***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** TENET SPOILERS ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS***

[JohnnyGossamer]

So this was essentially Memento with A LOT more window dressing and a far less satisfying reveal that lacked the pretty depraved, cynic hook of Memento. Ending lacked any emotional payoff whatsoever too. Middle bookended by the plane crashing and then crashing again is great though.

 

5/10

[Hatebox]

1 hour ago, JohnnyGossamer said:

So this was essentially Memento with A LOT more window dressing and a far less satisfying reveal that lacked the pretty depraved, cynic hook of Memento. Ending lacked any emotional payoff whatsoever too. Middle bookended by the plane crashing and then crashing again is great though.

Yeah, the actual denouement of him being the guy who set up Tenet in the first place was so underplayed I almost didn't take it in at first. Not like Nolan to waste a killer twist like that.

[JohnnyGossamer]

22 minutes ago, Hatebox said:

Yeah, the actual denouement of him being the guy who set up Tenet in the first place was so underplayed I almost didn't take it in at first. Not like Nolan to waste a killer twist like that.

I don't think it's that killer of twist so I was hoping that there was more going on beneath it. Like he'd become an even more controlling, worse version of Branagh. Or, some emotional payoff like Leo's choice at the of Inception. Or, the ugliness of why Pearce chooses to forget and repeat because he'll never be satisfied. Or, the muddled emptiness and confusion of Primer's ending. Or, the huge of emotional payoff you get from Potter 3's time play and countless Doctor Who episodes. 

 

It's Nolan. It's a movie of about time inversion. The lead character is named The Protagonist. There are very, very strong hints hints early on then layered on pretty thick once the first big hint drops that this is JDW's world, timeline, inversion, multiverse, whatever throughout. So... That really did very little for me.

 

He does make huge movies feel enormous. Similar to Bay. I mean that as a compliment. 

 

I hope Branagh plays the villain like Boris from Rocky & Bullwinkle in every Nolan from here on out. His motivation was right out of White House Down. Really didn't need to be there. Didn't hit personal note I think it meant to either. I wish he played it more in the vein of the self-destructive nature of control that Nolan puts in his stuff. It's kind of his main, compelling theme in just about everything he's made. Ails the good guys and bad guys in his films. It's here too. Didn't need inoperable cancer added in. Needless filler. 

 

Debicki is kind of a nothing here too. Nice enough performance but just a damsel in distress that kind of isn't good at anything. Oh, yeah, she loves her son. Felt like a mom from a Tony Scott or Transporter flick.

 

Pattinson's a lot of fun to watch. JDW is dull as hell but it's a dull as hell character. Literally a blank slate for the audience to exist through. There's nothing there.

 

Everything with ATJ, his troops etc. just bored the fuck out me and really just distracted from the more interesting core. Which bummed me out. Last half hour or so lost me not so much because I was confused but because I didn't care and the last action beats were visually extremely bland.

 

But, again, that stuff book ended by the plane crashing was great pulp cinema.

Edited September 2, 2020 by JohnnyGossamer

[Hatebox]

13 minutes ago, JohnnyGossamer said:

I don't think it's that killer of twist so I was hoping that there was more going on beneath it. Like he'd become an even more controlling, worse version of Branagh. Or, some emotional payoff like Leo's choice at the of Inception. Or, the ugliness of why Pearce choose to forget and repeat because he'll never be satisfied. Or, the muddled emptiness and confusion of Primer's ending. Or, the huge of emotional payoff you get from Potter 3's time play and countless Doctor Who episodes.

Ha, well maybe I'm just not one for predicting twists. At any rate it feels like it was meant to be one but when it's played out with Pattinson murmuring it as he walks off to die and within seconds we're onto the next scene neither the character nor the viewer is given any time to take in. Just a very odd storytelling decision from a director who, whatever his faults, is usually really good at final 5 minutes.

 

 

Edited September 2, 2020 by Hatebox

[Lucas]

Yeah, I didn't get surprised by any of the twists the movie had. The second they're in the reversing time world and say "we have to go back to the airport in Oslo" I knew exactly what was gonna happen, and from there on out I had every twist figured out. The Protagonist is gonna fight himself at the airport, the woman Kat says she saw jumping into the water is gonna turn out to be herself. The Protagonist wondering who their boss is, is gonna turn out to be himself. The mysterious guy with the red string is gonna turn out to be the only other character we've spent any time with, big surprise it's Neil.

It's the same rug-pull over and over again. I agree this doesn't have nearly as huge of an emotional payoff as Prisoner of Azkaban or many many Doctor Who episodes have when they play around with time.

[BoxOfficeZ]

One absolutely horrid dialogue scene is where one of them explains every single person will die if the baddie succeeds and Debicki's character adds "including my son" completely unnecessarily.  

 

I wish she was given more to do in the film because she feels absolutely wasted. It did give me a random thought that Neil might be her son? 

 

[CoolioD1]

in my heart i think Nolan thought the Debicki character and her "arc" was a refute of the criticisms that he can't write women and... well 

[Lucas]

5 minutes ago, CoolioD1 said:

in my heart i think Nolan thought the Debicki character and her "arc" was a refute of the criticisms that he can't write women and... well 

The story of Tenet is freeing Kat from her abusive husband by lying to her repeatedly, and then her grand empowering moment after being abused for over two hours is being impulsive and making a stereotypically "womanly" mistake. I also think Nolan thought Tenet would refute the criticisms, it is astounding how much he failed. 😄

[FilmFincher]

One thing I think Nolan really improved on was the idea of the future affecting/influencing the past.

 

I found that thread really weakly handled in Interstellar, (Which I still love) where you get a few lines of dialogue at the start about the blackhole being placed and then Coop expositing in the tesseract about how it's future humans helping out (how could he possibly infer that), it came across a little undercooked. 

 

But here it felt like he got to explore the idea a lot more because it's so integral to the central premise. A future war being fought in the past. JDW essentially recruiting himself, like others had said as soon as the first inversion happened you could see everything coming but I didn't mind.

 

I suppose I just really liked the implications of it all with everyone having their own linear experience from their perspective but in the grand scheme it's all these different pieces sliding together.

 

I would love to see the other half that's hinted at the end (I quite like the River/Doctor-esque relationship with JDW and Neil and another adventure with them; maybe Neils recruitment) but I supposed the point is that we've already seen the payoff to the whole thing. 

[Ethan Hunt]

I thought it was pretty good! seems like that's a hot take tho

[Brainbug]

What kind of very annoyed me about this movie was that none of the characters - apart from Robert Pattinson - felt like actual human beings. They were either robots who fight or robots who delivered never-ending exposition. The dialogue felt for me like a machine watched Nolans movies and wrote this script with that in mind. Its 2 and a half hours of Nolan flexing non-stop and i got tired by it quite fast honestly.

 

Its the first Nolan movie i cant recommend. I would have much rather seen a heist movie with this time concept, like Oceans Eleven-style where the robbers and the guy who they want to rob both can use this technique and its a cat and mouse game who can use it better. Would have been much more interesting for me than this tiresome "tHe WoRlD iS gOnNa EnD"-concept which kills the tension since we know the world wont end. That was all the more ridiculous as the film invests so much of its time to try and make us care about the robot mother and her son (which btw never says a word the entire movie, its hilarious).

 

I love Nolan, i really do. But i personally think this was hir first misstep.

[JohnnyGossamer]

1 hour ago, Ethan Hunt said:

I thought it was pretty good! seems like that's a hot take tho

Nah! Seems overall well liked, man. 

[JohnnyGossamer]

Agree or disagree, happy to be discussing a new release that I caught on the biggest screen with the BOT gang again.

[TMP]

That last conversation between Neil & Protag got to me a bit, ngl

[DeeCee]

10 hours ago, BoxOfficeZ said:

One absolutely horrid dialogue scene is where one of them explains every single person will die if the baddie succeeds and Debicki's character adds "including my son" completely unnecessarily.  

 

I wish she was given more to do in the film because she feels absolutely wasted. It did give me a random thought that Neil might be her son? 

 

Her child will survive.

 

Spoiler

 

[Knights of Ren]

Saw it tonight and really loved it.  I do agree though the sound mixing was pretty shitty at times.  Oh well haha 

[Cmasterclay]

On 9/2/2020 at 9:25 AM, BoxOfficeZ said:

One absolutely horrid dialogue scene is where one of them explains every single person will die if the baddie succeeds and Debicki's character adds "including my son" completely unnecessarily.  

 

I wish she was given more to do in the film because she feels absolutely wasted. It did give me a random thought that Neil might be her son? 

 

This moment made me literally laugh out loud in the theater.

[Liiviig 1998]

Watched it... and was meh for me.

 

" If I can't have you, nobody else can"

That bit of dialogue had me cringing hard. Never thought  I would evet hear such lines in nolan movie.

2020 has been  a wild year.

 

Watched a second time and it's gets Abit better but still meh.

 

Cool concept that is used as an action gimmick , don't get me wrong the way it's used is fantastic with exception of the final battle which bugged me more  the second time than the first ,needed better editing and ofcorse lack of tension due not rooting for any of the characters.

-Sound mixing.... Need I say anything.

-Solid acting but wasted potential.

-Score was pretty good actually.

- Editing of the whole movie as a whole made some scenes jarring.

 

I don't know why nolan tried to cram too much into this movie .

He could have it a two part movie, fleshed out the concept, characters, The past and future and this would have been something cool and great to watch.

Instead we are left with something that lives us with more questions than satisfactory conclusions.

 

Nolan just outnolaned himself.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 4, 2020 by Liiviig 1998

[wildphantom]

Does anybody want to have a go at explaining Kat’s events during the car chase. 
 

it seems she gets taken into the chase by an inverted Sator whilst she’s not inverted. Then threatened so JDW will give up where the ‘plutonium’ really is.  He then rescues her. 
 

My biggest question is at what point does she get shot. Is it before she’s even taken out into the chase, only the injury isn’t visible as it was with an inverted bullet? 
It’s not like she gets taken in and shot AFTER the chase, so when does it occur? 

[excel1]

On 9/4/2020 at 12:55 AM, Liiviig 1998 said:

I don't know why nolan tried to cram too much into this movie .

He could have it a two part movie, fleshed out the concept, characters, The past and future and this would have been something cool and great to watch.

Instead we are left with something that lives us with more questions than satisfactory conclusions.

 

Nolan just outnolaned himself.

 

Exact same thing as DARK KNIGHT RISES. Great on its own but could have been all-time had it been divided into 2 parts and further developed a bit.