By Christopher Nolan doesn't do things like most other filmmakers, whether he's bending Paris in half or forcing Sir Michael Caine, a knight of the realm, to talk about tangerines.
Now we've got the first inkling of what he's been preparing for his next film, Tenet, but not in the time-trodden 30-second Twitter teaser to one-minute YouTube drop to two-and-a-half-minute full reveal rigmarole.
The first footage from Tenet was sneaked out this week ahead of showings of Fast and Furious duff-'em-up spin-off Hobbs & Shaw with absolutely no fanfare. It was only when people started pointing to it on Twitter that anyone realised what was happening, and there's been no official release of the trailer on social media yet.
So what happens in it? First we see a pane of reinforced glass with what looks like a gunshot hole in it, before the line "time has come for a new protagonist" flashes up, followed by "time has come for a new kind of mission". A figure, soon revealed to be BlacKkKlansman's John David Washington, walks up to the bullethole and puts a hand on it, then moves across to another bullethole.
Then there's a quick and smashy montage of other scenes with a clattering soundtrack: Washington in what could be either a bomber jacket or some kind of babygrow outside in the dark, some riot police running in formation at the camera, Washington belting one of those riot police in the face in a brightly lit room, Washington being frogmarched somewhere, then Washington wearing an oxygen mask. Finally, there's a date: 17 July 2020.
What to make of that then? Literally no idea. Look at the phrasing of "time has come..." rather than "the time has come..." though - could we be looking at a time-travelling thriller here? No idea.
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