Tenet, Christopher Nolan 2020 Film

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so a question that I think may or may not a plot hole.

WARNING: spoilers below
I might already see some possible solution in Reddit.
#1 Neil was the corpse inside the hypocenter, as he inverted himself way back again to open the locked door and get shot for protecting TP, that makes there two Neil during that last mission. but the problem that I see that when the splinter team (TP and Ives) got inside the tunnel, the entrance collapsed because of the booby trap explosion.
so how he, this 2nd Neil on the battlefield, enters the hypocenter in the first place?
as he moves back from the "later" point of time where the entrance was sealed off, I try to think some other offscreen solution like there other entrances; but also unlikely as my impression for now there only that one-way tunnel. can't be sure.
it also feels unlikely that he blows up the sealed entrance to pave his way inside.

#2 ---
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you take it away... to show them what they had
What makes Christopher Nolan's films so successful in my eyes, is that he manage to create the feeling that there are ideas on stake, and the forces that clash in the war over the ideas find expression in every bit of the plot in inseparable way.

this film fails to give that feeling. Nolan has always loved to take crazy concepts and dress them up in well-known genres, thus turning the familiar elements on their side. Memento tells the most clichéd story of them all; a man tries to avenge his wife's tragic death. It works not only because of the general concept of a story told from end to beginning, but because of the technique; The elements of the plot feel like something that comes naturally from the assumptions of the initial premise. The elements are familiar - but you experience them in a different way.

In this movie, the familiar elements remain quite familiar. The situations and the sequence of events do not feel like the natural conclusion of an idea. its just like a regular movie, with elements as you expect them exactly, and which occasionally also reverses some scenes. there is no idea laid on the line, no emotional depth. it's like someone who is'nt nolan tried to make a nolan movie without the nolan technique.

Dunkirk was also ideologically and emotionally poor. But it was more successful because it moved away from the genre's generic conventions, and mostly because it felt like it had reached its full potential. It's perhaps the only war movie ever where you wont hear "Tell my mom I love her" or "Give my dad this necklace ...".

so the problam with tenet was more that it's flat story and characters. I mean, what was the **** was that **** about marriage-drama-abuse? Something I never thought I would see in a Nolan film because he always showed that he has an understanding of what works and what does not, and what elements to stay away from. The feeling is that a storyteller like Chris could have create a much more successful and much more worthy story.

make no mistake, tenet is still a pretty fun and engaging film. And if it came out of the hands of another director, I might have said it's a great movie. Whenever the film ceases to be a fairly ordinary and generic spy thriller and goes in and does reverses, it becomes breathtaking. The action here is amazing. The problem is that it happens too little, and feels like a plugin put in on the side of the plot rather than its essence. this is the first time I'm watching a Nolan movie where I feel like I'm not entering new territory, even though the overall concept should be enough.

7/10

very disappointed.



why is there a turnstile in the middle of art storage facility in newport ? I can believe there being a turnstile in any other location but how is it in newport ? isn't it like a airport maintained facility ? how did sator get that in there ?



What makes Christopher Nolan's films so successful in my eyes, is that he manage to create the feeling that there are ideas on stake, and the forces that clash in the war over the ideas find expression in every bit of the plot in inseparable way.

this film fails to give that feeling. Nolan has always loved to take crazy concepts and dress them up in well-known genres, thus turning the familiar elements on their side. Memento tells the most clichéd story of them all; a man tries to avenge his wife's tragic death. It works not only because of the general concept of a story told from end to beginning, but because of the technique; The elements of the plot feel like something that comes naturally from the assumptions of the initial premise. The elements are familiar - but you experience them in a different way.

In this movie, the familiar elements remain quite familiar. The situations and the sequence of events do not feel like the natural conclusion of an idea. its just like a regular movie, with elements as you expect them exactly, and which occasionally also reverses some scenes. there is no idea laid on the line, no emotional depth. it's like someone who is'nt nolan tried to make a nolan movie without the nolan technique.

Dunkirk was also ideologically and emotionally poor. But it was more successful because it moved away from the genre's generic conventions, and mostly because it felt like it had reached its full potential. It's perhaps the only war movie ever where you wont hear "Tell my mom I love her" or "Give my dad this necklace ...".

so the problam with tenet was more that it's flat story and characters. I mean, what was the **** was that **** about marriage-drama-abuse? Something I never thought I would see in a Nolan film because he always showed that he has an understanding of what works and what does not, and what elements to stay away from. The feeling is that a storyteller like Chris could have create a much more successful and much more worthy story.

make no mistake, tenet is still a pretty fun and engaging film. And if it came out of the hands of another director, I might have said it's a great movie. Whenever the film ceases to be a fairly ordinary and generic spy thriller and goes in and does reverses, it becomes breathtaking. The action here is amazing. The problem is that it happens too little, and feels like a plugin put in on the side of the plot rather than its essence. this is the first time I'm watching a Nolan movie where I feel like I'm not entering new territory, even though the overall concept should be enough.

7/10

very disappointed.
you need to watch it a couple of more times my friend....it pays off richly with each viewing. I can bet that no one will fully understand the movie in one watch. You need atleast 2 or 3 watches to kinda get it. All his other movies are adam sandler movies in terms of complexity when compared to tenet.



why is there a turnstile in the middle of art storage facility in newport ? I can believe there being a turnstile in any other location but how is it in newport ? isn't it like a airport maintained facility ? how did sator get that in there ?
if i remember it correctly because he kind of owns the place. all of his turnstiles were on his properties. he put in there likely to cover up his operation, easier when he shipping inverted stuff or container (harbor/port, airport).



you take it away... to show them what they had
you need to watch it a couple of more times my friend....it pays off richly with each viewing. I can bet that no one will fully understand the movie in one watch. You need atleast 2 or 3 watches to kinda get it. All his other movies are adam sandler movies in terms of complexity when compared to tenet.
no mate. it has nothing to do with understanding of the plot. I sure do agree i'll find new things in 2th viewing in terms of the mechanics of the plot. but my disappointed with the film, as i say, is related to the story itself. not the plot. the story is dull, and bad.



no mate. it has nothing to do with understanding of the plot. I sure do agree i'll find new things in 2th viewing in terms of the mechanics of the plot. but my disappointed with the film, as i say, is related to the story itself. not the plot. the story is dull, and bad.
the ripple effects of a technology like inversion will never be a straight forward story especially when it involves meddling with natural laws. Our protagonist is dumped into a situation which has no starting or ending point. So the path for him to contribute and figure out the things will always be a crooked one.

But in terms of potential I do agree with you that given the concepts in the movie there could have been a more kickass/badass spy film that could have been made. The 1 minute teaser released last year with JDW walking towards a bullet hole showed so much more potential than what the rest of trailers or even the movie ended up being.

I always wanted the premise of the movie to be more of a mystery which our protagonist would eventually figure out before others and lead the charge against time traveling antagonists but what we ended up getting is the protagonist being handed over the mission. The teaser at least made it seem like the protagonist figured stuff out in the room with bullets holes in the glass panel for the first and not in some exposition dump by a scientist in a white coat.



no mate. it has nothing to do with understanding of the plot. I sure do agree i'll find new things in 2th viewing in terms of the mechanics of the plot. but my disappointed with the film, as i say, is related to the story itself. not the plot. the story is dull, and bad.
I quiet enjoying the story myself. not perfect but far from being dull.
i enjoyed the nolanposition throughout but before the final battle (in the ship) that one was quiet aching for revelation to keeps the story move on.
WARNING: spoilers below
dead mean's switch, inoperable cancer


Stiil, I think this more best to compare to things like Mad Max fury road, stuff like that.



That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
SPOILERS Incoming, so fair warning.

Welp, I decided to take in a movie last night at the cinema in that I've not paid a visit since the C-19 shutdowns. They were open, and I was stressing so I needed a fix. Tenet was scheduled for about 30 minutes after I left office and by the time I got there there were maybe 7 vehicles total in the lot. I figured at least 3 were staff. Yup. I had the theater all to myself. I got a small popcorn, a bottle of water (trying to cut back on sugars, but damn if I can't watch a movie on the big screen without my salty popcorn. It's been MONTHS!) The clerk informed me that I had a free large popcorn available for my recent b-day, but I declined. Small for me. See? I'm trying.

Anyway. I watched Tenet and I have to say I'm more or less with the consensus of these forums. I believe a lot of people will be down-right frustrated with this one while a few puzzle seekers will adore it for years to come. I also feel like there will be a few in the margins that will say they love it to impress their friends, much the way college freshmen need to quote philosophy to appear enlightened. I can speak to that with confidence as I was that college freshman.

WARNING: "Spoilers (second warning)" spoilers below
I'm no longer that freshman.

As someone else already commented, I had to remove myself from this film several times to regroup, calculate, and confirm the math of reversals, time sequences, or to replay garbled dialogue in my head to try to decipher what might have been said (that fire hose the second time around the airplane crash was deafening!). That didn't frustrate me, which I found odd. What did frustrate me was the realization that this movie likely took a few years of drafting logic maps to make sure everything fit just so working in two time progressions (multiple progressions in the last half hour or so of the film), but presents its intricate network of entry and exit points for the run of several different characters within a 2-hour window to an audience completely unaware and without context to the intricate maps that were clearly necessary to create the movie. I think it is a lot to ask your audience to be introduced to a concept, follow the logic of the concept, reasonably track multiple instances playing out of that concept, and still make sense of much of anything after a point, all while trying to do so under the guise of a spy action drama complete with your trope red herring distractions needed to continue the core plot moving forward. To me, that is damn arrogant to throw your audience into such a convoluted mess without time to really digest what's been learned (as minimally as it was presented) before being thrown into an exponentially building sequence of timelines, reverse timelines both being experienced by two teams with some individuals' sub-reverse-REVERSE timelines to hit necessary plot points. Granted, this is a marvelous sequence of events, but damn the ego necessary to create it and just toss it out without a user's manual!

The script plays well enough straddling between watered down versions of David Mamet and the Craig-era Bond writing staff. Action sequences were excellent in the first half of the film but too dense in the second. The "Teams" attack at the end became comical for me very quickly with agents running around (forward and reverse). For a moment I was reminded of my recent viewing of Starship Troopers when landing on planet P. Hey, but that's my baggage bringing with me what I took in so maybe it's OK. To a point. In the organized chaos playing out on screen I had to take a beat to get my bearings enough to finally ask, "who is shooting back?" Aside from a few rocket launchers hiding in two of the emptied buildings, I guess I missed them. That triggered a sequence of micro-second mental leaps noticing just how many "grunts" are aware and totally cool with time inversion that my mind nearly shattered at the reality that each one of these soldiers (both good and bad) have the awareness and power to manipulate time potentially destroying all of existence. Really? I understand that the pretense is temporal warfare, however, with all of the cloak and dagger secrecy provided when Protagonist (I love the character naming btw!) is brought onboard and first introduced to inverted matter, it seems a bit silly to see so many enlisted during walkthroughs of the training and battle grounds presented in the second half of the movie.

Hey. It's a mostly tight movie. I'm not sure it plays as well as on screen as it must have been planned on paper, but I'm sure all the details are there and fit together. I'm just not sure I'm interested enough to bother tracking it all to verify any of it. I'll have to take them on face value that there was adequate quality assurance when sequencing these timeline interactions. Most of it looked cool though. So for you puzzle nuts out there, is that enough to make a good movie? To make something just because one can? I'd be more enthusiastic if that question played more of a meta role between the film and the viewer somewhere, what with all of the mind bending concepts at play. I'm not sure Sator reached out on that level though. I mean to speak directly to motivation of creating (or in Sator's case, destroying) something just because. He had reasonable (a madman's reasoning, but still reasonable in that context) motivation. That may be a sadly missed bridge between what happens on screen to what the viewer experiences in watching it. Walls are being shattered. What's one more to reach the audience? But, no. Unless I'm missing it? Someone show me please, if so.

I don't know. I really don't know. I do know that I don't know not because the concept is too high, but because so much of it is just imbalanced to itself. That is ironic, in a way, considering the title's sake palindrome of TENET and the several reverse/mirrored actions of the character and events throughout. We're thrown in the deep end on beat one. The Protagonist knows his mission but, after that, he knows as much as we do as he experiences following events. The guy takes everything in a well enough stride. I'm not sure it's necessary to know the "why" about his psychology before hand as we can deduce such things (assumption? deduction!. There were nice plays on words scattered about that I was reminded of as typing that word!). While not necessary to know this about our character, I believe the audience's attention is just spread too thin with so much information, minimal insight, and a shotgun scatter of everything else compounding seemingly infinitely as the movie progresses. Even with all this, the core spy drama had predictable beats some 20-30 minutes before playing out. How do you spend so much effort master-working a concept only to lose credibility with clunky plot points? Granted, that may be more of a primed expectation of the viewer given how movies rely so much on twists and attempts at subterfuge of the true plot line. I don' know. But that's my point! I do not know and I feel like I should have more confidence on any point after this movie. I'm OK with not getting it, if it's on me for not getting it. I don't think that's the case here. And that nags at me. Sadly, it's not a positive nag that gives me pause to consider, reflect, or revisit (other than for what I've done enough to write this). Hm. I'm writing something within 24 hours of watching a movie. I guess there's something to be said for that? Meh. I'm pretty sure I'm going to disconnect from this one after hitting the submit button so even that isn't really all that much of a victory.

Inception did it better. Even with Ellen Page.



seems only fitting, I mean the other half of the score must be inverted.
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I went to the cinema with my wife. She loves films of this genre. And I'm not very good, but I went for the company. To be honest, I was expecting another predictable and slightly necessary plot. Was "pleasantly disappointed". The film is really worthwhile. I will not spoil, although there are enough spoilers in the topic. I will say that I liked it. I do not regret that I looked.



I have a question...what exactly happens with the person who reverse shots a bullet and saves JDW in opening opera house scene ? i know who it is..but how did that person end up there ? obviously he is not inverted but the bullet/gun is. But how does he place the bullet there ? JDW getting threatened by a gun happens by surprise, how did the person who inverse shots the bullet puts the bullet there in that exact location so that it passes only through the soldier and not JDW ?



I have a question...what exactly happens with the person who reverse shots a bullet and saves JDW in opening opera house scene ? i know who it is..but how did that person end up there ? obviously he is not inverted but the bullet/gun is. But how does he place the bullet there ? JDW getting threatened by a gun happens by surprise, how did the person who inverse shots the bullet puts the bullet there in that exact location so that it passes only through the soldier and not JDW ?
This was all arranged/set up in the future when this person and JDW were friends, I assume because he knows this person will do this (because
WARNING: spoilers below
he’s seen the orange tag
), they could have agreed to send him into that moment at an unspecified time in the future.



I just finished watching it and it definitely felt like an unsatisfying watch, a feeling you don't usually associate with a Nolan movie.


Without getting into the plot, for which I made a small reading effort after the movie to solve my doubts, I will put forward few thoughts to tell why this movie didn't work for me.


1) There was a distinct lack of emotions, character development and relationships.
While Nolan has never really been big on that in his other movies, he has still presented us characters with strong emotional baggage, complex relationships, etc, which work in making us feel (or cheer) for those characters.
Here there was none. And the feeble attempt at romance between the two main characters was drab and flat. A part of the blame should also lie at the feet of Washington. I won't compare him with his father cause I think that's unfair, but he just hasn't got any presence.


2) The villian's casting was terrible. Why couldn't they cast a Russian actor. Kenneth Branagh was unbelievable, almost seeming like a cheap parody of Russian villians. He neither intimidated nor made me feel uncomfortable. He did make me unintentionally giggle with the poor Russian act. Not all the blame was his, as he was given a stereotypical character to play. So I blame the writing equally.


3) Things seemed rushed from the start. Again this is something that Nolan usually does in his movies, but he always takes his time to set up his worlds first, and then he rushes things before the all out action of the climax. We saw that in Inception with the main heist planning or even the Dark Knight or TDKR. Here it was rushed from the start.


4) The idea here, just like the core idea of Inception, was intriguing, but unlike Inception, here the idea's novelty was lost fairly quickly. Also, there was a lack of surprise. It was ruined because it's easy to figure out a lot of things that are about to happen. And that takes away a lot of excitement from the process of watching a movie that is actually meant to be exciting.




Anyways, on a nice note I was happy to see the greatest set of hair on the planet (trust me I have seen her in person couple of times and they are shiny and luscious) Dimple Kapadia get a meaty role in a Hollywood production.



The thing isolated becomes incomprehensible
Tenet is a 100% Nolan picture. Solid technically especially the sound design and visual effects but as pretentious as a film can get and a script more adequate to a highschool theatre piece.



That might sound a bit dull, but as much as I enjoy Nolan's movies, I disliked the chosen color palette of Tenet. The whole time I was watching it I thought, that everything looks somehow....sad, flat, not as stylish as e.g. Inception.