After the latest trailer of Christopher Nolan’s newest thriller, Tenet was released over the weekend, Warner Bros has decided to tease an official plot synopsis for the upcoming thriller. And yes, it’s a mind-bender.
During the recent Memorial Day weekend, the newest trailer for Tenet debuted on—of all places—Fortnite, which was in itself a surprising move from a director who has already made a career out of pulling surprises.
Jump into Party Royale now to catch the premiere of the newest trailer for Christopher Nolan’s @TENETFilm.
We’ll save you a seat in front of the big screen. pic.twitter.com/4LZdI1wWTu
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) May 21, 2020
Perhaps in an effort to generate some additional momentum, Warner Bros then quickly teased an official plot synopsis for the film.
While the synopsis did achieve the job of further fanning the flames of excitement among those eagerly awaiting Nolan’s next offering, it might not offer a lot of help when it comes to making the plot make more sense.
The Plot
Tenet is being billed as an original science fiction action thriller, which should please sci-fi fans who had dug Nolan’s earlier efforts in the genre such as 2010’s Inception and 2014’s Interstellar.
For the newest movie, John David Washington, of BlacKkKlansman fame, plays the role of the Protagonist, who is tasked with saving the world and the fate of humankind.
With only a single word, “Tenet,” to help him, he must complete a mission that involves navigating a stealthy world replete with international spies.
Because this is a Christopher Nolan movie we’re talking about, the mission may or may not unfold in real-time.
Not a time travel movie
While it is true that Tenet’s storytelling approach may involve events happening in a non-linear mode (but totally not like Memento, Nolan’s earlier 2000 masterpiece), Warner Bros has explicitly stated in the released synopsis that the film is not a time travel story.
The major film studio, however, took the opportunity to offer another word instead— Inversion.
Cleverly, no other explanation was provided by Warner Bros. So if the objective was to tease people and pique their curiosity, it might have worked, because fans now have more questions than answers.
Anyway, for those who want to hunt for clues in the latest trailer, they have more than a month to do so before the film hits theaters on July 17 later this year.
Continuing to bend people’s expectations
It might be safe to declare that Christopher Nolan is no stranger to playing mind games in his past movies.
With Memento, the British-American director told a story in reverse about a man who can’t form new memories. In The Prestige, he piled plot twists on top of other plot twists and somehow pulled it off.
Then in Inception, he had a Leonardo DiCaprio-led crew dive deep into a person’s dreams/subconscious, not to steal, but to plant an idea. And don’t forget about Interstellar, in which Matthew McConaughey literally witnessed her daughter get older than him in one sitting.
The upcoming Tenet should grant Nolan another golden opportunity to challenge moviegoers’ brains and logic, while also delivering cinematic thrills and jaw-dropping action sequences.
Tenet stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Clemence Poesy, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh. The movie set for theatrical release on July 17.
Featured image courtesy of Tenet (Warner Bros)