“I just came out. But I’m going in again,” said a 21-year-old moviegoer outside an IMAX auditorium on Friday night. He was expressing his devotion to the movie but also inadvertently echoing the central theme of Tenet.

In the John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, and Elizabeth Debicki–starring mind-scrambler from 2020, time moves forward and backward. But in our world, so the cliché goes, time heals all wounds. Indeed, this weekend, obsessive nerds of every stripe had an opportunity to watch Christopher Nolan’s Tenet in 70mm IMAX, a victory lap for the film and its fans, but also a high-profile case of mending fences in Hollywood. To understand what happened, we need to enter a temporal turnstile and go back a few years.

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Originally scheduled for Nolan’s signature late-July release weekend (Oppenheimer, you might remember, opened July 21), Tenet was delayed to a September release when it was still hampered by the coronavirus pandemic and the social-distancing measures most theaters took at the time. The box office receipts were, under the circumstances, better than you might expect, but it’s fair to say the picture never really got its due. Some markets, like New York City, were not part of the initial release window, sending dedicated Nolan-heads to New Jersey or Connecticut to see the film, some resorting to renting a small theater (remember when that was a thing?). At the end of 2020, Warner Bros. decided that its entire 2021 slate would go to digital (partially for public health reasons, but also to juke the subscription rates at what was then called HBO Max). That’s when Nolan officially broke ranks with the studio that had released all his films since 2002’s Insomnia.

“Some of our industry’s biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and woke up to find out they were working for the worst streaming service,” the usually mild-mannered filmmaker said. Then he took his toys over to Universal and made Oppenheimer, which has grossed over $950 million worldwide and is all but guaranteed to win Nolan at least one Oscar. If he wins for directing, it’ll be his first.

After Disney announced late last year that it would bring several pandemic-era movies (Turning Red, Soul, and Luca) to theaters, there was a bit of a push for Warner Bros. to do the same with Tenet, an intentionally perplexing movie with a growing reputation (some might call it fanaticism) in certain circles—Peloton instructors notwithstanding. But Warner Bros. is, of course, in the Oscar race against Nolan this year, pushing Barbie—which camped out on Nolan’s preferred July weekend and created the Barbenheimer phenomenon—and competing against Oppenheimer in six Oscar categories. The studio’s once fruitful relationship with Nolan has been dramatically, publicly severed, and neither Universal nor Warner Bros. responded to our requests for more information about how this rerelease happened smack dab in the middle of final Oscar voting. But it turns out there’s still one thing that can create amity in Hollywood: money.

The Tenet screening I attended at the AMC Lincoln Square IMAX auditorium on Friday night was packed and, what’s more, everyone there got to watch one of the slicker scenes from the next big release from Warner Bros.: Dune: Part Two, in glorious large format. (The short sequence was, indeed, met with hooting and applause.) Chances are that anyone going to a rerelease of Tenet was already on board for Denis Villeneuve’s craft-rich sci-fi epic, but in marketing, you pull every lever. Indeed, the Quebecois filmmaker sat with Nolan after a screening of Tenet in Los Angeles for a 25-minute chat. The conversation is on YouTube and the comments section is loaded with chestnuts like, “Watching Nolan and Villeneuve talk about cinema for half an hour is better than porn. And more healthy for your brain function, too.”

I love Christopher Nolan’s movies and Tenet in particular—I’ve spent more time on this film’s subreddit than any other in recent history—but I did not brave the pandemic to see it in theaters back in 2020–21. As such, I secured my tickets about 11 seconds after the studio (and Travis Scott) made the reissue announcement about a month ago. I was sure to get seats at New York’s AMC Lincoln Square, as I knew, from talking with Nolan during the release of Dunkirk, that this is a Nolan-approved venue. If you wanted to do Tenet in IMAX 70mm (not just 70mm, not just IMAX, but 70mm IMAX with its pairing of both large format and actual celluloid running through a projector), there were only 12 places on the planet doing so. That’s why, as I entered the AMC Friday night for the 7 p.m. screening, I immediately clocked a vibe.

Bros. The bros had come.

But these were benevolent bros. Bros who appreciate puzzles and craftsmanship, not “yell about superheroes on the internet” bros.

Ricky from the Bronx, just out of the 3 p.m. show, had now seen Tenet six times. He’d actually seen it only once in a theater and admitted he’d probably come back another time before the run was over on Wednesday. “I’ve got A-List,” he said, referring to AMC’s loyalty program. “The action sequences, like the scene on the highway, are just incredible,” he added.

Sean, charging up his iPhone in the IMAX antechamber, sported a Kangol hat, a beard, and a deep grin as he informed me he flew down that morning from Rochester. Technically, the IMAX in Woodbridge, Ontario may have been closer, but it made more sense for him to come here, he said. This was his third time watching Tenet, but first in a theater. “I never rewatch movies,” he boasted, but the head-scratching tale of inverted time and espionage had him forcing friends to watch the movie with him a second time. “By the time I went to order tickets online,” he told me, “it was all sold out except for one seat.” Hence, he flew down alone—and was flying back the same night.

Caleb, a wide-eyed 21-year-old with a gorgeous Hasselblad large format analog film camera strapped across his shoulder like a tricorder, flew up from Raleigh, North Carolina. He had never seen Tenet before the 3 p.m. screening and sheepishly admitted that, because he had been up since 2 a.m. traveling, he nodded off for a moment. (“I woke up and they were in an art gallery or something and I was so confused.”) No worry, though, he already had tickets secured for the 7 p.m. show.

Though Caleb owns Oppenheimer on Blu-ray, a movie he’s seen in theaters several times, the Oscar-nominee remains in the wrapper. “The whole point is the 70mm IMAX,” he said. “It’s how it wants to be seen.”

As we entered the 7 p.m. screening, we were handed commemorative film negatives (“Oh, I’m framing this,” one man said with glee) before we took to our assigned seats. I cannot tell a lie: There were not a lot of women at the screening. (Lines for the bathrooms at the end bore this out.) What’s more, plenty of fellas were there by themselves. But when the story unspooled, there was no talking, no texting, nothing but an enraptured audience.

Afterward, on the short walk down Broadway to the subway at West 66th Street, I saw beaming packs of bros going on and on with fan theories. (Do you know that many believe Pattinson’s character is Debicki and Kenneth Branagh’s kid, Max, all grown up then sent backward in time?) And some were just geeking out over how cool the apex of the temporal pincer movement looked on an enormous screen.

For years, Christopher Nolan, like Tom Cruise, has been a prominent advocate for the theater-going experience. He was able to convince Warner Bros. to rerelease an “unrestored” version of 2001: A Space Odyssey back in 2018, declaring “I want to give a new generation the experience of sitting in awe.” In 2015, he was able to get a roadshow—again, on film—for the avant-garde shorts directed by the Quay Brothers. What was happening on the streets of New York City on Friday night was the great man’s dreams turned into reality.

“Who understands Tenet?!!?” I bellowed to a group of teens and early 20-year-olds, to great laughter. “Me! I do!” one said. “Really?” I asked. “Well, mostly,” he smiled.

“How many times have you seen it?” I asked the giddy youngsters. All had seen it before, with one guy boasting “at least 10 times.” This was the first time in the theater for all of them. And as they waited for the train, not one of them was looking at their phone.