How To Watch Christopher Nolan's 'Tenet' On A Game Boy Advance, As God Intended
Last year, Christopher Nolan's time-bending action film Tenet became – fairly or not – the film that would theoretically save theatrical moviegoing in America. After enduring multiple release date delays which served to build hype to practically unprecedented levels, the film was finally released last July...and – surprise, surprise – it was not able to live up to the impossible expectations with which it was saddled. Through it all, there was a consistent message from Nolan himself: this movie should be seen on the biggest and best screen possible.
Now, an intrepid YouTuber has hilariously gone directly against Nolan's wishes and committed what the filmmaker might consider the ultimate moviegoing sin: putting Tenet on multiple cartridges and watching it on a Game Boy Advance. Watch the video below, and learn how to do this yourself.
Tenet on a Game Boy Advance
It would be easy to joke that even if Nolan himself has not watched this video (and since he famously does not have a cell phone, I can't imagine him spending a lot of time scrolling through YouTube), he may have some sort of Spider-Sense that goes off when someone watches Tenet at six frames per second on a tiny-ass screen. But actually, it turns out that Nolan doesn't mind when people watch his films on small screens like cell phones or iPads.
"The reason I don't [have a problem with watching a Nolan movie on a phone] is because it's put into these big theaters as its primary form, or its initial distribution," he said previously. "And the experience trickles down, to the extent where, if you have an iPad and you're watching a movie, you carry with you the knowledge and your understanding of what that cinematic experience would be, and you extrapolate that. So, when you watch a TV show on your iPad, your brain is in a completely different mindset."
But how about this Game Boy Advance viewing? What's that experience like? "As far as the viewing experience," the host says at one point in this YouTube video, "it was absolutely abysmal. Honestly, I was actually pretty surprised that you can kind of make out what's going on most of the time. But it doesn't help that this movie's audio is mixed so bizarrely."
As has been well-documented by now, Nolan loves his unconventional sound mixes – even if they result in a sub-quality experience for the viewer and are questioned by filmmaker friends of his.