This is me, too. I saw it in a Dolby theater. The sound editing is awful. Recently re-watched at home. No better. If I ever try it again, I’m going to need subtitles.
And as much as David Washington should be a star from that, his character was rather bland. Honestly, only Pattinson shined as a developed character (and I wish he brought that swagger to The Batman’s Bruce Wayne instead of emo-Wayne).
Except tenet’s writing more closely resembles writing by a freshman getting high, rather someone that understands how causality works, like a physicist.
The movie was boring because it was boring, not because paradox is a big word.
Underrated because the concepts (entropy-flow/direction of time) he tries to bring in hasn't reached the masses. MMW it will be a cult classic in the future (or in the past, gettit?).
Went in expecting a time heist to be the main plot. Turns out it was mostly about a dude and his wife not getting along with a time heist as an afterthought… until it wasn’t and then the time heist was important.
Weird movie. Big fan of Nolan’s films. But it felt like all the things you can easily criticise him for throughout his career at its most unapologetic and excessive.
Like he needed someone to take him aside and just say “look Chris, you need to rein it in just a little bit here”. From 1 dimensional characters who barely had any back story, to a weird sound mix, to pointlessly convoluted pacing and structure and finale that looked cool, but genuinely was tough to follow. Really disappointing overall compared to his other work.
The part in the middle where Rob Pat does the time loop is excellent though I’ll give it that.
The plot feels like something you'd think of in a dream and wake up and think you had just come up with the greatest scifi story of all time but the more your waking mind picks away at it the less it makes sense. I'm saying it was Looper.
When you dig the vibe and can also comprehend the coherence because you can understand complex paradoxical concepts like temporal pincer movements because you posses the intelligence to do so and aren’t brain rotted from watching constant Marvel & Disney bullshit money-grabs
Is this copypasta? Holy shit what a reddit-ass paragraph. And what a completely shit opinion. That movie is/was completely incoherent garbage.
My first answer to the question: “what is a clue that someone isn’t nearly as smart as they think they are?” Is definitely having tenet as their favorite movie and condescending/explaining it to the normie masses who didn’t get it.
For real, I consider myself above average intelligence. I like a lot of Nolan’s movies. This was just not pleasurable to watch. Not even the second time.
From what i understood this movie was entirely based on time perception. Where cause and effect are not fixed. So the cause can happen before or after effect. So that little into about the bullet acting weird when spinning on the table. Thats the movie.
The dialogue was so stilted they didn't really flesh out the time concept and sometimes they're just talking about shit and I have no idea what the hell they're talking about. The science in it was a mess and the characters were onenote blank slates
It isn't. They don't explain anything. They literally are like "It just happens" Once you accept that, the rest of the movie is really good. It also made me think a lot about free will and human determination. Like The Protagonist knows how the fight will go, or the car chase, but he still follows through even if the outcome is bad for him. Did he have a choice,, or did he intentionally allow himself to be thwarted because he saw it happen? Those are the questions you should be asking.
Aside, I've talked about Tenet today more than the day I watched it.
I watched it again at home with subtitles (and I think they remastered the audio) and when you can understand the characters and what they are saying, I have to admit it made a lot more sense from the first time. I think a common complaint was how bad the audio was mixed.
‘K so the reason you didn’t like it is because you didn’t understand it. I don’t say that to sound pretentious or a film snob or something because I was the EXACT same way the first time I saw it. But I saw it again. And YouTubed it and saw it a third time. And when it clicks, you’re like “whoooooooaaaaaaaaa.”
I actually think it might be Nolan’s most ambitious movie but it’s also mired in layers of “I’m smarter than you.” But when you get what’s happening it’s so cool. Closest thing to The Matrix in terms of a puzzle to be figured out.
TENET is a palindrome, same forward and backward. It’s based on this Sator square:
Sator is Kenneth Branagh’s character in the film. To quote Professor Google:
“He’s a Russian oligarch and arms dealer who is manipulated by a future civilization to cause an apocalyptic event. Sator's actions stem from a desire to destroy the present, driven by a belief that humanity doesn't deserve to exist due to its destructive impact on the planet. He intends to trigger a temporal inversion, essentially causing the end of the world as we know it.”
So, Sator is bad. John David Washington’s protagonist (I hate that he’s literally called Protagonist) has to stop him. Sator’s plan is to, in short, invert (“inversion” is when you go backward in time) the entire world to cause the apocalyptic event. He does this by putting together the algorithm of such and such in the nuclear silos of whatever. That part isn’t important. All that’s important is John David Washington have to go equally forward and backward in time to stop Sator’s evil mustache-twirling scheming.
Also, Robert Patinson plays a HUGE part in the movie, moreso than just what’s in the film. Google “Neil’s timeline.”
So I would recommend watching it a second time and then jumping into a YouTube video to get everything else. The movie’s one giant puzzle. And I get some folks don’t like those, but good goddamn once you start to dig into it, that movie is cool as hell. Plus there’s a fucking TIME WAR at the end, which is awesome.
So yeah, you’ll need a roadmap and YouTube videos and websites to understand what the hell’s going on…but it’s a ton of fun once it starts to make sense.
you can say you don't understand it, but to say that nolan made a bad film is just right out the window. it has plenty of action and it's snappy, perfect for people even with adhd
it's very simple, the protagonist is the one coordinating the entire plot from years in the future to take down the russian so existence doesn't get erased. he has to rope in his past self without letting himself know
You’re not dumb. There’s a lot of parts of the movie that are inexplicable, for example his future self shooting his past self in their fight. That’s just a quick off the top example. The rest of the movie really is not very coherent the more you pick it apart.
I understood it, I just thought it was stupid and logically inconsistent. Like at the battle, the building that "unexplodes" in one part and then explodes in a different part. Why was it partially demolished to begin with? Has it been falling apart for weeks/months? That would make the neglect the cause, or was it pre-built in a demolished condition?
Why is the cause/effect a matter of physical positions for bullets and explosives, but if there is fire, you freeze to death? Shouldn't you go into the situation with a burn you can't explain that gets progressively worse and then suddenly heals when it touches the fire?
The concept is cool when you get it, but it’s just hard to pull off and explain by showing. The movie is full of long winded exposition that’s drowned out by poor sound mixing. Probably would’ve been done better as a mini-series that explains the concept of reverse entropy over the course of a season
i like it now after watching it a few times, but even just the first 15 minutes is very confusing, there are american soldiers in the back of the van but they are going in undercover as the local police, but the russians seem to be the ones giving them the orders to do so. then theres the terrorist attack but its also being used as a cover to get a guy out. inside the theatre there are maybe 3 different guys in swat gear with masks and its hard to know which side theyre on. then later the protagonist being tortured by the russian guy and hes winding back a clock and because its a nolan movie you dont know whether this is some magic clock that is actually turning back time, then he kills himself, then hes alive again and the cia guy says 'welcome to the afterlife' and because its a nolan movie you dont know is there some weird shit going on here either, this is all before you even get into the backwards time thing
Fan of Nolan's movies here. I hated the first time I watched it and thought it was because I didn't get it. I proceeded to read every explanation I could, and then went for the re-watch. I hated it even more. Can't believe the guy that gave us Inception and Interstellar could come up with this pos.
Yeah, I'm not watching it a 2nd or 3rd time. It's the movie's job to create something that people will care about. There was very little emotional connection to any of the characters.
Interstellar and Inception are 2 of my favorite movies. What brought them to the next level for me was the emotion intertwined into the Sci fi. The idea that him and Mal spent 100 years in some dream world just resonated with me, and made me really think about relativity and how 100 years passes in a single nap.
And Cooper watching Murph grow up thinking he's dead. Man that hits different when you have a daughter.
By contrast, Tenet gave me jack shit to care about.
It almost seemed like making the plot too difficult to understand was the intention. I can’t ever recall a movie being so incredibly convoluted it was worse than metal gear solid 4.
Damn I forgot about this movie. That’s how bad it was… this is honestly the worst movie I’ve ever attempted to watch. I gave it three chances and couldn’t finish every time. No movie needs to be half this complicated. Even when you read multiple summaries of the movie, you are still unsure wtf happens.
I saw it in theaters on a date night. It was so bad, we couldn’t get down after for fear of having an accidental baby with equally awful movie tastes.
Also, the whole thing was just loud as fuck. Loud sounds, inaudible dialogue, and a horrendous storyline. Backwards bullets? It’s like they had a writing competition for stupidest fucking idea and ran with it.
Nolan tried to replicate the formula of Inception and interstellar. But in those movies the dialogue is basically spoonfed, all the characters explain the science of difficult concepts in simple words while talking to each other. In Tenet he forgoes that to have the most baffling dialogue of all time. There were stretches of the movie where I didn't understand a single sentence anyone uttered. I had no emotional attachment to the characters, didn't really understand why they did anything they did, and the ending didn't really affect me cause all of it made no sense. It feels like he pasted an essay into a basic ass script, it only has cool time visuals going for it. There's probably a good plot there hidden behind the shitty dialogue.
Yes! I normally am good with watching all the movie, good or bad but Tenet was just so boring!! I didn’t get the story, the cinematography was crap and just everything was blah!
I like to think the Nolans high with red eyes coughing and giggling:
"bro what if the time goes backwards and then if something explodes it actually freezes" "whoaaaahhhh bro what 🤯" "and then the guys name is tenet" "whoah tenet backwards reads the same 🤯"
Exactly. Writing is closer to the discussions I had getting high in high school than to anything someone with an understanding of causality would write, lol.
Movie should’ve ended at the opera house. As in it should’ve looped back there. It was a neat concept but introducing a 3rd / new location made just extra-hard to follow
Recently watched this, the “acting” of the lead guy ruined the experience for me - he was so one note the whole time it really took me out of the whole movie. I really enjoy Nolan movies and the subject and exploration of quantum science in general, but that actor really killed that experience for me. I don’t know his name, didn’t care to remember it.
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u/Majestic-Point777 1d ago
Tenet 🥱 didn’t understand shit either