Like Missy Elliott before him, director Christopher Nolan is a fan of putting his thing down, flipping and reversing it. His films have often tweaked the linear nature of storytelling, re-arranging the order of things to keep audiences on their toes. It looks like his next film, Tenet, will be once again doing that on a much, much bigger scale.
The first trailer for the film is above and it is full of action, intense characters looking intense and that famous Nolan gravity. Everything just feels heavy, like the entire world is at stake. Turns out it might be, as our lead character states that he’s attempting to literally save the world. Gulp.
Typical to a Nolan trailer, we don’t get much of anything related to the film’s story but we DO know it’s about a spy (John David Washington) who may or may not be witnessing time out of order. We see several shots of things like cars, boats and even people moving in reverse, all suggesting that Tenet will take Nolan’s time-toying antics to a new level. I’m particularly interested (and honestly a little disturbed) by the last shot of the trailer which shows an armed guard leaping up at Washington’s character. Something about his backwards movement is just creepy and unnatural to me.
Much has been made about the film’s title. As you know “tenet” is a palindrome, meaning that it’s the same thing if you’re reading left to right or right to left, forwards and backwards. That title and this new trailer seem to confirm that Nolan is going to messing with our ideas of time yet again. That’s exciting and a little daunting. It is also exciting to hear people repeatedly claim that this is Nolan’s biggest, most ambitious film yet. Strap in tight, it seems like he’s aiming for the fences with this one. And I can’t wait.
Tenet opens July 17, 2020.
