6. Fight Scene Editing (Batman Begins)
The first Batman Begins was a superb, refreshing slap in the face for Batman fans everywhere, but it also demonstrated Nolan's biggest weakness as a filmmaker, one that permeates through a lot of his films even though it has improved considerably lately - his editing. While this isn't
directly his fault, it's something he should have pulled editor Lee Smith up on, because the action scenes in Batman Begins especially really suffer for it; particularly when Bruce and Ducard (aka Ra's) are fighting on the ice during the early training sequences, and then when the Batmobile is fending off cars through a tunnel, the money shots are all too frantic and scattered. It's difficult to make spatial sense of what's going on, and this only became worse for those who bought the Region 2 DVDs; the 4% speed-up from NTSC to PAL means that the slack editing is even more disorientating. Most of Nolan's subsequent films aren't saddled with the same problem - some of Inception's editing was a bit spotty (watch when Cobb is walking through the streets with Ariadne), but on the whole Nolan and Smith have managed to strengthen their working process.