Tenet (2020)
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Xarpolis
Life's a Dream
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I still can't see it because the knee-jerk Governor shut everything down again. At least there's a surge of MAGA people in Hawaii now, and I'm sure these Democratic pussies have no idea what to do about it. I really hope they vote some if not all of the blue out of office.
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Scoresby
Trakanon Raider
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I agree with the difference between Inception and Tenet you noted. I felt that the concept of inversion was unnecessarily complex, to the end that even though Nolan had a story he was trying to tell it gets in the way of him being able to share it in an enjoyable way. As a viewer, and not easily understanding the rules, it is hard to even figure out what's going on at some points. I also suspect some of the paradoxes can only be hand-waived away as there's no way to explain it all in a rational way. If he had backed off a bit on that part, I think there could have been some space to follow the plot closer and fill-in some of those gaps on your own without getting distracted trying to rationalize it as, in the end, it will likely be irrational/non-sensical. I do applaud the effort though and it wasn't a bad film, just not up to par with his other work.
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Intrinsic
Person of Whiteness
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The other somewhat strange thing was the last sequence, all the fighting, I don’t remember actually seeing an enemy force in a significant way. The teams just ran around spraying bullets. Never a focus on the opposing force with the rare’ish dead grey soldier. It was strange and disjointed.
The opera was similar in the beginning but it was the first sequence so didn’t stand out as much. But bullets were just popping around characters with no emphasis on enemy standoffs
The opera was similar in the beginning but it was the first sequence so didn’t stand out as much. But bullets were just popping around characters with no emphasis on enemy standoffs
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They are there, its just you have SO much to take in, with the different teams doing different things, and the different effects of the different teams' attacks: Blue Team going backward, Red Team going forward, and the enemy in their light green/grey uniforms get lost. Most of them are in cover. The building getting blown up and down? at the same time, so it is standing with no snipers in it is INCREDIBLE. Who has ever conceived of such a thing? And Nolan had Kip Thorne consulting, so you know Nolan worked through how to stage it scientifically.
I completely disagree and challenge anyone to find any paradoxes in the movie that have to be "hand-waved" away. That just isn't how Nolan does things. I guarantee there is a movie "bible" and this plot has been storyboarded and mapped out to death. There is an explanation: It may not be the one you want or like, or even make sense to you but that doesn't mean that there isn't one. Just because "you" (generalized other you, not anyone specifically) can't figure it out, doesn't mean there isn't any answer to the Paradox. Multiple PhD's will have greenlit this plot as being without flaw before Nolan shoots a single frame because that's just how he works. I don't find it confusing at all, other than busy at the end. It's only hidden from the audience because as part of the plot
and they say this in the movie "Ignorance is our best defense". Multiple times they try to not write anything down or send email. If the future knows or *CAN* know something, Sator *will* know it, too, and act on it. So to that end, the Protagonist has to keep himself, and therefore the Audience, ignorant of many of the details. Neil can't tell him anything because they are scared it might change how events unfold, even though by the end it is fairly certain that they are working in a deterministic world and there is no "Grandfather Paradox"; in fact, there are no Paradoxes at all. Events happen a certain way because they happen that way; Entropy may reverse but the causal flow of time does not. Even Neil says by the end "What we *saved* the world from." It makes the beginning that much more poignant because when he meets him, Neil/Max? knows he is coming to the last part of his life.
like The Climate Change Motivation and how long they drag out the part of the climax between the Blue Team/Neil, Red Team/Protagonist and Ives, and Kat on the Boat: That was a few beats too long for me, just like climax of BR 2049: Do you need 60/90 seconds of that? Or would 30/45 seconds do? We have been in the movie for 140 min at this point, man.
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kegkilla
The Big Mod
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I was really thinking of physics of various sorts but I guess you could probably have PhD's in Horology? Hyperbole? Mostly likely, if not those, then this:
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kegkilla
The Big Mod
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So regarding paradoxes
The movie presents inversion as having a retroactive effect on past events. We know this because the movie follows events linearly from The Protagonist's perspective and (among several examples) we see him fight with his future inverted self the first time he goes through the airport art facility. Based on this we can assume that the "past" is being affected and rewritten by the inverted individuals moving through it.
However, the movie ends with Kat putting a bullet through her husband and killing him, an action that, based on the above logic, should have retroactive significant impact on all events shown in this movie.
Both of these things can't exist and be logically consistent. One is a case of time travel retroactively changing prior events, the other it seemingly has no impact. If Protagonist has to fight his future inverted self the first time he goes through the art facility, then Kat can't kill her husband in the past without it disrupting the events of the movie as they were shown.
However, the movie ends with Kat putting a bullet through her husband and killing him, an action that, based on the above logic, should have retroactive significant impact on all events shown in this movie.
Both of these things can't exist and be logically consistent. One is a case of time travel retroactively changing prior events, the other it seemingly has no impact. If Protagonist has to fight his future inverted self the first time he goes through the art facility, then Kat can't kill her husband in the past without it disrupting the events of the movie as they were shown.
Where do I pick up my honorary PhD?
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That's Sator from The Present, not Sator from Back Then [EDIT: I don't know when they are on the yacht off Vietnam. The same time Kat notes that he has incurable cancer, she says he won't be there] He goes back in time to hide in the place he was happiest to wait until the Algorithm is put into the vault so it can be with sealed into the chamber, with the same kind of phone that The Protagonist gave Kat. He knows that when he kills himself, he blows up the bomb that seals in the Algorithm for the Future to find. He taunts Kat with the silver capsule on the boat "something I got from the CIA". He was planning on killing himself regardless of what happened. The countdown was to when he dies and the bomb goes off. That is what the watch/pulseometer he wears throughout the movie is; his dead mans switch for the bomb in the hypercenter. All of this is already determined from the forward/3D/linear causality view of time; Neil knows it because he comes from the "future" and has reverse-entropied back into the "past" but is moving forward "red" into the future. If it was Sator from Back Then, then the future couldn't get their Algorithm and the movie wouldn't take place, people could go back in the past and change the future, etc. That's not the kind of universe the movie sets up.
Sadly, nowhere.
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kegkilla
The Big Mod
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Interesting. I will need to rewatch this again when I can download it and get a sound mix that isn't pure ass. Someone really needs to get on Nolan's ass about the god awful sound mixes in his movies. I read the comments on reddit and almost everyone had issues with it.
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From what I am reading, this mostly due to how the Dolby theaters perform. Give it a shot in a non-Dolby theater next time but I admit given how much theaters are piling on to get people out of their houses these days, you would think they would take the time to either optimize their sound systems or watch the movies prior to release to and then optimize themselves to ensure they won't have issues when customers see them.
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Jozu
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Its not just about complicated concepts that can theoretically be resolved by the viewer, it is the very concept of inversion itself that is the problem, or circumstance that drives everything.
The simplest way to explain entropy, is like the movie broke down to the most simple terms. You have a kitchen, and in there you have a kettle boiling water for some tea. Then you put something in the oven, turn on the faucet to wash off some vegetables, put bread in the toaster and started the blender. By the time your done that kitchens entropy has increased by a significant amount.
Thats basically it. Unpredictability. How can you get to the simplest point in reversed entropy? Increasing order. How this pertains to inverted humans interacting with non inverted humans is the crux of this entire concept. You are trying to relive moments in time in order to decrease entropy and "predict" favorable outcomes.
The simplest way to explain entropy, is like the movie broke down to the most simple terms. You have a kitchen, and in there you have a kettle boiling water for some tea. Then you put something in the oven, turn on the faucet to wash off some vegetables, put bread in the toaster and started the blender. By the time your done that kitchens entropy has increased by a significant amount.
Thats basically it. Unpredictability. How can you get to the simplest point in reversed entropy? Increasing order. How this pertains to inverted humans interacting with non inverted humans is the crux of this entire concept. You are trying to relive moments in time in order to decrease entropy and "predict" favorable outcomes.
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I thought I had a line on what you were trying to say but the more I read it, the less I grasp the point you are trying to make. The movie is much more about specific entropy for an object's particles and it's position in the flow of time, "pissing in the wind" as The Protagonist" calls it, or the discussions Neil has later on about the general flow of entropy/time, rather than some kind of general entropy of the universe, or the kitchen. No one in the movie is trying to "replay" or "relive" moments per se but rather accomplish tasks or prevent others from succeeding in goals. Everything that has happened has already happened, although no one I think realizes this until the end of the movie necessarily. The principle that I read this is based is somewhat defined here, in that its a Quantum model that allows for backwards-in-time causality:The Causally Symmetric Bohm Model
Jozu
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Your somewhat wrong.
Sator relived the highway sequence over and over, using the temporal pincer to ultimately achieve his goal, but the reason being, he was attempting to gain an advantage by understanding exactly when and how specific events unfold in order to have an edge. I do understand what you are saying about specific entropy and pissing in the wind, flow of time etc, but my point still stands. Ultimately, inversion boils down to how the inverted interact with the non inverted, and how those interactions can have an influence on the "global" timeline.
A big part of all of this too is the turnstiles. They kind of go overlooked but its a very convenient way to "get inverted".
Sator relived the highway sequence over and over, using the temporal pincer to ultimately achieve his goal, but the reason being, he was attempting to gain an advantage by understanding exactly when and how specific events unfold in order to have an edge. I do understand what you are saying about specific entropy and pissing in the wind, flow of time etc, but my point still stands. Ultimately, inversion boils down to how the inverted interact with the non inverted, and how those interactions can have an influence on the "global" timeline.
A big part of all of this too is the turnstiles. They kind of go overlooked but its a very convenient way to "get inverted".
Yeah, that's the expected mindfuck from Nolan with this movie. Nothing anyone does in the movie changes anything, it all just slots into place like clockwork. What makes it so impressive from a technical standpoint is that it doesn't feel like this at any point. Even though lots of people theoretically know what's happening in the future, everything they do still seems to make sense from their perspective in the current direction they are traveling.
Like with Kat, when she first describes the yacht scene, she mentions that he disappears off the boat while she is on-shore, and she sees another woman diving off the boat. As it turns out, the other woman was her, and he disappeared because she killed him and took him with her. Ironically, the idea that he was banging another woman while toying with her was part of what turned her against him.
Like with Kat, when she first describes the yacht scene, she mentions that he disappears off the boat while she is on-shore, and she sees another woman diving off the boat. As it turns out, the other woman was her, and he disappeared because she killed him and took him with her. Ironically, the idea that he was banging another woman while toying with her was part of what turned her against him.
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moonarchia
The Scientific Shitlord
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Not arguing, you clearly understood the movie, I was hungover and had trouble following a lot of it:
How did they go backwards through time? Was it bc they were inverted? Why didn’t they need oxygen when Kat killed her husband at the end? How did they uninvert themselves?
Was that robert Pattinson that was shot in the head at the end? If so, so he dies after they had their little goodbye at the end?
In the inverted/normal action sequences, the people were never really running backwards right? That was just the perspective from normal time?
What was happening when Sator was interrogating The Protagonist by threatening to shoot Kat in the room with the inverted turn stile thing?
What was the whole plot with the painting about?
Also, what was the whole opening sequence about? There was an inverted round in the opera right? Who were they saving? Is that why he asked “do you like opera” to the bad guy?
Was Robert Pattison Kat's son grown up?
When Protaganist is learning about Tenet, the bullets are shot in the stone, and he sucks them back up bc they are inverted. Didn't someone shoot them initially into the stone? So you could shoot them, then unshoot them??
Also, the scene on the boat where Kat is sitting, and you see the pole behind her move right to left and back multiple times, why was it so rapidly reversing time?
How did they go backwards through time? Was it bc they were inverted? Why didn’t they need oxygen when Kat killed her husband at the end? How did they uninvert themselves?
Was that robert Pattinson that was shot in the head at the end? If so, so he dies after they had their little goodbye at the end?
In the inverted/normal action sequences, the people were never really running backwards right? That was just the perspective from normal time?
What was happening when Sator was interrogating The Protagonist by threatening to shoot Kat in the room with the inverted turn stile thing?
What was the whole plot with the painting about?
Also, what was the whole opening sequence about? There was an inverted round in the opera right? Who were they saving? Is that why he asked “do you like opera” to the bad guy?
Was Robert Pattison Kat's son grown up?
When Protaganist is learning about Tenet, the bullets are shot in the stone, and he sucks them back up bc they are inverted. Didn't someone shoot them initially into the stone? So you could shoot them, then unshoot them??
Also, the scene on the boat where Kat is sitting, and you see the pole behind her move right to left and back multiple times, why was it so rapidly reversing time?
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Intrinsic
Person of Whiteness
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My pedestrian answers to your questions based on my understanding of what I watched...
Yeah I'm not sure either. Didn't hate him. Protag was just a flat character that kind of moved from A > B and did stuff. Not sure he was offered a huge range of emotion to play with. I liked the character enough. Maybe he can. Would need to see more.
Yeah I'm not sure either. Didn't hate him. Protag was just a flat character that kind of moved from A > B and did stuff. Not sure he was offered a huge range of emotion to play with. I liked the character enough. Maybe he can. Would need to see more.
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