Christopher Nolan Crashed A Real 747 Airplane For A 'Tenet' Action Scene

While the world waits to see if Christopher Nolan's new film Tenet will actually make it to theaters in July, part of the usual marketing blitz is still happening thanks to magazines who need to publish the stories they planned out months in advance. In this case, not only are we getting a handful of new Tenet photos, but we're learning that director Christopher Nolan actually crashed a real 747 airplane for a key action sequence in the movie. But not from the sky. It's not quite that dramatic.

Total Film magazine (via their online sister publication Games Radar) got a chance to speak with Christopher Nolan about Tenet, who revealed that the plane crash sequence teased at the end of the most recent trailer was done practically with a real 747 airplane. Nolan explained that using a real plane was surprisingly more efficient than doing it with visual effects and miniatures:

"I planned to do it using miniatures and set-piece builds and a combination of visual effects and all the rest. 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. It's a strange thing to talk about – a kind of impulse buying, I suppose. 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."

And don't worry – that 747 will be blowing up. Co-star Robert Pattinson confirmed as much, and was wowed by what Christopher Nolan pulled off with this sequence:

"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?"

That thought is probably even more relevant today now that the coronavirus pandemic will change the way movies are made for the foreseeable future. We're just lucky that Tenet was actually finished before the pandemic came around so we wouldn't have to wait for even longer to see what Christopher Nolan has up his sleeve this time.

While it's still up in the air as to when Tenet will arrive in theaters, some new photos have arrived to hold us over.

Tenet - John David Washington

There's also this synopsis that won't even tell us John David Washington's character name:

John David Washington is the new Protagonist in Christopher Nolan's original sci-fi action spectacle "Tenet." Armed with only one word—Tenet—and fighting for the survival of the entire world, the Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time. Not time travel. Inversion.

Tenet is coming to theaters, possibly on July 17, 2020, but we'll see what Warner Bros. decides to do.