'Tenet' Behind-The-Scenes Featurette Shows How Nolan Pulled Off The Movie's Biggest Stunts...in Reverse

As Warner Bros. forges ahead with the divisive U.S. theatrical rollout of Tenet, the studio is attempting to take our minds off the dangers surrounding releasing a movie in theaters amid an ongoing pandemic with a ritzy behind-the-scenes featurette. The new nine-minute clip goes into great detail about how "cinematic" and "game-changing" the Christopher Nolan espionage movie is, from its incredible stunts to its even more incredible scope. Watch the Tenet behind-the-scenes featurette below.

It's hard enough to pull off a massive big-budget blockbuster with mainly practical effects and expensive on-location shoots. It's even more difficult trying to do all that in reverse. Nolan and his time-bending method of storytelling takes on another layer with Tenet with the introduction of the ability of "inversion," in which the "entropy of an object or a person can be reversed," as the director describes in the featurette. Nolan being Nolan, the director and his crew often had to invent new ways of doing stunts, from choreographing fight sequences backwards, to rigging up all kinds of complicated devices that make it look like objects can fly backwards.

"It's very much cinematic, it's something that you have to see onscreen to fully engage with," Nolan added, which feels like a pointed statement about Warner Bros.' insistence on releasing Tenet in theaters, despite concerns about opening theaters while the pandemic is still in full swing.

The early reactions to Tenet have been somewhat mixed based on the critics who were able to see it outside of the United States before the film arrives in many international markets next week. /Film's Jason Gorber joined the mixed reactions, writing in his review, "In the end, Tenet feels like the most Nolan-y of Nolan's own films, amping the many quirks of this remarkable filmmaker's visual, aural, and temporal fetishes up to 11. The result is messily entertaining, a film that feels both boisterous and bloated in equal measure."

Tenet is written and directed by Christopher Nolan. It stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh. Tenet is currently slated to hit theaters in the U.S. on September 3, 2020 with early access screenings starting on August 31.

John David Washington is the new protagonist in Christopher Nolan's original sci-fi action spectacle Tenet. 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.