Tenet (Christopher Nolan) *spoilers from post 475*

reubenreuben

flasher0030 wrote: »

Haven't seen it yet. Was looking forward to it until I starting reading the negativity here.
Then I was having a look at how the film was perceived by the “big guns” – rotten tomatoes and Metacritic. Ratings of 70% from 42 critics on Metacritic and 78% amongst over 300 “ordinary people”.
And on Rotten Tomatoes, it has 74% amongst 220 critics and another 78% for 1695 audience members.
That’s far more impressive than average or just above average.
Gets me thinking that there is a lot of the auld Irish begrudgery at play here. i.e. Chris Nolan was great when he was on the up. But there’s only so far that we allow someone to enjoy that success. Now, we’re sick of the pompous successful git, and it’s time to bring him back down to earth with a bang. It’s a sad mentality. It’s obviously a good movie. No need to be picking holes in it for the sake of it because you want it to be perceived as a bad movie.

Watched it last night.

Its a bad movie.

Bad casting (kenneth branagh as the russian gangster, just doesn't work), bad audio (thought it was the cinema but seems like its bad everywhere after reading reviews), script is comical.

Pros - locations, action sequences.

Hrududu

Just back from seeing this. It had a lot of stuff I enjoyed. After seeing a behind the scenes a little while back, knowing that all the action was done practically and not using CGI made all those scenes really enjoyable to watch. I also thought Robert Pattinson was an engaging presence, having never really bothered with him before.

I’d give this a 3/5, as I had some issues.

Mainly these were around me not knowing what the **** was going on at any given time. At one point towards the end I thought to myself “What’s going on here again?” And I answered myself “No idea.” I then decided to not worry too much, that I’d go home and look up synopses and flow charts. Then if I watched it again I’d know more about what was happening. When you are resorting to this then the film has surely failed at some level. You could also argue that I have failed at some level, namely at not being an idiot (which is always a possibility)

Then you take an already complicated plot and muffle a good chunk of the dialog. There was one scene towards the end where two characters are wearing masks while a load of action is going on around them. They shout some dialog at each other that sounds like it was important. But I’ve no idea what they said. And that was far from the only scene where that happened. It made me want to give a shout out to my man Ken Watanabe who went through the entirety of Inception being completely incomprehensible.

I think once I’ve read some plot outlines, looks at timelines, and learned to read lips I’ll probably watch this again.

serfboard

Hrududu wrote: »

I think once I’ve ... learned to read lips I’ll probably watch this again.

Won't help you for this part though ...

Hrududu wrote: »

There was one scene towards the end where two characters are wearing masks ... They shout some dialog at each other

jface187

It seems Tenet was the trail run and it's low box office has pushed Wonder Woman back to December. I think Tenet did as well as it could in the current climate.

gmisk

glasso wrote: »

https://screenrant.com/tenet-10-million-box-office-opening-weekend/



obviously referring to the US opening weekend which was actually after many other markets this time but is still a de facto measure

25% of US cinemas not open as it explains but still not a good sign for cinema "going forward"

That is definitely still a poor opening...didn't the new mutants manage 7? Despite by all accounts being dreadful

jface187

I follow a lot of the american youtube film people and most of them didn't go to see Tenet when it open, explaining there own reasons. When it went to drive in a lot more were open to going. If you have people who's job is to review new films and didn't want to risk going, you can see how the average joe is not running to the cinema at the minute.

Shelga

Went to see this tonight. Honestly thought it was one of the stupidest movies I’ve ever seen. And I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every other Nolan film that I’ve seen.

I could tolerate a preposterous plotline if I felt any attachment to any of the characters. Didn’t feel that at all with this.

Let’s call a spade a spade, people! A rare Nolan dud.

Homelander

Shelga wrote: »

Went to see this tonight. Honestly thought it was one of the stupidest movies I’ve ever seen. And I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every other Nolan film that I’ve seen.

I could tolerate a preposterous plotline if I felt any attachment to any of the characters. Didn’t feel that at all with this.

Let’s call a spade a spade, people! A rare Nolan dud.

It's very subjective. I thought Tenet was definitely leaning on the side of good, and I loved Interstellar and Inception, as well as his Dark Knight movies, but found Dunkirk fairly unremarkable.

Each to their own.

somuj

Started watching it for the second time. Turned it off after an hour.

somuj

somuj wrote: »

Started watching it for the second time. Turned it off after an hour.

not saying that this is a good movie, in fact it's not, but watching Tenet on a shaky dark cam bootleg is not exactly doing it justice.

MfMan

Shelga wrote: »

Went to see this tonight. Honestly thought it was one of the stupidest movies I’ve ever seen. And I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every other Nolan film that I’ve seen.

I could tolerate a preposterous plotline if I felt any attachment to any of the characters. Didn’t feel that at all with this.

Let’s call a spade a spade, people! A rare Nolan dud.

Called it a dud here from a long way out.

Hego Damask

The scene when Sator was threatening his wife with a gun and interrogating the progtagonist, he was inverted .... so they used software to reverse his speech etc ... but how could they have a sensible conversation ?

if it were a timescale of 20 seconds ....
so at tp (time protagonist =0) , ts (time sator = 20)
tp moves forward ... ts moves backward at they both meet at 10 seconds ... i am simplifying it here ...

Sator asks some question at ts = 6 ... , but the protagonist won't hear/translate this until tp = 14 ....
Prot. answers at tp = 15 .... but Sator would get this answer at ts = 5 ..... BEFORE HE ASKED THE QUESTION in his timeline ????

WTF ... I saw it for the 2nd time last night and my head is even more melted !!

homerun_homer

Hego Damask wrote: »

The scene when Sator was threatening his wife with a gun and interrogating the progtagonist, he was inverted .... so they used software to reverse his speech etc ... but how could they have a sensible conversation ?

I was thinking this as well when Sator is threatening to kill the wife during the car chase. He would be going backwards in time to TP's going forwards, so Sator progresses he would have the briefcase at the start and then be threatening to kill her by counting forwards, 1, 2, 3. Though we see this in TP's moving forward time so Sator is counting down to killing her as a threat, and then receives the briefcase. My head hurts.

This has to be wrong, I don't see how he would go into the scene with the briefcase.

Hego Damask

homerun_homer wrote: »

I was thinking this as well when Sator is threatening to kill the wife during the car chase. He would be going backwards in time to TP's going forwards, so Sator progresses he would have the briefcase at the start and then be threatening to kill her by counting forwards, 1, 2, 3. Though we see this in TP's moving forward time so Sator is counting down to killing her as a threat, and then receives the briefcase. My head hurts.

This has to be wrong, I don't see how he would go into the scene with the briefcase.

Also the bullet hole, if the bullet hole is there in theory her wound should be there... so when the bullet moves back through her into the gun - the glass fixes, so her wound should be gone ... yet she isn't she is wounded after the bullet is "caught"


So I think .... he was inverted ... and she wasn't ???



headmelter allright ...

Hego Damask

https://www.reddit.com/r/tenet/comments/iurk48/question_about_chris_nolans_intelligence_levels/g5n89da/

interesting ... .

Rfrip

Love Christopher Nolan, Inception is one of my favourite films but by Christ this was ****e

For about 95% of the film I hadn’t a canoe what was going on. Kenneth Branagh casting was woeful as a baddie and I couldn’t understand what people were saying half the time especially Priya

Ya it was ****e

MrStuffins

Saw this last week and experienced a lot of the same issues as everyone else. However, with so much going on and so much confusion, I wasn't sure I could even decide if I liked it or not until I'd seen it at least another time. Maybe watching it with fresh eyes and the knowledge of having already seen the whole movie (like a Blue Team member I guess) would be a different experience to initial viewing.

I went again the other night and came to the conclusion that it's just a bit "meh". It's ok, nothing more.

Needlessly confusing
Poor sound mixing
No heart
No character development

I simply didn't care about the characters. I'm not sure why JDW's character cared so much. I guess we're to assume he loves her or something? I'm not sure.

When it's available to watch at home I'll watch again but right now I'd call it 6/10.

I've noticed something in a lot of the negative reviews here. A lot of them seem angry. Mentions of "not as clever as it thinks" and "Nolanites" shows a chip-on-shoulder mentality in my opinion.

it's quite the opposite - it's the real Nolan die-hards who have the chip on their shoulder with their sanctimonious argument against any criticism, playing upon the confusing aspect of the work, being that

"oh you can't understand it so you can't see its greatness"

which is quite frankly a facile and completely insecure reasoning in defence of a fairly bad film which they simply can't bring themselves to admit is bad.

MrStuffins

glasso wrote: »

it's quite the opposite - it's the real Nolan die-hards who have the chip on their shoulder with their sanctimonious argument against any criticism, playing upon the confusing aspect of the work, being that

"oh you can't understand it so you can't see its greatness"

which is quite frankly a facile and completely insecure reasoning in defence of a fairly bad film which they simply can't bring themselves to admit is bad.

While I get what you're saying in principal, I haven't seen much, if any, of that.

I don't think anyone has had that argument on this thread?

MrStuffins

MrStuffins wrote: »

While I get what you're saying in principal, I haven't seen much, if any, of that.

I don't think anyone has had that argument on this thread?

I didn't say that it was on this thread - where such obvious trolling would hopefully be put down

I've seen it a lot, say on youtube, metacritic etc

e.g. https://www.metacritic.com/movie/tenet

Shelga

glasso wrote: »

it's quite the opposite - it's the real Nolan die-hards who have the chip on their shoulder with their sanctimonious argument against any criticism, playing upon the confusing aspect of the work, being that

"oh you can't understand it so you can't see its greatness"

which is quite frankly a facile and completely insecure reasoning in defence of a fairly bad film which they simply can't bring themselves to admit is bad.

Exactly! Also I do not understand this "I have to watch it again to see if I like it"- sounds like people who just don't want to say it was crap and incomprehensible, for fear of some weird insecurity of seeming stupid.

If I listen to an album I'm fairly sure is awful, I don't listen to it again just convince myself it's actually a work of genius.

Tenet is not Ulysses!... which is also dull AF :pac:

mikhail

glasso wrote: »

I didn't say that it was on this thread - where such obvious trolling would hopefully be put down

You responded to a post talking about the posts "here" without caveat. When asked to give an example of your strawman, you suddenly moved the goalposts to talk about the vast depths of stupidity on the internet. This is pretty much textbook trolling.

mikhail

mikhail wrote: »

You responded to a post talking about the posts "here" without caveat. When asked to give an example of your strawman, you suddenly moved the goalposts to talk about the vast depths of stupidity on the internet. This is pretty much textbook trolling.

not taking your bait.... m8

MrStuffins

Shelga wrote: »

If I listen to an album I'm fairly sure is awful, I don't listen to it again just convince myself it's actually a work of genius.

You're seriously missing out here in this case. There are literally hundreds of albums that would have been considered poor after just one listen, that go on to grow in the ears of the listener on subsequent listens.

I get where you're coming from I think, but using music to compare isn't a great analogy.

MrStuffins

glasso wrote: »

I didn't say that it was on this thread - where such obvious trolling would hopefully be put down

I've seen it a lot, say on youtube, metacritic etc

e.g. https://www.metacritic.com/movie/tenet

The image you posted there isn't an example of what you were talking about though.

It's true what the above said, just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's bad objectively. Is it a big enough reason for you to say you didn't like it? Absolutely! But not enough to say it's bad (objectively).

This is the reason I went again. I didn't fully understand everything but I enjoyed some of what I was watching. Another viewing, one where I understood everything, would allow me to decide properly.

I didn't like it. It was ok. That's about it!

There is plenty more out there - going on the assumption that the internet is the wider discussion than a single boards thread.

But I do think that that image is an example of what I said. The message is linking not understanding and not bad directly whereas there are plenty of other reasons why it's bad.

For me I could understand the concepts fine but it was just the last long end battle piece that I couldn't process every last detail in real time but at that point I didn't really care due to the general faults of the movie

I couldn't care to go back and look at it again to tie up a couple of technical details to make sure they make sense in the inversion gimmick world etc as it's not good enough a movie to bother watching again (for me)

Retr0gamer

Maybe I didn't understand the movie. I just couldn't care enough about the movie to want to understand it. Ergo it's not great. 2001 A Space Odyssey this ain't.

reubenreuben

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Maybe I didn't understand the movie. I just couldn't care enough about the movie to want to understand it. Ergo it's not great. 2001 A Space Odyssey this ain't.

Exactly. If any part I would want to watch again, maybe the shots of the amalfi coast. Beautifully done.

somuj

Why didn't she just destroy the 'algorithm' instead of sending it back in time?