One of the buzziest movies set to arrive in 2020 is Christopher Nolan's Tenet. While much has been revealed in the way of the movie's cast — Nolan has assembled a crack team in the form of John David WashingtonRobert PattinsonAaron Taylor-JohnsonMichael CaineElizabeth Debicki, and Kenneth Branagh — we still don't know too much about Tenet's plot.

Luckily, one big clue about the Tenet plot was revealed by Pattinson in a GQ profile published in mid-May. At one point, Pattinson remarks how he modeled his Tenet character on philosopher and social critic Christopher Hitchens, and, at GQ's mention of imagining Pattinson as a Hitchens-esque time traveler, Pattinson goes on to refute the notion by remarking, "He’s not a time traveler. There’s actually no time traveling. That’s, like, the one thing I’m approved to say."

Pattinson's rejection of time travel as a plot point in Tenet is attention-grabbing, not just because it's one of the more solid teases we've gotten about Nolan's new movie or descriptions of the movie, like the one featured on Amazon's page for The Secrets of Tenet: Inside Christopher Nolan’s Quantum Cold War actually mention time, but because it sounds very unlike the director's past movies where toying with time and space (to any degree) has often factored into the narrative. So, with Pattinson's comment on Tenet's plot once again piquing our curiosity, let's break down what we actually know about Tenet's plot ahead of the movie's planned August 12th release date.

What Does the Tenet Trailer Reveal?

The Tenet trailer is a serious puzzle box. teasing the bare minimum in terms of characters and plot. We don't get any character names, but it's established that Washington and Pattinson are working together on a mission. Washington's apparent boss or liaison, played by Martin Donovan, also notes at one point about a key word — "tenet" — which will help Washington get more information and possibly even lead him down a more dangerous path. Offhand comments about an impending World War III and flat-out accepting seeing things in a new way, whatever those things may be, are peppered throughout the trailer, too, along with shots of an armor-clad man sliding backwards on the floor or a car crashing on a highway before reversing and reassembling so it's good as new. All of these moments seem to confirm there will be a mind-boggling element to the story.

It's also worth mentioning the movie's title, Tenet, is both a palindrome and defined as "a principle or belief, especially one of the main principles of a religion or philosophy." With this in mind, it's very possible the title refers to the trailer's depiction of a disruption in the laws of physics (which have hard and fast rules we humans know to be irrefutable and central in our relationship to the world around us) with things and people moving forward and backward in odd ways. Even if time travel isn't involved, something about the laws of gravity are definitely....off in Tenet. 

Combined the broad premise we learned about back in May 2019 ("An action epic evolving from the world international espionage"), it sure seems like Washington and Pattinson's two-man spy team will be on a ticking-clock mission to prevent the use of a physics-defying weapon which could bring about something worse than nuclear war (is that was those oxygen masks are for?).

What Has the Tenet Cast Said About the Plot?

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Image via Warner Bros.

For the most part, the Tenet cast hasn't spilled too many state secrets about the plot of Tenet. For Caine, a frequent Nolan collaborator, he hasn't revealed the plot because he simply has no idea was it's all about. In March of this year, Caine shared in an interview with international outlet The Hindu: "All I had was one day’s work and he gave me my pages. I did my part and shot only with John David [Washington]. I haven’t heard anything since."

Pattinson has been the most vocal Tenet cast member when it comes to discussing what this movie might actually be about — but he's somehow managed to spill no real details. Back in April 2019, while speaking with USA Today Pattinson shared his first reaction to reading the Tenet script, saying, "I got locked in a room to read the script – I don’t have it myself. I’ve been a little wary of doing big movies for years and years, but there’s just something about Chris Nolan’s stuff. He seems like the only director now who can do what is essentially a very personal, independent movie that has huge scale. I read the script and it’s unreal."

Now, just one year later, Pattinson confirmed the following in addition to the fact Tenet won't deal in time travel: "This thing, it’s so insane," going on to detail how half of the 500-person crew would travel around the world to film huge set pieces and detailing how "in each country there’s, like, an enormous set-piece scene, which is like the climax of a normal movie. In every single country."

The only other Tenet cast member who has commented anything significant about their time working on the Nolan feature is Washington. In a December 2019 Entertainment Weekly article revealing exclusive new images, Washington briefly discussed working on Tenet's big stunt sequence. He told EW, "I was terrified, but when Christopher Nolan yelled ‘Action!’ I had to throw all that away and make it look cool," and, when confirming the stunt in question was being done on a boat, Washington explained why he was so terrified: "“Because it’s a boat, man! I don’t know how to drive a boat! But I had to act like I did."

So, what exactly do these cast comments tell us about the plot of Tenet? In addition to being yet another heady viewing experience courtesy of Nolan, Tenet will not be skimping on the action. The trailer has already teased some of what awaits, including a physics-defying walk up the side of a building and an equally physics-defying car chase. With this in mind, it's likely the action of Tenet will be just as integral to the narrative (versus it being included to add some spectacle to the movie) and will serve to help viewers in what will no doubt be an all-hands-on-deck effort to unpack what we'll be watching.

What Has Christopher Nolan Said About the Tenet Plot?

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Image via Warner Bros.

As one might expect, Nolan has been coy about revealing too much of Tenet's plot over the last year. He did, however, give some interesting insights while speaking with Entertainment Weekly in December 2019.

"We’re jumping off from the point of view of an espionage film, but we’re going to a number of different places. We’re crossing a few different genres in a hopefully exciting and fresh way. [Producer] Emma [Thomas] and I have put together a lot of large-scale productions, but this is certainly the biggest in terms of international reach. We shot in seven countries, all over the place, with a massive cast and huge set pieces. There’s no question, it’s the most ambitious film we’ve made."

Nolan also revealed Washington is "very much the hero" of Tenet in the December EW chat. As for Pattinson's approach to his Tenet performance and understanding of the plot, Nolan offered this up to GQ for the May 2020 profile:

"Rob’s read on the script was extremely acute. But he also understood the ambiguities of the film and the possibilities that spin off in the mind around the story. And so both things are true. Yes, he’s fucking with you, because he had a complete grasp of the script. But a complete grasp of the script, in the case of Tenet, is one that understands and acknowledges the need for this film to live on in the audience’s mind, and suggest possibilities in the audience’s mind. And he was very much a partner in crime with that."

Conclusion: Based on Nolan's comments alone, Tenet is going to mess with our minds something fierce. Of course, that's what you get these days when Nolan is at the helm. It's no surprise, either, that Tenet's narrative foundations in the spy movie genre considering Nolan has been on record for years now proclaiming his interest in directing a James Bond feature. But Nolan remixing the genre with his own mind-bending twists and hinting at some Inception-level open-endedness to the story implies this story could be among the most high-concept of his stories despite the familiarity of the genre it's rooted in.

What Do Christopher Nolan's Past Movies Tell Us?

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Image via Warner Bros.

Even a casual fan of Nolan's knows this is one creative voice who has no fear of inserting serious, intellectual and philosophical concepts into his movies. From the days of Memento to time- and space-bending movies Inception and Interstellar to his most recent feature, Dunkirk, which is one of his most straight-forward despite telling three different arcs over three different periods of time, Nolan has nurtured an interest in demanding the active participation and focus of those who watch his movies through various bits of narrative trickery.

We should expect nothing less when it comes to Tenet. In fact, all previously mentioned comments or clips about Tenet seem to hint this story will mix in the surreal, world-bending physics of Inception with the mission-focused storytelling of Dunkirk, and with a few dashes on the same high-falutin' commentary on the nature of quantum physics explored in Interstellar.

What Is Tenet's Big Twist?

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Image via Warner Bros.

At the end of the day, Tenet is a Christopher Nolan joint, which means there will inevitably be a big twist revealed at some point in the movie's runtime. Based on the trailer, we know that, even if there is no time travel involved per se, the laws of physics are going to be futzed with to great dramatic effect. The "big twist" will happen, believe you me. Perhaps the twist in question is simply what we've seen in the trailer: The laws of physics are thrown out the window thanks to someone or something with the ability to mess with them. Perhaps it's that what we're seeing in the trailer or hearing from the cast and Nolan are misdirects meant to lure us into feeling confident about what to expect from this story before pulling the rug out from under us.

At this point, all bets are off, every option is a solid one, and the desire to actually see Tenet in theaters and satisfy one's curiosity couldn't be higher.