A.J. Merch
Staff Writer
As the number of cinemas slowly open up, during this seemingly never ending pandemic. Christopher Nolan comes right behind it, to save film industry with his ground breaking blockbuster Tenet. Tenet follows the Protagonist played by John David Washington, a secret agent who travels on a epic time bending mission to prevent the beginning of World War III. With this being said, I must also include that John’s character is an African-American man, but most importantly he is a character on a mission. For some time lately, following these years we have had a surge of representation throughout Hollywood. Everyone felt that they belonged, no matter their race or sexuality. Leading for surge of movies especially for black actors being chosen for numerous roles. But it just never felt sincere, for Hollywood it was about put a black person in the movie, just to say “ Hey we’re woke guys”, as well as using them to replace originally white characters.
Prime example, Halle Bailey as the black Ariel for a Little Mermaid. This in turn created a huge problem, and outrage because it never felt sincere. It felt as if they were trying so hard to please African Americans like myself, and we fell for it. Cheap character swap with no creativity or originality, they could’ve created a black mermaid not replacing a generational known white Ariel and made a show about them in a certain time period. Sadly, when Hollywood is allowed to explore their creativity, they push out original stories using genres like Sci-fi, fantasy, and horror that could be amazing to explore and tell. But I was quite wrong, based the fact that so far those genres all have one thing in common when involving black people. We are shown either be fighting or crying about the injustice of racism and slavery. For the most part, we are never just characters on a journey who happen to be black. We are a black man on a journey who goes against some sort of racist or discrimination. This type of story has been thrown around theaters for years now, and black people have been going enjoying it. Just not realizing that there’s a fault in these movies that the 80s, 90s and early 2000s never had. Those eras had movies with established characters on journey, and Tenet feels like that type of movie.
Christopher Nolan makes the viewer only care about the character as a character on a distinct mission to save the world,nothing else. We aren’t watching for thinking I wonder if the protagonist is self aware of his color. We are watching because we want to see this man succeed on his mission. As a director and writer Christopher Nolan gives an upcoming future writer and director like myself hope for movies. Based on the fact he leads his movies about the man journey against the coming threat by the antagonist Andrei Sator , not a racist white man. This racist against the time makes everything worth wild when John David Washington is trying to save the world. The movie was able to gather audiences undivided attention because they were trying to see what the character would do next. They were hoping for his success as they go with him on the ride. The characters race is less than important to who the character is to anyone and movies should have that feel. That there’s a man on a mission trying to stop the World War III,That’s an amazing site to see, as you munch on popcorn and he just happens to be black. With that being said Hollywood deserves to give us more stories like that to the public with respect to the character as a person and their journey not a slave journey or involving racism. But a journey through any genre of film that draws moviegoers to the theatre to see more original ideas that give us a feel good feeling.