Christopher Nolan is a visionary director who is known for his grandiose and unexpected plot twists, his great action sequences, and his extremely complex stories. However, not every single one of his movies' plot twists comes completely out of the blue.
With Nolan's newest film, Oppenheimer, on the way, one must address some of his past films and their plot twists to see where this feature will fit in with all the rest. Though predictable plots certainly don't ruin the quality of his movies, it's always good to look back and acknowledge what reveals shocked audiences and exactly what ones didn't.
Bruce Finds Peace - The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
The Dark Knight Rises is the final installment of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy in which Bruce Wayne is introduced to Catwoman while trying to stop Bane, a terrorist willing to do anything to get the Batman to come out of the shadows and fight. This being said, the ending lacked some action and it was relatively predictable.
The movie starts off with Bruce Wayne already on an eight-year break from doing his vigilante duties. It's clear that he doesn't want to continue protecting Gotham because he wants to find his own happiness and move on from his past traumas. Therefore, the ending of the film with him finally getting away by faking his death is the only practical ending to the trilogy.
The Main Character Asked Neil To Work For Him - Tenet (2020)
There are many things about Tenet that make no sense and this greatly affects the way different twists impact viewers. The science-fiction thriller follows an agent who must work to bend time to stop World War III, but when his assignment doesn't quite add up, he makes some rather astonishing discoveries revolving around the reason he was picked to complete this mission.
This film is so disorienting at times that the plot twists lose some of their effectiveness, but it still manages to tell a convincing tale. However, the protagonist finding out that he hired Neil is something that anyone who has seen the trailer can easily predict once they start watching the film. The good news is that some of Tenet's bigger plot twists are more difficult to predict.
Mal Died Because She Thought She Was Still Dreaming - Inception (2010)
Inception is one of the best sci-fi psychological dramas of the 2010s because it made viewers question the way they see reality. It follows Cobb, a thief who has mastered the technology to enter peoples' dreams so that he may extract information from them when they are at their most vulnerable. In the film, it is revealed that Cobb is jaded because his wife killed herself thinking she was no longer in reality.
This discovery wasn't something that warranted a gasp or anything. Because he was so cautious with his newest recruit in the film, it was predictable that something related to his dream of traveling led to his wife's tragic death. Overall, it didn't have the intended effect on the audience that other elements of the film had.
Ducard Is Ra's Al Ghul - Batman Begins (2005)
Batman Begins is the first film in Nolan's Batman trilogy, which follows the childhood and challenging adulthood that leads Bruce Wayne to become an incredible fighter and a vigilante. In the movie, Wayne believes that his teacher is helping him to get rid of the evil in the world, but he finds out at the end that he is actually Ra's al Ghul and wants to destroy Gotham.
Anyone who has familiarity with the Batman comics knows that the League of Shadows is bad news from the very start of the film. Not to mention, with the intense and merciless training that Wayne received from his teacher, it was relatively easy for even a layman to foreshadow him becoming the villain of the movie.
Dormer Kills Eckhart With Killer As The Only Witness - Insomnia (2002)
Insomnia follows experienced detective Dormer who goes to an Alaskan town to solve the murder of a teen girl. When he struggles to find conclusive evidence to convict his main suspect, Walter Finch, the detective's instability gets the better of him. The plot twist comes when Dormer kills his partner, Eckhart, right in front of Finch.
Insomnia is a great movie and although this plot twist is brilliant, it's not difficult to guess what the movie is building up to. Dormer's mental state continues to devolve making him seem more deadly than Finch at times. Not to mention, since Dormer is played by Al Pacino, Scarface himself, it's pretty simple to piece this plot twist together with just the cast list and trailer.
Leonard And Sammy Switch - Memento (2000)
Nolan's Memento has one of the most memorable opening shots of the 2000s. It follows Leonard, a man with untreatable memory loss who uses the hints he left for himself to understand what is going on in his life and what happened in his past. This lack of memory gives way to many surprising moments and great twists in the film, however, the main twist is given away by one specific short scene.
In this scene, Leonard tells Sammy's story while a scene of Sammy sitting in a mental health facility overlaps with him talking. At one point, someone walks past Sammy's door, and for a quick instant, Leonard is sitting there, not him. Though it may take a keen eye to spot this detail that makes the final twist predictable, it's certainly something that someone can notice upon their first watch of the movie.
The Twin Discovery - The Prestige (2006)
One of the most talked-about plot twists in all of Christopher Nolan's films is the discovery that Borden's trick works because he and his twin can pull it off together. The Prestige follows Borden and his rival, Angier, who figures out how to clone himself to pull off the same trick.
This entire film is a work of art, but, with the number of subtle clues about The Prestige's twist throughout the feature, most audiences can predict the final reveal with relative ease. From the anecdote with the little songbirds to the separate lives lived by the Borden brothers, the truth was in front of everyone's eyes the whole time. For that reason, it's often considered the most predictable Christopher Nolan plot twist.