It’s a turbulent time for the movie industry and movie theaters, so what better answer than a movie about time?

It was three years, one month, and thirteen days between the domestic releases of Christopher Nolan’s last film Dunkirk and his newest release, the long-awaited and much-delayed Tenet. I lead with those numbers because the auteur director and most of his films, Tenet not withstanding, seem obsessed with the concept of time. 

A lot has changed in the last three years, including the way most of us watch movies. The movie industry has evolved since the release of Dunkirk. That evolution has reached a crescendo in 2020 as face masks and home viewing have become the new normal. Movies theaters closed their doors in March and I now go through more hand sanitizer than I do artificial popcorn butter, which feels crazy. It’s a weird time to be alive and an even weirder, more precarious time for the film industry at large. 

Finally, movie theaters are reopening. They started the reopening process on August 20th, with over two-thirds of theaters open as of September 3rd. To do so is an admittedly mixed bag; movie-nerds such as myself are elated to see new movies in a theater but there’s an inherent trepidation about the safety/sanity of doing so. One of the most hotly anticipated films of the year is set to open and the big question is whether anyone will actually go out to their local cinema and see it. A year ago, we never would have questioned whether we would be going to the theater to see Tenet.

Weird times indeed. And in these weird and confusing times, I find it incredibly apropos that theaters are set to reopen on the back of a weird, confusing film about time. Enter Tenet.

Tenet Is Important

Whether you’re a Christopher Nolan fan or not, Tenet is important. It’s important because it’s the first big film to enter theaters since the Covid-19 reopening. Yes, other movies have already opened in theaters over the past two weeks, including the Russell Crowe vehicle Unhinged. That felt like the equivalent of a soft opening, though. It’s Tenet that actually stands to bring significant numbers of people out of their houses.

We’ve been witnessing a harsh transition in how we consume movies as streaming services and VOD attempt to assassinate the theater-going experience. This transition has been in progress for several years now, almost like a death being watched in slow motion. Theaters aren’t entirely dead yet, but if we don’t give people a reason to return soon then they could die entirely. As more and more films fall subject to direct-to-home viewing, such as this year’s comedy hit Palm Springs which fully bailed on theaters and opted for a straight to Hulu release (a wise decision that seems to have paid off), the fate of movie theaters feels unstable, to say the least. That said, a film like Tenet could be just what the industry needs in order to get theaters rolling again. 

Tenet is not only crucial to the immediate success of theater reopenings in the short term. It’s important to the overall landscape of movies as we plunge into the decade that will be the 2020’s. (I say plunge rather than dive because 2020 has felt more like a painful belly flop than a graceful swan dive.) This movie stands to set the table for what we can expect out of the coming months or years. Is there still enough incentive to see high budget blockbusters in a theater? Sure, a smaller film like Palm Springs or HBO Max’s An American Pickle work great on your home set up and a theater experience didn’t feel necessary for them. But will a theater be deemed necessary for the likes of No Time To Die or Dune, set to release in November and December respectively? Just because theaters will be open doesn’t mean people will go. I think whether people actually show up to see Tenet on a gigantic screen may set a not-so-silent precedent for how we view future releases for these type of high-budget, high-concept films. 

Give Us More Original IP, Please

Stepping beyond the implications for movie theaters, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say Tenet is paramount to the future of movies themselves. Specifically, Tenet represents original IP filmmaking. The crucial term there is ‘original IP’, IP standing for intellectual property. It feels like we’re heading toward a future where people only go to theaters for the tent-pole event films. Only Marvel, DC, sequel, and spinoff movies are going to be able to guarantee butts in seats. I enjoy a lot of those movies (I can’t wait for Bond 25 and I’m praying for a Jumanji 3) but it will be a sad, sad day when there are zero films playing in theaters that are based on fresh, original ideas.

That’s the main reason I subscribe to Christopher Nolan. Save for his Batman trilogy, every Nolan film has been an original story. Okay, I guess Dunkirk was based on a real-life story, but it wasn’t based on any sort of existing IP. The Dark Knight made Nolan into a household name but I think it’s his other projects that make him so well regarded. He’s the pinnacle of what it means to be an auteur in 2020 and one of the few who prioritizes wholly original scripts. Inception and Interstellar feel so ingrained into our cinematic consciousness now that it’s almost easy to forget that they weren’t based on any previously existing IP. That’s incredible in today’s market.

 

Not only is Nolan a Godfather for original films, he leads the charge for big-budget original films. Tenet boasts a staggering reported budget of $225 million, the highest for any original story in Nolan’s career and highest in general since The Dark Knight Rises. It is set to be the only original IP film released in 2020 with a budget of over $150 million, which isn’t surprising. Original IP simply isn’t the safe bet for studios. There are other exciting original films slated, such as Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch or Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things but neither of those had a budget anywhere in the realm of Tenet. The fact that Warner Brothers gave Nolan north of 200 million to play with on an original story about a time heist is borderline unbelievable. And I love it.

Really, at the end of the day, I simply want more original stories. They don’t all need to be as expensive as Tenet and most of them shouldn’t be. Folks like Wes Anderson, Jordan Peele, and Paul Thomas Anderson are holding it down for original IP in the $20-50 million range. However, Nolan is one of Hollywood’s most trusted purveyors of original content intended for a big screen and therefore stands as a beacon for the industry’s willingness to finance big, high-concept original ideas. I’m sure people will always continue to make original movies. But will they always be able to make them for $200 million? Will a sci-fi epic be financed in 2030 if it isn’t based on something? The odds go way down if Tenet is a massive financial bomb. 

If Tenet flops, that doesn’t mean Warner Brothers won’t drop the bag for Nolan again for his next feature. It might mean they limit him to a more reasonable, less risky budget, though. That would be fine because, in my opinion, some of Nolan’s best work has come with a smaller price tag, such as Memento and The Prestige. Regardless of budgets, Nolan represents the *idea* of original filmmaking and I still believe the success of Tenet is instrumentally important to the future fruition of original, high concept films.

Tenet is a Film About Time, At a Weird Time In History

I haven’t seen Tenet yet. I’ve seen the first trailer and that’s all. I wanted to write a piece about it before seeing it because, after its multiple Covid-induced delays, I’m almost as interested in what the movie represents as I am in the movie itself. What little I know about Tenet is that it seems to center around the idea of time. More specifically, that future events are somehow able to be altered from the past via some kind of afterlife. I can only speculate what this really means or how it will actually unfold in the film, but going off of limited knowledge gleaned from the trailer, I think this is a fascinating topic given the current historical moment.

In the trailer, John David Washington and Robert Pattinson enter a room full of bullet holes. Pattinson asks “what happened here?” to which Washington replies, “It hasn’t happened yet.” This exchange strikes me as an exquisite metaphor for the state of movie theaters and the movie industry. As I said earlier, it feels like we’ve been witnessing a long, drawn-out death of theaters for years, basically since Netflix came onto the scene. It’s as if there was a fight scene and the entire movie theater business got shot up, we can see it and know that it happened, but at the same time, it hasn’t quite happened yet. Theaters are stuck in this weird limbo state (not quite like limbo as depicted in Inception) where they await their final fate. 

I find a certain poetry in the idea that the first blockbuster to land in theaters can be thematically related to theaters themselves. It’s all rather meta. And what better filmmaker than good ole Chris Nolan to provide us with some action-packed meta-ness? Nolan is an elite auteur who has been able to make spectacularly unique and innovative films from within a massive studio system. He sits at the fulcrum between making odd, intellectual, and often confusing think-piece films and blockbuster, popcorny crowdpleasers. He’s one of the few directors who seems to be doing both simultaneously. And while I have countless other films that I’m eagerly awaiting, I can’t think of a better director or a better film to reopen theaters. It truly feels like the right film at the right time.

I’m Excited

Safety measures will of course be taken by theaters as they welcome people back. I’ll be rocking a mask (I bought a new one yesterday that fits better, so I’m excited), slathering my hands in sanitizer, and appreciating the limited, socially distanced seating configuration. These new elements may initially disturb the wistfulness of the theater experience, but I’m pretty okay with it. 

Sure, it’s not ideal. One of the primary reasons I love theaters is to see a film in the company of a large audience. Therefore, the 40% capacity situation is a slight bummer to the experience I know and love. I adore that sensation of witnessing previously unseen amazingness with a crowd of strangers. There’s nothing quite like when you hear the entire theater gasp or laugh in unison. However, this is the new normal so reduced theater capacity and strapping cotton over my mouth is a minuscule price to pay in exchange for getting to see movies in public again. Even though things are different now and there are new rules, it’s tremendously exciting to see theaters open again. 

There have been a handful of other movies already released and there will be more in the coming weeks, but in the long run, it will be Tenet which we remember as reopening theaters post Covid-19. This year has been a strange and uncomfortable, albeit extremely memorable, chapter in human history. The pandemic is likely far from over and its effects will be longlasting but, at least for today, it feels good to be returning to a semblance of normalcy. I’ll be attending Tenet later tonight with a massive smile on my face and in my heart not only because it’s the long-awaited return of Christopher Nolan, but because it’s the long-awaited return of movie theaters.

Michael