Christopher Nolan makes big movies. He’s basically staked his entire career on this ever since The Dark Knight, even expressing little interest in going back to making smaller-budgeted films. If studios (primarily Warner Bros.) are willing to give him massive budgets to make smart, cool blockbusters, why scale down? Tenet, his latest film, is certainly big – both in execution and ambition – but in an ironic twist it may end up being the one Nolan film that will be seen by most people on a television instead of a gigantic movie theater screen.

While Nolan and WB attempted to use Tenet as a carrot to lure people back to theaters this summer, the omnipresence of the pandemic kept most folks away. Restrictions and the abject danger of hanging out with strangers prevented many from seeing this movie on the big screen, and with the Tenet 4K release imminent, a host of Nolan fans are about to experience this Big Idea for the first time – in their living room.

So what’s it like to see Tenet for the first time on a TV? Let’s start with the presentation first, then I’ll get into the film itself.

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Image via Warner Bros.

First and foremost, it’s clear that seeing Tenet in IMAX would have been a pretty terrific moviegoing experience. The film is full of the ambitious practical effects that make Nolan’s films stand out (they crash a real plane into a real building!), and Hoyte van Hoytema’s stunning cinematography brings the globe-trotting locations to life in insane detail. But you know what? It still looks pretty darn great on a TV.

I got a 4K UHD copy of Tenet to review and watched the film for the first time on a 4K television. The picture quality was pristine, the sound loud (and the sound mix… troubling, but more on that later), and it was easy to become immersed in the story from a technical standpoint. The image was crisp and eye-popping (especially the sequences shot in IMAX), and Ludwig Goransson’s acrobatic score goes a long way towards mimicking a theatrical experience if you have a good sound system. Yes, perhaps an IMAX screen would have been the ideal viewing experience, but just because I saw Jaws and The Empire Strikes Back and 2001 on TV for the first time (and in Standard Definition at that) doesn’t mean I couldn’t still enjoy those movies. A great movie is a great movie, no matter the presentation.

But is Tenet a great movie? Honestly, I think it’s Nolan’s worst film to date – but it’s not necessarily a bad film. The Interstellar filmmaker has described Tenet as his own riff on a James Bond-type film, a globe-trotting spy adventure with a charming hero at its center. But it’s like Nolan forgot the one thing that makes the good Bond films so compelling – they’re charming as heck. Tenet is, at least for the first half of the film, a fully joyless affair. Even John David Washington’s lead character (named The Protagonist) is kind of dull as Nolan mistakes stone-faced confidence for swagger. And with a plot that’s extremely difficult to understand, you may find yourself not only bored by the characters, but also confused by what exactly is happening.

The film does open up in its second half as its true structure is revealed and more layers unfold, and Robert Pattinson in particular brings some color to the proceedings. But still, there’s a tedious intensity that overwhelms the story. It’s not as if Nolan is incapable of making a joyful film – Inception is a lot of fun! There are jokes in Batman Begins! But the overly serious nature of how Tenet is presented makes you search for a deeper thematic meaning or some kind of emotional core to fill that void, and it has neither. Elizabeth Debicki’s arc is the closest we get to an emotionally engaging character (we never really know what drives Washington’s character or what he cares about, which makes it hard to emotionally invest), but it still comes up short. And honestly, if Nolan wanted to make just an entertaining popcorn blockbuster that’s totally fine, but a key ingredient of that is joy, a word that apparently does not exist in the world of Tenet.

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Image via Warner Bros.

There’s also the problem of the time inversion device and convoluted plotting. The 4K Blu-ray comes with a fascinating hourlong making-of documentary (the only bonus feature on the disc, for what it’s worth) in which many of the film’s department heads and actors admit that understanding exactly how the plot of the movie worked was a significant challenge on set. And it ends up being a challenge for the audience as well, as understanding the mechanics of time inversion are necessary for investing in what’s happening onscreen. Nolan absolutely nailed the visual cues that made the mechanics of Inception easy to follow, but I’m afraid Tenet is a misstep in that regard – and a big one. If you can’t really follow what’s happening, it’s hard to care about the outcome.

But boy is Tenet pretty to look at. If you’re going to watch the film for the first time at home, I highly recommend springing for the 4K. Nolan takes great care in the visual quality of his films, and Tenet transfers beautifully to the format. He’s maybe the only filmmaker who’s using a $200 million budget to blow up actual airplanes and buildings in an elegant manner, and Tenet is kind of worth witnessing for that aspect alone.

And honestly, watching Tenet at home has its advantages. Nolan is, shall we say, experimental when it comes to his sound mixes. By his own admission, he likes drowning out some of the dialogue with the score and sound effects. But with a movie as confusing as Tenet, you really feel like you want to understand every word – and now you can, with subtitles! I turned these on for the final 30 minutes of the movie and found that they increased my enjoyment of the film, as I now finally understood every word being spoken by Kenneth Branagh’s admittedly droll (and one-note) antagonist.

So while I didn’t really love Tenet, I can definitely see myself revisiting this film at least once to see how it plays on rewatch (with a better understanding of the plot mechanics). And it’s a very impressive film on a pure technical level – the cinematography, score, effects, and production design are all pretty outstanding. If you’re a fan of Christopher Nolan and eager to finally see Tenet, go the 4K route. It’s not an IMAX screen, but it'll do.

Tenet will be released on 4K, Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital on December 15th.

For more on Tenet, read Matt's full review and breakdown of what time inversion is.

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Image via Warner Bros.