One of the most highly-anticipated movies of the year, Christopher Nolan's Tenet, was finally released last month. The movie offers a sci-fi twist on the classic spy genre. Audiences are loving the dashing suits and formal wardrobe of the characters in the movie. In an interview, the costume designer of the film Jeffrey Kurland explained how a specific era of James Bond inspired Tenet's fashion choices.

"[Tenet] can't be totally irrelevant [to James Bond]. If you're making a movie like this then Bond is the kingpin. It's like the big kahuna. But you want to make it different. I was more creating the Sean Connery Bond than anything else. Not necessarily suit styles but the way the suit is worn by the character and the way he looks in the suit, and I was trying to go beyond that. It's more the character of Sean Connery's Bond, not necessarily the clothes he was wearing, because obviously those were made in the Sixties. It's a totally different period. But it still, as a look, lasts and works. You want to achieve the essence of that, without stealing it, but still get the satisfaction that it gave. When you went to your first James Bond movie and saw Sean Connery, you thought: "Wow, this guy's amazing, I want to grow up to be like that." You wanted that quality."

While the current era of Daniel Craig's James Bond movies would seem to be the ideal inspiration for spy movies, it seems Nolan and his crew preferred a throwback to the original movie version of 007 that kickstarted the entire Bond franchise.

But while the aesthetics of Tenet might recall the earliest Bond, the action and storyline are fiercely modern. The movie tells the story of an unnamed CIA agent protagonist, who finds himself embroiled in an international plot to stop the machinations of a Russian oligarch named Sator from destroying all of reality.

The only thing stopping Sator is an elite global network of spies and a mysterious new technology known as time inversion, that allows the user to travel backward in time while the rest of the world keeps moving forward. The concept is one of the most mind-bending that Nolan has ever introduced in his movies, which means, just like in Inception, a large chunk of Tenet is devoted to well-dressed characters explaining the plot to each other and the audience.

Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, Tenet features an international ensemble cast consisting of John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Kenneth Branaugh, Dimple Kapadia, Martin Donovan, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Himesh Patel, Clémence Poésy, Denzil Smith, and Michael Caine.

Despite a heavy marketing campaign that included the trailer being shown in Fortnite, and the appeal of watching a new Nolan movie, Tenet has struggled to attract audiences who are concerned about social distancing protocols in theaters. The film is now playing in multiple theaters chains overseas as well as in select U.S. cities. This news first appeared over at Esquire.