Christopher Nolan Didn’t Watch Any Spy Films While Making ‘Tenet’
By George Robbins
The movie making process can be a long and arduous one that production crews spend a ton of time working on. It can sometimes take a decent chunk of time for these projects to get done and this is because of the filming style and what the director and writers want for the film. Based upon the director’s decision is whether a film’s script should be changed or not. Sometimes director’s go so far as to write their own scripts because it means that they can work on the project however they feel is necessary without conflicts with the script. There are plenty of things that directors do in order to make the most out of their cast and crew in order to make a film the best it can be.
What many people may not know about the movies they watch is the fact that some of the best movies use references so that cast and crew have a better idea of what they are working on. These reference materials can be any number of things ranging from other films in the same genre to reading up on books with core elements similar to the movie’s plot. One of the more famous examples of this was what happened with ‘The Matrix’ when the Wachowskis had their cast read up on a number of philosophy books before the movie was made. It allowed them to get more into the mindset of everything that is going on in the film and just why their characters are doing those things.
Christopher Nolan has become known as one of the best directors around over the past few years due to the fact that he always puts out quality content. His most recent film, which is having an international release first and will then appear in select theaters in the U.S., is an espionage movie called ‘Tenet.’ A majority of that film is a complete unknown to everyone because no one knows just what they have seen already in the trailers. The trailers for the film make it even more of a mystery with the only discernible details being that it sees a team of agents trying to prevent World War 3 while dealing with some kind of time manipulation concept. In other words, it is a unique film and Nolan has been wanting to get it out in theaters since the pandemic began.
Nolan has recently gone more in-depth with the processes that he used in order to make the film, but he hasn’t said much. Among the things that he had said about the making of the movie was the fact that, while normally he would screen other films for his cast before they work on one of his films, he didn’t do that this time. He has said that the spy genre is one that has completely embedded itself in us and it should be something that is felt from memory. Essentially, by doing something like this, it encourages the cast to play out a spy movie that is wholly unique and given what we have, or in this case haven’t, seen the movie will be just that. It will be a spy film that will hit the same beats as other spy films but it will not be a copy of any of them.