It’s no secret that Christopher Nolan is a James Bond nut. The Oscar-nominated director even once compared his knowledge of the franchise to be on par with Alan Partridge. And now as he gears up for the release of his spy thriller Tenet next month, the 007 comparisons are inevitable.
Russian oligarch star Kenneth Branagh told Entertainment Weekly of the plot: “It’s an espionage piece that’s dealing with a global threat to the world.
“A nuclear holocaust is not the greatest disaster that could befall the human race.
“Tenet discusses an even worse possibility, and it is wrapped up in this mind-boggling treatment of time that continues Chris Nolan’s preoccupations in films way back to Memento, through Interstellar and Inception.”
While Nolan himself teased: “We’re dealing in a world of espionage, we’re dealing in a world of hidden identities.”
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Nolan continued: “This is definitely the longest period of time I’ve ever gone in my life without watching a James Bond film.
“My love of the spy genre comes from the Bond franchise, and the Bond character very specifically.
“I know as much about the Bond films as Alan Partridge does.
“It’s totally in my bones. I don’t need to reference the movies and look at them again.”
The Tenet director, who hopes to helm a Bond “reinvention” one day added: “It’s about trying to re-engage with your childhood connection with those movies, with the feeling of what it’s like to go someplace new, someplace fresh.
“It actually has to take them somewhere they haven’t been before, and that’s why no one’s ever been able, really, to do their own version of James Bond or something. It doesn’t work. And that’s not at all what this is. This is much more my attempt to create the sort of excitement in grand-scale entertainment I felt from those movies as a kid, in my own way.”
With Daniel Craig hanging up his Licence to Kill after No Time To Die this November, perhaps Nolan’s turn at a 007 reboot will be his next project.
Tenet is released in UK cinemas on July 31, 2020.
