Seth Lamey
Christopher Nolan is one of the most renowned writer-directors of the 21st century. While he sometimes works with a writing partner, his characters are more frequently a singular vision of what he sees in the world and himself. While he enjoys playing with non-linear narratives or puzzle box type storylines, he keeps the characters consistent as a through-line for his work. Nolan is especially well versed at writing male characters, working from what he knows and that is mostly from the white male perspective.
Nolan has said in Inception: The Shooting Script that his greatest fear is losing his family, especially his wife and producing partner Emma Thomas, so many of his protagonists are written with that fear in mind: deadwives or difficult pursuits back to them or family often become the main conflict in many of his films. His newest film, The Odyssey, may be one of the most infamous examples of this trope, but many of his characters have already gone on a similar spiritual journey. A few of his characters even resemble him: dashing hair and facial features, with well designed attire and impeccable manners. Of all the memorable characters he’s created, here are my favorites.
Honorable Mention: Leonard Shelby (Memento, 2000)
Few main characters in Nolan’s filmography are as tragic as Leonard Shelby in Memento. Based on a short story by his brother Jonathan, Nolan weaves a character through a complicated non-linear format with a clever conceit: Leonard suffers from short-term memory loss. Previously an asset for an insurance company, following the assault and death of his wife and resulting brain damage he suffered in the incident, he finds himself hell-bent on finding her killers. The “deadwife” trope is not so much stale callousness but an exploration of what he fears the most: losing his own wife and filmmaking partner/producer.
Guy Pearce gives a devoted and stellar performance as Shelby, with his high cheek bones and body covered in helpful tattoo notes giving the character an edge. He is cunning, resourceful, but ultimately vulnerable to manipulation by others because of his condition. He gets exploited by nearly every other character in the film, even the motel worker Burt (Mark Boone Junior) who charges him an extra room just because he can. Natalie (Carrie Ann-Moss) and Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) both lie to him and give him poor information for their own gains, the latter using Leonard’s keen sense of revenge to hunt down drug dealers and criminals for his own undercover cop wishlist.
Nolan’s use of the reverse-chronological narrative device puts the audience in the shoes of its memory-holed protagonist along with a forward-moving black-and-white sequence. Viewing characters and events as fresh and guarded as Leonard Shelby unleashes the betrayals he suffers from other characters—and it is truly heartbreaking. Worst of all are the lies he tells himself regarding the truth about his wife’s death and his part in it. Nolan would go on to use is greatest fear (loss of family and his wife) in many of his films and Leonard Shelby in the neo-noir mindbender Memento would serve as template for similar protagonists to come.
10. Cobb (Inception, 2010)
Speaking of Nolan protagonists who have deep-seated trauma about their dead wife, Inception has one of his most scarred characters suffering from it. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a Nolan avatar in appearance with a slicked-back haircut and good fashion sense. He is also a smart, resourceful man who cares deeply about his friends and family, and spends the whole film tormented by the guilt of his involvement with his wives death and his perilous pursuit to return home to his children. A common theme for Nolan protagonists, and definitely on-point for his new film The Odyssey. Inception began Nolan on his affinity for great ensemble casts and this film includes Nolan staples Michael Caine, Tom Hardy, and Cillian Murphy.
Inception follows a mind-heist thief and his team of collaborators, who use a sci-fi technique of invading dreams to extract secrets but also sometimes plant ideas. Nolan carefully avoids the surreal and absurd lure of dreamscapes for a Bondian caper of twists and turns and multi-layered dream schemes. DiCaprio plays Cobb with determination, confidence in his ability to keep a working plan and team in place. He also nails the vulnerability and insecurity the character deals with the entire film. Taking on a “one last job” mission to incept an idea into the son of an energy-corporation giant, he risks his own neck for the reward of returning home to see his kids. Cobb is haunted the entire film by the projection of his dead wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) who invades his subconscious, foiling plans by his team at nearly every turn. In the end he needs to reconcile with her and the actions that lead to her suicidal demise.
Cobb is one of Nolan’s most obvious and personal connections for his personal reflections in his films. He directs a “crew” to create dreams along with ideas, a metaphor for film making itself. His connect to his friends and skill within that job are professional and exacting, but with the fear of dead loved ones looming over him as well as an endless need to see his children again. DiCaprio is the biggest movie star Nolan has ever casted and a fine choice for Cobb in this film. His devotion to nailing the professional side of Cobb as a dream thief and leader of his crew are precise and believable. His bittersweet interactions with Ariadne (Elliot Page) and Mal give the film its touchstone moments to make Cobb and Inception one of Nolan’s most emotional performances and films.
9. Murphy “Murph” Cooper (Interstellar, 2014)
“Murph” has the privilege of being the only female character on this list. Nolan admittedly is better at writing male characters in his films, drawing from experiences he knows, but by the time of Interstellar in 2014 his time as a father of a daughter had him up to the task to write his best female character. Without getting too deep into the sci-fi quantum physics of the film, the Earth in a near future is dying because of a blight causing draught, famine, and eventually death of crops and living organisms. “Cooper” (Matthew McConaughey) is tasked by NASA to pilot a mission to explore new habitable planets to save the human race. His ten year old daughter Murph (Mackenize Foy) can’t bear to part with her father not knowing if he will return, kicking off the emotional catalyst for the remainder of the film.
Murph is a unique character for the fact that she is played by three separate actors throughout the film. The first act shows her as a bright-eyed ten year old, showing affinity for science in the world and immense devotion to her father Jonathan Cooper. After a teary-eyed goodbye, we see her again in the second act 27 years later, nearly the age of her father when he left for his mission to save the world. Jessica Chastain plays her as a woman still deeply devoted to her father and his cause, although jaded by his departure. Her tenacity to reunite with him and solve the gravity equation with quantum data from a blackhole save her father and the human race. After realizing the “ghost” in her old bedroom was and is her father communicating across time in an extra-dimensional tesseract, she figures out all that is needed in the end.
Ellen Burstyn plays an elderly Murph near the climax of the film, on her deathbed and at long-last reunited with her father Cooper. The emotional catharsis of the film wraps up one of the strongest emotional bonds seen in any Nolan film; Murphy Cooper and her Dad “Coop.” After saying her goodbye she implores him to continue his exploring instincts and find Dr. Brand (Anne Hathaway) and her hopeful new colony for the human race. While “Coop” is the main protagonist of Interstellar, “Murph” is the emotional drive of the films narrative and heart from the first scene. It could be said being a father softened Nolan as time evolved for him as a filmmaker, and his creation of this father-daughter connection saving the world through love and communication among world ending despair is his crowning achievement for a female character in his films.
8. The Protagonist (Tenet, 2020)
Tenet may be the most confusing of all of Nolan’s “puzzle box/mind-bender” films. He lays out its plot about heroes and villains in the future using the creation of reverse entropy sending objects and characters back in time to end and save the world from catastrophe. Luckily he grounds such high-end sci-fi concepts with characters straight out of the Bond franchise formula: Russian villain Sator (Kenneth Branagh) as scene-chewing antagonist; his wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) as “Bond-girl” who switches sides to see his demise. Centering it all is “The Protagonist” played by John David Washington as a CIA operative hired by a mysterious organization to save the world in the present and future. He shows off his skills the whole film as a physical presence who can fight and endure any call to action throughout this action-thriller. His most enduring qualities are his ability to think out situations as well as feel for those close to him, and in this case his new friend Kat and his trusted sidekick Neil (Robert Pattinson).
The Protagonist offers a unique spot on the list as the only minority entrant but his casting by Nolan is exacting. John David Washington carries himself as a former college athlete up to the task of the physicality the role requires. He also brings the appropriate charm and dramatic flare needed for a character evolving on the fly in a turbulent plot and world around him. He brings his famous father’s (Denzel) suave voice to Nolan’s Bond character archetype playing against Branagh’s menacing Russian villain performance. The Protagonist handles himself with efficiency and grace, and his best quality is his devotion to Kat. First he uses Kat for her proximity to Sator as he tries to access devices he is digging up to build the ultimate weapon of destruction, but when he sees the abuse she endures his secondary mission becomes caring for her well being.
By the end of the film The Protagonist realizes not just his importance to himself and his current mission but also what it will evolve into for the future. Realizing he is the one who founded “Tenet” in the future because of his choices in the past (and present) makes him conscious of his choices and who he cares about outside the macro plans to save the world. Being a protector to Kat and her son Max as well as good friend to Neil going forward literally save the world. Pattinson as Neil acts as the Nolan avatar in this film, proficient in his work and donning the slick hairstyle of Nolan and well-dressed demeanor. The Protagonist makes Tenet work through Washington’s performance and Nolan’s evolution with his hero character types deep into his action-thriller filmography.
7. Bane (The Dark Knight Rises, 2012)
Christopher Nolan had a difficult task following up the tour-de-force performance of Heath Ledger as The Joker in The Dark Knight, so he pivoted to a character from Batman’s rogue gallery of villains to challenge him physically and attack his soul. Bane makes his mark on The Dark Knight Rises from the unforgettable opening sequence. Tom Hardy was cast in the role after his performance in Inception and he brings brute strength and an intensity with his eyes behind a mask that ups the ante on Batman’s challenges in film. Bane is an exiled member of the League of Shadows, an ex pupil of Ra’s Al Ghul’s (Liam Neeson) much like Bruce Wayne was. He sets up well as a foil for Bruce and Batman, almost an evil twin or twisted cousin, come to Gotham for a reckoning to finish the job attempted in Batman Begins but in a more radical way.
Much like The Joker Bane sets Gotham ablaze, but where as the clown prince aimed for chaos and to test Batman’s morality Bane does it in a more tyrannical way. He bankrupts Bruce Wayne, infiltrates Gotham systematically, holding it ransom against the world with the threat of a nuclear bomb (hey, a nod to Oppenheimer a decade early). He lures out a retired Batman back into the fold before a brutal hand-to-hand fight where he mocks Batman’s tactics and then breaks his back. He lowers him into a pit of despair to let him watch as Gotham burns to the ground, torturing his soul before he ends his life. Bane uses demagoguery to fool the citizens of Gotham into an uprising that gains him total control over the systems of power on Gotham. Only in the third act of the film does Batman make a comeback to challenge him in a battle for Gotham.
Hardy was a perfect choice to play Bane, both from a physical stature and his face and acting cues. Bane entered the final entry of Nolan’s Batman trilogy as a storm that had come for Bruce Wayne/Batman after he and Commissioner Jim Gordon thought they cleaned up criminality in Gotham for good. His radical ideals and use of force upended Gotham and exposes weakness in the systems that thought they had control of the city. Bane has the chaotic nature of The Joker to challenge Batman on a grand scale but also the physical tools to battle him in close quarters. Trained by Ra’s Al Ghul, he possesses the same use of darkness, theatricality, and deception that Batman does and neutralizes his power. Bane forces Batman to up his game and trust new allies to defeat him in the end, and for that he jumps off the screen as one of Nolan’s best characters.
6. Robert Angier (The Prestige, 2006)
The Prestige checks all the boxes. Great men competing at their craft? Check. Dead wives to mourn? Check? Obsession driving characters and plot? Check. Based on a Christopher Priest novel of the same name, Christopher and Jonathan Nolan adapt a screenplay about rival magicians in late 19th century England giving it all in the name of one-upmanship. Hugh Jackman plays Robert Angier AKA “The Great Danton” AKA Lord Caldlow. Working his way up the ranks of London’s best magic acts, he gets ensnared with a rivalry of fellow magician Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) that would take both men to the brink of their craft and lives. In typical Nolan fashion, he shows the ending first and the rest of the narrative is told in non-linear fashion showing what lead to the inciting incident of the story.
Angier presents as a well dressed showman who dresses up his tricks and illusions well but is “afraid to get his hands dirty” unlike his competition. After losing his wife Julia (Piper Perabo) in an accident during a trick he blames his rival Borden, spiraling him down a path of destruction to best the other man by ay means necessary. “Obsession is a young mans game” is quoted by his mentor John Cutter (Michael Caine) and a lesson that Angier fails to understand before it’s too late. He grows to envy Borden living a life with a wife and family, which he feels robbed of and fuels that jealousy by sabotaging Bordens work and steal his trick ideas to a point that leads him to Tesla and a transportive machine.
As Angier, Hugh Jackman showcases the charm and professionalism of a top-notch magician as well as the dark and obsessive side of the character. This would be the only time he has acted in a Nolan film but he and Christian Bale work very well off each other, making the rivalry between their characters payoff. Angier could be considered another avatar for Nolan in one of his films based on appearance and craftsmanship, but the writer/director hasn’t showed the outward demons of the main character. However, magicians and film makers have very similar aims in the presentation in their craft so Nolan could be using mechanics of magic in line with how he crafts a film for an audience. Angier is one of Nolan’s more exciting and tragic characters, a man who follows down a path of deception and destruction to one of Nolan’s best and thrilling twist endings.
5. Odysseus (The Odyssey, 2026)
A “great man” who is also tortured by his choices and fights to get back home to his family? Nolan’s newest film adds its main character Odysseus into his best character ranks as well as continue to tell stories that speak to him. Odysseys is played by Matt Damon, who brings his veteran presence as an action and dramatic movie star to a film that wants to accomplish both genre checklists.
Odysseus is a brilliant man who also relies on his wits and honor to balance the life of men who use war to tempt the grace of the Gods. It is his idea of the Trojan horse to fool the Trojans and defy the Gods ideas of “Zeus’s Law” that leads to mass destruction of Troy and begins his trek home while also needing to reconcile what his choices have wrought. The anger of the Gods send him on a terrifying and dangerous journey throughout the world where him and his men must battle a cyclops, sirens, witches, and the dead.
Nolan saves the best for last, as Odysseus and his son Telemachus (Tom Holland) need to outwit and overpower dozens of suitors that have come for his thrown and the hand of his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway). Damon is up to the challenge for the physicality needed to show Odysseus as a fine warrior but also a smart man who needs to think through his challenges. He also nails the psychological aspect of the role, a king who needs to come to terms with the terrible war he participated in and what his legacy is in his homeland. You could say Odysseus is the culmination of all the great men with fatal flaws trying to get back to their families that Nolan has been crafting since the start of the current century.
4. Joseph “Coop” Cooper (Interstellar, 2014)
I wonder if Christopher Nolan has worries about the world he is leaving for his children? Interstellar could be a meta text for him, a father who wishes he had enough time for his children. To make sure they know he loves them and wants to keep their future safe. Jonathan “Coop” Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is a former pilot turned farmer trying to salvage what life he has on a dying planet for his two kids. INASA informs him of a mission they want him to pilot to explore a galaxy with potential new worlds. His skills analyzing situations and people gets pushed to his limits. Coop is first and foremost a good Dad to “Murph” and Tom, proving throughout the film he is seeking the survival of the human race but also wants to see his kids again. Although not direct in appearance, he possesses many of the qualities of a Nolan avatar on screen.
Coop shows his resourcefulness from the get-go, using a downed Indian surveillance drone to man his farming equipment and teaching his kids valuable life lessons about survival and evolution. Later on his mission through the wormhole visiting potential planets he uses grounded reasoning with human touch to weight the resources at stake for their mission, with time being a key factor. He wants to save the human race not just going forward but has a loving connection back home with his family and the families back home at earth. After viewing video logs of his kids after 23 years pass during the mission, he is overcome with joy of seeing their faces but regret of how quickly they have aged without him. His confidence and skills as a pilot pull off the impressive docking sequence at the end of act two, one of the most thrilling scenes in any sci-fi thriller.
This is the only performance McConaughey has given in a Nolan film and his casting was done at the height of his Hollywood comeback trajectory as a leading man. His ability to range from humorous to understated dramatic tension for a Nolan film with a lot of technical exposition as well as emotional depth is unmatched. Cooper is a valuable asset not only to his kids and the human race but also his friends on the mission. His ability to think critically but also with connection to humanity wins out in the end. He figures out in the tesseract that his connection with his daughter Murph is how he can get the quantum data transmitted to her and she can save the humans on earth. In the end, he gets his ultimate reconciliation with Murph and sets off to continue his exploration to find his friend Dr. Brand (Anne Hathaway) and the future human race colony. Although there have been iterations of caring fathers trying to get home to their families in Nolan’s films, none have had the impact like Cooper in Interstellar.
3. Bruce Wayne/Batman (Batman Begins, 2005)
What would a Nolan characters list be without one of his most prolific collaborators? Warner BrosB tasked Nolan with reviving the Batman franchise in 2005 with Batman Begins, and he brought Christian Bale on board to breath light into Bruce Wayne/Batman once again. Nolan and co-writer David Goyer decided to show more of Bruce Wayne’s upbringing after he witnesses the death of his parents, using a non-linear storyline to show the evolution of Bruce Wayne into Batman. The world of Begins shows the typical character traits of Bruce Wayne consumed by fear, anger, guilt, and rage as he tries to cope with the loss of his parents and the city of Gotham to the corrupt and criminal.
After he meets the mysterious Ra’s Al Ghul (Liam Neeson) and the League of Shadows, he learns to channel his loss and despair into the theatricality and deception with ninjitsu. His strength, agility, and newfound skills bring him back (from the figurative dead) to Gotham with a new crime fighting identity: Batman. Fitted head to toe with gadgets, armor, and a black cape/mask he instill fear into the criminal underworld of Gotham, trying to right the wrongs of what happened to him and might happen to others. The third act battle against Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy) and the rejuvenated League of Shadows trying to sack Gotham is textbook good vs. evil story elements. Bale brings the appropriate intensity and layers to the performance. His physicality as the character is very fitting as well as showcasing a false confidence and arrogance as billionaire socialite Bruce Wayne, but the early incarnation of a vulnerable and misguided Bruce is also an important thread for the character.
Bale would go on to play Bruce Wayne and Batman in two more Nolan films but the origins of the character flesh out both identities the best. Further world-building would allow more side characters time in the spotlight (especially villains) but Nolan and Bale new the importance of getting the main protagonist right in the origin story. Bruce Wayne is a staple for Nolan filmography themes of love for family and duty, good men fighting corruption. Bale as Wayne takes on the slick dapper appearance of Nolan and could be added to his stable of directorial stand in characters. The care which Nolan takes to flesh out complexities of Bruce Wayne and Batman make the characters from Begins vital to the Nolan filmography.
2. J. Robert Oppenheimer (Oppenheimer, 2023)
I think we all knew that long time Nolan acting collaborator Cillian Murphy had a big role coming for his filmography, and the biopic Oppenheimer was the perfect one for the duo. The film took home seven Academy Awards including Best Actor in a Leading Role for Murphy it the titular role of J. Robert Oppenheimer. The only real person to make this list, Murphy and Nolan had the unique task of portraying real life events with world changing consequences. “Oppie” as he was nicknamed by those close to him, was a brilliant scientist and student of theory related to quantum physics. During the peak of World War II it was thought that the Nazi’s were building an atomic bomb, so the Manhattan Project was commissioned by the U.S. government and military to build it first. Oppie was just the man for the job.
The film uses a Nolan staple, non-linear narrative storytelling to show much of Oppenheimer’s life from his days as a student abroad in Europe through his days back in the States as a professor and eventually lead of the Manhattan project. Scenes shown in color depict his subjectivity of key moments in the timeline, with black-and-white serving to counterbalance objective view of important scenes. Oppenheimer is depicted as a smart and reserved man, always thinking and processing through situations. He is friendly and social, skills that would be important for uniting Americas greatest scientist to a compound in Los Alamos, NM. There they would accomplish the building of the atomic bomb that would eventually be dropped twice on Japan and effectively end the war. Not unlike Nolan as a film maker and producer, Oppenheimer administers a cohesive plan and he is exceedingly good at the science and organizational tasks. The film shows the day to day obstacles of both the scientific challenge of the project as well as the political and social aspects.
The film also carries a subplot of analyzing Oppenheimer’s personal life and choices that put his security clearance at risk. He was no saint, often having a mistress or two and not fully committing to his wife Kitty (Emily Blunt). With an ever growing conservative government and paranoia regarding security, he was accused of being a communist and spy for the Russians when the cold war arms race began after World War II. This railroading was conducted in the shadows by Senator Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey, Jr.) who saw him as an opponent that needed defeating. Despite this, Oppie carried on his life with the heavy burden of being an “American Prometheus” the man who gave them the power to destroy themselves. Murphy delivers an outstanding performance and rightfully was rewarded for it. His most impactful scene is when Oppie delivers a “victory” speech to a gym full of fans but his PTSD of what those effected by his bomb endured drowns out the cheers in a near panic attack. His realization to what world-destroying political chain reaction his success with creating the bomb weighs heavy on his face during the final shot of the film. Nolan tackles the material with his propulsive energy of a cinematic freight-train, and Murphy’s performance gives J. Robert Oppenheimer the appropriate complex gravitas adding up to one of Nolan’s best films and characters.
1. The Joker (The Dark Knight, 2008)
When The Joker was teased in the final scene of Batman Begins, it kicked off high anticipation for the sequel The Dark Knight and the impact the infamous Batman villain might have in Chris Nolan’s new Batmanverse. The casting of Heath Ledger was met with skepticism but word of mouth quickly grew of great work he was putting in with the character, and when promo footage went wide people were stunned by his transformation. The Joker has been done previously on TV shows and in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman film by the great actor Jack Nicholson, but Ledger and Nolan had a new brand of chaos and anarchy brewing,
Drawn out by the challenge and new order of Batman, Ledger’s Joker takes Gotham by the throat and gives them an aggressive expansion explosion. Almost immediately he gains control of the mob and dirty money floating through Gotham, then setting his sights on exposing the rules and regulations of Gotham’s systems. He also challenges Batman head on to turn himself in, and tortures Batman in the second act with a deadly dilemma pitting the death of his friends Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent on his shoulders. A thrilling chase sequence preludes this sequence while Batman and The Joker have a face to face in an interrogation room. Ledger’s command of the scene leaves Oscar winning opponents Gary Oldman and Christian Bale in awe of his commanding presence. The Joker’s aura hides around every corner of the screen, his musical theme by James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer alerting the audience to his existence like the shark in Jaws.
The Joker is brilliant, sadistic, unpredictable, and darkly funny. Ledger plays him like a man with nothing to lose, every facial tick and lip licked precise and with purpose. His amateur make-up covers his scarred cheeks, his dark eyes peer at every victim. It might be hard to parse how much of The Joker in The Dark Knight was the creation of Christopher Nolan or actor Heath Ledger. Legend tells that Ledger locked himself into a motel for weeks and carefully cultivated his agent of chaos. Many thought that digging too deep inside a dark character like The Joker lead to his untimely death upon the films production. He would go on to win Best Supporting Actor that year for the performance. Nolan wrote the script so the over arching symbolism and dialogue is always present on the page and screen. Nolan also called action and cut for every scene Ledger acted in, and by all accounts their collaboration sparked this impeccable character and performance. The Joker’s backstory is clouded in mystery and purposeful contradictions, instead used as a cloud of terror that sweeps through Gotham and turns it on its head. His corruption of the people, Harvey Dent, and even exposing weaknesses and vulnerability in Batman/Jim Gordon will forever plant his flag as Christopher Nolan’s best character.
No matter where his characters fall on the spectrum of good vs. evil, Nolan always writes them to fit into each narrative and better serve the story at hand. He does often give his best writing to his male characters, coming from what he knows best. They do often have to fight through the pain of losing or having lost the person they love most, or are striving to heal a broken family. His dialogue is often sharp, plotting sometimes maximized or twisted too much for the casual viewer, but he keeps writing and directing iconic characters and performances. Heath Ledger, Cillian Murphy, and Robert Downey Jr. have taken home Academy Award acting Oscars in his service on screen and they probably won’t be the last. Few modern film makers can craft iconic characters for the screen like Christopher Nolan, and he doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. He has a winning formula for these characterizations, with key notes of evolving them over time.
