three that are most interesting to me 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. Like, he does, 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 at 10 years on this fucking beach, and, you know, the way that Himesh Patel and him interact, feeling like a war movie that was made two years ago about Desert Storm or Vietnam, and it's, there's no difference. Bale, God, he would have 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 Bale 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 a 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 at it as much. But to me, I was just like. The R's are hard for him. Yeah. Yeah, I just, 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? Oh, 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 two, the Terror Twins, Logan Marshall Green and Mia Goth. Yeah. I would love to party with them. You know who else I really enjoyed, who we didn't mention in the first episode, is Corey Hawkins. Yeah. Who is, you know, playing sidekick to Antonis. And just a lot of actors who really command the screen in this movie. Yeah. In such a great way. There's been a lot of talk of Leguizamo, who 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 Himesh Patel. Yeah. What's that guy's name? Who's the one in Tenet. He feeds John David Washington. He's torturing John David Washington. He plays the Ukrainian. Yeah. And he's been in a million things, but 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, but perhaps has been in none. I don't know. 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. Yeah. I have a different relationship to his movies. Has your relationship changed? Probably. I think because he's moved away from the, the Jonathan sci-fi and we, have more movies in the, you know, in a row in the back half of his, 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. 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 or negatively to. I think I have been pretty consistent in what works and, and what does not work. What about for you? I'm a fan. So it's like, I, I don't think I, if you would ask me in 2008 with dark night, 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 Zack Snyder Superman movie. And Nolan is overseeing like a DC cinematic universe. And that might change the course of, 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 Zack Snyder. That's true. That's not cool. Like that movie sucks. So I think that movie is evil. So yeah, I, that's funny. Do you 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 is 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 and Oppenheimer in the course of three years like but I just definitely feels like an end of a phase and 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 on online this weekend was Moby Dick that that is there have been adaptations of Moby Dick, but none that really rise 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, 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. 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, nobody wants to see the IAEA, you know, it's true and it's they're not easy to make and they're not easy to pull off and they're not they don't I mean they don't always work even in our epic movie drafts. We 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. Very true. Yeah. You know, you mentioned, some of the those forbearers like do you think in 50 years or 100 years he will be studied as one of the great critical filmmakers in the in the evolution of the art form. This is assuming there are still movies at that at that time. I certainly at least from a sociological and you know and technical point of view that the IMAX camera of it own of it all alone and what that has kind of introduced in terms of everyone getting freaky. with their VISTA vision and being like xyz you know i think will at least be worth like one day on a syllabus right um but the 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 um i think he already has more oscars than hitchcock and kubrick he does yeah so 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 a lung for the movie business and his is like his his sort of stepping into the void after covid to 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 feel make you feel something i think is like a really invaluable contribution maybe even a bigger one than 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 era 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 ben damon's talking point right that he said you know i 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 and sure you know body hacking that's right and he went gluten-free he said did he 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 you know this is a movie podcast what would you put on your pizza yeah uh what would i put on my pizza right yeah god you don't make the pizza i lead this so he makes the pizza high protein cottage cheese you don't like mushrooms don't tell him about that i like mushrooms you left all the mushrooms on that bacon on there sometimes you know some fun like you ate the pasta out of the mushrooms okay but that was just like it's like any kind of bolognese like there's just the bolognese 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 bolognese that i had i had lovely mushrooms with the rigatoni okay we are recording this um i just feel like i've gotten put on blast for this 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 and the bonanza in comparison with whatever sad avenger shit is going on dude i'm just hopeful that the part three though is is similar to 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 in a way that feels like it's part of some natural yeah 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 uh 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 you'll be 64 i'll be right yeah you give me a gold watch you can say thanks for the last step yeah um will you retire i want to see where bill goes i want to see how bill does senior his his because you'll follow him anywhere or because you just want to know that how to chart the path what's the appetite for uh an old version like a really old version of me being like ah you know this up the 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 podcast that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me thank you what do you mean just like just showing smoking hot it's like nothing else here makes sense but i still look good uh sure yeah if i can look like charlotte rampling okay 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 just want to get to the odyssey you know i'm done um you want to rank the movies sure um now i suggested should there be two separate rankings here yeah which is what should should there be my weird scale and then you guys but amanda says she wants to have some but i also think that this is we're not you know at odds this is a collective yeah we're not doing this 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 pre-ordained no no no we're doing it together and he 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 in diversions in terms of i'm not going to trash anything i don't think anything here is worth trashing um i think this is a very interesting filmography i think there are ups and downs mostly ups yeah um 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 i want to just check in with you about that i rewatched most of it last night okay honestly i had a pretty good time it's pretty good it's pretty good i mean i agree you know if you're gonna put it at the lowest it's because it is not a screenplay by nolan and it is like the least nolany you can't studio job yeah you can't use it as a text to explain every other movie but like the action sequences are pretty good very good yeah i 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 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 gonna 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 be like oh nolan is gonna do james bond or he's gonna revive indiana jones or we're gonna 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 uh a conman movie one's a murdering uh 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 like a de facto student film but there's there are a lot of jokes about this now but like it's all in there right 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 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 um all of his stand-in men who look and speak like christopher nolan yeah very much um so all of it's suited men by the way um 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 it's more like is insomnia just a better movie even if if following is a more critical film for him what do you so how do you how do you see it i i think i just enjoy watching al pacino so i i would i would have insomnia higher than the following i think pacino robo williams 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 gonna i'm gonna emphasize it yeah yeah yeah what do you think i really like more tyranny so we can put following 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 is nuts how much more i watch dark knight and dark knight 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 so many times but did you feel that way in 2005 you know what i thought in 2005 was in some ways what i thought with oppenheimer with odyssey was just like he's moving a little too fast like there's not it it goes from going to find uh razal ghul to back to gotham to you know like it's very fleet of foot um but yeah like i i am not a huge batman begins guy i was and remain absolutely terrified by the scarecrow in a way that i think I think it 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. He's a good villain. 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 somewhat low. I would rather watch Inception and Interstellar even if they're not my favorites over Batman Begins. That'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 Neeson's good, but it doesn't have Joker or Bane. I mean, it has a rare Katie Holmes performance from this era. What do you think of that, Rachel? Well, I think it was better for everyone when Maggie Gyllenhaal showed up. Maybe not better for Katie Holmes, but she's a street style star now. Is that what she is? Yeah, I mean, she's also making and directing films. Have you seen them? 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 Batman has to make at the end of Dark Knight? Is it? You can either, 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. What do you got 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. Um. Are you guys going to say? Do 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's a superior film than Memento. I do as well. I completely understand. Okay. 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? Sure. Please offer a counter. Why have I taken the role of, like, couple of therapists? Because you want to do it together. Yeah, that's exactly. Yeah, you want to do it together. Broker this peace between Chris and I. I just want to heal. I want this guy back. Chris, what do you mean? From Toronto, you know? Oh, my God. Just from a van ride. We've been having such a good time today. What do you think? I agree. I agree. We've been talking cusk. 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? Okay. Yeah. Does Memento go at 10? What if we put Dark Knight Rises at 10? Oh, okay. I think that's right. That's big of you? Now, Dark Knight Rises. But that, you know. You're the number one defender. No, I am a Bane apologist. I think Dark Knight 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. And 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 Bane 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. It's also so long. And this came out after Interstellar. Yes. Isn't that so strange? It did? Yeah. No, it didn't. Dark Knight Rises is 2012 Interstellar. 2012. It came out after. After Inception. Sorry, after Inception. He made Inception in between Dark Knight and Dark Knight Rises. Thank you. You know, it's kind of fascinating to think that a movie that has as much plot incoherence as Dark Knight 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. From nine through six. Is that what you imagine a jellyfish experience is like? Well, don't get too close to me. Or I'll sting you. But otherwise, 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, I've 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 Canada next year. You know, it's a real Anakin Skywalker. I hate sand. 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. We could get you some hats. 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, like, 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've got to 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. Okay. That's not that recent anymore. That's true. 21, maybe. You can, like, check my logs. I'll pass. That's cool. 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. 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 to my house. Ask me a question face-to-face like a man. Come to your house at 11.45 p.m. and be like, have you seen the horror movie, The Passenger? I think that movie's just called Passenger. Passenger. Sorry. I think The Passenger is an Antonioni movie. Did you see Passenger? I didn't see Passenger. Was it any good? There's some good stuff in it. Yeah. Classic. Two and a half stars. Sure. Okay. Look. Are you always. Are you always giving stars? No, I only do hearts or no hearts. Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah. Well, you just threw out a star rating there. I know. That's like the general review of people are giving it on Letterboxd. Okay. Look, I think Inception is better than Memento. It's fine if you don't. Do you think 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 than Inception. Like, The Prestige is very good. It also just has a lot of your stuff. You know, it has Hugh Jackman. I love magic. 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. We got Bowie as Nikola Tesla. Okay. I mean, come on. Yeah. He was the best. Yeah. That's in the film. It's in the text. Like, Hines Ward, he's in Dark Knight 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 what could have been a beautiful. Crackback blocks? Is that what they call those? Yeah, it is. Yeah. 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 move here would be to do some combination of that. To do Memento 9, The Prestige at 8, and then run through, figure out the classics from there. I love that. I love that. 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 filmgoers, you're just going to get a lot of variance in what people value. Like, the Batman trilogy is amazing. Dark Knight trilogy is incredible. It's not a huge. It's not a grower for me. Like, I think I like it. And I admire it, but it's not going to, like, pierce. I'm not going to have Dark Knight 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 Knight now as time goes on, which is really exciting. I think The Dark Knight, 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. 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 pinwheel movie? 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. 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 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. It's. 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. And it goes on and on and on. I think there's a beautiful, beautiful passage of Interstellar if you put it at seven, I think it's okay. I also, the McConaughey of it, when I was, because 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. Uh, and it, like, tips it over too far into the sentimentality that you were referencing. Yeah. Um, and. That's the movie to me that is more, though, about my life spent making movies without my family. And then 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. Um, and being away from a newborn. Uh. You want to put Interstellar in something? It's so hard because, like, 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, uh. Which one do you like more, Memento or Interstellar? I like Memento, but I don't think that's. So what if we did 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. To me, Memento is like a 1940s Warner Brothers movie in reverse. Like, it's a really, really sharp crime movie. I'm pro-Memento. Memento is, you know, a subhead of The Prestige of people being like, yeah, 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. 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. 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 I. 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, 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. I don't even know where I am with myself right now. I know that I'm not. 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., who. I think my rankings right now are from one to five are Oppenheimer one, Dark Knight two, Odyssey three. Dunkirk. Memento four and Tenet five. Dunkirk is six for you. And Dunkirk is six. 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? No, 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? When Barry Keegan gets kicked down the stairs? Yeah. No, I didn't say that. And they're like, Peter! You guys, 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 if we act, then we meet where Amanda is. This is like the third hour of Oppenheimer. No, no, no. I'm saying I would give you Dunkirk at two, but I can't, I don't think I can do it at one. You can't have the bomb. Like I can give you Dunkirk at two, but I can't give it at one. Your number one is the Odyssey? It's Oppenheimer, yeah. And your number one is the Odyssey? And the Odyssey could be number one in six months. Or I could do Dark Knight. Or I could do. Dark Knight is not his best movie. Okay, all right. Okay, that's fine. The first hour and a half is. And also, so here's the thing. The first an hour and a half of Dark Knight, 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? My genius. When Alden Eroic is like, boom, gotcha. To Downey. Yeah, some senator named John F. Kennedy. 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 work so well to me. I don't remember when. Remember when Rami Malek had a clipboard? Oh, yeah. Yeah. He was working on that project with the other scientists in Chicago. 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 what's a sick scene in Oppenheimer? Is when Casey Affleck is like. That's so good. It's so good. Yeah. He's like his. What did he say? He killed Russians with his bare hands? Yeah. It's good shit. There's a lot of really good stuff in Oppenheimer. Should we move Prestige down to nine and Memento back up since we've been speaking so glowingly of it lately? Because right now, Memento's at nine, Prestige's at. Maybe just flip Memento to eight and Prestige to nine. Okay. Okay. Just as a. As a salve for me. Then I will give you Inception at six. I know apparently it is more and more of a like. You're saying it's number two for you? Yeah. And it's top five 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 five. This is going really well. For the sake of a unified theory of Christopher Nolan, let's make Inception five. Okay. Because most people will want to see it in that space. And you guys both really like it. I'm okay with it at five. Are you going to put Interstellar. I'm going to put Interstellar at 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? Oh, Oppenheimer. Oh, yeah. Because we have all these other. So I think. Tenet? I think Tenet goes at six. That's. You know what? People would. That's fine. I think if we had Tenet in the top three, people would be like. People would be mad. Yeah. Not that I care. It's not about that. It's about what is just. Tenet at six. What is just in this discussion. I think this is right. Then this means that Oppenheimer is probably going to four here. Based on your takes. I think Dunkirk's better than Oppenheimer. I do, too. So what's left here? So then. And then it's Odyssey and Dark Knight. I don't feel that at all. It's crazy. Well, we're missing a. What are we missing? We got. We're like 98 out of 100 on stuff. Odyssey, Dunkirk, and the Dark Knight. Oh, okay. 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. 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 it's a lot more of like, and we had no idea what power we had unleashed. And in Dunkirk, it's like. You 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. I really liked it when he said it in the Odyssey. You know? Yeah. A third of Dunkirk is silent. You know? Where there's no dialogue. You know? Yeah. Okay. Uh, so you want Dunkirk at. What? Three. But then that means Dark Knight's going to two. And Odyssey's going to one, which is recency bias. This is a mess. Well, fine. 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. I'm fine with Oppenheimer at four. I don't think. I mean, I agree that it's too soon. This is why this is a great idea for an episode. It's too soon for the Odyssey to be number one. It's too soon. Even though I do think that it is my number one. And he said Dark Knight, 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. I said Dunkirk is my favorite Christopher Nolan movie. I didn't say it has to be at number one. But what should be at 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 the problem. Do you have your life worrying about appearing to be cringe? No. You don't. You don't. I agree. I just mean, like, I meant. Or, like, let's be bigger than that. No, I'm never cringe. But I do witness it 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 Jimothy, I don't think they made it to the podcast. Well, I know, but now I found the word that I was looking for. They weren't mean. They were just really cringe. Okay. In their own ways. All right. And they were not confident. Amanda recently 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. Okay. So we're not doing Odyssey at number one because we all agree. What about The Dark Knight? No. Chris is not doing that. Chris says no. 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 his biggest commercial success to date. How about that? Tenet number one? Zag? Even I can't make that case. Okay. We tried in Toronto. Everyone was like. Polite golf club. Yeah, exactly. Sure, guys. We wish you brought Inception. What do you think of this list? 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 gets to be the way that this gets solved. And Dunkirk would be your personal six. It would. And it would be your three. And 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 one, Oppenheimer two. I like that. I'm okay with Oppenheimer at two. I like that. Well, now you're helping me out. Yeah, that's really good. That's what I appreciate. Because we get away, but also Sean. Yeah, I think that's great. It's called confidence. And is Dark Knight going to three? And Odyssey at four? Or is Odyssey going to three and Dark Knight to four? I think Odyssey three, Dark Knight four, personally. I think I probably. That gets closer to how I feel about his career. Okay. I think that's it. I gotta rewatch Dunkirk. Dunkirk one, Oppenheimer two, Odyssey three, Dark Knight four, Inception five, Tenet six, Interstellar seven. The Interstellar boys are gonna cry. Listen, they've been. They shouldn't listen to this podcast anymore. If you expect us to ever let Interstellar fully into our hearts, that's cool. That's cool. I think it's pretty. I think it's good. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm happy for everyone. I'm not cringed to cry. 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 Timothee Chalamet? No, I mean, I'm happy for him, but I kind of forget that he's in it. Mm-hmm. Is that a Hans movie? It's a Hans movie. Yeah, Hans blacks out when they go into the black hole. Do you think you could be friends with a theoretical physicist? Sure. I can be friends with almost anybody. 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. Physics is just where I check out. I appreciate all the work that they've done. 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. My mind doesn't work that way. So. 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. What does that mean? We gave you one. No, you got Dunkirk at number one. So you got to give me one. 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. You know what might be number one now is Magnolia. Yeah. You've entered that phase of your life. It's really good. I've watched it twice in the last two years. It's so fucking good. Yeah. And it's so free. I agree. And insane. God. All right. Anyway. Number 13, Following. Number 12, Insomnia. Number 11, Batman Begins. Number 10, The Dark Knight Rises. Number 9, The Prestige. Number 8, Memento. Number 7, Interstellar. Number 6, Tenet. Number 5, Inception. Number 4, The Dark Knight. Number 3, The Odyssey. Number 2, Oppenheimer. And number 1, Dunkirk. This is kind of like everybody gets what they want, but nobody gets what they want situation. That's what compromises. It sure is. If only the United Nations knew who had to cook like we do, we'd be in a much better place. We would. We wouldn't have to make the Odyssey. Put us in charge. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. We are the civilization that rose again. If there were to be something we could literally be in charge of. The Aspirus. On a national, global level? He doesn't care. I care. The three of us. But that's where the best ideas come from, you know? Someone who's totally checked out on something? 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 Jimothy runs? 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. For playing along with another silly game. I thought this was great. I'm so glad. It's nice to be back with you. 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 lot of good stuff. We are doing a mailbag. Send your emails in the form of a question. Send questions. That's it. 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. 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