Tenet

[QDRPHNC]

In the last 2 weeks, I've watched The Prestige twice (the boy wanted to see it again), and half of Inception.

The Prestige was, in my opinion, really good. But it was based on a novel, and you can tell. It has that's novelist's way of weaving its theme throughout scenes and dialogue, without expressing it overtly, and was structured to within an inch of it's life. It felt like a story that had been revised, and revised and revised. Nolan made it looks great. He is a great stylist.

But Inception. Fuck me. What a heap. I got to about the hour mark, and I was done. I was annoyed right off the bat, because dreams aren't anything like that and everyone knows that. And that woman they got as the new architect. "Hey! I'm a guy who works inside dreams and I need you to build dreams for me." "Cool! Ok wow I'm really good at this!" And the whole idea that if you build a safe inside a dream then people will put their secrets there. What, people have like 5 secrets total? Specifically the ones you want? Oh, and you can't read in dreams it doesn't work you dumb fuck.

If Nolan had written The Prestige himself, he'd have spent an hour explaining why the hats materialized that precise distance form the machine and how Wolverine was able to control where in the theatre he appeared. The Prestige is one of those rare twist movies that actually becomes more substantial in hindsight, Inception fell apart under the slightest scrutiny. It was like the Matrix directed by Russell Brand.

I haven't even seen Tenet and I'm guessing he used a catamaran because they're like symmetrical and there's 2 bits so it's like time, or something. Same way Nolan probably got hard at the idea of making Leo DiCap's office an old printing factory in Inception.

[Glebe]

The Prestige was, in my opinion, really good. But it was based on a novel, and you can tell. It has that's novelist's way of weaving its theme throughout scenes and dialogue, without expressing it overtly, and was structured to within an inch of it's life. It felt like a story that had been revised, and revised and revised. Nolan made it looks great. He is a great stylist.

One of his best movies for sure.

[dissolute ocelot]

A decent article in the Guardian about why Tenet's dialogue is unintelligible. It discusses directors getting carried away with too many audio tracks packed with sound effects, projectionists fiddling with sound levels, and cinemas playing films too quietly, before quoting professional sound designers who think Nolan deliberately tries to make the dialog hard to understand so audiences are forced to put in an effort and can't just sit back or half-watch.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I was listening intently and I still couldn't hear the dialogue. It's just inept.

[Chairman Yang]

Yeah there's repeated bits where the two Talking Objects will be having a nice mutter about something and then the largely strings, largely in-the-frequency-range-of-male-voices soundtrack swells.

Sammy Soundmixer is just being a dickhead.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

While we're lashing back: The armoured car heist is the most boringly perfunctory version of that sort of scene I've ever watched. Just a bunch of lorries slowly pulling up alongside each other while the protagonist waits for a ladder to slowly span a two foot gap.

I don't wish to get into a practical Vs. CGI debate, but this has strengthened my conviction that there's nothing inherently superior about Nolan's philosophy of filmmaking. The technical details of how a film is made are irrelevant if the end result is a bit ploppy.

[beanheadmcginty]

Plus that tactic of surrounding a police vehicle with four lorries is copied directly from Smokey and the Bandit, which is a far superior film on every level.

[PlanktonSideburns]

"He wants to grab the audience by the lapels and pull them toward the screen, and not allow the watching of his films to be a passive experience."

Put some characters in it then, you sentient Saab that walks like a man

[Custard]

Well, I liked it (mostly). But fuck knows what was going on. The sound mix is really bad, and you genuinely can't make out what people are saying a lot of the time. It also felt like a less good Inception. There's a quote for the poster

But I did find the action entertaining, and Son Of Denzel is very good in the lead

Don't see it in IMAX though, it was painfully, ridiculously loud. The opening scene was like being in a war zone. Thankfully one of the spods seemed to turn it down shortly after, but it was still way too noisy

[thugler]

Wow, that was supremely terrible. Easily his worst film I would say. Characters are completely bland with no sense of who they are or why they are doing all this shit. Endless scenes of vague explanation of all the nonsense that don't stand up to the slightest scrutiny. And the blandest action scenes of people shooting and fighting and crashing into each other for no real reason. The backwards gimmick is piss poor as well. Felt like he was taking the piss.

[Obel]

Just got back from seeing it and I thought it was okay. It was overly convoluted but not in a way where I feel like repeated viewings would be rewarding in any way. The action was quite average and not improved by the reverse action. Actually throughout a lot of the action scenes with reverse stuff going on I found myself really distracted by my brain trying to figure out the logic of the situation, which is a waste of time because fundamentally it doesn't make sense on any level. As a previous poster said, the kitchen fight where everything was going forwards was the best action scene in the movie.

Characters were mostly a bunch of nothing; typical for Nolan. Really liked the soundtrack. That's all really. I love that Nolan makes big budget films with an original script, but complicated does not always equal good.

[lipsink]

From the second it began to the moment it ended I literally had no fucking idea what was going on.

It looked nice though.

[touchingcloth]

A decent article in the Guardian about why Tenet's dialogue is unintelligible. It discusses directors getting carried away with too many audio tracks packed with sound effects, projectionists fiddling with sound levels, and cinemas playing films too quietly, before quoting professional sound designers who think Nolan deliberately tries to make the dialog hard to understand so audiences are forced to put in an effort and can't just sit back or half-watch.

Dunkirk was terrible for this. Tom Hardy's spitfire pilot character was always speaking while the engine thrummed loudly away and he was wearing his oxygen mask. "Mememrmrmrmmr forties leader mrmmrmrmrmrmrmmmm forties leader mmmrmrmrmrmrmrmr over".

[Johnny Textface]

Horrible bollocks.

[Icehaven]

I have the inaudible dialogue vs. too loud music problem with literally everything on tv/streaming so I wouldn't be bothering with this even if cinemas were still bearable.

[Ham Bap]

Horrible bollocks.

But what about the film?

[PlanktonSideburns]

Felt this was almost good fun grubby plotless Sci fi romp, felt like high budget version of Primer, but then sometimes it was a weird creepy bond film where the star was a Russian lad (probably had to get branner to play the part as they were too embarrassed to ask any actuall Russians to play such a boring Russian stereotype) who loves to smash his missus about. If it weren't for the fact that the women get barely anything to do, the main woman being sedated and pushed round on a trolley as to stop her interfering with anything, and the totally boring call of duty: container ship ending, it could have been something interesting

[Head Gardener]

No box office info : https://variety.com/2020/film/box-office/warner-bros-tenet-box-office-studios-1234767113/

[Butchers Blind]

Maybe a contributing factor in these covid times is word of mouth getting people into theatres.  Going by the sample of comments above who have seen it, thats not good.

[Rizla]

I fucking love the prestige, it's his best film by a mile.

Obvious thing I only realised the other day -

Alfred
Borden
Robert
Anglers

Abra (cadabra)

[surreal]

Something I've seen pointed out about Tenet which I didn't spot at the time is it's the Sator square:

S A T O R   (Branagh's character)
A R E P O   (the art forger)
T E N E T    (obvs)
O P E R A   (at the start)
R O T A S   (name of the company protecting the freeport)

Also quite a lot of suggestions that

Spoiler alert

Pattinson's character is Kat's son grown up.  His name is Maximillien, and the last 4 letters of that reversed spells Neil

[close]

.

[mjwilson]

Something I've seen pointed out about Tenet which I didn't spot at the time is it's the Sator square:

S A T O R   (Branagh's character)
A R E P O   (the art forger)
T E N E T    (obvs)
O P E R A   (at the start)
R O T A S   (name of the company protecting the freeport)

Also quite a lot of suggestions that

Spoiler alert

Pattinson's character is Kat's son grown up.  His name is Maximillien, and the last 4 letters of that reversed spells Neil

[close]

.

I refuse to believe that

Spoiler alert

anyone could be called Maxmillien and grow up to be anything other than a serial killer

[close]

.

[thugler]

Something I've seen pointed out about Tenet which I didn't spot at the time is it's the Sator square:

S A T O R   (Branagh's character)
A R E P O   (the art forger)
T E N E T    (obvs)
O P E R A   (at the start)
R O T A S   (name of the company protecting the freeport)

Also quite a lot of suggestions that

Spoiler alert

Pattinson's character is Kat's son grown up.  His name is Maximillien, and the last 4 letters of that reversed spells Neil

[close]

.

Oh who fucking cares. All this crossword puzzle bullshit but the film still makes no sense whatsoever and is a noisy bore.

[Puce Moment]

Pretty sure I'll never see this load of toss, but this thread is a real delight.

[sirhenry]

When you work in any creative area and you get bored with what you do, churning out a similar thing every time, one of the best ways of making it bearable is to make the job more complicated so that you have to concentrate harder to get it done right.
This looks to be what Nolan has done - by making the script, production and effects more convoluted it made it slightly less soul-destroying for him to make. Unfortunately by concentrating on getting all the pieces in the right order he seems to have lost sight of most of the basics, such as characterisation, plot, entertainment, etc. and in the process passed the annoying tedium on to us.

tl;dr: Like doing a Rubik's cube with one hand tied behind his back; self-indulgent and a waste of time.

But at least he managed to shoehorn in the current Hollywood requirement - that it turns out to all be about the F-word (

Spoiler alert

Family

[close]

).

[Custard]

SPOILERZ




So tall lady is told very explicitly NOT to kill Wallander, otherwise it could kill everyone in the entire world. Yet she decides to do it anyway, as, well, I don't really know why.

Then when she meets up with main bloke she says something like "oh, so you managed to save the world anyway? That's nice"

Then we're supposed to care about her at the end?

Get in ditch. Very much

[thugler]

SPOILERZ




So tall lady is told very explicitly NOT to kill Wallander, otherwise it could kill everyone in the entire world. Yet she decides to do it anyway, as, well, I don't really know why.

Then when she meets up with main bloke she says something like "oh, so you managed to save the world anyway? That's nice"

Then we're supposed to care about her at the end?

Get in ditch. Very much

Yeah by that point though there is a complete disregard for which version of each character everyone is, whether they are backwards versions or forwards versions or from a different time, why they are doing what they are dong and what exactly they know or don't know. I thought this film annoyed and bored me at the time, but since then it's only gotten worse in my estimations as I mull it over.

[sirhenry]

Early on in the movie, someone explains to the Protognostic thatthe word 'tenet', along with the fingers interlocked hand gesture will open doors for him. Does it? The only other time I noticed the hand gesture was towards the end of the movie as the basic premise was explained yet again.
And I'm sure someone mentioned (in this thread?) that the hero mentions having a wife and kid (to explain why he helps skinny woman get her son back) who never get another mention, despite the last page fallback on the Family trope. Did this happen? Do I care? No. Would eating my lunch be a better use of my time? Yes.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Early on in the movie, someone explains to the Protognostic that the word 'tenet', along with the fingers interlocked hand gesture will open doors for him. Does it?

He does it when he meets the exposition scientist. Later on, the arms dealer woman does it in their first meeting.

[mjwilson]

SPOILERZ




So tall lady is told very explicitly NOT to kill Wallander, otherwise it could kill everyone in the entire world. Yet she decides to do it anyway, as, well, I don't really know why.

Then when she meets up with main bloke she says something like "oh, so you managed to save the world anyway? That's nice"

She is told to wait until

Spoiler alert

the algorithm has been rescued

[close]

before killing him. But she realises she is about to run out of time and miss her chance, so she kills him anyway,

Spoiler alert

because she is a bit bored by the whole plot about the algorithm

[close]

.