Christopher Nolan's TENET (2020)

[Timex]

@jsnell

For example by putting an anvil on the accelerator and turning the engine on. Except from his point of view, he was actually taking the anvil off the accelerator and turning the engine off.

Except he didn’t do anything like that. He just hit the brakes.

I mean, maybe you want to imagine some inverted anvil, but that’s not in the movie. And to me, it seems silly to imagine it.

Occam’s razor suggests that there’s not some secret complex explanation explaining how it works… Nolan just filmed a scene that doesn’t really make complete sense, because he wanted to film a cool backwards car chase.

@jsnell

Sator and the driver are inverted. So is the car. You agree on both of these points, right?

I’m not sure there’s any clear indication that the car itself is not inverted, but perhaps it is.

And if so, then I guess you are correct that the intent explanation wouldn’t explain it… but that leaves us in a situation where there’s no explanation at all.

Like I said, I didn’t even think it was a good explanation… merely that it could possibly have explained stuff.

@jsnell

(But also, I think the intent nonsense is just sleight of hand to make the lack of free will less obvious. Understanding that part too early would make the movie feel even more emotionally barren.)

I don’t think I necessarily buy into the notion of a lack of free will in the movie.

You can perceive the notion of the timeline existing already as a lack of free will, but only if you limit your perception of the individuals as only existing in a singular point of time.

If you extend the idea of the individual beyond a single instant in time, to be their entire existence throughout the entire timeline, with ALL of that being “them”, then you can still have free will. It’s just that the entity which is expressing free will is not the 3 dimensional being that exists at a single point in time, but is rather the 4 dimensional being that exists across all points in time.

So, in that explanation, you’re still making your own choices… it’s just that you’ve already made all of them. But they are still your choices, and thus you still have free will.

[Wallapuctus]

This video should clear up Tenet for you all.

Our Antimatter, Mirrored, Time-Reversed Universe

There is no free will. It’s an illusion.

Allow me to explain. Free will is just quantum uncertainty. Anything that can happen, will and does happen. Just in a different, parallel universe. You have no free will because anything you can possibly do, you are doing somewhere in the multiverse.

[newbrof]

@Wallapuctus

You have no free will because anything you can possibly do, you are doing somewhere in the multiverse.

hm, so is this some kind of universal excuse for any bad (or good) deeds?

[Timex]

@Wallapuctus

You have no free will because anything you can possibly do, you are doing somewhere in the multiverse.

Not if I destroy Earth prime.

[anonymgeist]

First thing I thought of was Nick Cave:

“I have no free will”, I sang
As I flew about the murder
Mrs. Richard Holmes, she screamed
You really should have heard her
I sang and I laughed, I howled and I wept
I panted like a pup
I blew a hole in Mrs. Richard Holmes
And her husband stupidly stood up
As he screamed, “You are an evil man”
And I paused a while to wonder
“If I have no free will then how can I
Be morally culpable, I wonder”

[jsnell]

@Timex

Except he didn’t do anything like that. He just hit the brakes.

Let’s recap:

• I said that that “we aren’t shown everything the character does”.
• You responded “I can’t even imagine what he could have possibly done which would result in what we see”.
• I gave an intentionally ridiculous example, because you’d already rejected the simpler cruise control explanation. I thought that putting the physical object in there would make it more concrete, and easier to understand.
• You’re back to saying that it can’t have happened because you didn’t see it on screen.

This explanation is consistent with both the apparent rules of the movie, what’s shown on camera, and what could reasonably have happened off-camera.

@Timex

I’m not sure there’s any clear indication that the car itself is not inverted, but perhaps it is.

First, it’s driving backwards at 100 km/h :) I don’t think reverse gears work like that. Second, you can see that when the Audi clips the BMW, the damage is inverted (the BMW began with a broken side mirror, the collision re-attaches it). Those two cars can’t be traveling in the same direction in time.

You’ve got the directionality of time wrong for 2/3 of the significant cars (cars!) in that scene. It might be possible you’re not quite catching all the subtleties of the scene or of the rules.

@Timex

So, in that explanation, you’re still making your own choices… it’s just that you’ve already made all of them.

Sure, that’s reasonable. But either way, the characters are guaranteed to take exactly the actions that ensure that the loop persists, right?

[Timex]

@jsnell

This explanation is consistent with both the apparent rules of the movie, what’s shown on camera, and what could reasonably have happened off-camera.

No it’s not, man. I mean, hell, you see the pedals. He jumps in the car, and does absolutely nothing besides diving forward and hitting the brake. You actually see this, on screen. It takes place over like one second. There’s isn’t any magic anvil. He just hit the brake.

Come up with a non ridiculous thing that you think happened, not just “you don’t see everything, so MAYBE there’s something that makes this make sense.”

If you need to imagine unseen, entirely undescribed at all things for it to make sense, then that means the scene doesn’t make sense.

At that point, some other movie that you created in your mind maybe makes sense, but that’s not the movie we are talking about.

@jsnell

First, it’s driving backwards at 100 km/h :) I don’t think reverse gears work like that.

The mirror thing is a good indication that sator’s car is inverted, i had forgotten that piece.

@jsnell

But either way, the characters are guaranteed to take exactly the actions that ensure that the loop persists, right?

Well, there’s no “same” actions… There are the actions they’ve taken. There’s no loop. It’s just a line that continues on in both directions.

[roguefrog]

What happens when an unstoppable inverted object hits an immovable non-inverted object?

[kerzain]

The planet gets pushed around.

[Cormac]

This video sure cleared up a few things for me!

TENET Pitch Meeting

[Rock8man]

I just finished the movie yesterday, so perfect timing on posting that Pitch Meeting. That was great!

[kerzain]

You only finished half the movie. You have to watch it again in reverse. Treat the movie like a temporal pincer operation.

[Rock8man]

I actually had that exact thought this morning actually. I was thinking “I wish there was a way for me to rewatch the movie in reverse somehow”.

[Woolen_Horde]

Everything GREAT About Tenet! (Part 1)

[Woolen_Horde]

Part 2 is even better

Everything GREAT About Tenet! (Part 2)

[Woolen_Horde]

And Part 0, which is a barebones summary of the plot

Everything GREAT About Tenet! (Part 0)

[Starflightdream]

It’s pool table physics; Newton’s laws are time symmetric: nothing in classical mechanics forbids a shattered glass from assembling itself and flying back atop a table, due to individual molecular motions. It’s just extremely unlikely. Tenet’s tenet is “what happened, happened”, because it couldn’t have happened any other way. Hence, ‘inverted entropy’. It’s like living in a blueshifted universe.

/2c

[newbrof]

I have a gut feeling where Nolan got his idea for Tenet. I think it is based on Feynman diagrams, and somwhere I read about these diagrams. And that they also work if particles move backward in time.

[kerzain]

My favorite part of the movie is when The Protagonist exchanges photons with himself.

[Alan_Dunkin]

Apparently Nolan passed some of his ideas through Kip Thorne, it’s just not known how much, or what Thorne said.

— Alan