As a self--proclaimed Nolanogist, Nolan is one of the greats to me. Almost every of his films is a masterpiece to me (there are only a few exceptions.. coughs.. Dunkirk and Quay are awful..). Tenet looked very enticing. Nolan tackling time--travel after all. Only he calls it something else, time inversion. (More on that later.) Given the current circumstances, the film was proclaimed as the savior of the cinema industry. So nothing major. Just the first big film event after months of nothing, of this dry season. It slowly became the film to save the universe, the film to save the film industry. It became synonymous with the word 'hype'. If you were to look in a dictionary and find 'hype' there, it would give you the definition and underneath there would be a picture of the Tenet poster.
Christopher Nolan has been accused of making films too convoluted for their own sake, and perhaps the biggest criticism of them all, would be that he makes films without emotion. Hollow at the core. I always disagreed with this statement, however Tenet is that very film that critics accused him of making the whole time. Only this time it is true. Tenet is a bland nothing of a film.
Tenet starts out in media res (in a similar fashion to a James Bond film), at an extraction mission of sorts that goes awry. So awry that it ends in torture, and our main nameless character (sometimes referred to as The Protagonist, i.e. John David Washington) biting on a cyanide capsule. Only he wakes up afterwards, not dead, only to find out he has been recruited into an even more covert agency than he was at before. This one cares about saving the world from what could happen. He is given a word and a gesture to help him. That is all. During the opening mission he encounters the casing of a bullet, going backwards from one of the seats. He is then tasked to find this inverted ammo. And its origin. In order to get to a meeting with an arms dealer, The Protagonist meets the affable and dapper Neil (Robert Pattinson), which further leads them to Andrei Sator (Kenneth Brannagh who speaks in an dastardly diction and fashion, using threats about cutting someone's balls and stuffing them down someone's throat). The only way to get to Sator and find out his motives and plans is through his abused and exploited wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki). The film spends its better half filling the story with action scenes of great scope (opera houses being blown up, bungee jumping on a building, airplanes crashing into hangars, a boating trip gone wrong) yet despite all this, it is not particularly engaging. There are no real stakes presented, the lead actor is strangely emoting nothing. Not in a cool, suave way. Just no emotions. Pattinson tries his hardest to be the likable core of the film, only his character is not presented to us in any way. Neil just drops in to see what condition the state of the world is, and it is obvious he knows a little more than the rookie Protagonist. Those two leads are just one--dimensional figures. There is no reason given to care or root for them.
Elizabeth Debicki as Kat continues Nolan's Dead Wife trope, only to give it a little twist this time. Brannagh is really delightful as the bit over--the--top villain, only again, his character doesn't offer much nor creates any real stakes, only posing a threat over the life of Kat, who ends up being a pawn in the game of these men: Sator, the husband she loathes but stays with because of their son, and the nameless agent, who exploits her for his own gains. The stakes are never really quite established---only as something worse than armageddon. Later on we hear Branagh's plan and it isn't that enticing. The fact that the film doesn't try to make the audience care about any of the characters makes any world--ending stakes utterly meaningless. Sator is after The Algorithm, a glorified MacGuffin that is described, acts like and looks like the AllSpark cube from the Transformers franchise. Nolan knows how to spend the studio's money. No doubt about it. The film is big and doesn't shy away from big scope and spectacle. Only the film does this at the expense of the story. Nolan is masterful at using practical effects. The airplane crash scene is practical effects galore. Only that it is absolutely nonsensical. An airplane crashes and blows up, just because Nolan wanted it to be so. The characters are staging a heist and then one of them has an idea to just ram a plane into the airport. Now ain't that a new heist concept? This is a bad noisy blockbuster that tries to imitate the scope and grandeur of Michael Bay. (I am a Michael Bay fan.) The James Bond, Bay, and Mission: Impossible influences are obviously there, but the action scenes lack the emotional punch or tension. It all ends up as an empty shell of a film that just tries to be as good as those mentioned above. Tenet has got nothing on the scope and the grandeur of the last M:I installment. At some points it feels as if watching a parody of a Christopher Nolan film. The film cares too much about staging these elaborate cool, generic action scenes but forgets any story or characters. To further emphasize the generic nature of the action, the film's climax features a lot of gunfire and military--clad figures. The use of practical effects is nice but if they don't serve any story, they just end up as an interesting tidbit the PR team can use in a featurette or people in a pub can discuss how cool it is that the actors actually did that stunt on set. The film is a time travel story. No matter what Nolan says. It is a different time travel than usually featured in films, yes, but time travel nevertheless. Nolan is just using his old tricks here and since it is a time travel film, most of those tricks are easy to figure out. During a retelling of an event in the film Kat spots a mystery woman jumping from Sator's yacht. Who could it be? Of course, only her time travelling/inverted herself. A mystery assailant attacks The Protagonist and is moving in reverse? Of course, it is himself time travelling/inverted (that scene pales in comparison with the Inception hallway fight). If you have seen a time travel sci--fi movie then you can figure these out on your own as quickly as they are set up. Yes, and now we are getting to time--inversion, which doesn't really come into play until very late in the film. Time inversion really doesn't move the plot forward, it is just a gimmick, a way to reuse some scenes in the film. There is a lot of discussion on the internet about how the film unravels, and people trying to study the mystery. The film offers very little exposition, only that of a scientist who tells The Protagonist: "Don't try to understand it. Feel it". That's it. The exposition you get in the film is the same as in the trailer. Nothing elaborate. Apparently it all works on instinct. And then there is a time travel machine, in this case a turnstile, and it just causes the characters to move backwards in time. Easy. The film is so blatantly vague that it borders on comedy. It is as if the film refuses to tell us some information, denying us the name of the lead character. It is as if asking someone for answers they don't know the answers to. The film is not confusing as some make it out to be. It is pretty simple in narrative. No jumbled up chronology. What it does is it attempts to look smart and throws some buzzwords or tries to create a sense of confusion through the nonsensical dialogue. At one point the characters just start to talk about the Grandfather Paradox just because they feel like it. The conversation doesn't lead into anything, nor does it have any meaning or reason to be discussed. The Protagonist refers to himself as The Protagonist and the antagonists are referred to as Antagonists. Analyze that as you will. A lot of people are once again complaining about the sound mix and not being able to understand the characters. Now I am a person who has a hearing aid and loves going to the movies for the mere fact that I don't need to have one in my ear because I can hear it in a cinema. I saw the film with subtitles and also understood everything everyone said in the film. No complaints on the sound mixing from me. Tenet is simply a disappointment. Nolan is not progressing himself forward, he is moving backwards as fast as the inverted characters of Tenet. Tenet is merely an exercise in style, absent the intricate plotting of Memento and The Prestige. Tenet is in no way the film that saved the world, the universe or the film industry. It's just a big, loud, brainless action blockbuster. That is all. Nothing more. I hope Nolan returns to something more low--key next time. After the abysmal Dunkirk, now there is Tenet, a disappointing hollow film. I hope next time there will be another Memento, Inception, Interstellar or Insomnia in the cards.
Tenet starts out in media res (in a similar fashion to a James Bond film), at an extraction mission of sorts that goes awry. So awry that it ends in torture, and our main nameless character (sometimes referred to as The Protagonist, i.e. John David Washington) biting on a cyanide capsule. Only he wakes up afterwards, not dead, only to find out he has been recruited into an even more covert agency than he was at before. This one cares about saving the world from what could happen. He is given a word and a gesture to help him. That is all. During the opening mission he encounters the casing of a bullet, going backwards from one of the seats. He is then tasked to find this inverted ammo. And its origin. In order to get to a meeting with an arms dealer, The Protagonist meets the affable and dapper Neil (Robert Pattinson), which further leads them to Andrei Sator (Kenneth Brannagh who speaks in an dastardly diction and fashion, using threats about cutting someone's balls and stuffing them down someone's throat). The only way to get to Sator and find out his motives and plans is through his abused and exploited wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki). The film spends its better half filling the story with action scenes of great scope (opera houses being blown up, bungee jumping on a building, airplanes crashing into hangars, a boating trip gone wrong) yet despite all this, it is not particularly engaging. There are no real stakes presented, the lead actor is strangely emoting nothing. Not in a cool, suave way. Just no emotions. Pattinson tries his hardest to be the likable core of the film, only his character is not presented to us in any way. Neil just drops in to see what condition the state of the world is, and it is obvious he knows a little more than the rookie Protagonist. Those two leads are just one--dimensional figures. There is no reason given to care or root for them.
Elizabeth Debicki as Kat continues Nolan's Dead Wife trope, only to give it a little twist this time. Brannagh is really delightful as the bit over--the--top villain, only again, his character doesn't offer much nor creates any real stakes, only posing a threat over the life of Kat, who ends up being a pawn in the game of these men: Sator, the husband she loathes but stays with because of their son, and the nameless agent, who exploits her for his own gains. The stakes are never really quite established---only as something worse than armageddon. Later on we hear Branagh's plan and it isn't that enticing. The fact that the film doesn't try to make the audience care about any of the characters makes any world--ending stakes utterly meaningless. Sator is after The Algorithm, a glorified MacGuffin that is described, acts like and looks like the AllSpark cube from the Transformers franchise. Nolan knows how to spend the studio's money. No doubt about it. The film is big and doesn't shy away from big scope and spectacle. Only the film does this at the expense of the story. Nolan is masterful at using practical effects. The airplane crash scene is practical effects galore. Only that it is absolutely nonsensical. An airplane crashes and blows up, just because Nolan wanted it to be so. The characters are staging a heist and then one of them has an idea to just ram a plane into the airport. Now ain't that a new heist concept? This is a bad noisy blockbuster that tries to imitate the scope and grandeur of Michael Bay. (I am a Michael Bay fan.) The James Bond, Bay, and Mission: Impossible influences are obviously there, but the action scenes lack the emotional punch or tension. It all ends up as an empty shell of a film that just tries to be as good as those mentioned above. Tenet has got nothing on the scope and the grandeur of the last M:I installment. At some points it feels as if watching a parody of a Christopher Nolan film. The film cares too much about staging these elaborate cool, generic action scenes but forgets any story or characters. To further emphasize the generic nature of the action, the film's climax features a lot of gunfire and military--clad figures. The use of practical effects is nice but if they don't serve any story, they just end up as an interesting tidbit the PR team can use in a featurette or people in a pub can discuss how cool it is that the actors actually did that stunt on set. The film is a time travel story. No matter what Nolan says. It is a different time travel than usually featured in films, yes, but time travel nevertheless. Nolan is just using his old tricks here and since it is a time travel film, most of those tricks are easy to figure out. During a retelling of an event in the film Kat spots a mystery woman jumping from Sator's yacht. Who could it be? Of course, only her time travelling/inverted herself. A mystery assailant attacks The Protagonist and is moving in reverse? Of course, it is himself time travelling/inverted (that scene pales in comparison with the Inception hallway fight). If you have seen a time travel sci--fi movie then you can figure these out on your own as quickly as they are set up. Yes, and now we are getting to time--inversion, which doesn't really come into play until very late in the film. Time inversion really doesn't move the plot forward, it is just a gimmick, a way to reuse some scenes in the film. There is a lot of discussion on the internet about how the film unravels, and people trying to study the mystery. The film offers very little exposition, only that of a scientist who tells The Protagonist: "Don't try to understand it. Feel it". That's it. The exposition you get in the film is the same as in the trailer. Nothing elaborate. Apparently it all works on instinct. And then there is a time travel machine, in this case a turnstile, and it just causes the characters to move backwards in time. Easy. The film is so blatantly vague that it borders on comedy. It is as if the film refuses to tell us some information, denying us the name of the lead character. It is as if asking someone for answers they don't know the answers to. The film is not confusing as some make it out to be. It is pretty simple in narrative. No jumbled up chronology. What it does is it attempts to look smart and throws some buzzwords or tries to create a sense of confusion through the nonsensical dialogue. At one point the characters just start to talk about the Grandfather Paradox just because they feel like it. The conversation doesn't lead into anything, nor does it have any meaning or reason to be discussed. The Protagonist refers to himself as The Protagonist and the antagonists are referred to as Antagonists. Analyze that as you will. A lot of people are once again complaining about the sound mix and not being able to understand the characters. Now I am a person who has a hearing aid and loves going to the movies for the mere fact that I don't need to have one in my ear because I can hear it in a cinema. I saw the film with subtitles and also understood everything everyone said in the film. No complaints on the sound mixing from me. Tenet is simply a disappointment. Nolan is not progressing himself forward, he is moving backwards as fast as the inverted characters of Tenet. Tenet is merely an exercise in style, absent the intricate plotting of Memento and The Prestige. Tenet is in no way the film that saved the world, the universe or the film industry. It's just a big, loud, brainless action blockbuster. That is all. Nothing more. I hope Nolan returns to something more low--key next time. After the abysmal Dunkirk, now there is Tenet, a disappointing hollow film. I hope next time there will be another Memento, Inception, Interstellar or Insomnia in the cards.
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