Finally watched Tenet. After all the hype and discussion on Reddit when it was released, I was expecting some sort of neigh-on impenetrable profound piece of cinema, but it’s just Primer with action sequences.
Patrick Willems made a good video about Tenet. He calls it a Vibes Movie, in his explanation all the secret agent movies, like Bond, Mission Impossible, are vibes movies where the plot is actually meaningless. Tenet ups this to eleven. IMHO Nolan is a serial perpetrator of over his own head concepts, but I nevertheless like his movies because the’re at least not franchises.
I was disappointed. Nolan usually does a good job of grounding his “concept” movies in human personalities and relationship. I understand how he was trying to do that in Tenet, but it just didn’t work. The result was a movie full of action set pieces without anything to hold them together.
That’s a good take, I hadn’t thought of comparing it to Primer. In Primer, it’s clear Shane Carruth thought out all the implications of his time travel system. I don’t get that feeling from Tenet, where it feels like Nolan thought it would be cool and didn’t go further. What you end up with is a movie that’s fun while you’re watching it but falls apart once it’s over and you think about it for more then 5 minutes.
The scene I think is the most egregious is the air terminal fight. It’s a cool idea in theory but a fist fight between two individuals going in opposite directions in time would immediately result in a paradox. It’s hard to explain but it essentially boils down to the fact that both fighters are reacting to their opponents reaction to the move they’re about to make.
Great concept, bad script, fantastic screenplay making the most of the terrible script with some truly great set pieces, great cast, great visuals, terrible audio mixing, sums it up for me.
Still haven’t seen it yet, but I wonder if it’s not reminiscent of his earlier film Memento, which also played with time, in a way. It’s not literal time travel, but it at least plays with timing before the viewer realizes what’s going on.
I really disliked this movie, there were some really well done scenes but I feel like it was just a bad film.
The whole movie is about palindromes and we don’t finish where we begin.
The main character doesn’t get a name and explanations are just poor “don’t think about it”. Even if we weren’t to think about it it could have been presented better.
Washington was boring in this, and he isn’t boring generally speaking. Robert Pattinson is probably the best in this but he can’t make it interesting.
I don’t really understand why people act like I’m bullshitting when I say it wasn’t confusing. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t linear, but I understood the basic concept.
There are parts that go “forwards” in time and there are parts that go “backwards” in time and the streams of events influence each other when they meet. The relative perception of the characters is that all events go “forwards”. Some characters pass through the macguffin machine and their flow starts going backwards, and they influence themselves in both directions. Past this, you just have to watch the story happen.
The only confusing thing about the movie is the visuals. We’re not exactly used to watching shit happen backwards so shit looks weird sometimes. The big fight with a ton of soldiers was probably the worst at that.
I still can't get over the ridiculous audio mixing...the dialog in some scenes is virtually inaudible, which is the last thing you want in a movie with such a convoluted plot. I love most of Nolan's work but Tenet is by far my least favourite.
Definitely not a fan. I turned it off after 30 mins. You cannot possibly try to sell a professional hitman that has supressors sounding like, well, a movie supressor/silencer.
This is not the only thing I disliked, but it’s the only one I remember. It was quite forgettable for me.
It was groundbreaking in terms of how some of the action looked I guess but the rest of the movie was straight to DVD quality with top class talent due to the director.
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