Explaining what we learned from the new mind-bending ‘Tenet’ trailer

Another brain-melter from Christopher Nolan is coming.

If you’re a fan of Christopher Nolan’s films that make your brain melt as you try to wrap your head around the plot and wild visual effects (see: Memento, Insomnia, Inception, The Prestige, Interstellar, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight Rises and Dunkirk), then you’re probably as excited as I am for Tenet.

And, like me, you’re probably trying to figure out exactly what Tenet is about. We got a taste in December with a trailer of the John David Washington flick. Back then, there were some clues about “trying to prevent World War III” and that the word “tenet” will “open the right doors” for Washington’s character.

Other than that? We didn’t know much. Maybe it was about time travel or time manipulation, but that was it.

But on Thursday, the newest trailer dropped and we got some more clues. Here they are:

1. Washington and the people he’s working with might be manipulating time

There’s that line about “inversion,” in which Washington is “catching” the bullet instead of shooting it out of a gun. Is it a super power kind of thing? Something he and others have been given by the government? Hmm. But we know it’s not quite time travel.

Also I woke up and realized “tenet” is a palindrome, so it can be read backwards or forwards … kind of like looking backwards and forward through time, right??

2. They’re possibly working against someone who can “communicate with the future”

I presume that’s the Russian national Michael Caine was talking about, played by Kenneth Branagh.

3. This “World War III” thing is BAD

It’s all about survival in the future and something “worse” than Armageddon. I don’t know if I buy the “World War III” concept on its face, then.

4. Maybe this has some connection to Inception??

Esquire has a good post on the subject that’s heating up the interwebs:

One tantalizing theory is that Tenet will pivot around a military experiment with the same kind of technology which (Dom) Cobb’s criminal gang would later exploit for their own ends. So, not a sequel, but a nod to the shared dream-logic of Nolan’s films.

I sort of doubt this, but you never know!

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