Christopher Nolan’s Annihilation Trilogy

How many trilogies has Christopher Nolan made?

You’d think only one with the Dark Knight trilogy, but I’d argue two. Consider his output this decade – Tenet (2020), Oppenheimer (2023), and The Odyssey (2026). A time-inverting Bond-esque thriller, a historical courtroom drama, and a mythological epic about defying the gods. All different at a first glance, wouldn’t you think? But consider what drives these stories, on an emotional and thematic level. Beneath the spectacle, non-linear timelines, and spellbinding IMAX cinematography – all three are about annihilation. Our human capacity for it, how we live with it, and whether we can live with ourselves for having created such a thing. We live in a twilight world, indeed. But for a supposedly clinical, cold, filmmaker, Nolan’s thematic conclusions at the end of his annihilation trilogy may surprise you.

Tenet is confusing, I’ll give you that. I’m personally a Tenet truther, but that’s neither here nor there in this article. But put aside the time inversion, red room/blue room, cowboy shit chronal mechanics for a moment. Who are the villains in this story? Primarily, it’s the oligarch Andrei Sator – a terminally ill billionaire colluding with the future to end all of time. While he’s the face of the film’s antagonistic forces, he’s working with future generations who seek to destroy the present because of our mistakes and destruction of the planet – the personification of entropy. A post-annihilation world is looking for revenge against a pre-annihilation world. That’s bleak. Sator is nihilistic, cynical, selfish – he’s dying, so he figures he’ll take the whole world with him when he goes. It’s easy to end up like him – thinking annihilation is the cure to our own ills and the wider plethora of worries we as a society have. But, enter our protagonist – the protagonist, helpfully named. In the beginning, he’s at the mercy of this new world he finds himself in – but through his arc, he learns how to take control of his time-inverted destinies and fight back against the future. He initially tries to resign from his CIA posting after a disastrous operation, but by the end he’s fully involved in the fight to stop the villains’ doomsday device from being activated – and in another timeline twist, it’s revealed he’s the founder and architect of the TENET agency fighting the timeline fight (does your head hurt yet?). His arc represents Nolan’s argument for us fighting back against the possibility of self-destruction and entropy – Nolan doesn’t want us to be like Sator, embracing death and destruction. He advocates for us to take control over our own lives in this world where our own annihilation can happen. We may live in a twilight world, where annihilation is a very real possibility – but Nolan is optimistic that we can fight against it, and not give up. He doesn’t want us to go gently into that good night.

Oppenheimer is easily the most overt thesis on annihilation Nolan’s made. Tenet briefly mentioned the titular scientist and was concerned with the world the bomb created, but Oppenheimer delves headfirst into the man himself. For a filmmaker preoccupied with obsessive, self-destructive men trying to comprehend their own actions, J. Robert Oppenheimer is the perfect protagonist. There’s an undercurrent of existential horror that rears it head on occasion throughout the film’s runtime, often seen in the eyes of actor Cillian Murphy (in a tremendous, Oscar-winning performance). Nolan understands that for all the war-ending success of the atomic bomb’s invention – the world since is terrifying. The film starts with raindrops in a puddle, regarded by a young Oppenheimer – small, insignificant drops rippling in a small puddle. But by the end, the same image is repeated – only across the entire world, as nuclear destruction envelopes the world until Oppenheimer can only jam his eyes shut at the horror. Part of the runtime is dedicated to the very real worry from the Manhattan Project scientists that their detonation of the bomb would ignite the atmosphere – thereby destroying the entire world. While that didn’t happen, Nolan is fearful that the world may have been destroyed in a different capacity – with the mere invention of this device capable of such annihilation. In his acceptance speech at the BAFTA awards, he stated “Our film ends on what I think is a dramatically necessary note of despair”. He wants us to be aware that Oppenheimer’s actions are the origin of the modern world we live in – but either in release or setting order, Oppenheimer is still the middle of a trilogy between Tenet and The Odyssey. So for all its darkness, Nolan wants us to learn from Oppenheimer – not just accept it.

Even for Nolan, The Odyssey is a big swing. A $250 million-dollar epic shot across six countries and on the ocean, filmed entirely in large format IMAX, adapting a foundational text of western literature. But, of course, Nolan manages to tell the story in a way only he could. He takes this epic and folds it inwards – the grand, Homeric canvas now a vessel for reckoning with annihilation, regret, the cycle of violence, and our own actions. It follows on quite naturally from his previous two films – in a way, it’s like putting Oppenheimer himself (the creator of the annihilation device) into the plot of Tenet (an active fight against entropy). The man of many ways’ most famous exploit is the Trojan Horse gambit – smuggling Greek/Achaean soldiers into the impregnable walls of Troy, to destroy it from the inside. It’s a legendary accomplishment, a signature of Odysseus’ standing as a cunning thinker – but Nolan turns it into his own personal Hiroshima. The ancient Greeks had the concept of xenia, meaning ‘guest friendship’ – welcome strangers into your home, because they could be a god in disguise. In Nolan’s film, the Trojan Horse becomes a violation of the pact between hosts and strangers – and thereby, breaks the bonds of civilisation. The Bronze Age collapse (when it takes place) becomes tied to this break in the civility and order between people – sounds like annihilation to me. While Oppenheimer was an existential exploration of reckoning, The Odyssey is a much more grounded and emotional tale of regret. Odysseus broke the world, simple as that – he is forced to reckon with what his actions have wrought as his journey home is stretched out to ten years by gods, monsters, and mortals alike. This is seen most evidently in his home kingdom of Ithaca – his palace overrun by boorish, vile suitors seeking to seize power for themselves. His queen Penelope cannot kick them out, for that would be a violation of xenia – but they prey on Odysseus’ violation of the law, exploiting xenia to try further their own interests. But in the end, as Odysseus fights through the crumbling ruins of civilisation – Nolan still ends the story on a hopeful note. As a reunited Odysseus and Penelope sail into the sunset, she tells him; “civilisation will rise again”. The first shot of the film is the Greek fleet on the beach (a symbol of war) but the final shot is the Trojan Horse (a symbol of annihilation) burning in the ruins of Troy. Even for all the darkness, the devices of annihilation will be destroyed, and civilisation will rise again. Nolan followed up Oppenheimer with a redemption for the guilty, regretful man at the centre of annihilation, and with the promise that we will rise again.

In his typical fashion, Nolan told a saga of annihilation out of order. The cause (Oppenheimer) comes in the middle, sandwiched by the effect (Tenet and The Odyssey). It’s evident that our capacity for annihilation scares him – he’s made a career out of telling stories about it. But for such a dark concept, this unofficial trilogy still tells a positive story. He believes in us, for our ability to learn from the bad things in this world and to rise from the ashes of a collapsed civilisation. For a filmmaker who’s been accused of being clinical and emotionless, this trilogy proves he’s an avid humanist with a great love for who we are, and how we can be better. He just so happens to express it across varying, multiple timelines, enormous IMAX cinematography, blaring sound design, and across many a time period. But beneath the spectacle, the story is the same.