All I have for you is a word.
Tenet.
Use it carefully.
Audiences have never seen
anything like this before.
It's a swift, kind of,
action-packed adventure movie.
There are certainly images
that I have never seen before on screen.
It's a really hair-raising,
high-stakes thriller...
from an extraordinary filmmaker.
To do what I do...
I need some idea of the threat we face.
Tenet is an espionage story.
It's a classic spy story.
I grew up loving spy movies.
But to make it sing to today's audiences...
I sort of felt like,
for me to really engage with it...
I wanted it to have bigger possibilities.
Time travel?
No.
Inversion.
The film deals
with this concept of inversion...
which is the idea
that the entropy of an object...
or a person could be reversed.
It's very much cinematic.
It's something that you have to see
on the screen...
to fully engage with.
Aim it and pull the trigger.
You're not shooting the bullet.
You're catching it.
Whoa.
I really pulled from and dug into
my athletic experience more than ever.
The training was paramount.
Nobody's ever thrown an inverted punch
before, so how does...
How do you make that real-life, you know?
He had incredibly complex fight sequences.
We definitely pushed him to his limits.
Nice.
It was intense.
That's what was so exciting.
These moves, we've never seen before.
I mean, these stunt guys
who've been around a long time...
they were learning,
which was the fun challenge of it all.
Yeah!
Well, I've seen too much.
Well, we'll try and keep up.
This will be my third film with Chris Nolan.
You, kind of, realize when you read it,
"How are we gonna do this?"
Because he's gonna wanna do this for real.
Chris is really great, in that he wants it
for real. He wants it in-camera.
He doesn't want to do CG.
I haven't seen a green screen anywhere.
We're doing everything in-camera.
Our method of visual effects
is try and do everything without them.
It's almost like documentary-like.
It's all practical. It's all there.
It just pumps you up to know that.
And it's extremely helpful obviously...
on a performance level for the actors.
I think the audience is always aware...
on some level, of the difference
between things that are animated...
and something that's been photographed.
We always took the approach
that if we possibly can...
we'd like the actors
to be in real environments.
Action!
Well, I was in.
I didn't want any stunt doubles.
I wanted to do it for the team...
because it just benefits the film.
Everybody was blown away
by John David's enthusiasm.
The physicality of that man is,
you know, out of this world.
If we hadn't had a performer
of such skill and energy...
those things wouldn't have been possible
to do in-camera.
Chris, after one of the meetings,
he was like, "It's gonna be hard."
He said it just like that.
And I laughed,
but, you know, months later...
"Yeah, you were right, sir."
It was very hard.
Chris always sets the tone.
He sets the tone for me and for the actors.
The actor on a Chris Nolan shoot...
is very much, you know,
is very much part of the crew.
You feel the sense that this is someone...
who's telling the story this way because
that's what he passionately believes in.
This man, he just stands there.
I don't know how he does it.
He's right there.
His involvement is more than 100%.
He really loves it.
He can just keep shooting.
You know, the rain's coming down.
He's, like, loving it.
You lose the right
to complain about anything.
I mean, it's a good move on his part.
It's infectious. You can't help but
to want to keep going and give it your all.
Every film,
you're trying to challenge yourself...
because you're trying
to give something new to the audience.
You do that by building
on what you've done in the past.
Every production,
we came a step further.
And every production
has more and more sequences in it...
that we chose to shoot on IMAX.
At this point, they're, sort of,
the workhorse for us.
Which is really funny because when we first
started shooting with them...
it was such a big deal.
It's a very imposing camera.
It feels very important
when you're shooting something on IMAX.
There's a nice pressure to it.
It, kind of, makes you bring your A game
pretty quickly...
because you know
that this film is kind of precious.
And cut.
Cutting.
As I understand it,
we're trying to prevent World War III.
I'm not seeing Armageddon here.
No. Something worse.
The international component to Tenet
is very important to the story...
because it's really about threat
to the entire world.
Chris always envisioned this film...
as a, sort of, globe-trotting action epic.
And obviously, the best way to do that
is to actually travel yourself.
And it definitely plays into...
the, sort of, scope of the film.
You know, it enlarges the canvas.
We were going places
during the busiest times.
Summer in Amalfi, monsoon season in India.
Prep on this film was really complicated...
because we were based out of LA...
and making plans for all these
huge action set pieces all over the world.
Action!
We shut down an 8-kilometer freeway
for three weeks.
Had hundreds and hundreds
of extras in cars...
and stuntmen driving on it,
doing great action.
That was a first for me.
When will we ever be able
to do this in life?
You know, where they shut down
a whole entire freeway.
It defined the scale of it.
You know, in the end
what you see as an audience is a fragment...
or is a shot,
but you are filming a reality.
You know, you wanna buy into that reality.
So, in that way,
a real location always helps lots.
To be actually in the thing...
...to feel the thing
physically move around you...
or feel the boat rock under you...
it just, obviously,
organically feeds the truth of a performance.
It goes for his sweet spot, which is,
"How do you make great cinema?"
Not just tell stories in pictures...
but how do you make
the experience of cinema?
Yes, you could recreate India
in a sound stage...
...or London in a sound stage...
and you're not gonna capture the essence
or the authenticity.
No, I think being in those locations...
the audience gets to experience that.
They're gonna see that it's not green screen.
And they're gonna be amazed by it.
You wanna crash a plane?
Well, not from the air.
Don't be so dramatic.
Writing the plane crash...
I knew I wanted to try
and do it in some ways in-camera.
It read on the page
as the most exciting sequence...
and I definitely was scratching my head
about how we were gonna achieve it.
One of the first things I asked Chris was...
"You know, how big do you want the plane?"
He laughed...
and I said,
"I think I can get you a real plane."
To see a plane like this, actually...
kind of, makes you realize
what we're all flying in...
when we're flying.
These things are huge.
I don't think we tend
to get the scale of it...
when we're just, kind of,
walking in through the gangplank.
There was an enormous amount of prep
that went into that sequence...
because we were shooting
at a working airport...
and they're not traditionally, you know,
in the business of crashing planes for real.
I was, like,
"How're they gonna pull this off?"
Like, there's no way they're
gonna crash this thing into that building.
A lot of these sequences,
you, kind of, read in the script...
and you just think...
"Yeah. Would be cool in a movie."
And then you get to set, and they say...
"Yeah, we've got a 747
and we're crashing it into a building.
"That's how we're achieving
the 747 crashing into a building."
It feels very, very real.
It's actually 'cause it is real.
Don't try to understand it.
Feel it.
With Tenet, I'm hoping
to really give the audience...
a reason for reapproaching action cinema...
so that they get
some of that sense of excitement...
that I had when I was a kid
watching the first spy movie that I saw.
I'm hoping that this gives people a, sort of,
ultimate cinematic experience.
You feel you're being taken through a story,
but you also feel you're part of a story.
That's what's wonderful about his films.
You just get transported
into a different world...
and that's what cinema is to me.
It has to transport you.
It has to be larger-than-life.
I mean, it's the biggest movie
anyone's ever done, ever.
No one's doing this stuff.
And I don't think they ever will again.
Nobody can really hold a candle
to what Chris does...
which is,
create this epic tale of survival...
and in it, thread an incredibly human story.
I think you're seeing
Christopher Nolan inspired.
You're going into an experience
that you've never had before in the cinema.
It's a brilliantly-calculated...
precise, controlled, amazing story...
that's also completely out of control.
Once you're on the ride of Tenet...
you're gonna have to really
hold on to your seat.
-How would you like to die?
-Old.
Hurry up!
You chose the wrong profession.
