10 Harsh Truths You Don't Want To Admit About Chris Nolan's Movies

9. Neutered By PG-13 Rating

With Nolan's ground-breaking work on Batman Begins, he didn't just kick-start a trend of gritty, downcast Hollywood blockbusters, but he also catapulted himself headlong into the elite big-budget filmmaking system, governed largely by the proviso that these movies must be rated PG-13. Now, from a financial perspective, it's difficult to argue with that, but from a pure filmmaking perspective, it's frustrating to see a director who has flourished so well in the R-rated sphere being so continually neutered. That's not to say we'd want coarse language in a Batman movie, but the near-total bloodlessness is distracting to say the least, and Nolan fans have built up a certain thirst to see the director take a break from all of this blockbuster work and return to a lower-budget, more intimate, R-rated movie. Nolan deserves credit for clearly pushing the PG-13 rating to its extreme in The Dark Knight by way of Heath Ledger's savage, vicious Joker, though he's still a far cry away from the very different Nolan style we saw on Memento and Insomnia.