Nitpicking is part and parcel of modern film criticism, especially in terms of video reviews. Whole YouTube channels, most notably Cinema Sins, live to point out film flaws.
One common complaint is about narrative tropes – the fact that almost all screen stories are one of several dozen formulas ranging from rags to riches, man vs. nature, fall from grace, redemption, love triangle, found family, the ragtag team, etc.
Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” currently in cinemas, is an adaptation of one of the most famous stories that effectively helped create the single most famous trope of all – the hero’s journey.
But that’s not a bad thing, and in a recent interview with BiliBili (via Nichole), Nolan himself says it has become an issue with modern amateur criticism:
“That’s a fundamental flaw of film criticism and storytelling criticism because to be able to identify the mechanism does not invalidate the mechanism. That’s a real problem with criticism today: people have this idea that because I can understand why the story effects me the way it is, therefore it didn’t work – that’s not how storytelling works.
When I was talking about film criticism, I was talking more about amateur film criticism than professional film criticism because professional film criticism tends to understand the necessity for the mechanisms… [amateur criticism] because they feel they’ve identified the mechanism, they feel that it invalidates it. That could be true of certain elements, and film language evolves with that, so when a trope becomes too familiar to an audience, then it has to be changed.”
See the comments for yourself below. Nolan’s “The Odyssey” has been one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year and currently sits at a 94% (8.7/10) from critics and a 97% (4.8/5) from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. Sell out sessions are continuing for the film, which is expected to be screened in IMAX cinemas well into September at this point.
Christopher Nolan says one of the biggest problems with modern film criticism is the belief that recognizing a storytelling trope or narrative device somehow means the film has failed. pic.twitter.com/wqtqMkF6dh
— Christopher Nolan Archives (@NolanAnalyst) August 1, 2026
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