2. Faux-Philosophy
Nolan's blockbuster movies are some of the most ambitious there, but the fact that he wants to keep things simple enough to be digested by a casual audience tends to also limit those ambitions. Much of The Dark Knight, for instance, has The Joker waxing philosophical on the corruptibility of people, that when the code we all live by is subverted, chaos will reign, and people will promptly abandon the very social contract that they initially accepted. A thought-provoking idea, but the fashionable nihilism of the film is undermined somewhat by Nolan's oppositional, utterly conventional view regarding humanity. The boat stand-off in The Dark Knight is the key scene here; Nolan asserts by the end of the set-piece that, in fact, humans are innately good, with a prisoner throwing away the bomb controller - which could have theoretically saved his life at the expense of another boatload of people - before giving a "regular Joe" a condescending look. It's a promising idea albeit one solved in the most dewey-eyed, optimistic manner possible, with the hope presumably being that it would seem life-affirming for audiences. I simply sat there wondering why nobody had blown up the other boat yet. Or maybe I'm just a douchebag...