Christopher Nolan’s ‘Tenet’ Returning to Theaters

Christopher Nolan’s Tenet is coming back to theaters.

Or, from a certain inverted perspective, it is premiering there for the very first time.

The film, Nolan’s thriller about a very specific and peculiar sort of time travel, famously premiered as the very first major release back in theaters following mass theater closures in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. While the movie did get a theatrical run, a lot of potential viewers were still wary about Covid at the time, and understandably cautious about movie theaters. (I only saw it on a big screen because I paid to rent out an entire theater.) For those folks, I imagine this re-release will be very welcome news.

Tenet’s return to theaters is also coming as Nolan’s latest film, Oppenheimer, is looking more and more like the frontrunner to win this year’s Academy Award for Best Picture. Earlier this week it was nominated for 13 Oscars.

Here is the new trailer for the Tenet re-release:

The screenings of Tenet will be in digital IMAX, in 70mm, and in some spots in 70m IMAX. Screenings will also feature a special sneak preview of footage from Dune: Part Two, the conclusion to Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of the classic Frank Herbert sci-fi novel.

Tenet follows an unnamed “Protagonist” (John David Washington) who uncovers the existence of a technology that allows people to “invert” the flow of time. The Protagonist is recruited by a secret group known as Tenet to protect the timestream from our own future, where unseen people with this technology are trying to use it blow up the present. In addition to Washington, the film stars Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Michael Caine, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Kenneth Branagh.

The film can be a bit knotty and convoluted at times (trying to fully understand the nature of inversion still makes my head hurt) but as with all Nolan movies Tenet is a gorgeous spectacle. If you do want to see the movie, there’s no better way than back on a massive IMAX screen.

Tenet returns to theaters for one week starting on February 23.