Movie News and Discussion

I enjoyed it. I'm a sucker for time travel concepts. This one was done in a fun way. So, it has one fan at least.

I still can't get over the ridiculous audio mixing...the dialog in some scenes is virtually inaudible, which is the last thing you want in a movie with such a convoluted plot. I love most of Nolan's work but Tenet is by far my least favourite.

That's a good take, I hadn't thought of comparing it to Primer. In Primer, it's clear Shane Carruth thought out all the implications of his time travel system. I don't get that feeling from Tenet, where it feels like Nolan thought it would be cool and didn't go further. What you end up with is a movie that's fun while you're watching it but falls apart once it's over and you think about it for more then 5 minutes.

The scene I think is the most egregious is the air terminal fight. It's a cool idea in theory but a fist fight between two individuals going in opposite directions in time would immediately result in a paradox. It's hard to explain but it essentially boils down to the fact that both fighters are reacting to their opponents reaction to the move they're about to make.

I'm surprised that you say that there was a lot of hype when it was released. I remember seeing a lot of hype before it came out, but all of the discussion I saw when it was released was just complaints about the audio mixing and lack of character development.

For the record I like the movie as an action movie. I feel like it's at a similar quality to most of his Batman movies and Inception in that sense. I just don't think it was ever intended to be profound or particularly deep (outside of the standard complexity that comes with a time travel story)

I was disappointed. Nolan usually does a good job of grounding his "concept" movies in human personalities and relationship. I understand how he was trying to do that in Tenet, but it just didn't work. The result was a movie full of action set pieces without anything to hold them together.

Patrick Willems made a good video about Tenet. He calls it a Vibes Movie, in his explanation all the secret agent movies, like Bond, Mission Impossible, are vibes movies where the plot is actually meaningless. Tenet ups this to eleven. IMHO Nolan is a serial perpetrator of over his own head concepts, but I nevertheless like his movies because the're at least not franchises.

Fleur Delacour says it best in the movie:

Don't try to understand it.

I want to watch it again. Maybe going in not expecting certain things to happen that drives a story. Like you know, character motivation.

But to watch it like it’s a visual jigsaw puzzle.