Christopher Nolan Talks About His Love of James Bond Films and The Influence They've Had on His Films
Christopher Nolan is looking to do something completely new and different with the spy genre in his upcoming film Tenet. The movie looks unlike any spy film I’ve ever seen before! There’s some pretty crazy stuff going on in it that has intrigued fans.
As many of you already know, Nolan is a huge fan of the James Bond franchise. He loves the spy genre and it’s something that we’ve seen influence his films. Usually, Nolan puts on screenings of Bond films for the cast and crew before they start shooting, but he didn’t do that with Tenet. In an interview with Total Film, the filmmaker said:
“Interestingly, this is one of the first films I’ve ever made where we didn’t do any screenings. And the reason was, I think we all have the spy genre so in our bones and in our fingertips. I actually wanted to work from a memory and a feeling of that genre, rather than the specifics.”
He went on to say that while making the movie, it’s the longest stretch of time in his life where he did watch any James Bond movies:
“This is definitely the longest period of time I’ve ever gone in my life without watching a James Bond film. My love of the spy genre comes from the Bond franchise, and the Bond character very specifically. I know as much about the Bond films as Alan Partridge does.”
When it comes to Tenet, he wants the movie to bring the same grand scale and excitement that he felt from the Bond movies when he was a kid, and I’m all for that!
"It’s totally in my bones. I don’t need to reference the movies and look at them again. It’s about trying to re-engage with your childhood connection with those movies, with the feeling of what it’s like to go someplace new, someplace fresh. It actually has to take them somewhere they haven’t been before, and that’s why no one’s ever been able, really, to do their own version of James Bond or something. It doesn’t work. And that’s not at all what this is. This is much more my attempt to create the sort of excitement in grand-scale entertainment I felt from those movies as a kid, in my own way.”
Tenet has been described as a “mind-blowing espionage thriller so unique that audiences will puzzle over its intricacies for years to come.” It’s also said to be a “time-bending masterpiece” about a Quantum Cold War. This is the recent synopsis for the film that was shared:
Armed with only one word – Tenet – and fighting for the survival of the entire world, the Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time. Not time travel. Inversion.
There’s still so much that we don’t know about this mind-bending story, but when previously talking about it, Nolan explains that it will take the spy genre into some new territory:
“It’s a film of great ambition and great scale that takes a genre, namely the spy film, and tries to take it into some new territory, and tries to take the audience on a ride they might not have had before, and might not be expecting."
The movie stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Clémence Poésy, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh.
The film is still seemingly scheduled to be released in theaters on July 17th as the studio hasn’t said otherwise.