News on Netflix: The Film That Convinced Christopher Nolan to Direct Oppenheimer

What is it about?

Armed with one word – Tenet – and determined to fight to save the world, our hero journeys into the twilight world of international espionage. His mission takes him to a dimension that transcends time. However, it’s not time travel, it’s going back in time…

Before Oppenheimer there was Tenet

Christopher Nolan returns to cinemas this summer with Oppenheimer, his 3-hour biopic about Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the “Father of the Atomic Bomb.” The director of Interstellar, Inception, and the Dark Knight trilogy can boast that the film has grossed over $700 million, which might not have seen the light of day without his previous feature, which hits Netflix today.

Released in late summer 2020 after several delays due to the pandemic, Tenet is Christopher Nolan’s eleventh feature film. Considered Denis Villeneuve’s “masterpiece” and considered too difficult by Quentin Tarantino, the film tells the story of how a secret agent played by John David Washington must manipulate the flow of time to prevent the outbreak of World War III.

The rest of the cast includes Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debic, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine and Kenneth Branagh. Despite the difficulty, Tenet still drew 2.34 million viewers in France and earned $365.3 million at the worldwide box office. This film, unlike any other, has a spectacular and ingenious sequence that did not leave the public indifferent.

And above all, it was somewhat of a precursor to Christopher Nolan’s next film. In one of the series, the director refers to Oppenheimer! In a conversation between the main character (John David Washington) and Priya Singh (Dimple Kapadia), the latter mentions the “Manhattan Project” and Robert Oppenheimer’s concern about the chain reactions of the first atomic bomb test that we see in the film. Oppenheimer.

Was that wink a sign from Christopher Nolan? Yes, especially after actor Robert Pattinson put him on the trail of this new feature film and offered a book about Oppenheimer, as he explained Interview with journalist Tara Hitchcock :

“It’s from Robert, after Tenet, where we mention Oppenheimer—I wrote that scene at that incredible moment when Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project scientist couldn’t completely rule out the possibility of a chain reaction that would destroy the world the moment they occurred. That first gadget, that first atomic device.

We used it as a metaphor for the tenet that Robert was in. At the end of the shoot, he gave me a book of Oppenheimer’s speeches from the 1950s, in which you can read the thoughts of these great intellectuals trying to deal with the enormous implications of how they changed our lives. everyone forever. This story really grabbed me and hugged me.”

And he followed his instinct well, as Oppenheimer is a worldwide box office hit. If you enjoyed Oppenheimer and missed Tenet, I suggest you catch up with the film, which is already available in the Netflix catalog.