Tenet has become, through the COVID-19 pandemic, the most important film of 2020 – and whether Christopher Nolan’s new film can hit the international office when its release begins on August 26 will likely be an indicator of whether or not other studio films will be showing cinemas this year. Now, in a new interview with The Irish Times, many of the film’s stars and their producers have opened up about the challenges of the shoot.
Emma Thomas, who produces the films of Christopher Nolan (and is also his wife), told The Irish Times that Tenet is her most ambitious film, although the temptation is always there to go smaller instead of larger. “With every movie, we have the same conversation,” she says. “Are we going to do a little bit this time? In a world where studios have become more and more risk averse, we’ve just been lucky that every movie we made worked. That we keep capitalizing on the latest movie.”
Thomas also says that although previous Nolan films often have one scene that they will know to be difficult (with quotes from the hospital explosion of The Dark Knight), Tenet has several. “With Tenet, it felt like every time we were going to do one of those great things, you relax for five minutes and then you look at the set schedule for new week and then there’s another one,” she said.
Robert Pattinson – who stars in the film and gives some of the very best Hollywood interviews – recalls how difficult some of the action scenes were to film, and refers to a specific driving sequence they recorded early on. . “I woke myself up while hovering 80 miles per hour between cars and behaving like Chris is completely normal,” he says.
Pattinson says he’s generally paired with John David Washington, the film’s main character, and since the actor is an ex-NFL player, he’s in very good shape. “The maximum training I do most of the time is a casual walk,” Pattinson says. “John David can run all day. It was good that I was finally fit. But absolutely, in the beginning there were days when I just could not run after him.”
He also revealed that Washington had to explain elements of the plot to him. “Right up until the last week of the shoot, I talked to John David and asked him some nice fundamental questions about who my character was. And John David was, ‘Wait, you do not know this?’ But it’s complicated! You are not the only one feeding the story. “
Kenneth Branagh, meanwhile, plays the villain of the film, who he says is “darker than anything (he) has ever played.” According to Branagh, Nolan told him to “unintentionally harm” the character. He also says there were two scenes he filmed where he was not really sure what was happening – the first time that happened in his career.
Tenet will have a limited US release in select markets on September 3, if all goes according to plan.
