While the official teaser still hasn't been released online, speculation is that we'll see the first footage for 'Tenet' some time this weekend.

As ever with Christopher Nolan's work, plot details are thin on the ground and while set photos and videos might give some clue as to what's going on, it's really anyone's guess as to what the movie is about.

With that in mind, we're now going to offer up three completely unfounded and utterly speculated ideas to what 'Tenet' may be about.

 

THEORY 1: IT'S A SEQUEL TO 'INCEPTION'

This, far and away, seems to have the most legs online and it's easy to see why. For one, everything we've seen so far seems to suggest that it shares a lot of common DNA with 'Inception'. There's the vague notions to espionage and some kind of sci-fi concept that plugs into it. You also have the ensemble cast, and with it the same comparisons to a team / heist scenario that 'Inception' had.

If this turns out to be true, this would be the first time that Christopher Nolan has made a sequel out of any of his original works. 'The Dark Knight' trilogy are the only sequels of Nolan's career so far, so this would definitely be breaking tradition.

While we still don't have any official teaser footage yet, we know what it looks like and the fact is that it's eerily similar to the first teaser for 'Inception'. All the teaser for 'Tenet' needs is the airhorn BWAAAMMMM and it's the same idea.

 

THEORY 2: IT'S ABOUT TIME TRAVEL

This theory comes from on-set footage which shows - and this is going to sound crazy - cars driving backwards on a motorway somewhere in Estonia. Now, again, looking at the teaser for 'Tenet', one thing that seemed off was how John David Washington's character seemed to move.

Here's an example. You film yourself walking down a flight of stairs backwards, and then you reverse the footage. You'll see someone walking up the stairs, sure, but the manner in which they move looks weird and creepy because, well, the movements are all wrong but the essential momentum is the same.

David Lynch frequently used this trick in 'Twin Peaks', particularly in the Red Room sequences, in order to give it an other-worldly effect. If you look at what Christopher Nolan did in 'Inception'  with slow-motion footage and sound, it could be the same here for 'Tenet'. Not only that, there's also the name itself which lots of weird meanings.

 

THEORY 3: 'TENET' IS ABOUT REVERSING TIME AND TIME CONTROL

The word 'Tenet' is a palindrome, which means it's the same word backwards as it is forwards. It also forms the centre word of a Sator Square, which is a type of world puzzle. The Sator Square is a square, 2D palindrome, meaning it can be read across, backwards, upwards and downwards and the centre word - 'Tenet' - is still the same. Here's an example we took from Wikipedia.

S A T O R

A R E P O

T E N E T

O P E R A

R O T A S

If you read this upwards, backwards, across or reverse, you can still see 'Tenet' right in the middle of it. On top of that, the dictionary definition of the word 'Tenet' is "a principle, belief or doctrine generally held to be true." In other words, no matter how you spin something or change it, be it reversing it backwards or forwards, it still holds to be true.

On top of that, check out the official motion poster that was released today on Imgur.

Our own guess as to the plot? 'Tenet' is some kind of agency that's been tasked with monitoring time travel and stopping criminals and rogue governments from using it to change the timeline for their own end.

We'll find out if our theories are correct when 'Tenet' is released on July 17th, 2020 - which just so happens to be a day and 10 years after 'Inception' was released.