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Is “TENET” the James Bond Film that Nolan Never Made?
Back in 2015 it was suggested that Idris Elba should be the next James Bond. Daniel Craig had grown tired of the role and fans wondered if he was ready to hang up his immaculate suits and switch from an Aston Martin to a Prius. And throughout Christopher Nolan’s career it had been suggested that he direct a Bond film. His plane takeover sequence at the beginning of The Dark Knight Rises and snow mountain fortress scene in Inception were doubtless references to the ludicrous action scenes of Bond films while Inception in particular, with its globe-trotting characters, fit perfectly into Bond’s realm of international espionage.
Flash forward (invert forward? revert?) to 2019 and the TENET teaser trailer drops before the IMAX screening of Hobbs and Shaw. It opened with two subtitles that were the only descriptors for the film back then: “Time has come for a new type of protagonist” and “Time has come for a new type of mission.” These two sentences already lay out the foundations of Nolan’s Bond-film-that-never-was. From what we know of the film, it is a spy/science fiction thriller that involves time manipulation — reversing an object’s entropy to make it appear as if it’s going backward. Pseudo-science aside, let’s break down what these two subtitles mean.
“Time has come for a new kind of mission.”
That word “mission” is a direct reference to spy films in general and given Nolan’s track record, Bond films in particular. He references the time manipulation aspect (always popular in his films whether it’s through stylish narrative editing like Memento, psychologically mapping a character’s mind like in Insomnia, or the subjectivity of dreamscapes like in Inception) by stating it is a “new kind of mission.” Nolan is going to bring his own spin on the espionage genre. But let’s circle back to the first phrase “A new type of protagonist.”
“Time has come for a new type of protagonist.”
On the surface the descriptor is obvious: this new protagonist will have to alter time in his mission to save the world. Bond always had new gadgets to play with thanks to Q (invisible cars, a laser watch, etc.) just like any other spy narrative, and the same is true of TENET’s protagonist (literally named “The Protagonist”). So why can’t “A new type of protagonist” mean a black spy leading the way in saving the world, rejecting the traditionally white, male, and (up until Sam Mendes’ Skyfall) heterosexual men that save their country and the world from the brink of destruction. Or any type of protagonist? Female? Trans? Anyone.
I think that would have been part of Nolan’s vision for a Bond film. And I even disagree with the idea that calling John David Washington’s character “The Protagonist” dehumanizes him: it suggests a malleability with protagonists in spy films, that they can be anyone. If bending time can be believable, then so should casting a person of color in any role a white person plays. And judging from the new trailers, the casting has created some powerful images: John David Washington fighting off an armed SWAT-like officer by reversing the officer’s bullets is chilling, fantastic, and heroic as the U.S. enters an increasingly hostile and militarized police state.
Not to say that Nolan has social justice in mind (he doesn’t even acknowledge that there’s a gender disparity in film), but there has to be some awareness on his part, and with the release date getting pushed back more and more (now sometime in August), we’ll have to wait to see if TENET lives up to the legacy of Bond films and whether or not its colorblind casting keeps the momentum going for representation in Hollywood. Time has come for a new type of film.
