Tenet

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

This is what I was trying to get at by saying it wasn't as clever as it thinks it is, you summed it up better than I did.  They could have explained the back/forward time thing a lot more simply and still had the effect they were after.  I was left scratching my head wondering just why you'd be physically going in the opposite direction to people in that time-slice, as it's not just jumping back to a point and going forward from there.

It first struck me when rewatching Inception a couple of weeks ago. There's so much talk about the time stretching effect of the multiple dream layers, but it's never actually relevant to the action.

While we're scratching our heads: When the protagonist

Spoiler alert

fights himself in the freeport vault, why does the future one shoot at the past one?

[close]

New page !tnuc

[Hand Solo]

Why in Inception when a van with a dreamer is rolling around, would it effect your dream and make it roll around too? It's complete bollocks isn't it as an excuse to have the set rotate? And having a rotating set so you can do all that going up the walls and ceiling stuff is as old as Hollywood, it was hardly innovative, I was bored as fuck from those fighting scenes.

[Head Gardener]

it was fun, yet I was confused quite a lot of the time and then thought I understood wtf was going on but probably didn't and ended up feeling more like I'd seen a ɘɿɔoibɘm Inception

[Chairman Yang]

Hahaha, fucking hell. In spite of reading this thread I didn't honestly expect the long sequence of exposition set to the sound of a fucking motorised catamaran race. I actually laughed out loud, best moment of the film by miles. Nolan's just trolling people at this point.

[Butchers Blind]

Not sure if it was the problem with the cinema I watched it in, probably not going by other comments I've read, but there were sections of dialogue that were inaudible and the soundtrack was way too intrusive to the point of being distracting.
The story was absolute gubbins held together by a few impressive set pieces.  Too many scenes of exposition, if you could hear what was being talked about, with characters you couldn't care less for.  Think Nolan has confused clever with over complicated.
The last big action sequence was edited terribly.
5/10

[rue the polywhirl]

Forget the meagre palindromic title. This should have been called Whoosh... (One Flew Over The Audience's Head) because I didn't know or care in the slightest what was going on and I'm pretty sure the 10 other people in the cinema didn't either. Any non-existent character or good story zoned out in favour of impenetrable walls of drab, grey exposition and special effect. Most suspenseful moment for me was when I thought Gordon Ramsey made a cameo about 20 minutes from the end and then it turned out not to be him. Easily Nolan's worst movie yet. 0/10

[Mrs Wogans lemon drizzle]

I can't make my mind up about Nolan films.  I tend to quite like them but never find myself wanting to watch them more then once.  As the other poster mentions the editing always seems choppy and the music is usually good but overbearing.

I enjoyed this more than inception,  although I didn't have a clue what was going on during the climax.  Not really sure the actors did either.

[Head Gardener]

the best bit was edited out

[Butchers Blind]

Just remembered, Michael Caine pops up in this for no reason other than Michael Caine appears in it.
I've seen some reviews suggest that its one of those films you need to see again to fully appreciate what was going on.  Why? Just think that's an excuse not to admit it made no sense first time round.

I'm reminded of this quote from one of our own which seems apt in regards to Nolan:

Smart person for thick people, like how uncle bulgaria was the wisest womble, only wise by the standards of his trouserless bin-diving vagrant society.

[Head Gardener]

Just remembered, Michael Caine pops up in this for no reason other than Michael Caine appears in it.

as The Protagonist leaves that meeting with Caine someone says "thank you Sir Michael" which I remember thinking was odd at the time and that he may have been playing himself

[Puce Moment]

Desperately trying to work out whether it is worth risking my life to see this mediocre film from an over-rated director.

[Butchers Blind]

Desperately trying to work out whether it is worth risking my life to see this mediocre film from an over-rated director.

Don't.  You'd only wish you could find a way of reversing time to go back and stop yourself.

[peanutbutter]

$53 million opening weekend

Given the current circumstances, is that good? is it bad? is it anything??

I assume this will be judged as a success if it gets people going back to cinemas as opposed to making mad money itself, but how badly does it have to do to be considered a failure? Is Nolan pretty much gonna get a free pass with this one due to the circumstances?

[El Unicornio, mang]

It's done very well, was expected to get half that. And it's still not opened in the US or China yet.

[SteveDave]

I've just read the plot on Wikipedia and saved myself £30 and 2 hours. 7/10 would read again.

[Puce Moment]

I suspect this is going to be not so good for Nolan. If this had been released in the summer in a non-covid world it would have been fine, but now it has tons of expectation. Audiences and critics seem extra disappointed to me, hence the scathing reviews and career reassessments.

[El Unicornio, mang]

It's currently rated 8.0 on imdb, got a lot of 5 star and 4 star reviews from the likes of The Guardian and Chicago Sun Times, good box office so far. Not exactly Heaven's Gate.

[Puce Moment]

True, but imdb has The Dark Knight at number 4 in their top 250 rated films so...

It's the only Nolan film that I have seen get consistently 3 and 2 stars from reviewers - especially all of those who are on the Guardian who are not the embarrassingly awful Peter Bradshaw.

[Phil_A]

It got as far as the first fight in the vault before I realised Chris Nolan had basically made a big budget blockbuster version of the Red Dwarf episode "Backwards", which I found quite amusing.

[chveik]

It's currently rated 8.0 on imdb

insecure Nolan fanboys innit

[peanutbutter]

I suspect this is going to be not so good for Nolan. If this had been released in the summer in a non-covid world it would have been fine, but now it has tons of expectation. Audiences and critics seem extra disappointed to me, hence the scathing reviews and career reassessments.

It's a weird kind of expectation though, it seems like the kind of thing that could be the signal of a downturn in his commercial strength but the fact its surrounded by the pandemic and being the first film most people see in the pandemic... it does a lot to make it more a weirdo novelty than a proper filmic event surely?


What I could see happening is his next film doing okay but having a huge backlash as people look back and realise that while it's not great, this was even worse or something like that.

[surreal]

I think they should just get his Bond obsession out of the way and give him the next non-Craig set to do as he did with Batman.  I think he'd make a good job of it to be fair, and get him away from high-concept stuff for a bit.  They could even cast JDW as Bond, shake everything up...

On Wikipedia it mentions that Tenet probably needs $450m-$500m to break even.

[Lord Mandrake]

They could even cast JDW as Bond

I'm down for a female Bond, black Bond, trans Bond but an American? Get to fuckery fuck.

[dissolute ocelot]

Does Nolan have a thing about obscuring his stars' faces, if it's not masks or superhero costumes, it's beards.

I'd like to see a Chris Nolan Bond, mainly because it'd totally kill Bond for a few years: hugely expensive even by Bond standards, exposition-heavy, uncool, unsexy, boring heroes and dull incomprehensible villains. JDW putting on an unconvincing British accent would be the icing on the cake for annoying all the fanboys. But I get the feeling directing Bond is a bit of a director-for-hire job, doing what the producers tell you, so I can't see it appealing to Nolan. What he actually should do is something else like Dunkirk, lots of pilots with masks over their faces shooting stuff with pretty cinematography, no plot, and nobody talking.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Does Nolan have a thing about obscuring his stars' faces, if it's not masks or superhero costumes, it's beards.

Less of that pesky human emotion to capture on film.

[frajer]

Does Nolan have a thing about obscuring his stars' faces, if it's not masks or superhero costumes, it's beards.

Someone asked Nolan about that in an interview once and his answer was quite revealing: "Six-foot props do not need to sit or talk. Nature of question is irrelevant. Have you seen this boy?"

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Perhaps his next film will be about the current situation: Some bloke, with a dead wife, goes to the shops. He's dressed in a sharp suit with a face covering. Meanwhile, the narrative criss crosses between him at the till and writing his shopping list at home.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Can imagine him writing all the shop names down to check if their palindrome's

Asda. ...... nearly!

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Speaking of covid, I wonder if the decision to release the film now, with schools and universities returning, was taken to deflect any blame in the event of a second wave. I expect they wouldn't be legally liable if it did happen - nobody has been forced to watch it - but it would be pretty terrible from a PR perspective. Nolan's insistence on a cinematic release would seem like a blatant ego trip.

[beanheadmcginty]

It got as far as the first fight in the vault before I realised Chris Nolan had basically made a big budget blockbuster version of the Red Dwarf episode "Backwards", which I found quite amusing.

This was my thoughts exactly. I was desperate for someone to shout "unrumble!"

The best bit was the normal forwards brawl in the kitchen where that bloke got cheese gratered across the face.