The trailer for TENET dropped recently, it looks spectacular with a mind-bending time-travel premise. Directed by Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Man of Steel, Interstellar)

Tenet promises to be a truly cinematic experience. We can reveal a little more about one of Tenet’s biggest set-pieces – one that required the production team to purchase and then crash a real 747 into a hangar. 

Pause the SCIFI.radio stream while you watch this.

You read that correctly. That’s not a partial fibreglass replica of a jet. Not CGI. This is a real airplane, bought by the production. 

Call it a spur-of-the-moment purchase. “It’s a strange thing to talk about – a kind of impulse buying, I suppose,” laughs Nolan. “But we kind of did, and it worked very well, with Scott Fisher, our special-effects supervisor, and Nathan Crowley, the production designer, figuring out how to pull off this big sequence in camera. It was a very exciting thing to be a part of.”

“I planned to do it using miniatures and set-piece builds and a combination of visual effects and all the rest,” Nolan tells TF. However, while scouting for locations in Victorville, California, the team discovered a massive array of old planes. “We started to run the numbers… It became apparent that it would actually be more efficient to buy a real plane of the real size, and perform this sequence for real in camera, rather than build miniatures or go the CG route.”

Robert Pattinson also remembers the plane sequence with a laugh. “You wouldn’t have thought there was any reality where you would be doing a scene where they just have an actual 747 to blow up! It’s so bold to the point of ridiculousness… I remember, as we were shooting it, I was thinking, ‘How many more times is this even going to be happening in a film at all?'”

Nolan says his intention with Tenet is: “A film of great ambition and great scale that takes a genre, namely the spy film, and tries to take it into some new territory, and tries to take the audience on a ride they might not have had before, and might not be expecting.”

Tenet is scheduled to be released by Warner Bros. Pictures on July 17, 2020 in IMAX and 70 mm. Possibly the first summer blockbuster to go to theaters since the pandemic. Nolan is a leading proponent of creating movies that need to be seen in a theater, so the release may be delayed.

[First reported by GamesRadar].

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David Raiklen
David Raiklen

David Raiklen wrote, directed and scored his first film at age 9. He began studying keyboard and composing at age 5. He attended, then taught at UCLA, USC and CalArts. Among his teachers are John Williams and Mel Powel.
He has worked for Fox, Disney and Sprint. David has received numerous awards for his work, including the 2004 American Music Center Award. Dr. Raiklen has composed music and sound design for theater (Death and the Maiden), dance (Russian Ballet), television (Sing Me a Story), cell phone (Spacey Movie), museums (Museum of Tolerance), concert (Violin Sonata ), and film (Appalachian Trail).
His compositions have been performed at the Hollywood Bowl and the first Disney Hall. David Raiken is also host of a successful radio program, Classical Fan Club.