Hey Guys, I'm back from my break, and I hope you enjoyed today's video! I'm currently working on two videos right now. One on Cyberpunk 2077, I'm doing something extra special for that, and the other is on Wonder Woman 1984, what is quite possibly the worst superhero movie ever made. I hate that film. I just hate it. I still don't know if I want to make a proper video essay on it, or just a full on rant. It makes batman v superman look like a 9/10 masterpiece. If you want to chat with me and the rest of the community, feel free to join my discord server. I am very active on it, and if you want to discuss films or creative writing, it's the place for you! My discord: discord.com/invite/aJpYPQX All the best, - Henry
You are speaking as if he is the greatest director of all time. His entire filmography will not stand a second against Apocalypse Now which is just one work of Francis Ford Coppola. Stop treating him as if he is Stanley Kubrick.
@@karangupta1825only people i put above him prolly tarantino and edgar wright? who else can u recommend has a vast array of successful movies? watch u say micheal bay
I actually really like John David Washington's character. He doesn't have a heroes journey character arc like many other characters in movies but he definitely evolved throughout the story. He starts as a government agent then evolves into a man fighting for something beyond a nations interests. By the end of the film he becomes the Protagonist, founder of Tenet. The final scene in the car with Priya shows what he becomes and the new demeanor and attitude he has toward his duty. I enjoy his character and I didn't even realize people would have a problem with him until I watched reviews and videos like this. I have really enjoyed this movie for the action packed adventure that it is. I really like the fast moving plot. Exposition can get really boring for me, Adhd I guess, so this is a really unique story that keeps me interested throughout. Its not a perfect movie but I have come to love it for what it is.
I just feel like the movie really needs a follow-up to be a complete, realized masterpiece. We don't know how the Tenet got made. We don't know for sure why the future wants to destroy the past, and we don't know how The Protagonist formed an attachment with Neil.
So Tenet is the good kind of failure because it’s an experiment that explores the limits of cinema. Which is why we can respect Nolan’s failures more than Disney’s
Disney's movies are not failure, because they don't even try anymore. If you don't try, you can't fail. They don't want to make good stories/ movies, they just want to make money. And they are actually making money, so, in a way, one may say that they are succeeding.
The fact that you don't know what's happening in the opening scene is what drew me in. It's one of my favorite scenes in the movie. I think it was intentionally vague and confusing
Yeah, I don't agree that there always needs to be a character to emphasize with or a smooth introduction. The high number of questions can be engaging on its own and with such an outstanding cinematography it just makes a really great scene. I think what really made Tenet under-deliver on this promise is that all answers are given in big portions( right after the opening scene and at the end). And even more than that, the answers are just really simple. In the end, we have a promise of something more confusing than "Inception", but it turns out to be just a very fast-paced action movie with time-traveling shenanigans.
I enjoyed Tenet as a pure sensory experience, because that's what it is. It's action distilled to its purest form, I'm glad I got to see it in IMAX because it hit hard.
That really is the perfect descroption. Buckle up and jump in to the eyes of the protagonist. It's gonna be a hell of a ride. Don't try to understand, feel it.
This video made me look at tenet in a whole different light. Tenet was confusing but at least it wasn't stale. Hollywood needs more movies like this. I'm seeing this movie again.
Enjoyed this analysis a lot. It's funny that hearing these shortcomings put to words in a optimistic context can make the film better to me on another viewing lol. The title "Tenet" had me thinking before even watching that it''d benefit from a rewatch, and having seen this now, I think that rings very true.
Here’s the interesting thing. I think The Protagonist isn’t supposed to have developed character yet at that point in the story. I think it’s a bold choice and I still enjoyed the film; completely engrossed by the plot and by what isn’t shown in the story. Robert Pattinson did a superb job leaving the relationship with the Protagonist to where you know there’s more... I connected with it but I see why others don’t.
@@norpriest521 like a friend that you knew along ago in grad school where you were best friends but you guys separated but then after years later when you two see each other as adults, he remembers you but you don't remember him and all the good time you guys had.
The Protagonist is introduced as though we already knew him, he doesn't need to develop further because the story doesn't revolve around his character, but the mission.
Yes.... the more I watch this the more I see real characters/people.... I didn't like it first time. But couldn't get it out of my head and the more I watch it the more it reveals. Just awesome. Great observations:)
The rare time when the movie is shallow yet well-made people are upset. Yet when you have "deep" and bad or shallow and bad people will defend it too often than now.
"If that most a written confession that Nolan chose to make his character a blank state" - Nolan has actually confirmed this in an interview, he mentions stripping back the characters in Dunkirk so it wouldn't feel like once character was more important to the story than the other, and once he noticed audiences and critics were still able to empathise with the characters despite them having little identity, he became curious if he could do this with a fictional story.
I dunno, I really didn't see Tenet as a failure. As a science lover, I found the concept of inverted entropy fascinating. It never crossed my mind that the characters were two-dimensional or blank slates. Maybe it's because I enjoy puzzles and spy thrillers, but I loved being confused by the opening. Having the characters so confident in what they were doing made it seem like figuring out what was going on was a solvable puzzle. Even when I left the theater having not heard about 40% of the dialogue and not really understanding many of the plot points in the movie, I didn't care. Having seen it twice since, I still don't fully grasp it, but I want to. I really loved everything about the movie, and returning to it seeking answers has been enjoyable each time.
I know this is coming a year after your comment, but I want to respond. Everyone I've heard from who've watched it in theaters said they had trouble hearing what characters were saying, and that they had trouble following a lot of what was happening.. I first watched it through Amazon, so I had subtitles available to help with that. I think it makes a huge difference, because I was able to roughly follow most of what was going on in the first watch through, and pieced together much of what I didn't understand in the second watch through. Anyway, I cosign your opinion of the movie. As someone who loves time travel plots that are well done, I took to Tenet as a puzzle right away and was patiently paying attention to what was happening so I could tally it together to try to make sense of things. I enjoyed it a lot.
Honestly I liked the fact that the characters didn’t have much depth. It made the story feel a lot more mechanical, predetermined, which I think fits the “timetravel” aspect. I absolutely understand those who want characters to connect to, but I really enjoyed the impersonal perspective even if I can’t fully explain why
Exactly. I don't think we are supposed to empathize with either underworld or secret agents. Their goals are just their missions. We don't have to watch useless drama in everything.
I though Neil was actually an amazing character. Watching it a second time. I also think Tenet was special because it is one of the few movies that gets better each and every time you watch it. It’s incredible. Everything about it was for me.
I think the soundscape of Tenet is one heck of a masterfully crafted masterpiece. It's 100% original. It is so iconic that not a single movie has done anywhere similar to that type of uniqueness.
I think the sound was fuckawful. Couldnt hear a single word and I didn't watch the movie with subs either. It's like Nolan only made key parts intelligible, but let everyone mumble the rest of the lines. Awesome movie, but the sound was awful.
@@strebicux6174 I don’t know, maybe they just didn’t specialize it enough for certain audio setups. I thought the mixing was perfect in my setup, but it may be bad in other peoples audio setups
@@GoogleAccount-tg9lp it was mixed solely for movie theaters, but because of covid most people only saw it at home. But I agree the issue is way overexaggerated
This is my favorite film. Already watched it four times, and I love how unique, fast, stylized, full of depth and fun it is. You can look at this film thoroughly and still find a great movie in it. I don't even consider it a failure.
@@beansonawaterslide3198 It's quite hollow and doesn't hold up on multiple viewings at all. Big miss from Nolan, and it's not good for film overall as the studios are always less willing to take chances with every failure.
@@tonycarpaccio9550 I enjoyed it more the second time around, but the script and concept revealed a lot of flaws. Still, I noticed some new details and was more moved by the emotional plot threads with Kat and Neil, and it’s the kind of film I can watch again and again without getting tired of it.
You’re all missing the most salient point: Nolan is a Minimalist. Character is action, so backstory is superfluous. We see the characters make decisions, so we know who they are in the only way that matters in film. Show, don’t tell. I don’t think Tenet is as emotionally rich as Dunkirk, but Nolan tends to be emotionally cold in his films, like Kubrick before him. And if you compare Tenet to a Mission Impossible film, is there honestly more character development of the protagonist in Ethan Hunt’s case? Something about a girl he likes, then crazy stunts to save the world, only Tenet has time contortions Which would make The Doctor blush.
Tom Cruise has an interesting charisma. He shows the personality of the character at the beginning: he cares about his teammates, he's methodical, he adapts, he thinks ahead. In each action scene, there are hints about his personality and feelings. Tom Cruise (and the script) shows it in a subtle way but still shows it. The protagonist in Tenet in comparison, seems like a clean slate, driven by the plot, much like The Dude in The Big Lebowski.
@@BadGuySVK I agree Cruise has incredible charisma. Personally, I thought JDW had quite a compelling charisma as well, although less energetic than Cruise's. But let's be real. You're not going to Mission Impossible films because you're compelled by Tom Cruise's *character,* (whose name I've forgotten). Yes, there is more of an ensemble dynamic in MI films 3-6, but if it was just the characters, and no action set pieces, you wouldn't bother going to see MI:7. Are you familiar with the idea that a complex design requires simple elements to read properly? The structure to Tenet is the point of the film, so it would work against the core of the film to have highly detailed characters. Honestly, I think the Mission Impossible films are similar, except that the world ending plots never matter beyond their usefulness in providing death-defying stunts for Cruise to perform. None of which is a dig--I really think they're great films, and the directors have crafted them to highlight the action. But they're not meant to be character studies, any more than they're meant to ponder the meaning of life. It's odd to me that you would classify The Dude as a clean slate. He's got a lot of character, it's just that a substantial part of his character is to be extremely passive in the plot.
@@MackerelSkyLtd Oh yeah, The Dude has developed character, I meant to make just the parallel that he's driven by the plot, he's passive. The clean slate bit was in contrast with Tom Cruise's character. Sure, we don't go watch MI movies for his character, but if we are talking about characters, I think that Ethan Hunt is more developed and therefore more relatable to the audience. Ethan feels more like a real person. JDW feels like an actor following a script. But that's just my impression, you can have a different one.
I don’t see Nolan as cold at all. I find his movies quite emotional, I actually find myself welling up at the end of Inception whenever Cobb’s kids turn around to look at him.
"Peace has cost you your strength, victory has defeated you" - Bane, the dark knight rises Nolan knows exactly where true failure comes from, that's literally the point of that entire film, learning to never be complacent and throw yourself into a pit to see if you can climb back up, because when you reach the top you'll realise why you needed to do it, and if you don't throw yourself into a pit for too long, if you live in the luxury and endless peace of your own success without needing to try anymore, someone else will instead, when you least expect it, and you'll wish you had made your own mistake to fix, instead of someone else coming along and exploiting your weakness.
I taught Tenet had one of the most interesting concepts for an action movie I've ever seen (at least for as long as I can remember). While it's true that Tenet did not have the emotional throughline other great movies have, the rocksolid pace kept me hooked all the way through and felt like a glorious, time-travelling, mind fucking, rollercoaster ride. Conceptually, I actually like it that Nolan doesn't feel the need to explore his characters all of the time, compared to the concept of the movie itself. Dunkirk and Tenet spring to mind here
Yeah, everyone praises Dunkirk meanwhile the characters have like five lines total. Don’t get me wrong I love it, but that movie puts the event, the concept, the plot, over character. Tenet is no different in that regard.
The thing that actually drew me in about JDW’s character was during the opera house scene when it’s clear that the team has achieved their objective and they state that saving the people from the bombs is “not their mission” and JDW says, “it’s mine now.” It was his “save the cat” moment and so later when it seems that he is manipulating Kat (intentional?) just to get close to Sator I knew he was going to do everything he could to save her too. Considering she becomes key to the success of the end was great storytelling in my opinion.
I absolutely agree to and I, too, was more astounded, astonished, impressed and moved by Inception. But in my opinion Nolan is just taking another approach in Tenet: While in Inception (and Interstellar) he uses his strong characters and their compelling arcs not only as the emotional string but also to develop his themes about dreams, demons of the past, love, etc., in Tenet his characters (while having some core motivations, relationships or characterstics) are all part of the greater concept. They are essential parts of the plot. Therefore, the plot (in Inception and Interstellar in Service of the Story that develops or reveals the themes) becomes the story, becomes the heart of the movie. Nolan tells us about the failures of linear thinking and the connections between past, present and future through his great concept. As it is excellently explained in the video, he sacrifices the emotional String for the greater vision/experiment. Nolan truly is a modern master of filmmaking.
I remember 10 years ago people would say that Inception didn't manage to make you connect emotionally with the characters. Who knows what we'll say about Tenet 10 years down the line, when we have been able to properly digest it.
Funny thing...i felt more sad after watching tenet than inception!! A movie doesn't actually require more facial expressions to be emotional... Infact i felt least emotional in interstellar which had Matthew crying in there....funny eh?
I love how this movie just all comes together in the second half From the first time protagonist inverts so many scenes from the earlier parts come together Straight away the car chase gets explained And slowly over the course of the second airplane scene it all starts making sense essentially, the second half explains the first half
As in Memento, it's when the audience are looking down on the maze and are two steps ahead of the main character things will get frustrating.. Nolan has said this a million times over
The protagonist definitely was more aware of what's happening than I was. But this is how I think it ideally should have been. I think mainly because the fast pacing I never knew what they were doing when they should have only made certain aspects confusing.
@@npcimknot958 upon a rewatch I realized there is actually alot more to the protagonist than one would initially expect. Every decision he makes in the prologue tells us something about his character that informs how he acts going forward. It's interesting to approach the rewatch this way.
TBH I didn't notice the lack of character development, I was just so engrossed in the plot and trying to figure it out. I have watched this movie 7 times. I love it so much, and the fact that it took me so long to fully understand all the little details and how each scene fit together, for me that was thoroughly enjoyable. This is at least in my top 5 favorite movies.
Tenet is the emotional and writing technical opposites of interstellar in so many ways its mind boggling. They only meet in the middle when it comes to the way you need to feel concepts vs thinking about them. Hes one of the true artists left in any genre True art
Totally agree. Tenet forces you to think and have the "ah ha" moments instead of having an emotional response. IMO, Inception did such an amazing job in giving us both. It slowly revealed the concept of Inception and then gave us an emotional response of what it could do (in the case of Dom and Mal). That being said, I actually really enjoyed Tenet because of concept driven it was.
2001: A Space Odyssey doesn't really have compelling 3 dimensional characters, but it still stands as one of the best movies ever made. So, you can make a great movie without the need of complex characters. I don't know if this was the intended discussion, but it is an interesting one.
Yeah, but 2001 is possibly the greatest film ever made, this is a mediocre mess, so in the lack of character arcs I'll take the well made film over this, the characters were never the problem, the writing is the problem, the editing is the problem, that fucking headache of a score is the problem; you can say the same exact thing about apocalypse now, characters can fit a different role than the ones accounted for by conventional dramaturgy, yet appcalypse now is another masterpiece, this isn't
@@pijlenboog23 maybe i don't, what i do know however is that fucking beating my brain with beats for 45 minutes straight is a shitty way to put music to film, interstellar's score is much better, yet the editing makes it feel obnoxious, nolan often uses the score to hijack your brain instead of complementing a scene, "hey you know this scene is supposed to be intense right? Well how about hans lays over the piano keys for the next ten minutes straight uninterrupted just to make sure you got how intense it's supposed to feel", yeah the score worked well in dunkirk, here it's pretty crap, ad if it's a well written piece of music which i won't argue against even though it's tonally monotone as fuck, it's three different tones of "intense, more intense and emotional for that one scene", i'll still argue that it's completely uncompelling in how it's used,
I thought the Tenet opening was not confusing at all. The Protagonist is a CIA spy rescuing another spy amidst a "fake" Opera Siege. He knew the Siege was fake to catch the spy but saved the civilians anyway.
It's no more confusing than the beginning of any bond movie. It is a pretty typical spying heist sort of thing until the inverted bullet. And it's also done largely visually
@@woody40000 yeah I always figured that’s how spy movies started so it didn’t take me long to realize he was some form of an agent. It’s actually really important that he’s an agent because it shows how, even with all his resources and contacts, he’s woefully out of his depth for the level of insanity that’s he’s about to uncover.
I watched it first without subtitles and a second time with them. While I had correctly guessed what happened the first time, I was never 100% sure because half the lines were inaudible at my cinema. Many people online had this experience as well. I get that Nolan likes his "Impressionist" audio mixing where you're not supposed to hear every word, but that doesn't work with a film about high concepts where every scene and piece of information matters to the story. It sends mixed signals to the audience, literally.
Tenet combines the two kinds of openings you spoke about. It gives us a mystery to solve like MIB, and it has a protagonist who knows what's going on while the audience don't, like Inception. There are also bits in the opening that the protagonist DOESN'T understand, like us. The opening provides a mystery, a hook, that makes the audience curious, and it fulfills that promise by solving the mystery by the end of the film. It just doesn't provide instant gratification of explanation during or right after the sequence, instead rewarding you for following along. Which was perfectly fine imo.
@@Davide_LP Why would he need to take one? Memento, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, and Interstellar all have great stories with mostly well written scripts, Dunkirk and Tenet are Nolan trying to break the mold and experiment with story telling conventions to see what works and what doesn't.
@@Deathlygunn I don't agree. Tenet is not a try, that was bound to fail, to brake the rules about story telling. Clearly the guy of the channel don't know much about cinema. There are lots of examples where this kind of narration (without a strongly characterized character) is used... the most obvious are Kitano's movie. I personally don't like Nolan's movies, and I really don't think that the previous movies were much better. Furthermore Nolan is not experimenting, he uses for litteraly every film the same tricks. P.S. I like the batman trilogy
He said he'd like to try it in the future. But he also admits it'd be difficult to do it really well. But I think his obsession with time might do REALLY well with creating a horror movie that perfectly incorporates the feeling of what I'd call "sudden terror". Have you guys watched Memento? If not, just skip this paragraph real quick: Remember when he's been talking on the phone with someone for a while and then he peels off a bandage from his arm, on which he has tattooed "NEVER ANSWER THE PHONE"? Yeah, that moment gave me fucking goosebumps for several minutes. It's that sudden "oh shit" moment, but not the apathetic or energetic kind of "oh shit", but rather the scared one. I've also seen people play Phasmophobia and only afterwards do the players who are still alive get to know how incredibly close they actually were to dying, since the dead players can see the ghost doing its thing. So essentially, you would have never known how close you were to death until someone tells you afterwards, and that instantly gives you the chills (you'd have to experience it, not just read it here). I honestly believe that Nolan's love for using time as an element in his movies could perfectly create such moments in a horror movie.
@@tictacmaniac7415 He did say that? hopes up!!! I agree that using time in a horror movie like he does would be fucking awesome But honestly I'ld be thrilled with whatever he comes up cuz horror is a genre that have so few really good movies these days, I don't think there has been a single horror movie with a rating of more than 7.7 on imdb in the last 20 years. And that I'm sure he could pull of
I cry in the end everytime of how amazing it is to have a director like Nolan to feed us true cinema lovers with stuff like this. He never lets down. Literally never. Only on an inverted future maybe.
Honestly... The only character I cared about is Robert Pattinson's Neil character.... Because he's fun to watch and has some character and not a blank slate maybe!!
I agree. I watched Tenet a second time and that was the best decision, because I was more invested the second time, because I knew about the connection between Neil and the Protagonist. It made me care more about the story and so i enjoyed it a lot more.
Couldnt tell you why but John David Washington’s acting almost always caught my attention in this movie. Maybe it’s just his voice or his face but I loved him in this more than anyone else
Tenet is about the experience and story. I don’t see why people care about character so much in this movie. People are too afraid to change what they are used to. Watch in a couple years this movie will be iconic.
@@berniet1215 what is the story though; a dude tries to stop people from the future neither we nor he ever see from blowing up the present. It’s b-movie stuff that could have been fun if it wasn’t played so seriously, but the movie tries to have its cake and eat it by having a nonsensical plot and one-dimensional characters with the tone of fkin Melancholia
I'd kinda argue that the side characters were the emotion of the movie and I'd say they were done amazingly. I see the protagonist as a type of character that has a flat character arc, he changes and affects the characters around him, making us love the side characters more and by loving them, we feel for the protagonist because they feel for him. Specifically Robert Pattinson's character and the future relationship he alludes to.
About this story, I somewhat find relevancy to Dunkirk. It's an excerpt from all the happenings, where the actors in focus play a specific role of expression/action. I feel the intention to not develop any character arc is to emphasize on the happening itself, which is a running theme in all of Nolan's masterpieces. Great video!
Damn I had a thought a lot like the title after I saw this. The movie could have been better, but I’m so glad to see somebody come up with a genuinely unique idea and make an effort to translate it to the screen. The big sequels, remakes, adaptations, etc can be cool, but after a while many get tired of seeing the same properties following the same formula
This is EXACTLY what I was thinking when I watched Filmento’s video. “Like yeah, yeah, the characters are bad, but the question is *why*” And that’s the thing too, all the side characters are properly “sized”, one might say. Neil, Sator and Kat are excellent, with Kat carrying the emotional core of the movie by dint of Protagonist not having anything along those lines.
but the script is kinda bad too :S so yeah, why indeed... For example, why does the protagonist try to shoot himself? (2:11). And, aren't the guys from the future the good guys? How does people survive for days inverted if they can't interact with the world? How do they travel around recruiting people without anyone freaking out and locking them up to study them?
@@Yarblocosifilitico oh right! I didn’t think of how inverted people are going to eat food? Do they pack inverted food ahead? Inverted pooping to get nutrients?
@@pokguys16 yeah my guess is the later because of the comedy it brings. Peeing through the mouth into the bottle and drinking through the arse from the toilet xD I think it's clear Nolan has no answer how things would work (or knew it would be ridiculous) when he says "don't try to understand it, just feel it", through the random, irrelevant scientist who appears to not really explain the rules while making it seem like she was explaining them.
As a person who has lived for a long time in Tallinn, I can easily say that watching this and recognizing the locations and hearing it being directly mentioned plus the insane visuals was probably the most enjoyable and awesome moviegoing experience I've ever had.
Exactly, it feels almost bizarre to see this small country/city in an international film. Especially because it’s basically never happened before. Going to see the movie along with the special message at the start (etc) felt really unique because of that.
This.....almost feels like that urban legend about taking the SAT, that if you fail it so completely, that means you did it on purpose and are therefore a genius! Something like that.
NO, its like there are 50 multiple choice questions.. and answering each question wrong deliberately even though you know the answer for each question.. In a way that is also brilliant 😆 .. because even a random layman can answer 5 questions right just by luck… a pure genius , lets say James Cameroon gets 95% correct in the test.. Nolan deliberately answered each question wrong 😛
This movie is perfect for 2020. It’s a movie people who find themselves going into a world where time has lost all meaning and people have to wear masks to survive when outside in this world.
I watched this last night with my dad, and I’d seen it once before. I prefaced the film by saying “the film doesn’t make sense the first time through but it’s not meant to until later, so don’t try to work it out as it’s happening” and it really helped. I explained that the first time I was trying so hard to work out what was going on, that come the prestige of the reveal, I realised I hadn’t been paying attention to the details or remembering parts so that I could retrospectively add things up. The second watch was so much more enjoyable for me as I got to notice the details which all mattered, and it was amazing.
Tenet became my second favorite Nolan film, behind Inception. I don't think he was necessarily trying to handicap himself with John David Washington's character, instead I think he was trying to fully lean into the concept and physics of the movie. The blank slate protagonist helps to allow the audience to place themselves in the movie along with the peripheral characters. There may not be an arc to the protagonist, but there's a lot going on with his character development throughout the movie!
"Can you tell a story where the protagonist is just the playable character from skyrim and still have a gripping story?" I mean, Hardcore Henry did it...
In Tenet, the protagonist and the main villain is not the hero or the person we should care about, at least initially. The two people *I* cared about are Kat and Neil. When at the end of the movie I understood that Neil sacrificed himself in cold blood to save the world, and when Kat could not help herself but show her abuser that he had failed before she kills him, these were great, emotional moments. Then something else happened. It turns out that Neil and Kat are likely related, and the Protagonist who is completely clueless throughout the movie is actually the main orchestrator of the whole narrative, I found that amazing. I also began to understand the motivations of the villain and his own demons. It turn out that neither the Protagonist nor the Villain are one-dimensional characters. They have dimension, but they don't appear linearly through the film. A single viewing was not enough to get all this for me. The beauty of Tenet is that it can be watched and watched and watched again, and the intricacies of the plot and character development slowly unveil, layer by layer. Initially, at first viewing, I was not impressed by Tenet. Now, after about 3 viewings, I think it's a masterpiece.
honestly given the expository nature of tenet and the many many many classroom-esque scenes in it I think it is artistically spot on what it wants to be. Watch in the typical way, such its a bad film, but when you understand that the purpose of cinema is to learn about a world and get lost in it he very much hit that mark in a new way. With the film being directly about moving backwards in time and the end being a beginning and vice versa it really shows that the best way to understand the film is after two watches and from there you can begin to see the arcs of the film since the arcs themselves transcend the platform of typical cinema. In this way Nolan inspired thousands of videos on youtube to come up trying to understand this meta story arc where you can't just watch the film you have to understand the film, you have to look at it from a new perspective. You have to watch it forwards, you have to watch it backwards, you have to make hypotheses about the missing parts of the film given by the exposition already in the film. There you force the audience to enjoy the film thoroughly or lose those who don't have the will to understand it, and even those people can then see what the forced audience saw when videos like these or the syncronized videos or reverse videos. Ultimately Nolan made the ultimate movie for our time. One that allows the audience to imagine, to be creative of the arc that happened when young neil actually met the protagonist, how neil came back in time to meet the young protagonist. Moreover the name "protagonist" comes off not as a simply "blank slate" but as a codename for a timeline that needed to be placed correctly by the organization that man would go on to create. It seems very plainly that way if we understand Max as the last(or 'past') Neil. I think theres a lot to tenet that really goes out of its way to be fundamentally amazing.
Everyone could always have done better. If everything is perfect, nothing is perfect. Also criticizing a movie because you didn’t enjoy it for some reason is always legit because it’s art and art is subjective.
@@evanwakelin7944 But yet that would still be subjective. You’re grounding that off on your own supposed merit which in itself can never be truly objective when it comes to opinions. No ones saying it’s wrong but we’re all welcome to digest it in whatever way we want
One of the things that seems very strange until you get to the end is that Protagonist's story we see is at the beginning and Neil's is at the end. Neil cares because he already has the relationship.
It's pretty impressive how you can explain so accurately that weird emotion of loving/not loving this movie. It's something that kept me thinking for a long time after watching the movie but, until now, i hadn't found an accurate answer that pleased me. Great work!!
Honestly, the weakest part of the movie for me was when Nolan tried to give John David Washington's character some emotional motivation with Elizabeth Debicki's character. I thought her character was interesting and had a good place in the story, but I didn't care for the romance between the two because I was enjoying the Protagonist just being a CIA agent adjusting to the world of inversion, learning about it and becoming comfortable with it. I saw it more as a spy thriller where the characters are doing their job, rather than a movie where the characters need to grow and undergo a change. Then again, I'm usually more interested in the concepts and world of a movie rather than the characters, so it's probably just me.
I don't think he tried to create a romance situation between them, I think the Protagonist felt responsible for Kat because she dragged her into all of this just to get to Sator and it went too far
The movie kinda lost me when the Protagonist took the threat against Kat’s life seriously (on the highway) when she’d already fulfilled her function in his mission. This guy is a professional killer and was willing to kill himself for the sake of the mission yet he’s suddenly white knighting for this source that he doesn’t even know rather than focusing on saving life on Earth - it undercuts any sense of reality in both his character and the fictional world as a whole, it becomes more a wish fulfilment story than a thriller.
@@flyondonnie9578 I think there was a great character building moment at the beginning of the film during the opera house scene where after he completed the mission, he went back in to get rid of the bombs. It showed that once the mission is complete, he'll risk his life to save innocent people. So it makes sense that he would want to save her, but he should be putting the mission first, then try to save her.
In my view, the protagonist does have a character arc, which is going from “I’m the guy you send to kill, not a thinker” (paraphrased) to being the future head of Tenet, someone saving the future through influencing the past. A mastermind.
Your comment about Nolan’s making aspects of the film _deliberately_ bad is spot on I think, and there’s evidence backing this up. In the blu-ray special features, Nolan said that he wanted to make an antagonist so evil that he has no redeeming qualities at all. Branagh’s character has all the clichés of a super-villain: rich, violent (even towards his own men), abusive; he also wants to end the world and is a Russian. In contrast, Nolan has made memorable villains before (the Joker being the obvious example), and he has also made compelling films without a clear-cut villain role - “The Prestige” and “Inception” come to mind. “Tenet’s” terrible characters obviously don’t come from Nolan’s lack of skill in writing. I don’t know why Nolan does this though, as it doesn’t do “Tenet” any favors. The film is saved by Nolan’s increasing adroitness in making clever and physically real action sequences. With scenes like the inverted hallway fight, the truck heist, and the plane crash, it almost doesn’t matter that the characters are so emotionally thin. P.S. Nolan’s best film is still “Dunkirk” for me. Even with stripped-down storytelling aspects, that film still manage to have emotionally resonant characters. It’s a rare moment where Nolan opted for less and made the film richer for it.
I think it was so clear cut, the characters, to the point of being bland was because the story wasn't about the characters. The story was about determinism and consequence, and the 'Protagonist''s place in those consequences. Furthermore there a message about lacking control, as the Protagonist is put on goose chase by himself, or so he thinks, to then force himself to set up TENET to force him to save the world. His future self forces his past in a cycle of deterministic purgatory, with his failure possibly being the end of the world.
What I'll never understand about Tenet is why Nolan decided to not give any character in the movie. Well, I do know why- I obviously watched the video, but I don't know why Nolan wasted the opportunity for a masterpiece. It's not every day that someone comes up with such a complex and intriguing concept, and I believe that Nolan would definitely been able to make compelling characters. Why not save his lesson on a "smaller" project? I heard rumors that he might do a horror movie next, and I think that that would be a good opportunity for him to teach his lesson to the next generation. Maybe Nolan couldn't find a way to make compelling characters in such a crazy plot without directly copying Inception, which wouldn't be surprising, and therefore decided to "sacrifice" this movie to teach a lesson.
Agree. I also think that he intentionally made some things about the film super trope and cliche to give a very clear and understandable context almost like a safety blanket, so that he could really push what was happening with the reverse entropy element and still serve it in a format that people could understand. I think having characters that were too complex and developed could distract from the main focus of the film, but to me he still told a lot about the character via very subtle things like how they run, or with their face acting.
@@hrrrmit9187 yeah yeah it’s not like interstellar or inception where the “action” and non character driven elements takes a back seat, it’s about as subdued in terms of character and writing that way as Dunkirk. You make a good point. Trying to do so many things at once while handling such an ambitious concept would’ve been too much too. Honestly when you look at Bond films and M: I they never groundbreaking in those aspects too, but because they expected a more art-y film from Nolan, it didn’t live up to expectations. This is his most sterile and stubborn movie, but it’s nevertheless a lot of fun to watch.
soft science, noun. Any of the specialized fields or disciplines, as psychology, sociology, anthropology, or political science, that interpret human behavior, institutions, society, etc., on the basis of scientific investigations for which it may be difficult to establish strictly measurable criteria.
Honestly, your rewrite was the only thing that made the opening scene make sense lol. Love Nolan but this movie was hard to grasp. I give him credit for the concept though as a film goer that wants to see new and fresh ideas.
It's clear what the opening wanted the viewer to do, go with the flow. Because viewers are so used to everything explained to them this opening is confusing for those.
@@Yarblocosifilitico If we look closely at the fight from the inverted protagonist's perspective, we can see that he intentionally misses, causing the regular protagonist to dodge, moving the fight towards the turnstile. He does this because he wants to be close enough to the turnstile so he can escape through it. We know this, because we can see him checking the proofing window.
This is the best! I was struggling to explain to myself why I enjoyed TENET so much without caring about anybody in it. It's more like a puzzle than a story and left me unsatisfied but not feeling cheated. Your essay clarified. Thank you.
"Tenet's opening is Christopher Nolan's worst opening…" is like talking about a Pixar movie's worst heart-felt moment; or John Williams' worst score. Even the worst-of-breed is still better than 95% of other movies.
tbh it's one of my favorite movie openings and i can credit that to seeing it first in theaters, got lucky being the only person in the entire room thanks to covid, now all that's on my mind is "I NEED A SUBWOOFER"
Golden Age science fiction spent decades giving us stories without characters. I often complain that youtube story reviewers are unreflectively narrow minded when it comes to character arcs, so I really appreciated this video for being very up front about it. You do you, man.
@@TheCloserLook ah, that explains it. Thank you for your response. But I have to say, in a f*cked up way I kinda enjoyed the destruction of my eardrums during this movie. I mean, like you said, it was fast paced and you had to pay attention at all times, and the loudness kinda added to the overall experience. I can't really explain it, but it was fitting. You couldn't even hear the thoughts in your head and maybe you weren't supposed to :D
This video was just amazing, I’m extremely glad that someone finally pointed out how we should appreciate experimentations in big films, hats off to a Christopher Nolan!
Given that the future players of tenet are forced to come back and attempt to kill their past because the past and present of humankind have doomed the future this apathetic choice of character attachment seems deliberate and fitting to me. While the individual is the vessel to carry out actions it's simply not about them but rather whether we, as a global team, can pull through and prevent ultimate doom. As you said in your analysis (23:33) you don't care about the hero's cause because you built no personal attachment to their struggle, which is the exact same situation we are currently in with global warming and depriving future generations of their livability. As the majority of people aren't affected on a personal level most people behave towards climate change the same way we consume this movie, passively rooting for the good guys because we know we should while just being handed through one important marker after another at breakneck speed towards a final conclusion we know is coming. In the context of climate change, the bland protagonist makes perfect sense as there is no point in growth based on learning or development as we already know all there is to know about the situation we try to prevent (some characters in the movie quite literally know) and it's not about the attachment or how invested you are but whether people do the right thing at the right time hoping everyone else does as well.
"What's happened, happened. Which is an expression of fate in the mechanics of the world. It's not an excuse to do nothing." This quote totally fits in the premise of sudden and progressive climate change that most of us are only non-participant witnesses while some of us struggled to maintain ecological balance. The nonparticipating witnesses or characters in the movie are the civilians in the background; witnessing the individuals who have the personal responsibility to act against an impending doom. This movie has multiple layers of thought provoking concepts that this UA-camr had failed to unravel and grasp. We cannot entirely blame him because his perceptive comprehension to this movie is grounded in the premise of a typical movie with emotional drama intentionally engineered into the story itself. Tenet isn't specifically designed to evoke emotional moments unlike Inception and that's why the man scrutinizing the movie in this video judged Tenet with the wrong impression while using the preconceived tropes of other genres not knowing that Tenet itself belongs to completely another league worthy to be reviewed in its own category.
I resonated so much with this write up that while reading this Hans Zimmer’s “Time” played in my head, specifically the guitar part. I loved the soundtrack to Tenet but it could borrow a lot in terms of music from Inception.
Point one: Yes, thinking back to movies that have pretty simple protagonists, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Raid: Redemption, and Hardcore Henry all have plot/action moving at a breakneck pace. Point two: I think another important thing is if you have your audience asking questions, then the answer to those questions should be interesting. Compare the confusion that Tenet has to the cold open of the pilot of Breaking Bad, your confusion as to why a man in his underwear is driving an RV with a unconscious/dead body in the back is very much intentional, and has all your curiosity, therefore attention. While Tenet is just disorienting in a very uninteresting way. Point three: Yeah, I don't have much to add, that's pretty much perfect.
point one: there is a difference between simple protagonists and protagonists with no character. Mad Max: Fury Road had good characters with an actual character development and relationships in it. I haven't seen the other ones. so I can't comment on that. About Tenet: I really liked Neil, especially when watching a second time. He felt like an actual character to me and the ending made me care more about him, so I was more invested, when I watched it a second time.
Oh come on you're exagerating so much by saying no one shows any emotion in the film, that is just so untrue... There is a lot of fear, anger, sadness, confusion, etc
@@tvolz9749 Nolan took up the idea of the protagonist we know nothing about from The Thief, a silent spy film of the 1950s, so as usual he invented little or nothing. Not to mention Salò by Pier Paolo Pasolini in which the four antagonists have no name because they represent power in its various forms, or "Dillinger is Dead" by Marco Ferreri in which we witness the private life of an anonymous protagonist.
So I just watched this movie, and am surprised to find that I'm in the minority that really loved it. My only real gripe is the dialogue being difficult to understand at times, so I watched with subtitles (that didn't bother me because I'm used to using subs for foreign films, anime, etc.) . But the Protagonist being a blank-slate was cool for me, because it allowed me to use him as a self-insert, and imagine myself in his shoes. This is harder to do when a protagonist has a more clearly defined character that you can't completely relate to. The story didn't really need the protagonist to bew anything more than "the heroic spy who's willing to take risks to save civilians, give his life for his country, and step into the unknown to save humanity." I loved the movie because it toyed with a concept that hasn't really been done before. It was both a spy film AND a time-travel film. And the concept alone (with the film's strong adherence to its universe's own rules) was well more than enough to keep me enthralled throughout the films duration. I thoroughly enjoyed rewatching scenes to fully wrap my head around everything that occurred. If a movie uses a concept to such a complex degree that you have to sit and think about it for it to make sense, then it becomes a challenge like a puzzle, which is also quite fun.
that was actually intentional, of course. Nolan wanted some of the dialogue to just be a background sound, you probably wont be missing important exposition.
This is a nice exploration in scientific elements *but human character is not scientific, it’s emotional.* However, this mistake can be learned like a scientific experiment, and the variables can be corrected to make a successful experiment.
This was the first film I was able to watch at the cinema after the first lockdown was lifted. The screening was absolutely PACKED...there was a grand total of _THREE PEOPLE_ - myself included! - in the *MASSIVE* auditorium! Once we left, face masks in place & appropriately socially distanced, one of the blokes said: "I hope you don’t mind me asking, but did either of you follow _any_ of that?" I said "No, but it was absolutely brilliant!" We all had a good laugh & chatted for several minutes about it, which was great as this was probably the most meaningful interaction I’d had with other people in about 7 months - sad, I know! Whilst in retrospect, there was definitely an emotional dimension missing from this film, but the ambitious mind-blowing, boundary-pushing sheer exuberant spectacle of the whole endeavour was still hugely enjoyable! So, because the dialogue was chock-full of _incredibly_ vital information in the form of exposition dumps, right from the word go - the salient details I often struggled to catch every word of, due to the overwhelmingly competing sound-effects, explosions/gunfire & musical score - I actually went back the following week to watch a subtitled screening for the hearing impaired, & it made *SUCH* a difference! I tend to really enjoy films that give back more with repeated viewings, although I understand that isn’t the same for everyone, but I appreciated Tenet so much more with the subtitled dialogue! So, a flawed film, yes; but for me, at least, it was still a jaw-dropping, amazing cinematic experience, which I was fortunate to see on the big screen. Alas, my local multiplex closed down again a few days later, & obviously hasn’t reopened since...probably not for a minimum of the next 6 months!😳😔
Just watched this on Nebula and wanted to comment - I for one absolutely loved the confusion and lack of handholding through the whole film, especially the beginning. It encouraged a wide eyed absorption of the film to develop some form of understanding as to what might be driving the action.
Hey Guys,
I'm back from my break, and I hope you enjoyed today's video!
I'm currently working on two videos right now. One on Cyberpunk 2077, I'm doing something extra special for that, and the other is on Wonder Woman 1984, what is quite possibly the worst superhero movie ever made. I hate that film. I just hate it. I still don't know if I want to make a proper video essay on it, or just a full on rant. It makes batman v superman look like a 9/10 masterpiece.
If you want to chat with me and the rest of the community, feel free to join my discord server. I am very active on it, and if you want to discuss films or creative writing, it's the place for you!
My discord: discord.com/invite/aJpYPQX
All the best,
- Henry
Future me lolololol
Happy New Year for you, Henry 🍺
Keep up the amazing work
Looking forward to that cyberpunk video! Really excited to see what you have planned
I MAKE THIS MOVIE WORK
Good to have you back
Nolan is the perfect definition of the statement "Dream so high that when you fail, you'll fail above everybody else's success"
You are speaking as if he is the greatest director of all time.
His entire filmography will not stand a second against Apocalypse Now which is just one work of Francis Ford Coppola.
Stop treating him as if he is Stanley Kubrick.
@@karangupta1825 he is one of them
@@raheelkhan6585 Not even among the Top 25.
@@karangupta1825only people i put above him prolly tarantino and edgar wright? who else can u recommend has a vast array of successful movies? watch u say micheal bay
@@motwhom3230 I never said he is better than edgar Wright.
I have watched his films, they are just average.
TENET failing is actually box office success.. it's just inverted.
so would "earning" negative money be inverted? 000,000,702$ -
@@c.wubby.u861 yes it would
It's $207,000,000
@Akshay 004 it was also available on HBO max, which tanked the numbers
@Akshay 004 I meant wonder woman
@Akshay 004 WW sucking HARD might have had something to do with it. Tenet was so much better than WW.
I actually really like John David Washington's character. He doesn't have a heroes journey character arc like many other characters in movies but he definitely evolved throughout the story. He starts as a government agent then evolves into a man fighting for something beyond a nations interests. By the end of the film he becomes the Protagonist, founder of Tenet. The final scene in the car with Priya shows what he becomes and the new demeanor and attitude he has toward his duty. I enjoy his character and I didn't even realize people would have a problem with him until I watched reviews and videos like this. I have really enjoyed this movie for the action packed adventure that it is. I really like the fast moving plot. Exposition can get really boring for me, Adhd I guess, so this is a really unique story that keeps me interested throughout. Its not a perfect movie but I have come to love it for what it is.
@wakkythug dude watched a 26 minute video but can't read a single paragraph of text
Yeah, its pretty interesting how everything worked itself out inverted.
YES! You get it!
I just feel like the movie really needs a follow-up to be a complete, realized masterpiece. We don't know how the Tenet got made. We don't know for sure why the future wants to destroy the past, and we don't know how The Protagonist formed an attachment with Neil.
@@thesnatcher3616 we don't really need it. It's up to your imagination and expanding even further could ruin what this movie created.
So Tenet is the good kind of failure because it’s an experiment that explores the limits of cinema.
Which is why we can respect Nolan’s failures more than Disney’s
Almost all of Disney's movies aren't failures because they try to do something new. They instead fail for the exact opposite reason.
Disney's movies are not failure, because they don't even try anymore. If you don't try, you can't fail. They don't want to make good stories/ movies, they just want to make money. And they are actually making money, so, in a way, one may say that they are succeeding.
Disney tried to bet on people's nostalgia. But it failed
Haha, Evil Gilderoy Lockhart. Kenneth Branagh will never live that one down.
@@TheSunMoon you say that but the beauty and the beast remake made 1 billion dollars
More than the original
S A T O R
A R E P O
T E N E T
O P E R A
R O T A S
Woahh...that's cool
The sower Arepo holds the wheels with care.
my mind blow so hard when i realized all of those stuff are in the movie
@@jothishprabu8 A subjective opinion is not necessarily an objective truth.
And the Sator Square just shows us exactly how Nolan's mind works! Brilliant.
The fact that you don't know what's happening in the opening scene is what drew me in. It's one of my favorite scenes in the movie. I think it was intentionally vague and confusing
Thats what i loved about the movie it doesnt tell you all the pieces of the puzzle and keeps you guessing
what a trip it was!
@@rawrmcsaurs6052 just caught it again last night lol 😵
We live in a twilight world
@@SAMSARALIVEEEEEE There are no friends at dusk
Yeah, I don't agree that there always needs to be a character to emphasize with or a smooth introduction. The high number of questions can be engaging on its own and with such an outstanding cinematography it just makes a really great scene. I think what really made Tenet under-deliver on this promise is that all answers are given in big portions( right after the opening scene and at the end). And even more than that, the answers are just really simple. In the end, we have a promise of something more confusing than "Inception", but it turns out to be just a very fast-paced action movie with time-traveling shenanigans.
This video has expressed why I love Tenet better than I could put into words
But still it's a failure
@@norpriest521 intentionally
He always dos
@@norpriest521 i actually really enjoyed the movie and all its intentional weird choices
Ah it's been a while since I've seen you golden man
I enjoyed Tenet as a pure sensory experience, because that's what it is. It's action distilled to its purest form, I'm glad I got to see it in IMAX because it hit hard.
That really is the perfect descroption. Buckle up and jump in to the eyes of the protagonist. It's gonna be a hell of a ride.
Don't try to understand, feel it.
Descorpion
Yeah, i enjoyed the hell out of this movie in Cinema. This is the only 'criticism' video i kind of agree with.
yes when truck in place scene comes the music is on god lvl and when the protagnist say prostarity that scene was phenomenal i watched 3 times in imax
So... dropping acid beforehand... Is a good idea?
I'm ADHD and Tenet was perfect for my brain. The entire movie was go go go lol
The same reason I like 2nd mummy
YES. movie felt great
OMG YES !!! the most fun i've had watching a movie. I usually skip through movies. the first time that i sat and watched the whole thing.
okay BUT LIKE SAME
I have ADID and found TENET stunningly boring, I turned it off 47 mins in.
The most annoying thing about this film?
Everyone pronouncing it “Tenant”.
So how do you pronounce it? Ten -ent?
@@l.bakker7563 Ten-et. There is no second "n".
Ten-et
Mr. Stuckmann
Sometimes, they even take their pronounciation to their written comments.
This video made me look at tenet in a whole different light. Tenet was confusing but at least it wasn't stale. Hollywood needs more movies like this.
I'm seeing this movie again.
I’ve seen it 15 times.
Same
It's better the second time and starts to make more sense each go around
that s exactly what i was thinking, I d rather watch a "bad" movie but an original one than a great remake like the force awakens
if hollywood does more movies like this where characters are as blank as my wall...then I would rather stare at my wall than watch these movies...
@Thanos How is an unrelatable character as "the protagonist" interesting in any sort, the guy is shown reverse entropy and he's like Meh ok.
Enjoyed this analysis a lot. It's funny that hearing these shortcomings put to words in a optimistic context can make the film better to me on another viewing lol. The title "Tenet" had me thinking before even watching that it''d benefit from a rewatch, and having seen this now, I think that rings very true.
Wooooooah conar you here ?
Pog Connor
hehehe CONAR
connor hello
Whats up checkmark
Here’s the interesting thing. I think The Protagonist isn’t supposed to have developed character yet at that point in the story. I think it’s a bold choice and I still enjoyed the film; completely engrossed by the plot and by what isn’t shown in the story. Robert Pattinson did a superb job leaving the relationship with the Protagonist to where you know there’s more... I connected with it but I see why others don’t.
So why others don't?
Please enlighten
@@norpriest521 like a friend that you knew along ago in grad school where you were best friends but you guys separated but then after years later when you two see each other as adults, he remembers you but you don't remember him and all the good time you guys had.
The Protagonist is introduced as though we already knew him, he doesn't need to develop further because the story doesn't revolve around his character, but the mission.
Yes.... the more I watch this the more I see real characters/people.... I didn't like it first time. But couldn't get it out of my head and the more I watch it the more it reveals. Just awesome. Great observations:)
The rare time when the movie is shallow yet well-made people are upset. Yet when you have "deep" and bad or shallow and bad people will defend it too often than now.
"If that most a written confession that Nolan chose to make his character a blank state" - Nolan has actually confirmed this in an interview, he mentions stripping back the characters in Dunkirk so it wouldn't feel like once character was more important to the story than the other, and once he noticed audiences and critics were still able to empathise with the characters despite them having little identity, he became curious if he could do this with a fictional story.
I dunno, I really didn't see Tenet as a failure. As a science lover, I found the concept of inverted entropy fascinating. It never crossed my mind that the characters were two-dimensional or blank slates. Maybe it's because I enjoy puzzles and spy thrillers, but I loved being confused by the opening. Having the characters so confident in what they were doing made it seem like figuring out what was going on was a solvable puzzle. Even when I left the theater having not heard about 40% of the dialogue and not really understanding many of the plot points in the movie, I didn't care. Having seen it twice since, I still don't fully grasp it, but I want to. I really loved everything about the movie, and returning to it seeking answers has been enjoyable each time.
Best review of the film I've ever seen.
I know this is coming a year after your comment, but I want to respond. Everyone I've heard from who've watched it in theaters said they had trouble hearing what characters were saying, and that they had trouble following a lot of what was happening.. I first watched it through Amazon, so I had subtitles available to help with that. I think it makes a huge difference, because I was able to roughly follow most of what was going on in the first watch through, and pieced together much of what I didn't understand in the second watch through.
Anyway, I cosign your opinion of the movie. As someone who loves time travel plots that are well done, I took to Tenet as a puzzle right away and was patiently paying attention to what was happening so I could tally it together to try to make sense of things. I enjoyed it a lot.
Couldn't agree with you more.
I'm super late but I completely agree, I love this movie
As a science lover the physics are complete nonsense that generate about 5 different paradoxes every time the movie tries to explain the rules
*Let’s take a Closer look.....but Backwards.*
@Jimbob1708 ecin
@Jimbob1708 damn, you got it first hahau
@Jimbob1708 lol
So like a farther look? 😂
@Jimbob1708 how
Honestly I liked the fact that the characters didn’t have much depth. It made the story feel a lot more mechanical, predetermined, which I think fits the “timetravel” aspect.
I absolutely understand those who want characters to connect to, but I really enjoyed the impersonal perspective even if I can’t fully explain why
I enjoyed it too but I also feel like I would've enjoyed it a lot less if it wasn't for pattinson and Washington, who were charming to watch
@@RK-ep8qy But that's exactly why he picked charming actors ! :)
Yes I completly agree
Exactly. I don't think we are supposed to empathize with either underworld or secret agents. Their goals are just their missions. We don't have to watch useless drama in everything.
Same
I though Neil was actually an amazing character. Watching it a second time. I also think Tenet was special because it is one of the few movies that gets better each and every time you watch it. It’s incredible. Everything about it was for me.
I think the soundscape of Tenet is one heck of a masterfully crafted masterpiece. It's 100% original. It is so iconic that not a single movie has done anywhere similar to that type of uniqueness.
I think the sound was fuckawful. Couldnt hear a single word and I didn't watch the movie with subs either. It's like Nolan only made key parts intelligible, but let everyone mumble the rest of the lines.
Awesome movie, but the sound was awful.
@@WEBTEAM1000 that was intentional, but it says nothing about the quality of the music, just the quality of the audio mixing
@@strebicux6174 I don’t know, maybe they just didn’t specialize it enough for certain audio setups. I thought the mixing was perfect in my setup, but it may be bad in other peoples audio setups
@@GoogleAccount-tg9lp it was mixed solely for movie theaters, but because of covid most people only saw it at home. But I agree the issue is way overexaggerated
@@WEBTEAM1000 try rewatching it with some nice headphones. That did it for me.
This is my favorite film. Already watched it four times, and I love how unique, fast, stylized, full of depth and fun it is. You can look at this film thoroughly and still find a great movie in it. I don't even consider it a failure.
If you analyze the film thoroughly, it is somewhat of a failure but still an admirable one at that.
I did like it upon my 1st viewing. Ready to watch it again and catch things I missed the 1st time around
@@beansonawaterslide3198 It's quite hollow and doesn't hold up on multiple viewings at all. Big miss from Nolan, and it's not good for film overall as the studios are always less willing to take chances with every failure.
@@tonycarpaccio9550 I enjoyed it more the second time around, but the script and concept revealed a lot of flaws. Still, I noticed some new details and was more moved by the emotional plot threads with Kat and Neil, and it’s the kind of film I can watch again and again without getting tired of it.
@@TheWelchProductions ditto
You’re all missing the most salient point: Nolan is a Minimalist. Character is action, so backstory is superfluous. We see the characters make decisions, so we know who they are in the only way that matters in film. Show, don’t tell.
I don’t think Tenet is as emotionally rich as Dunkirk, but Nolan tends to be emotionally cold in his films, like Kubrick before him. And if you compare Tenet to a Mission Impossible film, is there honestly more character development of the protagonist in Ethan Hunt’s case? Something about a girl he likes, then crazy stunts to save the world, only Tenet has time contortions Which would make The Doctor blush.
Tom Cruise has an interesting charisma. He shows the personality of the character at the beginning: he cares about his teammates, he's methodical, he adapts, he thinks ahead. In each action scene, there are hints about his personality and feelings. Tom Cruise (and the script) shows it in a subtle way but still shows it. The protagonist in Tenet in comparison, seems like a clean slate, driven by the plot, much like The Dude in The Big Lebowski.
@@BadGuySVK I agree Cruise has incredible charisma. Personally, I thought JDW had quite a compelling charisma as well, although less energetic than Cruise's.
But let's be real. You're not going to Mission Impossible films because you're compelled by Tom Cruise's *character,* (whose name I've forgotten). Yes, there is more of an ensemble dynamic in MI films 3-6, but if it was just the characters, and no action set pieces, you wouldn't bother going to see MI:7.
Are you familiar with the idea that a complex design requires simple elements to read properly? The structure to Tenet is the point of the film, so it would work against the core of the film to have highly detailed characters. Honestly, I think the Mission Impossible films are similar, except that the world ending plots never matter beyond their usefulness in providing death-defying stunts for Cruise to perform. None of which is a dig--I really think they're great films, and the directors have crafted them to highlight the action. But they're not meant to be character studies, any more than they're meant to ponder the meaning of life.
It's odd to me that you would classify The Dude as a clean slate. He's got a lot of character, it's just that a substantial part of his character is to be extremely passive in the plot.
@@MackerelSkyLtd Oh yeah, The Dude has developed character, I meant to make just the parallel that he's driven by the plot, he's passive.
The clean slate bit was in contrast with Tom Cruise's character. Sure, we don't go watch MI movies for his character, but if we are talking about characters, I think that Ethan Hunt is more developed and therefore more relatable to the audience. Ethan feels more like a real person. JDW feels like an actor following a script. But that's just my impression, you can have a different one.
@@BadGuySVK Fair enough. I guess I've never really agreed that relatability is a meaningful goal, though.
I don’t see Nolan as cold at all. I find his movies quite emotional, I actually find myself welling up at the end of Inception whenever Cobb’s kids turn around to look at him.
"Peace has cost you your strength, victory has defeated you" - Bane, the dark knight rises
Nolan knows exactly where true failure comes from, that's literally the point of that entire film, learning to never be complacent and throw yourself into a pit to see if you can climb back up, because when you reach the top you'll realise why you needed to do it, and if you don't throw yourself into a pit for too long, if you live in the luxury and endless peace of your own success without needing to try anymore, someone else will instead, when you least expect it, and you'll wish you had made your own mistake to fix, instead of someone else coming along and exploiting your weakness.
oh shit i didn't expect to see you in the wild
I taught Tenet had one of the most interesting concepts for an action movie I've ever seen (at least for as long as I can remember). While it's true that Tenet did not have the emotional throughline other great movies have, the rocksolid pace kept me hooked all the way through and felt like a glorious, time-travelling, mind fucking, rollercoaster ride.
Conceptually, I actually like it that Nolan doesn't feel the need to explore his characters all of the time, compared to the concept of the movie itself. Dunkirk and Tenet spring to mind here
Thank god, finally I found someone in the comments I can agree with😂
Yeah, everyone praises Dunkirk meanwhile the characters have like five lines total. Don’t get me wrong I love it, but that movie puts the event, the concept, the plot, over character. Tenet is no different in that regard.
Nolan fanboys always say that.
I'm not surprised.
@@norpriest521 Nolan haters discourage originality and creativity in film buy gassing the shit out his films’ few flaws
@Meta Man
Bro stop writing the whole essay.
Stop making Nolan look like a God.
The thing that actually drew me in about JDW’s character was during the opera house scene when it’s clear that the team has achieved their objective and they state that saving the people from the bombs is “not their mission” and JDW says, “it’s mine now.” It was his “save the cat” moment and so later when it seems that he is manipulating Kat (intentional?) just to get close to Sator I knew he was going to do everything he could to save her too. Considering she becomes key to the success of the end was great storytelling in my opinion.
I'm surprised you even remembered 'MIB: International' at all to be used as an example.
Sorry, what film is that? Never heard of it mate.
I didn't know it existed. Bit disappointed that I now do
The emotional string along with the brilliance of a core concept is what made *Inception* GREAT...
Undeniably, and if you ask me inception is a better movie than Tenet because of that.
I absolutely agree to and I, too, was more astounded, astonished, impressed and moved by Inception. But in my opinion Nolan is just taking another approach in Tenet: While in Inception (and Interstellar) he uses his strong characters and their compelling arcs not only as the emotional string but also to develop his themes about dreams, demons of the past, love, etc., in Tenet his characters (while having some core motivations, relationships or characterstics) are all part of the greater concept. They are essential parts of the plot. Therefore, the plot (in Inception and Interstellar in Service of the Story that develops or reveals the themes) becomes the story, becomes the heart of the movie. Nolan tells us about the failures of linear thinking and the connections between past, present and future through his great concept. As it is excellently explained in the video, he sacrifices the emotional String for the greater vision/experiment. Nolan truly is a modern master of filmmaking.
I remember 10 years ago people would say that Inception didn't manage to make you connect emotionally with the characters. Who knows what we'll say about Tenet 10 years down the line, when we have been able to properly digest it.
Funny thing...i felt more sad after watching tenet than inception!!
A movie doesn't actually require more facial expressions to be emotional...
Infact i felt least emotional in interstellar which had Matthew crying in there....funny eh?
Paprika is much better. Inception is just a mediocre film in front of it. Simple story, bland direction and lack of imagination.
I love how this movie just all comes together in the second half
From the first time protagonist inverts so many scenes from the earlier parts come together
Straight away the car chase gets explained
And slowly over the course of the second airplane scene it all starts making sense
essentially, the second half explains the first half
So even the plot itself is inversed.....my gosh I love Nolan, my favorite director ever
About the opening: The protaginist is confused, you're in the maze with him the whole time as more and more is revealed about Tenet
As in Memento, it's when the audience are looking down on the maze and are two steps ahead of the main character things will get frustrating.. Nolan has said this a million times over
What makes the film great is the confusion, cus then you get that "Aha! I see now!" moment.
The protagonist definitely was more aware of what's happening than I was.
But this is how I think it ideally should have been. I think mainly because the fast pacing I never knew what they were doing when they should have only made certain aspects confusing.
@@npcimknot958
upon a rewatch I realized there is actually alot more to the protagonist than one would initially expect. Every decision he makes in the prologue tells us something about his character that informs how he acts going forward.
It's interesting to approach the rewatch this way.
This video can be summed up in three words: "Dare to suck"
Now that's a piece of advice you shouldn't give an aids patient
Idk man it sounds kinda gay
@@winstonsallet9541 I don't see the problem
Nah, let's draw it out for 20 minutes for ad revenue
@@erikarolinenorheim1640 ah there were go
TBH I didn't notice the lack of character development, I was just so engrossed in the plot and trying to figure it out. I have watched this movie 7 times. I love it so much, and the fact that it took me so long to fully understand all the little details and how each scene fit together, for me that was thoroughly enjoyable. This is at least in my top 5 favorite movies.
Tenet is the emotional and writing technical opposites of interstellar in so many ways its mind boggling. They only meet in the middle when it comes to the way you need to feel concepts vs thinking about them.
Hes one of the true artists left in any genre True art
Totally agree. Tenet forces you to think and have the "ah ha" moments instead of having an emotional response. IMO, Inception did such an amazing job in giving us both. It slowly revealed the concept of Inception and then gave us an emotional response of what it could do (in the case of Dom and Mal).
That being said, I actually really enjoyed Tenet because of concept driven it was.
@Blaktimus Prime @Devin Smith so happy to see people in UA-cam comment sections with such great takes on Tenet. Well said.
Tbh I liked tenet cause i saw the things going backwards and was like “oh wow that looks sick.” I couldn’t have cared less about the story.
So you watched it like...a videogame.
@@Player-kg1ds As a gamer, I always look through the plot the first time I play.
@@GeorgeDCowley A lot of people do, including me.
@@Player-kg1ds so what was your point? 🤣🤣🤣
Alternate title: "TENET is a story without side quests."
2001: A Space Odyssey doesn't really have compelling 3 dimensional characters, but it still stands as one of the best movies ever made. So, you can make a great movie without the need of complex characters. I don't know if this was the intended discussion, but it is an interesting one.
the most human character in that movie is the robot
@@theohaegele9011 Just about to say the same thing
Yeah, but 2001 is possibly the greatest film ever made, this is a mediocre mess, so in the lack of character arcs I'll take the well made film over this, the characters were never the problem, the writing is the problem, the editing is the problem, that fucking headache of a score is the problem; you can say the same exact thing about apocalypse now, characters can fit a different role than the ones accounted for by conventional dramaturgy, yet appcalypse now is another masterpiece, this isn't
@@marcogianesello6083 you clearly don't know a lot about music if you think Tenet has a bad score
@@pijlenboog23 maybe i don't, what i do know however is that fucking beating my brain with beats for 45 minutes straight is a shitty way to put music to film, interstellar's score is much better, yet the editing makes it feel obnoxious, nolan often uses the score to hijack your brain instead of complementing a scene, "hey you know this scene is supposed to be intense right? Well how about hans lays over the piano keys for the next ten minutes straight uninterrupted just to make sure you got how intense it's supposed to feel", yeah the score worked well in dunkirk, here it's pretty crap, ad if it's a well written piece of music which i won't argue against even though it's tonally monotone as fuck, it's three different tones of "intense, more intense and emotional for that one scene", i'll still argue that it's completely uncompelling in how it's used,
I thought the Tenet opening was not confusing at all. The Protagonist is a CIA spy rescuing another spy amidst a "fake" Opera Siege. He knew the Siege was fake to catch the spy but saved the civilians anyway.
It's no more confusing than the beginning of any bond movie. It is a pretty typical spying heist sort of thing until the inverted bullet. And it's also done largely visually
I saw the movie and I didn't know that...
@@woody40000 yeah I always figured that’s how spy movies started so it didn’t take me long to realize he was some form of an agent. It’s actually really important that he’s an agent because it shows how, even with all his resources and contacts, he’s woefully out of his depth for the level of insanity that’s he’s about to uncover.
exactly!
I watched it first without subtitles and a second time with them.
While I had correctly guessed what happened the first time, I was never 100% sure because half the lines were inaudible at my cinema. Many people online had this experience as well.
I get that Nolan likes his "Impressionist" audio mixing where you're not supposed to hear every word, but that doesn't work with a film about high concepts where every scene and piece of information matters to the story. It sends mixed signals to the audience, literally.
Tenet combines the two kinds of openings you spoke about. It gives us a mystery to solve like MIB, and it has a protagonist who knows what's going on while the audience don't, like Inception. There are also bits in the opening that the protagonist DOESN'T understand, like us. The opening provides a mystery, a hook, that makes the audience curious, and it fulfills that promise by solving the mystery by the end of the film. It just doesn't provide instant gratification of explanation during or right after the sequence, instead rewarding you for following along. Which was perfectly fine imo.
"Then fuck off.... why did I swear at the audience??? Heh" my fav moment
"Why did I swear at the audience?"
Me: Cause the audience doesn't want to be babied.
I hope John David Washington goes really far.
Considering who his father is, I'd be surprised if he didn't.
@@HOTD108_ George Washington?
@@monkey-choppa2751 I thought it was Washington D.C
I'd say with this, Ballers, and BlacKkKlansman he is well on his way.
@@jothishprabu8 that is an opinion. Also Tenet isn’t his only movie, BlackKklansman is 👌
Tenet honestly just feels like one of those action-movie-fueled fever dreams that you don’t want to wake up from
This is exactly why Nolan needs to do a Masterclass on filmmaking or storytelling.
I know I'd watch it.
Needs to take*
I'd actually buy that
@@Davide_LP Why would he need to take one?
Memento, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, and Interstellar all have great stories with mostly well written scripts, Dunkirk and Tenet are Nolan trying to break the mold and experiment with story telling conventions to see what works and what doesn't.
@@Deathlygunn I don't agree. Tenet is not a try, that was bound to fail, to brake the rules about story telling.
Clearly the guy of the channel don't know much about cinema. There are lots of examples where this kind of narration (without a strongly characterized character) is used... the most obvious are Kitano's movie.
I personally don't like Nolan's movies, and I really don't think that the previous movies were much better.
Furthermore Nolan is not experimenting, he uses for litteraly every film the same tricks.
P.S. I like the batman trilogy
I’d love to see Nolan make a horror film
damn me too
Yes
He said he'd like to try it in the future. But he also admits it'd be difficult to do it really well.
But I think his obsession with time might do REALLY well with creating a horror movie that perfectly incorporates the feeling of what I'd call "sudden terror". Have you guys watched Memento? If not, just skip this paragraph real quick:
Remember when he's been talking on the phone with someone for a while and then he peels off a bandage from his arm, on which he has tattooed "NEVER ANSWER THE PHONE"? Yeah, that moment gave me fucking goosebumps for several minutes. It's that sudden "oh shit" moment, but not the apathetic or energetic kind of "oh shit", but rather the scared one.
I've also seen people play Phasmophobia and only afterwards do the players who are still alive get to know how incredibly close they actually were to dying, since the dead players can see the ghost doing its thing. So essentially, you would have never known how close you were to death until someone tells you afterwards, and that instantly gives you the chills (you'd have to experience it, not just read it here).
I honestly believe that Nolan's love for using time as an element in his movies could perfectly create such moments in a horror movie.
@@tictacmaniac7415 He did say that? hopes up!!!
I agree that using time in a horror movie like he does would be fucking awesome
But honestly I'ld be thrilled with whatever he comes up cuz horror is a genre that have so few really good movies these days, I don't think there has been a single horror movie with a rating of more than 7.7 on imdb in the last 20 years. And that I'm sure he could pull of
After watching dozens of breakdown vids and a 2nd viewing, I must say this movie is genius and a sheer masterpiece.
This movie was so good cuz it got rid of bullshit imo, but I can see why people would hate that tbh
true, its not a failure its literally a masterpiece.
Just did this today. You're right!
I cry in the end everytime of how amazing it is to have a director like Nolan to feed us true cinema lovers with stuff like this. He never lets down. Literally never. Only on an inverted future maybe.
Honestly... The only character I cared about is Robert Pattinson's Neil character.... Because he's fun to watch and has some character and not a blank slate maybe!!
I agree. I watched Tenet a second time and that was the best decision, because I was more invested the second time, because I knew about the connection between Neil and the Protagonist. It made me care more about the story and so i enjoyed it a lot more.
Yeah I had to watch the film a second time to finally grasp it.
Couldnt tell you why but John David Washington’s acting almost always caught my attention in this movie. Maybe it’s just his voice or his face but I loved him in this more than anyone else
Tenet is about the experience and story. I don’t see why people care about character so much in this movie. People are too afraid to change what they are used to. Watch in a couple years this movie will be iconic.
@@berniet1215 what is the story though; a dude tries to stop people from the future neither we nor he ever see from blowing up the present. It’s b-movie stuff that could have been fun if it wasn’t played so seriously, but the movie tries to have its cake and eat it by having a nonsensical plot and one-dimensional characters with the tone of fkin Melancholia
So Tenet is bad?
The Closer Look: "Well yes, but actually no, ,on yllautca tub ,sey lleW" :kooL resolC ehT
¿dab si teneT oS
!taht, seY
!siht ekil gniklat elpoep era yhW
@@vlazurah789 !wnok t'nod I
Because in Tenet the novelty is things moving backwards in time
@@9786oof professor obvious has entered the chat.
I'd kinda argue that the side characters were the emotion of the movie and I'd say they were done amazingly. I see the protagonist as a type of character that has a flat character arc, he changes and affects the characters around him, making us love the side characters more and by loving them, we feel for the protagonist because they feel for him. Specifically Robert Pattinson's character and the future relationship he alludes to.
About this story, I somewhat find relevancy to Dunkirk. It's an excerpt from all the happenings, where the actors in focus play a specific role of expression/action. I feel the intention to not develop any character arc is to emphasize on the happening itself, which is a running theme in all of Nolan's masterpieces. Great video!
Exactly! I barely connected to any of the characters in Dunkirk but it was still a fantastic movie because it wasn't about the characters
Damn I had a thought a lot like the title after I saw this. The movie could have been better, but I’m so glad to see somebody come up with a genuinely unique idea and make an effort to translate it to the screen. The big sequels, remakes, adaptations, etc can be cool, but after a while many get tired of seeing the same properties following the same formula
I love this movie. Normally I care about characters, but for this movie I got engulfed in the concepts.
This is EXACTLY what I was thinking when I watched Filmento’s video. “Like yeah, yeah, the characters are bad, but the question is *why*”
And that’s the thing too, all the side characters are properly “sized”, one might say. Neil, Sator and Kat are excellent, with Kat carrying the emotional core of the movie by dint of Protagonist not having anything along those lines.
Yeah, I mean he made a good video, but I do wish he went deeper.
@@TheCloserLook You mean, he should've - looked closer?
but the script is kinda bad too :S so yeah, why indeed... For example, why does the protagonist try to shoot himself? (2:11). And, aren't the guys from the future the good guys? How does people survive for days inverted if they can't interact with the world? How do they travel around recruiting people without anyone freaking out and locking them up to study them?
@@Yarblocosifilitico oh right! I didn’t think of how inverted people are going to eat food? Do they pack inverted food ahead? Inverted pooping to get nutrients?
@@pokguys16 yeah my guess is the later because of the comedy it brings. Peeing through the mouth into the bottle and drinking through the arse from the toilet xD
I think it's clear Nolan has no answer how things would work (or knew it would be ridiculous) when he says "don't try to understand it, just feel it", through the random, irrelevant scientist who appears to not really explain the rules while making it seem like she was explaining them.
As a person who has lived for a long time in Tallinn, I can easily say that watching this and recognizing the locations and hearing it being directly mentioned plus the insane visuals was probably the most enjoyable and awesome moviegoing experience I've ever had.
Exactly, it feels almost bizarre to see this small country/city in an international film. Especially because it’s basically never happened before. Going to see the movie along with the special message at the start (etc) felt really unique because of that.
This.....almost feels like that urban legend about taking the SAT, that if you fail it so completely, that means you did it on purpose and are therefore a genius! Something like that.
You have to try hard and understand the system to get a zero on the SAT or ACT.
I'm pretty sure that something similar to that happened in a scene in Into The Spiderverse
@@weirdofromhalo to get a true zero. Means you know all the answers, but are brave and defiant enough to get them wrong
NO, its like there are 50 multiple choice questions.. and answering each question wrong deliberately even though you know the answer for each question.. In a way that is also brilliant 😆 .. because even a random layman can answer 5 questions right just by luck… a pure genius , lets say James Cameroon gets 95% correct in the test.. Nolan deliberately answered each question wrong 😛
Saki comes to mind.
This movie is perfect for 2020. It’s a movie people who find themselves going into a world where time has lost all meaning and people have to wear masks to survive when outside in this world.
Amazing observation
Didn’t think about that...
this is a mind blowing discovery my friend
This is literally a "im 14 and this is deep" moment
@@pepperstepper4830 haha
I watched this last night with my dad, and I’d seen it once before. I prefaced the film by saying “the film doesn’t make sense the first time through but it’s not meant to until later, so don’t try to work it out as it’s happening” and it really helped.
I explained that the first time I was trying so hard to work out what was going on, that come the prestige of the reveal, I realised I hadn’t been paying attention to the details or remembering parts so that I could retrospectively add things up. The second watch was so much more enjoyable for me as I got to notice the details which all mattered, and it was amazing.
Tenet became my second favorite Nolan film, behind Inception. I don't think he was necessarily trying to handicap himself with John David Washington's character, instead I think he was trying to fully lean into the concept and physics of the movie. The blank slate protagonist helps to allow the audience to place themselves in the movie along with the peripheral characters. There may not be an arc to the protagonist, but there's a lot going on with his character development throughout the movie!
"Can you tell a story where the protagonist is just the playable character from skyrim and still have a gripping story?"
I mean, Hardcore Henry did it...
I love seeing others that have seen and enjoyed hardcore henry...
@@nicksommaIt's the best video game movie not based on a video game ever made.
@@hunted4blood Man, speaking of video games, I’m dying to see a doom movie with a hardcore Henry feel to it
@Meta Man Totally Agreed! 👏
Fucking Skyrim did it.
I loved Tenet’s opening, it’s one of my favourites/my favourite
You'll do! Get him to the rally point!
In Tenet, the protagonist and the main villain is not the hero or the person we should care about, at least initially. The two people *I* cared about are Kat and Neil. When at the end of the movie I understood that Neil sacrificed himself in cold blood to save the world, and when Kat could not help herself but show her abuser that he had failed before she kills him, these were great, emotional moments.
Then something else happened. It turns out that Neil and Kat are likely related, and the Protagonist who is completely clueless throughout the movie is actually the main orchestrator of the whole narrative, I found that amazing. I also began to understand the motivations of the villain and his own demons. It turn out that neither the Protagonist nor the Villain are one-dimensional characters. They have dimension, but they don't appear linearly through the film.
A single viewing was not enough to get all this for me. The beauty of Tenet is that it can be watched and watched and watched again, and the intricacies of the plot and character development slowly unveil, layer by layer.
Initially, at first viewing, I was not impressed by Tenet. Now, after about 3 viewings, I think it's a masterpiece.
I have beginning to believe that all of Nolan's movies actually take place inside the Matrix.
Everything takes place inside of the matrix
You guys get it
......inside of the matrix
@@deadlyninja112
But do we live in da mAtRiX tho? 😆
@@norpriest521 shit, i dont know but i bet u can find out
....inside the matrix
A new video! Feels like it’s been forEVER. This channel will always be one of my top inspirations.
Thanks Danny. I'm glad you like my videos!
Honestly I like everything about this film, it's just so enjoyable to me and cannot get enough of the action, the concept, the characters, etc.
Like inception saying never recreat something you see or saw form your memory but make it your own.That's Nolans confession for his art
This really put into conscious thought why I've loved Nolan unconsciously.
Great video and perspective!
Thanks, I'm glad to hear you liked it :)
honestly given the expository nature of tenet and the many many many classroom-esque scenes in it I think it is artistically spot on what it wants to be. Watch in the typical way, such its a bad film, but when you understand that the purpose of cinema is to learn about a world and get lost in it he very much hit that mark in a new way. With the film being directly about moving backwards in time and the end being a beginning and vice versa it really shows that the best way to understand the film is after two watches and from there you can begin to see the arcs of the film since the arcs themselves transcend the platform of typical cinema. In this way Nolan inspired thousands of videos on youtube to come up trying to understand this meta story arc where you can't just watch the film you have to understand the film, you have to look at it from a new perspective. You have to watch it forwards, you have to watch it backwards, you have to make hypotheses about the missing parts of the film given by the exposition already in the film. There you force the audience to enjoy the film thoroughly or lose those who don't have the will to understand it, and even those people can then see what the forced audience saw when videos like these or the syncronized videos or reverse videos. Ultimately Nolan made the ultimate movie for our time. One that allows the audience to imagine, to be creative of the arc that happened when young neil actually met the protagonist, how neil came back in time to meet the young protagonist. Moreover the name "protagonist" comes off not as a simply "blank slate" but as a codename for a timeline that needed to be placed correctly by the organization that man would go on to create. It seems very plainly that way if we understand Max as the last(or 'past') Neil. I think theres a lot to tenet that really goes out of its way to be fundamentally amazing.
I've always said, criticizing Nolan is like pointing out that a championship team could have done things better.
Right???? If this was a DCEU movie everyone would treat it like the second coming of Christ
Everyone could always have done better. If everything is perfect, nothing is perfect. Also criticizing a movie because you didn’t enjoy it for some reason is always legit because it’s art and art is subjective.
@@waystone3699 Yes, but I would argue that, objectively speaking, some people's subjective criticism is more valid than others.
@@evanwakelin7944 But yet that would still be subjective. You’re grounding that off on your own supposed merit which in itself can never be truly objective when it comes to opinions.
No ones saying it’s wrong but we’re all welcome to digest it in whatever way we want
@@evanwakelin7944 Whose subjective criticism would be more valid than another's?
A closer look on 'The Prestige'
Yes that’s my second favourite Nolan film (you all know what number one is)
@@georgelong881 dude say it I actually don’t know evry1 has a different 1 lmao
@@AK-bt3oo not necessarily, could be interstellar, memento etc. my fav Nolan movie is inception.... could be anything
@@AK-bt3oo ah, I see you’re a cultured man as well...
Yes love the prestige
One of the things that seems very strange until you get to the end is that Protagonist's story we see is at the beginning and Neil's is at the end. Neil cares because he already has the relationship.
Neil was good though, he was my favorite character and i was really sad because i feel like he wasnt explored enough
It's pretty impressive how you can explain so accurately that weird emotion of loving/not loving this movie. It's something that kept me thinking for a long time after watching the movie but, until now, i hadn't found an accurate answer that pleased me. Great work!!
I feel like this movie should've made into a video game. Exploring lores and piecing together the puzzle of what's going on.
When was this game released?
@@ThePamastymui I know I'm 2 months late but... There is no game
Honestly, the weakest part of the movie for me was when Nolan tried to give John David Washington's character some emotional motivation with Elizabeth Debicki's character. I thought her character was interesting and had a good place in the story, but I didn't care for the romance between the two because I was enjoying the Protagonist just being a CIA agent adjusting to the world of inversion, learning about it and becoming comfortable with it. I saw it more as a spy thriller where the characters are doing their job, rather than a movie where the characters need to grow and undergo a change.
Then again, I'm usually more interested in the concepts and world of a movie rather than the characters, so it's probably just me.
I don't think he tried to create a romance situation between them, I think the Protagonist felt responsible for Kat because she dragged her into all of this just to get to Sator and it went too far
Bruh you just said what I wanted to say the Protagonist is interesting to me because of the fact I don't have his backstory I loved that.
The movie kinda lost me when the Protagonist took the threat against Kat’s life seriously (on the highway) when she’d already fulfilled her function in his mission. This guy is a professional killer and was willing to kill himself for the sake of the mission yet he’s suddenly white knighting for this source that he doesn’t even know rather than focusing on saving life on Earth - it undercuts any sense of reality in both his character and the fictional world as a whole, it becomes more a wish fulfilment story than a thriller.
@@flyondonnie9578 I think there was a great character building moment at the beginning of the film during the opera house scene where after he completed the mission, he went back in to get rid of the bombs. It showed that once the mission is complete, he'll risk his life to save innocent people. So it makes sense that he would want to save her, but he should be putting the mission first, then try to save her.
In my view, the protagonist does have a character arc, which is going from “I’m the guy you send to kill, not a thinker” (paraphrased) to being the future head of Tenet, someone saving the future through influencing the past. A mastermind.
dang thats genius never thought about that thank you for this comment fam
@@Whateveridksomething No problem~
Your comment about Nolan’s making aspects of the film _deliberately_ bad is spot on I think, and there’s evidence backing this up.
In the blu-ray special features, Nolan said that he wanted to make an antagonist so evil that he has no redeeming qualities at all. Branagh’s character has all the clichés of a super-villain: rich, violent (even towards his own men), abusive; he also wants to end the world and is a Russian.
In contrast, Nolan has made memorable villains before (the Joker being the obvious example), and he has also made compelling films without a clear-cut villain role - “The Prestige” and “Inception” come to mind. “Tenet’s” terrible characters obviously don’t come from Nolan’s lack of skill in writing. I don’t know why Nolan does this though, as it doesn’t do “Tenet” any favors.
The film is saved by Nolan’s increasing adroitness in making clever and physically real action sequences. With scenes like the inverted hallway fight, the truck heist, and the plane crash, it almost doesn’t matter that the characters are so emotionally thin.
P.S. Nolan’s best film is still “Dunkirk” for me. Even with stripped-down storytelling aspects, that film still manage to have emotionally resonant characters. It’s a rare moment where Nolan opted for less and made the film richer for it.
I think it was so clear cut, the characters, to the point of being bland was because the story wasn't about the characters. The story was about determinism and consequence, and the 'Protagonist''s place in those consequences. Furthermore there a message about lacking control, as the Protagonist is put on goose chase by himself, or so he thinks, to then force himself to set up TENET to force him to save the world. His future self forces his past in a cycle of deterministic purgatory, with his failure possibly being the end of the world.
Oh shit! Now I'm gettin nwolbdnim
What I'll never understand about Tenet is why Nolan decided to not give any character in the movie. Well, I do know why- I obviously watched the video, but I don't know why Nolan wasted the opportunity for a masterpiece. It's not every day that someone comes up with such a complex and intriguing concept, and I believe that Nolan would definitely been able to make compelling characters. Why not save his lesson on a "smaller" project? I heard rumors that he might do a horror movie next, and I think that that would be a good opportunity for him to teach his lesson to the next generation. Maybe Nolan couldn't find a way to make compelling characters in such a crazy plot without directly copying Inception, which wouldn't be surprising, and therefore decided to "sacrifice" this movie to teach a lesson.
Agree. I also think that he intentionally made some things about the film super trope and cliche to give a very clear and understandable context almost like a safety blanket, so that he could really push what was happening with the reverse entropy element and still serve it in a format that people could understand.
I think having characters that were too complex and developed could distract from the main focus of the film, but to me he still told a lot about the character via very subtle things like how they run, or with their face acting.
@@hrrrmit9187 yeah yeah it’s not like interstellar or inception where the “action” and non character driven elements takes a back seat, it’s about as subdued in terms of character and writing that way as Dunkirk. You make a good point. Trying to do so many things at once while handling such an ambitious concept would’ve been too much too. Honestly when you look at Bond films and M: I they never groundbreaking in those aspects too, but because they expected a more art-y film from Nolan, it didn’t live up to expectations. This is his most sterile and stubborn movie, but it’s nevertheless a lot of fun to watch.
"Soft Science" is probably the best thing i've ever heared.
soft science, noun. Any of the specialized fields or disciplines, as psychology, sociology, anthropology, or political science, that interpret human behavior, institutions, society, etc., on the basis of scientific investigations for which it may be difficult to establish strictly measurable criteria.
Ok Darth nihilus
Honestly, your rewrite was the only thing that made the opening scene make sense lol. Love Nolan but this movie was hard to grasp. I give him credit for the concept though as a film goer that wants to see new and fresh ideas.
It's hard to grasp because it doesnt make sense. Hence the video essay.
It's clear what the opening wanted the viewer to do, go with the flow.
Because viewers are so used to everything explained to them this opening is confusing for those.
@@Jacquobite I disagree, it's hard to grasp, but makes sense after seeing the whole movie.
@@indecisivepear did you make sense of 2:11 too? Why does he try to kill himself?
@@Yarblocosifilitico If we look closely at the fight from the inverted protagonist's perspective, we can see that he intentionally misses, causing the regular protagonist to dodge, moving the fight towards the turnstile. He does this because he wants to be close enough to the turnstile so he can escape through it. We know this, because we can see him checking the proofing window.
This is the best! I was struggling to explain to myself why I enjoyed TENET so much without caring about anybody in it. It's more like a puzzle than a story and left me unsatisfied but not feeling cheated. Your essay clarified. Thank you.
"Tenet's opening is Christopher Nolan's worst opening…" is like talking about a Pixar movie's worst heart-felt moment; or John Williams' worst score.
Even the worst-of-breed is still better than 95% of other movies.
Interstellar and Tenet are my top 2 favourite movies of Mr Nolan. Love the fact that they are opposite of each other.
Like Dory finding her parents or the score to Minority Report
tbh it's one of my favorite movie openings and i can credit that to seeing it first in theaters, got lucky being the only person in the entire room thanks to covid, now all that's on my mind is "I NEED A SUBWOOFER"
It's my favorite nolan opening tho
Its funny because i thought the opening scene was the best scene in Tenet
cool, I just finished watching tenet a few days back and this came up. Nice vid, keep up the good work dude!
Thanks, I will!
"In case the past 10 minutes didn't convince you of that"
He says this 8 minutes into the video
Unforgivable.
The video isn't 18 minutes long, either.
I can't even lie, that rewrite literally had me so in it. Fucccckkk why couldn't have that been the movie. I was so immersed lol
This film gives us the literal definition of a Maggufin. I am surprised it drives the plot so well.
Golden Age science fiction spent decades giving us stories without characters. I often complain that youtube story reviewers are unreflectively narrow minded when it comes to character arcs, so I really appreciated this video for being very up front about it.
You do you, man.
I don't know if there was something wrong with my cinema back when I watched tenet but DAMN it was LOUD
That wasn't your cinema. It was a very popular complaint the sound mixing was pretty crap.
@@TheCloserLook Nolan has come out and said it was SUPPOSED to sound like that. What's your perspective on that?
@@tonyflamingo3668 it's another genius display from Nolan's storytelling, no doubt xD
@@TheCloserLook ah, that explains it. Thank you for your response. But I have to say, in a f*cked up way I kinda enjoyed the destruction of my eardrums during this movie. I mean, like you said, it was fast paced and you had to pay attention at all times, and the loudness kinda added to the overall experience. I can't really explain it, but it was fitting. You couldn't even hear the thoughts in your head and maybe you weren't supposed to :D
Thank you for making my writing and creativity so much better! I look up to you as a story writer.
I'm happy to hear I'm helping you improve. Good luck with the writing Jared!
Really good movie IMO, wish they explained the "turnstile" thing more. A movie truly worth multiple re-watching to get everything.
This video was just amazing, I’m extremely glad that someone finally pointed out how we should appreciate experimentations in big films, hats off to a Christopher Nolan!
It's more of a challenge run, I feel.
Id LOVE a rant on ww84
Given that the future players of tenet are forced to come back and attempt to kill their past because the past and present of humankind have doomed the future this apathetic choice of character attachment seems deliberate and fitting to me. While the individual is the vessel to carry out actions it's simply not about them but rather whether we, as a global team, can pull through and prevent ultimate doom. As you said in your analysis (23:33) you don't care about the hero's cause because you built no personal attachment to their struggle, which is the exact same situation we are currently in with global warming and depriving future generations of their livability. As the majority of people aren't affected on a personal level most people behave towards climate change the same way we consume this movie, passively rooting for the good guys because we know we should while just being handed through one important marker after another at breakneck speed towards a final conclusion we know is coming. In the context of climate change, the bland protagonist makes perfect sense as there is no point in growth based on learning or development as we already know all there is to know about the situation we try to prevent (some characters in the movie quite literally know) and it's not about the attachment or how invested you are but whether people do the right thing at the right time hoping everyone else does as well.
"What's happened, happened. Which is an expression of fate in the mechanics of the world. It's not an excuse to do nothing."
This quote totally fits in the premise of sudden and progressive climate change that most of us are only non-participant witnesses while some of us struggled to maintain ecological balance. The nonparticipating witnesses or characters in the movie are the civilians in the background; witnessing the individuals who have the personal responsibility to act against an impending doom. This movie has multiple layers of thought provoking concepts that this UA-camr had failed to unravel and grasp. We cannot entirely blame him because his perceptive comprehension to this movie is grounded in the premise of a typical movie with emotional drama intentionally engineered into the story itself. Tenet isn't specifically designed to evoke emotional moments unlike Inception and that's why the man scrutinizing the movie in this video judged Tenet with the wrong impression while using the preconceived tropes of other genres not knowing that Tenet itself belongs to completely another league worthy to be reviewed in its own category.
I resonated so much with this write up that while reading this Hans Zimmer’s “Time” played in my head, specifically the guitar part. I loved the soundtrack to Tenet but it could borrow a lot in terms of music from Inception.
I believe we will look back at this movie and praise it for what it failed to do.
Point one: Yes, thinking back to movies that have pretty simple protagonists, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Raid: Redemption, and Hardcore Henry all have plot/action moving at a breakneck pace.
Point two: I think another important thing is if you have your audience asking questions, then the answer to those questions should be interesting. Compare the confusion that Tenet has to the cold open of the pilot of Breaking Bad, your confusion as to why a man in his underwear is driving an RV with a unconscious/dead body in the back is very much intentional, and has all your curiosity, therefore attention. While Tenet is just disorienting in a very uninteresting way.
Point three: Yeah, I don't have much to add, that's pretty much perfect.
point one: there is a difference between simple protagonists and protagonists with no character. Mad Max: Fury Road had good characters with an actual character development and relationships in it. I haven't seen the other ones. so I can't comment on that.
About Tenet: I really liked Neil, especially when watching a second time. He felt like an actual character to me and the ending made me care more about him, so I was more invested, when I watched it a second time.
Oh come on you're exagerating so much by saying no one shows any emotion in the film, that is just so untrue... There is a lot of fear, anger, sadness, confusion, etc
@@tvolz9749 Nolan took up the idea of the protagonist we know nothing about from The Thief, a silent spy film of the 1950s, so as usual he invented little or nothing.
Not to mention Salò by Pier Paolo Pasolini in which the four antagonists have no name because they represent power in its various forms, or "Dillinger is Dead" by Marco Ferreri in which we witness the private life of an anonymous protagonist.
So I just watched this movie, and am surprised to find that I'm in the minority that really loved it. My only real gripe is the dialogue being difficult to understand at times, so I watched with subtitles (that didn't bother me because I'm used to using subs for foreign films, anime, etc.) . But the Protagonist being a blank-slate was cool for me, because it allowed me to use him as a self-insert, and imagine myself in his shoes. This is harder to do when a protagonist has a more clearly defined character that you can't completely relate to. The story didn't really need the protagonist to bew anything more than "the heroic spy who's willing to take risks to save civilians, give his life for his country, and step into the unknown to save humanity." I loved the movie because it toyed with a concept that hasn't really been done before. It was both a spy film AND a time-travel film. And the concept alone (with the film's strong adherence to its universe's own rules) was well more than enough to keep me enthralled throughout the films duration. I thoroughly enjoyed rewatching scenes to fully wrap my head around everything that occurred. If a movie uses a concept to such a complex degree that you have to sit and think about it for it to make sense, then it becomes a challenge like a puzzle, which is also quite fun.
Ha! You thought you could held me as a hostage, but I simply skipped to the final important lesson and came back to whatch the rest
Dammit!
Damn u Leon
inverted
I would've enjoyed this movie much more if I could've actually heard the dialogue over the insanely loud bass in the theater
I'd watch it with subtitles, it was way better like that
@@caitlinoli7540 im sure too bad there wasn't subtitles in the theater...
You found an open theatre? What was it like?
that was actually intentional, of course. Nolan wanted some of the dialogue to just be a background sound, you probably wont be missing important exposition.
I walked out of the theatre backwards to confuse people.
I agree with this, honestly. Tenet to me was cool visuals and concept and that was about it. But it was fun in that respect.
This is a nice exploration in scientific elements *but human character is not scientific, it’s emotional.*
However, this mistake can be learned like a scientific experiment, and the variables can be corrected to make a successful experiment.
I think the answer is yes.
Du bist ja überall ; )
I agree that Nolan is certainly pushing himself - I’m less convinced he’s learning anything about bettering his craft.
This was the first film I was able to watch at the cinema after the first lockdown was lifted. The screening was absolutely PACKED...there was a grand total of _THREE PEOPLE_ - myself included! - in the *MASSIVE* auditorium! Once we left, face masks in place & appropriately socially distanced, one of the blokes said: "I hope you don’t mind me asking, but did either of you follow _any_ of that?" I said "No, but it was absolutely brilliant!"
We all had a good laugh & chatted for several minutes about it, which was great as this was probably the most meaningful interaction I’d had with other people in about 7 months - sad, I know! Whilst in retrospect, there was definitely an emotional dimension missing from this film, but the ambitious mind-blowing, boundary-pushing sheer exuberant spectacle of the whole endeavour was still hugely enjoyable!
So, because the dialogue was chock-full of _incredibly_ vital information in the form of exposition dumps, right from the word go - the salient details I often struggled to catch every word of, due to the overwhelmingly competing sound-effects, explosions/gunfire & musical score - I actually went back the following week to watch a subtitled screening for the hearing impaired, & it made *SUCH* a difference! I tend to really enjoy films that give back more with repeated viewings, although I understand that isn’t the same for everyone, but I appreciated Tenet so much more with the subtitled dialogue!
So, a flawed film, yes; but for me, at least, it was still a jaw-dropping, amazing cinematic experience, which I was fortunate to see on the big screen. Alas, my local multiplex closed down again a few days later, & obviously hasn’t reopened since...probably not for a minimum of the next 6 months!😳😔
Just watched this on Nebula and wanted to comment - I for one absolutely loved the confusion and lack of handholding through the whole film, especially the beginning. It encouraged a wide eyed absorption of the film to develop some form of understanding as to what might be driving the action.