Last month, we reported that Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk would be rated PG-13, and I wondered how the director would be able to tackle a war setting without showing any of the gruesome violence that honestly depicting a war demands.

Speaking to the Associated Press [via The Playlist], Nolan clarified why he went with a PG-13 rating and how he doesn’t really see Dunkirk as a war film even though it takes place in the middle of World War II:

“All of my big blockbuster films have been PG-13. It’s a rating I feel comfortable working with totally. ‘Dunkirk’ is not a war film. It’s a survival story and first and foremost a suspense film. So while there is a high level of intensity to it, it does not necessarily concern itself with the bloody aspects of combat, which have been so well done in so many films. We were really trying to take a different approach and achieve intensity in a different way. I would really like lots of different types of people to get something out of the experience.”

I’m willing to give Nolan the benefit of the doubt, and I’m particularly interested to see him tackle a triptych story, which will approach the rescue British soldiers from land, air, and sea. Hopefully we’ll get a new trailer soon to give us a better idea of what Nolan has in store.

The film stars Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh, Mark Rylance, Cillian Murphy, Aneurin Barnard, James D’Arcy, Jack Lowden, Barry Keoghan, Tom Glynn-Carney, and Harry Styles. Dunkirk opens in theaters on July 21st.

Here’s the official synopsis for Dunkirk: