Christopher Nolan hits out at ‘amateur’ critics, a ‘real problem,’ as The Odyssey nears $1B
Christopher Nolan is having quite a moment lately, with his latest epic, The Odyssey, gunning for that eye-watering $1 billion box office milestone. The audience is loving it, critics are swooning, and the tills are ringing. But if you thought Nolan would be too busy celebrating to toss a few thoughts into the big debate on film criticism, think again.
He popped up on Zhong Shu's podcast in Beijing and, in classic Nolan fashion, took a swing at what he sees as a major blind spot in today’s crop of reviewers—especially the amateur sort you get all over the internet. In short, Nolan reckons too many amateur critics think spotting a storytelling device makes it somehow invalid.
The Odyssey is charging towards $1 billion at the worldwide box office, just three weeks after release.
Not Just the Usual Critics
In the chat, Nolan laid it out plainly: plenty of reviewers love to grumble that a character feels a certain way or the story tugs at your emotions only because it’s been designed to work that way. Some seem to think that if you can see the man behind the curtain, the magic’s ruined. His argument is that identifying a trick doesn’t stop it working—something a lot of self-styled critics are missing.
Here’s Nolan himself, talking through his frustration:
‘And that’s a fundamental flaw of film criticism in a way, or storytelling criticism. Because to be able to identify the mechanism does not invalidate the mechanism.’
He went a bit further, saying that some viewers immediately dismiss the impact of a film simply because they notice how it’s constructed. Explained in his words: just because you recognise how the story’s built and why it moves you, that doesn’t mean it’s failed. In fact, all films are created using a shared cinematic toolkit—a ‘very, very accessible modern language of storytelling’ Nolan calls it—mixing rules and conventions that filmmakers can use, stretch, or break, so long as they know what they’re doing.
About That Epic
For context, The Odyssey is Nolan’s grand-scale adaptation of Homer’s classic. It’s got Matt Damon as Odysseus trying to get home after the Trojan War—a decade-long trek packed with monster encounters, gods, disasters, the works. And right now, still absolutely dominating the box office as it heads into its third weekend.
All of which helps explain why Nolan has both the platform and the confidence to weigh in on how people talk about movies. He’s not just making ‘blockbusters’, he’s building landmarks. Take or leave the critique of the amateurs, but the numbers on The Odyssey speak for themselves.