Robert Pattinson scene in trailer includes the crashing of a real plane

From Games Radar:

Total Film can reveal a little more about one of Tenet’s biggest set-pieces – one that required the production team to purchase and then crash a real 747 into a hangar. 

You read that correctly. That’s not a partial fibreglass replica of a jet. Not CGI. This is a real aeroplane, bought by the production. 

“I planned to do it using miniatures and set-piece builds and a combination of visual effects and all the rest,” Nolan tells TF. However, while scouting for locations in Victorville, California, the team discovered a massive array of old planes. “We started to run the numbers… It became apparent that it would actually be more efficient to buy a real plane of the real size, and perform this sequence for real in camera, rather than build miniatures or go the CG route.”

Call it a spur-of-the-moment purchase. “It’s a strange thing to talk about – a kind of impulse buying, I suppose,” laughs Nolan. “But we kind of did, and it worked very well, with Scott Fisher, our special-effects supervisor, and Nathan Crowley, the production designer, figuring out how to pull off this big sequence in camera. It was a very exciting thing to be a part of.”

Robert Pattinson also remembers the plane sequence with a laugh. “You wouldn’t have thought there was any reality where you would be doing a scene where they just have an actual 747 to blow up! It’s so bold to the point of ridiculousness… I remember, as we were shooting it, I was thinking, ‘How many more times is this even going to be happening in a film at all?’”

Here’s what Games Radar says we can expect from Tenet. The Total Film Exclusive is on sale 29 May 2020 and you can preorder HERE:

Expect gigantic scale set-pieces, mind-scrambling concepts, sharply-suited heroes and guns catching bullets, rather than firing them. As Washington says in the trailer, “Whoa.”

“It’s a film of great ambition and great scale that takes a genre, namely the spy film, and tries to take it into some new territory, and tries to take the audience on a ride they might not have had before, and might not be expecting,” says Christopher Nolan, talking to our sister publication Total Film magazine, in their upcoming Tenet cover story.

…

“We’re looking at first and foremost giving the audience an incredible ride in the spy movie genre, but using the audience’s facility with following the conventions of that genre to push it into some interesting and unexpected territory,” adds Nolan.