The Rating for "Tenet" Suggests We’re In for an Apocalyptic Time

Things are gonna get heavy, yo.

Given how frequently it's been delayed (for, ahem, reasons), the mystery behind Tenet has only grown in our minds. And it’s probably grown in the minds of its famously-in-the-dark stars too.

No one besides writer-director Christopher Nolan seems to know what, exactly, is going on in Tenet, and that includes actors John David Washington, Robert Pattinson and Elizabeth Debicki. As Pattinson told Esquire: "I mean, there were months at a time where I’m like, 'Am I . . . I actually, honestly, have no idea if I’m even vaguely understanding what’s happening.'"

We may not even get it once we've seen it, with Pattinson adding, "You have to watch [the scenes] when they’re completely finished and edited three or four times to understand what the true meaning is."

The one thing everyone can agree on is it’s not about time travel. But that’s still not particularly helpful to describe a movie by what it’s not about. That’s like telling someone Inception is not about the luxury rug industry, or that The Prestige is not about black-market dentistry, and expecting that to be a satisfactory description.

Of course, the only thing you really need to know going in is that 'it’s a Christopher Nolan movie' and 'the extremely vague trailer looks cool’' Here it is below, if you haven’t seen it yet.

However, ahead of the film’s impending Australian release, we have a slightly better inkling of what Tenet will contain, thanks to our old friends at the Classification Board.

The film has been rated M in Australia for "science fiction themes, violence and coarse language". (It also, accordingly to their ratings rubric, has a "very mild impact sex scene", so we can all look forward to that.)

That may not sound revealing at first, but "science fiction themes" is a very interesting phrase, especially when you consider the other pictures that have also received such a rating: X-Men: Apocalypse, Ghost in the Shell and Nolan’s Interstellar.

As you’d appreciate, those first two movies are far more fantastical than Nolan’s previous work. Does this mean we should anticipate something slightly less grounded in reality? Not exactly.

What all three of those films have in common is a sort of apocalyptic event, be it dystopian or total doom. And when you look at how the Classification Board rates its movies, we get the idea that Tenet, much more than the action-heavy Inception (which was rated M for "violence") is gonna be grim. Suddenly, the warning delivered in the trailer that Washington must prevent "something worse" than armaggedon feels like more than just posturing. We may actually see it go down.

"Context is crucial in determining whether a classifiable element is justified by the story‑line or themes," the Board explains in their guidelines. "In particular, the way in which important social issues are dealt with may require a mature or adult perspective."

Those themes may include "social issues such as crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependency, death, serious illness, family breakdown and racism," as well as "depictions of animal cruelty or predatory animal behaviour, gambling, crude humour, horror and scary content." An M-rated movie with "themes" in its consumer advice indicates "the treatment of themes may have a moderate sense of threat or menace, if justified by context."

So, what does this all mean for Tenet? Will it be full of racism, animal cruelty and crude humour? Maybe, though, that would be one hell of a left turn at this point in Nolan’s career. Unfortunately, we won’t know until we see the thing in full for ourselves. All we can do now is speculate. (And given our lives atm, we've got plenty of time to do exactly that!) But this rating does at least allow us to prepare for a very particular experience: even more so than what Matthew McConaughey felt on that ocean planet in Interstellar, the gravity of this film is gonna get heavy.

As of this writing, Tenet will arrive in Australian cinemas from 27 August (though Victorians, sadly, will have to wait a little longer). It is slated to arrive in America, where it is rated PG-13 for "intense sequences of violence and action, some suggestive references and brief strong language," on 3 September.