“I am so confused right now.” -Kip Thorne
Well Tenet, I’ve watched it over 7 times. What is wrong with me. Because I want to actually watch again, but mostly for the sequencing/sound tranckfdshfdf…
What’s happened, happened.
It’s an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world. It’s not an excuse to not rewatch Tenet.
Re: Rewatching Tenet
You have a future in the past.
I’m disappointed that these videos didn’t teach me anything new about the movie. It’s all stuff that’s pretty clearly explained already in the movie itself.
The only exception is the car heist action sequence, which he tries to explain, kind of, but his explanation didn’t help. And I don’t really care either way, I understand the scene on a conceptual level, I don’t need to understand the details of the scene and whether or not they are “correct”.
I was hoping it would reveal a whole other way of looking at the movie that I’d missed or something.
I did want to revisit the idea for a second that Neil is the kid, as apparently the kid’s name is Maximilien, of which the last four letters are Neil backwards, and Nolan has said that Neil is actually not his real name. Eh, whatever. The problem is that I don’t see how one could possible live in entropy world for that long. We’re talking… decades. Is there some kind of entropy school sequested in a bunker someplace that has enough recycled entropic air to last that long? What about food? Even if Neil were put into some kind of back-and-forth sequence where he grew older in some kind of forced loop, the dangers of running into himself over that span of linear time must be insane. The protagonist, et. al. can go backwards potentially for days in a shipping container, but years?
— Alan
Yeah, in that video posted above by Woolen, in Part 2, the guy speculates on this and says the same thing, that living backwards for 10 years doesn’t seem practical. He posits that perhaps this was an early idea by Nolan, but then abandoned because it wasn’t practical, hence the name and hints that were left in, even though it’s not really possible.
Here’s a question…
So when inverted TP comes out of the turnstile, and fights with himself… why does he fire the gun and almost kill himself?
I mean, I can understand why non-inverted TP would be fighting like that, he doesn’t know who he’s fighting. But inverted TP knows who he’s fighting. Why would he be almost killing himself?
He was firing the gun on his way INTO the turnstyle during reverse time (later in the movie), he wanted to empty it of bullets so forward-TP wouldn’t be armed with a loaded gun the first time reverse-TP pops out backward.
Ok this makes sense kinda.
I’m not sure I get THIS part.
Ignore the “first time” part. That was my brain thinking linearly. Now I can’t get on the chopper.
A more accurate statement would be the “first time” the audience sees the fight on screen.
Hmm… so you’re saying that he’s “emptying the gun of bullets” so that TP wouldn’t have it… but that’s not actually the case, right?
I mean, he’s firing the inverted bullets… so he’s actually putting bullets into the gun.
Now, I guess this isn’t really loading the bullets, since presumably you can’t fire inverted bullets if you’re not inverted, once they’re in the gun?
But either way it seems like there’s no danger of non-inverted TP doing anything with these bullets no matter what.
Either it’s an inverted gun, with inverted bullets, in which case they can’t be fired… or, if they can, then it’s actually BAD to have fired them, since he loaded the gun for forward TP then.
And if he didn’t fire them… then they wouldn’t have even been in the window to begin with…in which case I don’t even know where they would have been. This gets weird.
Currently eating, I can expand on this later, but quickly:
The second time we see the fight on screen (in revserse-time) reverse-TP is running INTO the turnstyle, but has to get past himself (forward-TP) to do so. He knows that back when he was in the position that forward TP finds himself, there was a disassembled gun laying on the floor that will be re-assembled in forward-TP’s hand (because reverse TP used his special disassemble-gun move on the way INTO the turnstyle). Reverse-TP didn’t want to leave that loaded gun for forward-TP to find, so he empties it. In his frame of reference he’s shooting the bullets out on his way past TP, knowing that TP will see him pop out backward and suck the bullets into the gun in forward-time. But forward-TP can’t shoot it after the bullets are sucked back in because by that time the gun gets knocked down the hallway, and reverse-TP does the “freaky” crabwalk thing on the floor from TP’s perspective.
That was excellent
That is very well done.
That said, I think Nolan has been getting better at writing complicated movies without needing to put in too much exposition. It felt to me like Inception just had sooooo much exposition. And their second unit action scenes (which they did themselves!) were terrible. In Tenet I never felt confused or bogged down by exposition because most of the rules were explained in a light short exposition scene followed by showing something to illustrate it. Like the reverse bullets, or the plan briefing for the final assault. Short and to the point, followed by the actual action on the screen to illustrate.
I watched this now that it’s available on HBO Max. It was certainly good and thought provoking, which is a welcome change from the vast majority of movies. I’ve skimmed through this thread and the diagrams, and while I’m somewhat interested in understanding more… well, it wasn’t that good of a movie. I think I’m fine with understanding what I do.
I did think the final battle was just a pointless mess of people shooting other people. I had no investment.
Ditto. I enjoyed it when I first saw it. After all this discussion I was thinking of watching it again, now on HBO Max, but decided there are other new movies to watch and this one wasn’t quite good enough to justify rewatching within a few months. Maybe in a few years.
An hour in and I know two things: First, I will probably never watch this again because it is just too much brain-hurt to figure out. I think I had Inception more or less in control but the central premise is brutal. Second, as goofy a joke as we all make it, a cheese grater actually is a terrifying weapon.