Tenet is Nolan's Most Interesting Misfire [OPEN SPOILERS]

Warning: SPOILERS for pretty much every Christopher Nolan movie. Including Tenet.

Let no one say that Christopher Nolan is devoid of ambition.

A man who loses his memory every few minutes, his story told in reverse. A professional thief who not only breaks into his target's dreams, but creates those dreams for them to inhabit as well. An astronaut who saves the Earth by communicating with his daughter through space and time in a black hole. These are all interesting ideas in theory that could easily fall flat, or even be catastrophic trainwrecks, with the wrong execution. Now, mileage may vary with these fillms -- Interstellar/Dunkirk especially -- but for my money, Nolan has hit the mark perfectly almost every time. (With the glaring exception being The Dark Knight Rises, a film that he may not have even wanted to make.) There's a same-ness in his oeuvre, for sure, but they've all functioned on a purely dramatic level, while playing with mind-bending ideas most $250 million films wouldn't even attempt.

And Tenet, set in a world of international spies travelling backward through time, has all the same surface aspects of a successful Nolan outing. The premise is esoteric, but simple enough for audiences to "get" in a broad stroke: the future is waging war on our present, backwards through time. GOT IT. The cinematography and production design are slick, the music and atmosphere fit this "Twilight World" perfectly, the lead cast members give great performances, and the action scenes are suitably large in scope and ambition.

But despite all that, Tenet might be Nolan's weakest movie since The Dark Knight Rises. More than that, its problems are not the kind of nitpicky plot holes that entire YouTube channels have made a career from criticizing Nolan on, but fundamental dramatic missteps.

Now, that's a really harsh thing to say, so let me back up a bit and explain where this take comes from.

On Dead Wives

Critics have rightfully pointed out that Christopher Nolan goes back to the same problematic trope rather often -- the dead wife that gives our main (male) lead motivation and pathos. The death of Guy Pearce's wife in Memento set his quest for revenge in motion, which was manipulated by another party for their benefit; the death of Hugh Jackman's wife in The Prestige set his quest for revenge in motion against Christian Bale; the death of Leonardo DiCaprio's wife in Inception set his quest to return home in mo -- okay, you get it. This is obviously not a great look for Nolan in 2020, and more than a little macabre for his wife, Emma Thomas, but these backstories serve a crucial function in the screenplay. They give the main characters a clear motivation the audience can follow, and they're executed pretty effectively. I'd argue Inception is one of the best uses of this trope, because not only does it give Cobb an initial motivation, but his obsession over his dead wife continues to complicate the story and create interesting new obstacles to overcome throughout. (Think of the "oh shit" moment when Mal shows up in the snow base to shoot Cillian Murphy in the back, and Cobb can't take the shot -- or that wonderfully creepy scene when Ariadne sees Cobb's dreams.) Of course, motivations don't need to be dead wives (god no), they just often show up like that in Nolan's work. It can be something as simple as "we need to get the hell off this beach" in Dunkirk.

So with that established, let's ask ourselves: "What is The Protagonist's motivation in Tenet?"

Seriously.

We know that he is a spy of some sort, likely working for the CIA or an equivalent. From the first real exposition in the story with his handler, we know that he is dedicated to "the mission." That he'll do whatever it takes to follow whatever orders he was given (a "tenet" if you will). Given that he has a barebones name like "The Protagonist", we can tell that his backstory/motivation is intentionally sparse, either for mystery or to let us focus on the plot as quickly as possible. Later on, we can infer that he wants to protect Kat from her abusive husband Sator, and there is supposed to be conflicting motivations between accomplishing "the mission" to stop Sator destroy time itself, and protecting Kat. Now, like I said earlier, a simple motivation can work -- but this is as thin as it gets. Even John Wick, which everyone lauded for its economy of storytelling and motivation (they killed my dog, I must kill them), took the time to establish why this dog was so important. We saw John grieve for his wife's loss (SO MANY DEAD WIVES), saw how the dog was one last gift to him from her, saw this bring some joy back in his life, however small -- and then the gangsters kill the dog, so when John is heartbroken and furious, we feel some of that too.

To that end, there is no "why" in Tenet for our main character but the plot itself -- save the world. Maybe more charitably, we can say the motivation for him is the same as the audience's, uncovering the mystery of what "tenet" means, as his handler tasks him. This kind of impersonal distance can work -- a lot of great thrillers are intentionally sparse on the character details -- but this puts a lot of importance on the plot, how intrigued we are in the mystery. Because The Protagonist has no stake in this for a long time, other than, "it's his job."

And the plot of Tenet is not particularly compelling.

Nolan's Usually Good at Exposition, but...

In one scene, The Protagonist's handler tells him that there's a shadowy underbelly to the world he wants investigated, and all they know is the word "tenet." Cryptically, he says, "Use that word, but be careful where -- it may open some doors you want to, and others you don't" or something to that effect. Cue the very next scene, where the very first person he says "tenet" to in a labcoat reveals almost everything upfront. I'm not kidding. The scene goes:

"Tenet."

"So we've been seeing guns and bullets come backward through time, find out where they're coming from."

This starts a trend the movie never recovers from, where everyone The Protagonist comes into contact with already know more than him, and simply tell him what's happening as flatly as possible. This is a shadowy world of time travel that no one knows anything about! Except everyone you've ever met actually knows about it, and know more than you about it, to the point that there are dozens, if not hundreds of soldiers who are in on the time travel. This is getting dangerously close to just saying "durr, that's a plot hole", but it's more than that. It robs the main character, and therefore us as the audience, of the joy of discovery, something crucial in an action movie that's trying to play up the mysterious sci-fi angle as much as this one. Imagine The Matrix if there wasn't that 30 minute build-up to the "twist," if Neo asked Trinity at that night club, "What is the Matrix?" and she just said, "You live inside a simulation, your actual body is in a pod being harvested by machines. Bye!" That is almost every bit of exposition in Tenet. Even characters like Neil (Robert Pattinson) who aren't supposed to know anything, are revealed in a "twist" to actually have known everything about time travel since the beginning.

This is so strange, because Nolan is usually great at exposition. To go back to Inception, you have entire scenes that are just Arthur or Cobb explaining to Ariadne how the rules of the world work, but they're still compelling because there's drama there. Notice how in the exposition with Arthur and Ariadne, she's also teasing out the details of Cobb's inability to build dreams any more, learning more about Mal. Having these character dynamics help pure info-dump scenes, but that's pretty darn tough when your main character's entire reason for existing is "gotta do the thing."

The one potential upside of such cut-and-dry info dumps is that the audience (if their eyes don't glaze over) can follow the story clearly, but in Tenet, we don't even get that benefit, as the audio mix garbles the dialogue so thoroughly you just can't understand it without subtitles. Between that, and the overly convoluted plot of the middle of the film, ("We need to put pressure on this art dealer who's the wife of the bad man because she made a bad deal or lost this art piece that's worth millions of dollars for the bad man, so pose as an art guy yourself to put yourself in their circle, except now you're posing as an arms dealer for the bad man to work with and this involves the opera house from the beginning of the film somehow and AAAAAAAAAAA") it's really difficult to follow. Thus, a good chunk of Tenet is characters with no reason to care about each other, mumbling at each other in an inaudible audio mix about a plot I didn't understand but in the broadest strokes.

And that can be fiiiiiine, I don't need to get every little machination of the plot if at the end of the day, the big emotional moments and turns in the climactic action scenes are still understandable. So, are they? As the movie says, "Don't try to understand it, just feel it." Is there enough here to get out of my own way, and just "feel it?"

(Laughs nervously) Um.... no. Not really.

The Ending of Tenet FINALLY EXPLAINED!!!1

There's this misconception that Nolan movies, because they dabble in mysteriousness and big ideas, are somehow giant puzzles to solve even after you've finished watching them. Just today, while writing this and listening to S.T.A.Y. from Interstellar, I saw in the YouTube recommendations a video titled, "The Ending of Interstellar Finally Explained"... posted nine months ago. Now, you might not agree with some of the turns the end of Interstellar took (communicating through space and time in the middle of a black hole really did break some of the more left-brain viewers), but is the ending really that much of a mystery? Humans from the future gave Matthew McConaughey the equation to solve interstellar travel. He then gave this equation to his daughter, Murph, back on Earth. This saved humanity, and because we're dealing with, essentially, Space Magic at this point, he was teleported back to our solar system. He has a heartfelt goodbye with his daughter, and goes out to find a stranded Anne Hathaway. The End.

Inception had a similar reaction -- "woah, was Cobb really dreaming at the end or not? let's post hour-long videos trying to figure out the right answer, as if that's the important part of the movie!" I want to linger on this, because this ties into my issues with Tenet.

Let's clear this up right here and now -- Nolan movies are not meant to leave you scratching your head after watching them.

The core emotional beats are incredibly evident. Yes, there's a little bit of mystery at the beginning of these movies, but by the end, they have explained enough and established enough of the character motivations/relationships to land gut-punching emotional moments without even a word of dialogue. Think of the rows of Hugh Jackman's own cloned corpses at the end of The Prestige. Or think of Cillian Murphy finally having the reconciliation he's sought his entire life with his father near the end of Inception, holding a paper windmill from the one photo he put by his dying father's bedside. I tear up thinking about it now, that rush of catharsis with a distant family member, that is still a lie because this has all been constructed by Cobb for his own ends. Or, back to Interstellar, Matthew McConaughey has been slowly and surely drifting away from his daughter, the core relationship of the entire film. At the end, there is space mumbo jumbo about the "fourth dimension" and communicating through love, and messages from future humanity, but it all resonates and works anyway in that moment because he's finally reuniting with his daughter when he plucks those strings in the black hole. Murph, who thinks her father abandoned her for space travel, finally hears from him again, and realizes he's still out there and still loves her. All while also being the moment where humanity is saved -- it's cathartic stuff. Some people found it saccharine maybe, but no one missed what was being said there. To put it like Tenet might, you didn't have to understand it to "feel it." As crazy and convoluted as Nolan's machinations got, there was always a core emotional, dramatic thread to the story to keep the audience grounded.

This is what Tenet lacks entirely. I've already brought up my issues with the lack of character motivation, how the main character is the passenger in his own story thanks to the style of exposition, but the real killer here is what I haven't brought up yet, and that's basic comprehension of the big action scenes and climactic turns. For how Tenet has been marketed, this is the reason to see the movie -- watch the master of the big screen create the most elaborate, mind-bending action scenes you've ever seen!

In some ways, it delivers on this promise.

The craft and spectacle in the action scenes are very impressive. I can't imagine how much time and effort went into logic-ing out the choreography of that first hallway fight with the Protagonist's future self -- and it pays off. I don't understand much of what's happening moment to moment in that fight, but because it's a one on one fight, it's very easy to let it wash over you and just admire the spectacle of this guy being suplexed off the ground, or sliding forwards while writhing like he's being dragged backwards. Similarly, the truck heist in the middle of the film is fantastic, as the stakes are clear and the time travel doesn't get in the way of understanding them -- there's a case to steal from this truck, we are stealing this case, and now mysterious cars from the future are driving backwards on the highway to steal the case from us. Aspects of the time travel are clever as well, like the super clear visual language of going backwards by entering a vault, seeing both your past and future self walking along different sides of some partition glass. The first scene the Protagonist goes through one of these vaults is one of the more visually impressive shots in Nolan's career. Again, these all work because you might not understand the nitty gritty of the mechanics, but you understand what's happening in the overall story.

However, the longer Tenet runs, the more that moment-to-moment understanding slips away, as more and more complications are being thrown at the time travel rules. For instance, as the Protagonist first starts to go back in time to steal the case from Sator on the highway, it is an absolute nightmare to follow. You get the gist -- Sator has the case, Protagonist wants to get it back. But the scene now involves not just 2 parties: someone going forward through time, and someone going back through time. This now involves 3: 2 people going back through time, and 1 person going forward through time, which is really tough to parse in terms of visual storytelling, the bread and butter of action films. These things live or die by how much you understand in an action scene in a split-second, and by those standards, this scene fails. The Protagonist tries to intercept the case, but this somehow gives Sator the case. Even though he already had it. That is all I parsed from the scene, because it's very difficult to tell what's supposed to be a dramatic turn for the worse when you've already seen it happen earlier in the movie.

This continues with the climactic battle scene, which involves two entire armies fighting each other backward and forward through time at the same time in an abandoned quarry with some ruined buildings, easily the least impressive scene in the film. On the good guys' side, one platoon is going forward through time, and the other is going backward, attempting to defuse a bomb that's going to destroy all of time. But the bad guys also have one squad going forward and one squad going backward, and it becomes an indecipherable cluster, even after a five minute exposition dump explaining what the plan is. In here, it's harder to let it all wash over you, because the mechanics are no longer just details you can ignore, but crucial to understanding what's happening in the story. To the best of my understanding, the bomb gets buried after a tripwire explodes the entrance to the mine it's in, but Robert Pattinson goes from going backwards in time, to going forwards in time, only to go back again (I'm serious, he starts going in one squad or the other, but then uses one of those reversal vaults and AAAAAAAAAAA). It gets bad enough that the climactic showdown, involving the Protagonist trying to defuse the bomb, but being blocked by one of Sator's henchmen and a locked gate, is also tough to follow. This is important. This is your "yipee-ki-yay" Die Hard momentwhere, when all seems lost, the character's ingenuity turns the tables and saves the day. The problem? I don't know how he did so. He just stared at the lock and it got shot by Robert Pattinson or...

You know what. I'm boring even myself with this blow-by-blow. Let me just say I understood none of it other than the most basic "yay, he defused the bomb" or "oh no the bomb gonna explode." Yes, there are literally two fronts of time-warfare occurring at once here, but it boils down to lots of gunfire and explosions happening in reverse around the characters, so... it's a lot of effort for something that ends up imparting the exact same feeling as say, Black Hawk Down.

The bigger issue is that this admittedly clever premise starts to make the movie less interesting from a character or dramatic perspective. The big twists, like the fact that the second half of the movie is dedicated to going backward through the first half, means that there's very little tension because we've already seen it go fine before. Remember that hallway fight I praised? Well, you get to see it again, and the outcome goes the same. A fight scene where you know what happens is inherently less exciting, and that's a good chunk of Tenet. The characters don't get out unscathed either. We learn next to nothing about either Neil or the Protagonist, but, we learn that they become really good buddies in the future, so that's a lot of character development you can just hand-wave away. And this isn't a nit-picky thing, either -- Robert Pattinson was the best part of the movie, and the movie's clever ideas deprive us of seeing more interesting interactions with him. We never see his relationship with the Protagonist develop, never earn any camaraderie, so that when we learn he's marching off to his death in his last scene, it's an "awww", but not nearly as affecting as some similar moments in earlier Nolan movies.

The Protagonist gets even more scammed by this setup than Pattinson -- because, as it turns out, literally the entire Tenet program was founded by him... in the future. So the mysterious people he has been taking orders from are... himself. In his words, when he's talking to the Indian arms dealer -- "I thought I was taking orders from you. I was actually taking orders from myself, to you." Which, I see what they're going for, in a Matrix-y sense -- he's the One and doesn't even realize it. Heck, you could make an argument that his super slight character motivation and background is intentional for this twist -- his character arc is one of self-realization of agency, from taking orders to being the master of his own destiny. And that's pretty clever! The problem is that while this is satisfying in hindsight, it doesn't make the present moments in the film any more engaging. We just spent 2 and a half hours watching the main character be shuffled around from taskmaster to taskmaster, only to learn the ultimate taskmaster was HIMSELF! But that doesn't change the fact we watched him be an errand boy with no interior or motivation of his own throughout.

(As an example, imagine a twist in Grand Theft Auto, where all these characters give the protagonist meaningless errands to do, but at the end it turns out that the main character told those characters to tell him to do that. It works about as well as that. Which is to say, it doesn't.)

To continue the Matrix example a bit further -- even in that film, that hinges entirely on Neo being an ingenue who has to accept this power that has been bestowed upon him, there is a clear scene of self-realization. When he jumps off the helicopter to save Trinity, we all understand before even a line of dialogue occurs, that he is absolutely the One. Now imagine The Matrix where Neo does nothing, Trinity saves the day, but Morpheus calls at the end and says, "hey Neo, by the way, you're the One!" Tenet is a lot like that.

On that note, one last thing...

On Living Wives (Or The Women in the Nolanverse Who Don't Get Enough Credit)

This is going to be a much smaller side note, but I thought it was worth pointing out -- Tenet is kind of unusually weird about women, even for a Nolan movie. Pretty much the entire emotional core of the story is attempting to revolve around Kat and her abusive husband Sator. In many ways, she has more character depth than the Protagonist. She has a motivation -- to protect her son. She has an obstacle -- her piece of shit husband might kill her if she sticks around, and he'll only let her go if she gives him her son as well. And she has an arc -- she goes from helpless to murdering the guy.

Now. Despite that, there are a lot of problems here. First, I don't think I need to point out how thin a character is who is entirely defined by her abusive relationship. Second, the movie goes for several cheap shots with her character. To establish what a bad dude Sator is, we get not one but two scenes of him verbally or physically abusing her, which doesn't make me hate the guy, it just makes me uncomfortable they put this on-screen. Third, her sole motivation being her child's wellbeing goes to pretty absurd lengths in the dialogue. One character says, "If this happens, the entire world will end!" to which she replies, "And my son will die!" No shit, really? Fourth, her largest contribution to the story -- killing Sator -- is marred by how the screenplay unintentionally paints her as reckless for doing this. Some pretty clear stakes are established near the end saying, "hey, make sure to only kill Sator if you get the signal, otherwise his dead man's switch to the bomb might go off and the world will end" (not to mention your son will die!) So, with that established, she doesn't get the signal, and she ends up killing him prematurely anyway. Sigh.

Elizabeth Debicki does well with the role, but man did she deserve more.

Also the triumphant scene of the film where the Protagonist realizes he's the ultimate badass is him shooting the Indian arms-dealer lady in the back of the head WHAT THE FUCK? That was like, one of three women in the movie you just killed, buddy!

Alright, Let's Wrap This Up

If you've made it all the way down here, thank you for your patience and time! I really appreciate it, and hopefully you enjoyed it. Sorry for the constant Matrix references, it just kinda cropped up given the similarity in genre.

If you did enjoy it, or any of the other longer-form things I've written here on Giant Bomb, I have a dusty blog about sometimes-games, mostly-movies, called Lapses in Taste. This is the first piece I've written for it in... several months? So it's not the most regularly updated thing, but I'm usually very happy with what I post there. I'm particularly fond of the Bumblebee and Scott Pilgrim essays.

TL;DR This is the first Nolan movie I've seen where the "big idea" actually gets in the way of the story working on an emotional level. Certain action scenes were cool, the aesthetic was great, I loved all the performances, but the characters had nothing going on, the moments that were clearly meant to be "WOW" moments just didn't hit, and I left bored, not caring to even see it a second time to figure it out.

Now that it's out on VOD, how'd y'all find Tenet?

That’s a long post, but just want to say I disagree wholly with this line:

Let no one say that Christopher Nolan is devoid of ambition.

I find this an incredibly safe film, considering where he could have taken the concept and how much money was dumped into incredibly boringly shot action scenes, locations and effects.

Gonna go back and read the rest of your post now and will edit with more thoughts :)

@theoracleofgame: This is a fantastic blog, wow! I really enjoyed reading this. I think I like Tenet a lot more than most people just for the aesthetics and the performances of the leads (aside from Kenneth Branagh, who's doing the same weirdo Russian accent that he barely pulled off in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, which I couldn't even stand to finish) but a large part of that is just me being willing to accept the madness and "shut off my brain" for a while. The entire movie falls apart if you think about the paradoxes for a split-second (and the "what about free will?" question early on just seemed entirely phoned-in) but I really did dig it as a sci-fi Bond movie.

The weakest part for me was the Protagonist's need/desire to protect Kat and her son at the cost of possibly ruining his mission (and thus ending the entire world). Nolan couldn't figure out if he wanted to make this relationship sexual or paternal or romantic or what, and in the end it wound up being ineffectual as a driving force for the Protagonist, and that, in the end, is probably the biggest flaw in the film. Nolan might've been influenced too much here by Casino Royale/Quantum of Solace, where Bond's attachment to a woman cost him dearly, but Bond is a different beast than the Protagonist, who pretty clearly is part of the military/special forces and should really be thinking differently about the needs of the many (everyone) and the needs of the few. Ultimately John David Washington and Elizabeth Debicki make it work just from charisma (she was so great in The Night Manager) but it's still the worst part of the movie.

@rorie: Aw, thanks!

You're totally right about the Bond influence gone awry -- blog was already running long, so I didn't get to touch on that. Bond films are, at their heart, romances, and Nolan does not get romance. I read the Protagonist's protection of Kat as more of a weird platonic thing, if only because they didn't have much sexual tension at all.

Also, for all my gripes, I agree about the aesthetic. This is the first non-Zimmer joint on a Nolan soundtrack, and it's just fantastic. Been listening to it on loop for weeks, especially "Freeport," "Rainy Night in Tallin," and "Trucks in Place." It's driving, ominous, and sinister in all the right ways. It honestly communicates more about the world and tone than the story itself.

@theoracleofgame: Oh the soundtrack is amazing, really clicks with me in a Cliff Martinez way.

@theoracleofgame: Really excellent writeup and I agree wholeheartedly. The biggest failing of the movie for my personally - which I still largely enjoyed - was getting caught up in the mechanics to the point where the big picture just passed me by rather listlessly. By the time the credits started rolling I was more concerned with how everything happened as opposed to why. In fact I was so concerned with understanding the "how" of it all that I wasn't entirely sure what the point of the film was to begin with. I very much agree that Inception is his best film to date as it manages to balance interesting mechanics with a compelling story. You're not as actively punished for not understanding the moment to moment details in Inception and by the time the final scene rolls the "mechanical" layer of the movie adds to the weight of that ending instead of entirely relying on it. Tenet is especially bad about giving you large exposition dumps yet still failing to fully communicate any concrete information during said conversations. Everything is very ethereal and you're meant to just be happy to go along for the ride, but once the story begins to heavily hinge on your ability to discern how all the pieces fit together to form the scene you realize that the info the movie has provided is wholly inadequate. The Temporal pincer which is a key, if not the most, important aspect of the whole movie is glossed over once after the highway chase as Ives casually mentions that half of Sators men moves forwards and half of them move backwards to work in tandem. At the time of the highway chase this is enough as you mention above, because it's still a fairly basic action sequence of cops and robbers. The moment you get to Stalsk-12 you are meant to understand how this mechanic works except that the movie has provided you with the knowledge of how to add and has now presented you with a problem that has two unknowns and long division. I've spent an embarrassing amount of time drawing.. well timelines on pieces of paper and trying to logically piece together how the details of that operation works and I'm still not sure if the answer isn't just "time magic". The broad strokes are there, one team gave the other team info from the future and then Robert Pattinson inverts to save the day, but I do feel this time around the details actually mattered because without them the scene has little weight.

I could go on and on about the details of this film and how they outweigh the actual plot but I don't think they actually matter all that much. Time is a flat circle and what has happened will happen precisely because it already happened.

Tenent is basically Thurderball, the James Bond movie with diving replaced by time reversing.

Great blog! Full spoilers in response to it below:

I think the emotional aspect is the mother and son story line. Her being the lady jumping from the boat when she thought some other lady was jumping and as she interpreted it “jumping away from their problems, I wish I could of done the same”.

I prefer inception for pretty much everything you said above, the protagonist doesn’t really have a plot twist or story line motivation. The motivation is very vague and I feel that is on purpose. The motivation and emotional story for him is actually Robert Pattison’s character helping him from the very start and the protagonist not realising it to the end also to a lesser extent; using Kat to facilitate his plan in the first place ignoring the pain she is experiencing.

That moment with Pattison’s character at the end worked for me on the first watch but worked even more on the second watch as I missed a key moment in the first scene. The protagonist had gone through hell and back to save the world and the only way this happened was due to Robert Pattison’s character sacrificing himself and the protagonist doesn’t want that relationship to end even though he knows it’s going to happen.

I enjoy a nice popcorn flick but sometimes a regular action film is just a little boring because it’s usually the same storyline. With Christopher’s Nolan’s movies, they have a sci-fi storyline or concept that’s adds value to repeated viewings of the film. Tenet isn’t my favourite Nolan film but I did really enjoy it in a similar way to Rorie, things move at such a pace that you just kinda get lost it in it. In some ways I think I enjoyed the second viewing more than the first as when you first watch it, the first hour is super quick exposition and you get the pay off in the time travel sequence but you still have lingering questions.

I still recommend people watch it, you may not think it’s the best film of the year or of Nolan’s filmography but I still feel like it’s a good movie that sparks conversation after it’s finished and I think that’s a good thing.

Echoing what many others have said, this is a fantastic read. I’ve seen Tenet twice now and I think I ‘get’ most of it, insofar as I understand what’s supposed to be happening. It’s a typical Nolan film for sure, good and bad, but unlike say The Dark Knight or Inception, it’s not something I feel I could ever go back to for fun - simply because I feel that film is trying to confuse intentionally so perhaps you focus less on its weaker parts.

For all that Nolan loves Fast and Furious and Bond movies, I'm not sure his love of them is the same as mine. It almost seems fetishistic, that he's in it for the look and feel of cinema and film and having "dramatic" scenes that seem dramatic on paper rather than grasping the mechanics of action films and why they're satisfying to watch. For all that Nolan's scripts are better and more clever than Bond to read (which isn't hard, mind), the actual act of watching any of his films is just less exhilarating and impressive and, dare I say it, fun.

There's online breakdowns of Nolan's action films and I won't belabor the point, but for me I find watching ANY movie of his extremely bewildering from a pure editing, blocking, and physical/spacial awareness standpoint. The climax of Tenet is probably the worst I've ever seen in this category - the film almost becomes as bad as your run-of-the-mill Netflix sci-fi movie at this point, it's so disjointed. Characters, vehicles, they disappear and reappear in other places. I only put together that Patterson's character died at some point due to the emotional conversation at the end, but the actual scene itself I couldn't tell who was who or even that I was watching linear events unfold.

Add onto this the most bewildering aspect which is that as far as Nolan's scripts go, it's all a vehicle to establish a world in which Bond movies could happen in real life. But the sci-fi premises leave so much on the table, staying relatively grounded when they don't have to. See Inception folding the world in on itself (a great piece of spectacle combined with exposition), then followed by...no action scenes ever doing anything more interesting than a Brosnan-era Bond movie. It's like if halfway through The Matrix, the action scenes suddenly shrunk in scope down to mediocre gun fights out of a Gerard Bulter movie. All of that exposition goes mostly wasted when Tenet has a fist fight, a car chase, and a Michael Bay mess of a army shootout. Wasted potential, especially when as said above Nolan just isn't good at that bread and butter action work.

I find this is a problem for all of his movies with the exception of Dunkirk, which fit the era and mood exactly was extremely easy to follow and purposefully overwhelming. Dunkirk fits Nolan's aesthetic the best, and his whirlwind action framing and editing. I was hopeful Dunkirk was a turning point for his work, but at this point I've kind of given up a little.

I've described Inception as 'upsy downsy' and this as 'lefty righty' when as asked to give a synopsis.

I haven't seen Tenet yet, but I like both Interstellar and Inception due to their emotional beats (which I wish more people mentioned) while I found Dunkirk lacking in that regard. Your talk about the second half having no stakes because you have seen it all before reminds me of the book "the collector", where you go through the (quite tense) storyline through one person's perspective, and then midway through the book, the entire story happens again through another person's perspective, so all the tension is completely lost and the book just becomes a slog.

Really well written column. Based on what I have heard, I do not think I would enjoy Tenet one bit, as I'm infamous for over-analyzing everything to death, and can't really "turn my brain off".

Wow, the response here has been overwhelmingly positive! Thanks, y'all!

@mikachops Yeah, I could have been clearer about this -- the opening line is referring to Nolan's body of work as a whole, not necessarily just Tenet. That being said, while I agree that it's overall a bit more mundane and "safe" feeling than I was expecting, between the almost oppressively grounded setting and Nolan's insistence on logic-ing out everything to the point that nothing too crazy happens, the premise is still pretty ambitious. There are dozens if not hundreds of time travel action films, but I'm not sure I've ever quite seen one with people/objects literally going backward in time in real time, while interacting with the world still going forward as normal. Usually time travel is more about big jumps, or at the most minute, rewinding the action then playing it again a different way. Now, as hard as the action gets to follow near the end, maybe there's a reason we haven't seen time represented in a film like this before? :P

@infantpipoc Fun fact, "the CIA rushes in to save the day and the last 20-30 minutes of our spy thriller is a bunch of extras standing around shooting each other" is my least favorite trope of the Bond movies! (Thunderball almost comes back around for me from how ridiculous it is seeing an underwater harpoon fight at that scale.) Given that the end of Tenet goes in a similar direction... yeah, yeah I see why I bounced off it. Wouldn't have made that connection without this comment, though!

@ste89 I'm glad you enjoyed it! (The blog and the film, ha.) Your point to the Neil bit being more emotionally involving on a second viewing of Tenet makes a lot of sense. On a second viewing, you can see, while watching instead of just in hindsight, that he was the one who saved the Protagonist at the opera house, that his opening comments about how the Protagonist prefers Diet Coke in their first meeting reveal a years-long friendship he is privy to. That being said, in my opinion, the fun easter eggs/clever bits of characterization for Robert Pattinson on a second viewing, actively detract from the experience on your first viewing, because easter eggs and clever foreshadowings of this later revelation are all that are there for his character to do for the first half of the movie. In a way, Neil's goodbye works best as a temporal tragedy -- he is at the end of a years-long relationship with the Protagonist, and the Protagonist has only just gotten to know him before having to say (for now) goodbye. Neil's bit about "what's happened has happened, that's not an excuse to do nothing" is also the closest the film has to a thematic thesis, as we see this theme play out with the Protagonist and Kat's growing agency through the film. So, on the whole, that moment is sad and works for me -- it's just a shame that this clever moment has been built at the expense of more character development between Neil and the Protagonist in the film itself. The closest to a bonding moment we get is after the reverse of the hallway fight in Oslo, and Neil explains why he didn't say anything, and they do a little bro-handshake/fist bump in the car. The rest is all pretty dry and business-like between them, with a little light banter thrown on top. And with as fun as it is to see those initial scenes between them again with the knowledge from the end of the film, I honestly have to ask, "why didn't we know Neil's role from the beginning?" Becoming friends with someone who has already been your friend for years is a wonderful premise for a relationship in a film, and a lot more could have been done with it if Nolan wasn't forced to play it low-key for the sake of a last minute reveal.

I find it interesting that you and so many others bring up the pace of the film as a reason they fell into it more easily, because that actually put me off a bit more than brought me in. Given that this is a 2 and a half hour movie, I understand why Nolan is rushing to explain all of this as quickly as possible and keep things moving (this feels like a film that has a 4 hour first draft on the screenplay), but in doing so, he makes it harder to follow the beats at the pace the story is going. For example, in that opening opera house scene, we have to follow that: the Protagonist is disguised as the Kiev SWAT to extract an informant in the upper seats; this informant is going to be "vanished", not by the terrorists in the opera house, but by the SWAT guys; SWAT guys start planting bombs in the audience seats; the 241 algorithm (in the moment on a first viewing, just a mysterious MacGuffin) was at the coat check, and this is important; Protagonist deviates from the "mission", and instead of extracting, goes back to save the audience from being exploded by the bombs the SWAT is planting for some reason (that I still don't understand); Protagonist is saved by a mysterious time travel man (Neil), and gets out with the informant, only to be caught off guard by the Russians he started in the van with. This all happens in about five minutes, and while I caught most of it on a first viewing, I genuinely missed that the SWAT, not the terrorists, were trying to kill the informant, plus I missed that the time travel guy saved the Protagonist's life. There are clear set-ups, payoffs, and reversals going on in this opening scene, but they happen so quickly that it's just bewildering. The time travel guy, who sets up the entire premise of the film and does lend some of that mystery I missed so much on an initial viewing, is only on-screen for about 2 seconds. We need a looooooong, unmissable moment there to really hammer home the weirdness of what just occurred, not, "Reverse bullet BLAM okay bye." And a lot of my complaints about readability could be solved with just a slower pace. For instance, when the Protagonist inadvertently gives Sator the algorithm by going back to the highway, we know that it isn't in the glovebox like he thinks, but we never learn where the Protagonist actually has it hidden, so it seems to appear, literally out of thin air in the Protagonist's car, only to fly into Sator's hands. Genuinely don't know where it was supposed to be hidden, and again, one line saying "oh yeah, I hid it in [blank]" would have gone a long way.

@zoofame Thanks! The Dark Knight is actually an interesting case study for what does and doesn't compel us in a movie -- you're right that there's not much emotional purpose there for the main (heroic) characters, but I still put it back on from time to time and find it difficult to stop watching. Why? Because, for me, there is an emotional center to the movie, and it's the Joker, which is as terrifying as it sounds. I'm not sure if this was intentional, but Batman's growling about "hero they need, not the one they deserve," the weird little love triangle between him, Harvey Dent, and Rachel Dawes, and Dent's character kind of pale in comparison to how much screen time and development the Joker gets. He is pure nihilism and chaos, a guy so deeply wounded by his past but so unwilling to admit it that he never says what has occurred to him, opting instead to toy with our natural curiosity with fake backstories, making a mockery of what little empathy we could have for him. The structure of the film totally reflects this resonance with the Joker, as the film doesn't have a plot so much as a constant string of reactions to whatever the Joker has done next, a series of escalating dares. It's as chaotic and bleak as he is, ha. In comparison, Begins and Rises are just remedial.

Weirdly, I love the Fast and Furious films (and Mission Impossible), even the later stuff. Those are a great example of how even the most seemingly stupid and basic action movies can work with an actual emotional center. It has lost its roots, but also, it's been 20 years, and that it's still transforming and relevant now is kind of a miracle. For me, 7 was a low point, 8 was "okay," but 5 and 6 were the high points. How many franchises as long in the tooth can say that? Similarly, I adored Fallout.

@swthompson I almost entirely agree with you. Nolan absolutely struggles with what masters of the genre don't -- blocking, editing, geography of an action scene, following what happens clearly. Imagine if a George Miller or a Gareth Evans directed the action scenes in Tenet! That'd be nothing short of transformative due to actually seeing what's happening. I also agree that he doesn't quite seem to know how to have fun in the same way a Bond or Fast and Furious film does. I've said it before, but Bond is a romance (even if it's a problematic, male-centric romance. I agree with Film Crit Hulk that I don't think it's an accident that the best Bond movies are the ones with the strongest female counterparts, Casino Royale, Goldeneye, On Her Majesty's Secret Service) -- romance with women, romance with exotic locations, romance with the general lifestyle of globe-trotting, Martini-drinking, and tuxedo-wearing. And despite emulating all of these beats so thoroughly, Nolan just doesn't have the same fun with it. Dunkirk was refreshing in that itfelt like Nolan finally letting the veneer go, and just telling a story, dammit!

That being said, I still really like Inception. A lot of it does devolve to gun-fire, but there's at least that incredible hallway fight. And unlike Tenet, I cared a lot more about the story, so I was willing to roll with it.

@avantegardener I can't wait for the sequel to Tenet which will only be describable as "Jeremy Bearimy."

@nuttism Yeah, probably not. I feel like the intended audience for Tenet is on a razor's edge -- don't think at all, and nothing will make sense and you won't have fun. Think too much, and nothing will make sense and you won't have fun. Think exactly as much as the movie asks you to and when, though? You're golden.

Great thread, happy to see the Tenet Discourse is alive and well at the end of 2020! Anyway, I did see it in a theater over the summer, and these were my notes-to-self afterward...

"Saw it in IMAX with 0 other people in the building on a Monday night."

Man, if working in bars and restaurants is a weird experience right now I can't even imagine what theater workers are going through. AMC is not taking this shit lightly though. Granted again there were literally no other movies playing in a 14 cinema multiplex and literally no one else had a ticket to see this thing, but they still had the ticket counter and concessions set up with barricades as if it was a Star Wars or Marvel premiere night. So you wind your way through this long maze while one person stands at the concession counter to check your ticket and they ask you to sanitize your phone, hand it to them, sanitize your hands, they re-sanitize your phone after confirming the ticket, strongly imply they'd like you to re-sanitize your hands after taking back your phone, let you know where the bathrooms are rather than where your theater is located and don't ask if you'd like anything to eat or drink. Again, as somebody who lives in one of the least affected states this summer and has really only been out to work at my restaurant or be on the patio at the bar across the street but otherwise orders everything delivery, it was wild stepping into a national, corporate building for the first time since the pandemic. It almost scared me away, which I guess is the point, right? Anyway, Tenet. Is this supposed to be Nolan's new trilogy? This whole thing felt like a prologue, or like it was making fun of the enterprise of blockbuster filmmaking or something. Looked great, John David Washington is officially a star, but I gotta say this movie lacked some kind of...oomph. At the start of every big action scene I was on the edge of my seat, but by their conclusion I honestly felt kind of dull. Going in I was worried that the movie's big gimmick was going to be too tremendous for the movie to be able to take advantage of it as much as I wanted or keep it making sense and I think my hunch was right. Edit: that being said, when the pivot hits at the mid-point mark, this thing fucking does not let up on the NOS injection for a solid 45 minutes and it no longer matters that you don't know any of the characters' names or care about their motivations for being in this plot or what their role is in this story. Nolan gets to do his whiz-bang setpiece thing and nails it. Ultimately, it's hard to say how much the scenario surrounding the movie affected that, but goddamn did it feel baseline pleasant to walk out of the theater and look around at the world in that dreamlike state where you're suddenly imagining how you'd film the location if it were in the movie you just saw, and to be in a huge room with a massive screen and awesome sound system completely glued to the movie rather than constantly checking Instagram, Facebook or Reddit and forgetting what's going on. Watching movies at home kinda sucks, man. But is it worth going to a theater to see Tenet? Not at all, other than how great it looked and sounded and the specifics of my experience in that I only saw and interacted with a single person during my three hours in that building which is a far cry from my own workplace. For what it's worth, I didn't think the movie had any sound issues at all other than when it was appropriate, and anyway almost all of the dialogue was expositional so it wasn't terribly interesting anyway. Other than the potential for a Tenet 2 and Nolan shoehorning a Black James Bond into our lives who also has the ability to travel through time, kind-of sort-of. I probably won't go back to a theater the rest of the year.

Editors' note: I did not return to a theater in 2020, and to the best of my knowledge I have avoided COVID-19 despite continuing to live a public life. What a weird, weird, sad, sad year it's been. Was a bit weird to re-read this and remember a time when the Midwest still felt like an isolation chamber from the woes of the coasts.

@nodima: I also saw it in theatres although sadly not in IMAX. Similarly I chose a time when it was me and two other people in the entire theater, but being quite squeamish and paranoid I naturally wore my mask throughout the show and disinfected my hands often etc. For what it's worth I do think Nolan movies in particular gain a point when watched in IMAX. Interstellar was an amazing experience for me in IMAX because of the fantastic Hans Zimmer score and the grand visuals of space travel on this huge screen. I'm not sure Tenet is ever as bombastic as that to fully utilize the screen but having watched a streaming version of it at home for the second time the impact of some of those scenes is greatly diminished. One of my favorite moments of the film, which also is one of the most "fuck it time travel" aspects of it as well, is when the Protagonist tells Kat she will be leaving a message "for prosperity" and that amazing Ludwig Goransson score kicks in with the subtle piano keys before shifting to the digital tones that frame the final setup.

@nodima I saw this in an empty theater back in the summer as well. On the one hand, looks great on the big screen! On the other, I didn't get quite as lucky as you with the audio... D :

Apparently this was supposed to be a setup for a larger franchise, and it definitely feels like it.

Observer: Tenet Will Lose $100 Million for Warner Brothers

WHOOPS.

This is like when Dennis Dyack said his favorite class from Too Human was in the sequel that would never come out. Let this be a lesson to put the cool parts of your story in the actual story and not plan for an ethereal sequel.

@theoracleofgame: Oh, the similarities between Tenet and Thurderball began way before their respective big final shootouts.

For starters, despite both claimed their respective threat trasends national interests, yet all the good guys are from the west side of the iron curtain. There is not even a token east bloc agent like in U.N.C.L.E. The broken arrows are seemingly recliamed for the west both times.

Then there are the villians. Largo in Thurderball is Number Two in SPECTRE, while what's his name in Tenet is at the most Number Two in the future invading force. Both abuse the women they are with and finally got killed by the abused women.

Over all I enjoyed Tenet as an action movie in a "better not think too hard about it" of kind way, Inception is similar on the regather. However it's disappointing to see Tenet "steal" whole cloth from a single cold war era spy thriller while previous Nolan movies are remix of so many things.

Guess the other way I would desribe Tenent would be Quantum Break story with CONTROL presentation. Remedy just came to mind. Just look at the corridors for time travel mechanics.

Movie is dense with ideas and unpacking them all after watching is the best part. I like how deep Nolan went this time, just getting completely lost in this complete mess of a plot dealing with so many things. It doesn't work but I enjoyed the experience of watching and unpacking it after. I love the idea of the future using "time travel" to nuke the past to stop current global warming. That's so hilarious and a clever spin on how we potentially ruin the future so we can live comfortably in the current time. And that's just a throw away line. Can make that its own story really.

Nolan is supposedly inspired by video games and even wanted Inception to be a game. Tenet really feels like it would have made for a good game.

I enjoyed it. I think in part, I liked playing with the idea of the premise in my head.

The more I thought about the plot the more I saw how all the plot beats were tied together in space and time, like how the explosion that Michael Cane's character mentions early in the movie, is the finale. So basically if you think about it, before the title drop, he's already saved the world.

I think that's where I found my fun, chewing on the plot of the movie

On a side note, I'm guessing the reason so many characters wearing masks in the film, is because they need to hide their mouths. They have to reverse footage to get inverted smoke/dust/gravity etc, but need characters to speak forward in the scene.

I got excited that Nolan North was in Tenet!

I just saw the movie last night and was in the same boat in that I found it hard to follow a lot of the time, but understood just enough to be content to keep watching to the end and try to enjoy the spectacle. Nolan's movies are usually interesting, but it feels like he's constantly trying to outdo himself with how crazy he can get, especially around the concept of time, and this movie I thought went a bit too far and strayed into 'this is clever but just too confusing to fully follow' territory. Also I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought the audio mix was off. I straight up could not hear what the characters were saying over the music in some scenes. It's kind of bizarre, because someone (if not Nolan himself, although it seems likely he would) must have heard it before they settled on it as the final mix, right?? I'm also completely baffled at the decision to put the movie out in theatres during a pandemic knowing full well not many people would go and see it, but they must have had their reasons.

Anyway, this was a really good write up. It almost feels like a bit of a waste that it got posted here instead of somewhere that will get more eyes on it. I'm no expert but based on this blog it feels like you could do this professionally (I was going to say you could do it for a living but I'm not sure there's a living to be made from this sort of thing any more, but you could definitely get paid for it!).

Good read!!

I'm really torn on Tenet. I really enjoyed watching the movie but as I discussed it with the friend who watched it with me several small issues popped up. Nothing was helped by looking online as several Youtube videos suggested that Robert Pattison's character was actually a future version of the boy in the movie. My friend and I sat and tried to logic out how anyone could jump to that conclusion and while we both noticed oddities nothing stood out.

And I think that's a result of, as you point out, the idea that every Nolan film is a Rubik's cube waiting to be solved. More often than not his films do a good job explaining what has happened throughout. And maybe that's one of Tenet's failures, it doesn't quite nail the complex layering of ideas that Inception achieved.

Tenet almost feels like an old Nolan film. Less refined, more focused on concept than the finish line. The editing was both stellar in spots and oddly jarring in others. The pace was an unrelenting excitement and exhaustion at the same time. The few 'aha!' moments were mixed in with confusion.

It was a ride. A fun one. The kind of roller coaster that pushes you around, twists your spine, and strains your neck. For some it'll be too much, for others they'll stretch and get right back on.

I just hope Nolan gets to keep making his kind of weird little movies. I'd rather watch ten Tenets than just another Marvel movie.

@bakoomerang: Thanks! I wrote for a couple of amateur game sites a while back, but no, I've never been paid for my writing.

Believe it or not, posting this to Giant Bomb is the most eyes I've ever gotten on one of my essays. (Usually there's 3-10 views on my personal blog drowned out by the Twitter algorithm.) And as someone who attempted to do the "starving artist" lifestyle for a year after college... yeah, not a lot of people can make a living writing movie criticism full-time.

Still, the feedback here's been great, so I'll be sure to post whatever I write in the future!

Really it was a bad idea to release this amid the pandemic. As no wonder they lost a lot of money. Maybe Nolan did not want ot release it on streaming or Warner Brothers either one or both. Still Nolan has changed the way for movies.

This is a great write-up, and I really appreciate it. It helped me solidify and codify some of my thoughts about the movie, which I watched for the first time tonight.

The particularly dumbfounding thing about this movie is the fact that a character, I think the scientist handler lady, says to The Protagonist "Don't try to understand it." That particular line is a fairly common in time travel movies. Variations on it pop up in The Terminator, Looper (speaking of dead-wife motivations), Austin Powers, and maybe one of the Happy Death Day movies, and in each case it's kinda a heads-up to the audience that they shouldn't spend a whole lot of time worrying too much about the specific mechanics of the time travel. I think it's meant to do the same here, sort of, underscoring Nolan's penchant for "you're not supposed to understand, you're supposed to FEEL". But the problem is, the aforementioned movies don't devote multiple exposition dump scenes to mechanics, and their plots are on a scale that makes it easy for the audience to understand what's at stake. Tenet has a real big problem with effectively communicating motivations, stakes, and consequences throughout it's 2 and half hour run, like you do a great job calling out.

The Protagonist wants to do things for.... reasons? The future wants to destroy the past to.... avert some global warming disaster, even though "what's happened has already happened?" The bad guy wants to help destroy the world because.... he's terminally ill and wants to go out on his own terms?

That's the best we got? Really?

So, I'm left writing off the narrative aspect of the movie and look to the visuals, which I found mostly dull. You wrote a lot about how the structure of the film inadvertently deflates a lot of the tension in the action, because we already know how these things all play out for 40% of the movie. And that final army scenario is just a mess. Flat, confusing, gray, and bland.

I've not seen Dunkirk, and I was no real fan of Interstellar because of the non-logic of its last act, but I think this is my least favored Nolan movie. At least I felt his other movies provided some sort of visual feast if the story was... lacking.

I was lucky to catch it in theaters, with three people in it. It was a beautiful film with a convoluted but fun to follow story. For me the ending was satisfying.

I just saw Tenet and a very good summary you posted. I believe you pretty much summed the movie up in the beginning. Nolan's need to have a damsel or female motivation in his movies. This is the main thing, imo, that throws Tenet off. The whole - we have to save the wife from the abusive madman - narrative which takes up a good chunk of the movie. If the main plot was just " The Protagonist" stopping the madman from destroying the world, the movie would've had better pacing and would have been much better. Not to say the the damsel narrative can't be in the film, but it dragged too long and became more of a focus than saving the world, which became an afterthought.

Other than that: I like the action, the movie score, I think John Washington did a good job as well as Robert Pattinson. I say Interstellar is Nolan's weakest work. Sorry, but that ending ruined everything for me in that movie.

@inevpatoria: Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts so thoroughly! Had fun reading through that. I'm glad that both reading my piece and writing your own was so cathartic, that's super flattering.

I agree completely that Elliot Page as someone new to the concepts of Inception helped explain a lot of the basic worldbuilding. In a sense, there's an attempt at a similar dynamic with The Protagonist explaining a couple things to Neil after that first bit in India. The problem is that The Protagonist is just repeating things we, the audience, have already learned with the Protagonist (instead of hearing these rules for the first time as Ariadne in Inception.) Neil's pre-existing knowledge also undercuts this because Nolan has to write both as if he knows it and as if he doesn't. Makes all the characterization/learning very vague and superficial. (I've said this in other posts here, but I genuinely think the Neil/Protgaonist relationship would have been a lot more compelling from the get-go if Neil was upfront about how much he knew. Getting to know someone who has known you for years for the first time is a fun buddy-cop setup for an action flick.)

On the other hand, plenty of narratives have worked with the protagonist of the story also being the fish out of water learning everything for the first time. It's arguably simpler than having a secondary character be the audience surrogate. Of course, that would be the case, except Nolan can't help himself and our audience surrogate is also the head of the entire program and architect of this entire series of events, so he can't just be an ingenue.

It's also good you pointed out more clearly than I did how the structures of Nolan's films reflect the subject matter -- that's one of my favorite parts of his movies. But, again, this only works as far as it lets the audience empathize with the characters in the story, as much as it lets them feel how the characters must in this situation. Who knows, maybe it'd actually be really boring to be told that you're the Chosen One and you've already figured everything out in the future. If that's the case, Tenet captures that boredom perfectly.