Rank your fav Nolan films... we're curious! Also don't forget to check out World of Tanks here: tanks.ly/3t2BXlZ and use the code GIJOE21 for in-game perks. Thanks to World of Tanks for sponsoring this video!
i don't think all physics ideas should make philosophical sense case in point : spooky action at a distance or "Quantum entanglement " the "reverser machine" actually makes time of objects effected by consciousness not just reversing how the object is moving back in time but that happens because the observer wants it I don't think you guys actually understand the fact that conciseness effects time in the "movie" and more importantly only effects objects that have been reversed ((because objects have been reversed from the observer point of view)) Don't quote me on any of this i don't claim I'm a "physicist" but that's what happened in the movie "i think"
Tenet in my top 5 Nolans, probably because I have a curious spirit and I don't get exhausted and mean when I get tired of thinking and I don't take it out on the thing I get tired of.. I just figure it out or don't. I usually do and then help ppl along find the stuff they can like when they thought there was stuff that was stopping them from liking things
so today I wasn't just doing my business until I saw this video? I started my day by being ready to write this comment, until the video was finally uploaded?
And now in 2022 as The Batman. I think he has outshined his cringy past and then some.He has been on a slow methodical roll and I cannot wait to see him in what he is in next.
I got 2 feelings watching Tenet. 1. While editing Dunkirk, Nolan must have seen some of the action scenes played in reverse and thought “I can make a movie out of this”. 2. Nolan must have been approached to do a Bond movie or wants to be approached to do a Bond movie. This feels like Nolan’s take on a Bond movie.
Nah he had been working on Tenet for like 10 years. Read the screenplay I have no idea how he was able to get that made on screen it's worse to read but it's also so good
Every time you said a reason it was bad I thought "yeah I kinda liked that". I suppose not every movie need be identical in structure and Tenet, for me, was good because it was different.
I didn't know who Pattinson was until someone said its Cullen from Twilight and I was dragged to see that chick flick "Twilight" back then otherwise I would had never known who Pattinson was in my lifetime. In short, more people know Cullen than Pattinson. I honestly wouldn't watch anything with Pattinson as the main interest of a movie.
Yeah, nice to have a big sci-fi and/or fantasy film that's not part of a huge franchise. Too bad I couldn't follow, connect with, or see the value of many of the choices made :/
I was stupid enough to drive 8 hrs to watch this movie in IMAX DURING A PANDEMIC and honestly I'm glad I did :) it may have been confusing, but experiencing an original mind bending concept w/ a great score was a subtle highlight in a horrible year. I also got a citation on my way to see this movie. The most money I've spent to see a movie. Lol!
Honestly I enjoyed the movie, it felt more like a puzzle to solve than a story to watch though. I enjoyed piecing together the timeline in my head as the time loops started to intertwine
This would be fine if you were making a toy or a puzzle. This is a film, so it's not - any more than if I made a toy or puzzle with strong characterisation but broken moving parts.
Say what you will, and it’s probably very valid, I remember leaving the theater and thinking the characters are weak, but this was one hell of an experience, nothing I’ve ever seen before, I really enjoyed it. I was also thinking it’s very cold outside, but that had nothing to do with the movie
My thoughts were similar. While Nolan's characters in previous movies had such depth to them (their motivations/past experiences/attachments) this film did not provide a lot of exploration on the protagonist or any of the characters stories (perhaps K.B's character?). Which led me to conclude Nolan did this on purpose; the characters are as cold as the frequent military / communist-reminiscent locations where the scenes were shot and as cold as the music (which contrasts greatly to Hans Zimmer's non-stop feels in his other films). Seemed like he was trying something new out, a detachment from sentiment, perhaps echoing a current paradigm of disconnection.
I agree very different but when they get too the reversing room I was like ok this needed to be broken down for us premtively so I could understand what was happening in real time. Also couldn’t hear shit
Not really, and I wouldn’t call it an “experiment”. This concept has been done before and so so so effectively in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey
Yes. He knew exactly what he was doing when he named his protagonist "Protagonist". And imo, he succeeded, or at least: he did not fail. Both concept and pacing are amazing
I believe Tenet is meant to be viewed backwards. If you knew the relationship between the protagonist and Neil, Astor’s tragic marriage with Kat, you’d be invested in the characters. But you can’t . So you watch the movie and then are meant to *rewatch* it. Then it hits differently.
Really thin points youre making here, and in my opinion this critisim comes from the fact that this film is different to standard Hollywood movies and isnt guiding you super clearly into what exactly is happening. Seen Tenet about five times, and I love it. Its fresh and innovative!
I was like “Yeah I disagree, it’s a clever movie, I’m clever, I got it, yey me” until you hit me with “If you got it you probably don’t care very much for the characters”... I was more interested in the world and the rules than the characters, as you said they were bland and uninteresting
I tend to agree, but just like strong characters don't always have a good story, good stories can exist without the having the strongest of characters. A lot of times when someone says they loved the story in this game or that movie, they are referring to the characters and how events that happened to those characters made them feel, not the actual story-line. That's why we cast Superstars in our movies - they are well versed in getting us to care about their character, even if the movie sucks. Notice how you probably cared a lot more about Neil (the best actor/biggest star in this movie) than anyone else? Nolan has always been more interested in plotting a stronger story than strong characterization, but has traditionally had such a strong cast that they fill out what might be sometimes be missing. No slight to Tenet's actors, but when you compare them to the cast of The Prestige, The Dark Knight, and Inception, its clear Tenet would have fared better with more star-power. Think DeCaprio or Jackman in the role of the Protagonist, and that fixes nearly every issue raised. I said all that to say this; I loved Tenet, it was a good movie, and I personally found J.D. Washington a compelling lead actor, probably because (much like many people feel about Keanu Reeves) I found myself connecting with an actor that mirrors my aesthetic, regardless of the strength of his acting. Maybe a let some things slide because I was so happy to see some protagonist representation from my favorite director.
This is the problem with movies today. If it's story driven, instead of character driven, people will call it a bad movie. In comparison to Transformers and other mindless action movies, Tenet was kinda cool and tried something different.
Nolan made an entire movie where time moves backwards, with amazing characters and a great first act where literally they show you the end of the film, abd it is amazing. I am speaking of course of Memento.
i think quite the opposite in fact. they're not shitting on the script or the idea of the movie, mostly just it's screenplay (the face value of the movie). whereas world of tanks has the face value, but is lacking in depth. ironic nonetheless
@Kevin Votaw I feel like this comment was more waaay more observant than Michael's video. Who I sometimes feel, takes himself too seriously and reaches a bit.
Just a few nitpicks up top. That opening scene does give us some idea of who the Protagonist is: -He's good at his job -He's not above killing someone -He goes out of his way to protect the innocents, and doesn't let the sleeping audience at the opera house "wake up dead." (shout out Scary Movie 3) -He's deeply resilient, and able to take a lot of punishment without breaking. Obviously your mileage may vary, but just some points I picked up on: My biggest issue with this video (which was very well done): None of it dealt with the AESTHETICS of TENET. And so much of this video is about our expectations for a Nolan movie and not engaging with what Nolan wants to do with this flick. He doesn't name or give a backstory to JDW's character because he doesn't want you to engage without him beyond his actions in this story. He truly is what this character is in every film. A series of choices and observations played out over the course of a feature length. You can say, "Oh I believe Doc Brown is a real guy outside of the margins of Back to the Future," but that isn't true, and you couldn't realistically get a picture of his childhood by his appearance in that film. It's an illusion that Nolan does away with in this movie. One of my biggest issues with Nolan's work is his reliance on the TEXTUAL to do what the VISUAL should communicate. Even the clips you showed from THE PRESTIGE and INCEPTION have this problem, where the characters outright explain exactly what needs to be communicated with a gesture or a visual motif. TENET just throws away exposition as if to say, "None of this actually matters, look at what's happening," and I really respect that. Now to the visuals. This movie is purely a reflection of the chaos of when man tries to reorient our perception of the natural world. We only engage with time in ONE direction, so the very idea of being able to movie in the opposite is an entire upheaval of what we have always known. So the film reflects that chaos. It's thrilling and baffling seeing this movie for the first time. Because it doesn't make sense (how could it?!). Everyone has dreams, but NO ONE has ever been inverted, and bypassing the mechanics just further pushes us into the chaotic path of this story. Does it really matter how it works? (No.) How does the dream suitcase work in INCEPTION? (NO ONE CARES). So that's kinda my take with this. One last thing, think about the great films of all time. While many have great screenplays (like THE APARTMENT or ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND), most are made purely by the AESTHETICS of the flick. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, SPRING BREAKERS, and MULHOLLAND DRIVE are not made by it's tight screenplays. They're made by the means by which the visuals communicate their points of view. THE SHINING makes no real sense. How does Danny's "shine" work? Why don't the ghosts haunt him and instead of Jack who doesn't seem to Shine at all? Why are the ghosts malicious in the first place? None of that matters because Kubrick is using the AESTHETICS of the film to tell us that this world is UNREAL and that human logic can't be applied to the sequence of events. What matters is the IMMEDIATE DANGER posed by a mad man and how a child with magical abilities is able to see the doom before we do. That's what's relevant, so the backstory on the Torrance family or the Overlook is completely useless. If you dislike TENET, that's fine. Plenty of ppl smarter than me do. I just happen to love it, and love it more and more the more I see it. TENET isn't OUT OF SIGHT (a perfect movie with a perfect structurally sound screenplay and a perfect director to match). It has more in common with A CLOCKWORK ORANGE or MIAMI VICE (the movie) than it does INCEPTION. And I think the biggest fault with this video is that it views TENET thru the prism of what Nolan has done before and not what Nolan is trying to do now. DUNKIRK (my favorite Nolan movie) was dinged for, "not having relatable characters" which was a fault of how people viewed that movie. So Like DUNKIRK, I feel somewhat defensive of TENET. Sorry for the novel haha, hopefully someone reads some of this (also also, I really love the sound design of TENET. In the theater and with HEADPHONES the sounds of bullets and footsteps and punches are so intense and feel so real. Felt like I was ducking bullets in the theater; unlike any movie I had ever heard before. Pay attention to that next time you check it out.)
Thank you for pointing out that a film can still be amazing even when it doesn't follow established norms. I kept watching this video thinking "They're missing the point. They're missing the point."
Your first point hit the nail on the head. Basically all of the talk about Tenet is about how it didn't meet people's expectations for a Nolan film. Most were expecting the next Inception or Prestige or Momento. Tenet wasn't that for them so they deemed it a bad movie.
Thank God someone said it. This entire video, while well put together, is just upset that it doesn't follow a linear 3-act structure. Big deal. As you said, there's so much going well for this film and in him taking chances that to get hung up on "this doesn't make sense" is a pointless argument because that varies on everyone's perception. I don't know man, he literally says in the film "Don't try to understand it, just feel it." And that's so literal in this case. Every time I watch this film (and i've seen it maybe 6 times now) it gets more fun and makes more sense. It's literally a film that challenges the audience to pay attention and watch it a few times instead of the spectacle of a film thats easy to digest and only needs to be seen once to appreciate it. This is an artist making ART and asking the audience to participate.
Couldn't agree more. Moreover I think the characterization is in the protagonist understanding of the mechanisms. The first time you see him fighting himself he is actually learning how the other guy moves during the fight and he uses that knowledge during the rest of the movie. He is learning in sync with the audience. It isn't necessarily spoken aloud, but all done internally. I love this character for it
Don't care how well reasoned your argument is, I still love this movie! Not a perfectly made film but if you can get on board with the story then it can be a 10/10 viewing experience. Had the biggest "Ohhhh holy shit!" moments when the Protagonist fought himself in the hallway and suddenly everything in the film started to make a lot more sense! Really enjoyed that moment.
@@vidroiualin2060 You need to watch Dark. It is a 3 season long show full of time travel paradoxes without a single plot hole and has really great characters.
I feel like nolan wanted to show off an exercise in reverse photography on the studio's dime. And this was the bare minimum story he needed to achieve this.
@@wibblewobble3 Some parts were enjoyable and the the time pincer thing was a neat idea, but time travel always breaks down under the lightest scrutiny, so that didn't really help the movie either. It was definitely an ambitious endeavor, I'll give it that.
I loooove puzzle movies and that's why I hate Tenet. There's no puzzle to figure out, just the illusion of a puzzle. It's like doing a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don't fit
@@FireShell7 no number of watches would explain what either Sador or Protagonist does during the car chase (for example) let alone all the logic errors related to time inversion (most of which exist solely to allow the plot to happen). Such a dumb movie posing as a smart one. I wish it just accepted its dumbness and let it be just the fun ride it is
There are enough videos on the platform discussing the matter of why the obsession with characterization will be the doom of original story writing. Wisecrack living up to their name with this take
ohh men not blatantly insult you is one of the hardest things I had to avoid doing, at least in recent memory, i was suprised by the effort it went in to make this movie as incoherent and unenjoyable as possible
@@Altjoni I have no idea why you would want to insult me. In actual fact, there is no reason why anyone should want to counter my comment because being "entertained" is subjected. You countering my comment is just as silly as the statement that Tenet "...doesn't make for an entertaining movie". While I think the points that this video makes are straight on, it will never change the fact that a lot of people found it entertaining. I always find it silly that TH-camrs, and a lot of movie critics, always want to equate 'enjoyable', 'entertained', 'fun', to successfully executing storytelling methodologies. You're welcome to talk about how character building was bad, etc. but don't come here telling people that that makes the movie unenjoyable. I can tell you 100s of films that follow typical story structures and they are boring, because the filmmakers think that they can pick up a screenwriting book like Save The Cat, and instantly entertain people.
And I wasn't just entertained watching the movie, I was entertained twice. There's not that many movies that explicitly reward multiple viewings, and it's particularly well done that a movie about time travel and the rewards of foreknowledge also grants the same reward to viewers. The movie also is proof that the idea of time travel doesn't have to be stale and boil down to "when it works, nothing will have happened." So far I have seen more disappointing than good time travel movies, but Tenet is among the best.
@@elbaecc I think you misunderstood the ad. When you sign up, you get a bunch of free stuff. You also get some missions you can complete to get additional free stuff. And it's a bit unfair to call World of Tanks a generic game. It's been out for quite a while, and been so successful that they created additional games, like the one with ships and the one with planes. I've tried playing it a few times over the last 6 or 7 years, never had any fun with it. But a lot of people do love it. 5 years ago in college half the computer science people I knew were playing. A lot of the war vets I work with also greatly enjoy the game. I wouldn't really consider it too dodgy. And it's definitely miles better than a Raid Shadow Legends ad
Neil could be Sator's son! Nolans supporting characters are always the most interesting. Eames and Saito in Inception. Borden and Tesla in The Prestige. Joker and Dent in The Dark Knight. Bane and Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises.
@@thecloofer1255 tars, case and matt damon were the best characters in that film by a long shot. That movie has the weakest main character and most pretentious plot Nolan has ever attempted to pull off.
@@RedCloudGawdian love the premise. Didn't love the execution. Same with Tenet for me. And yes, DR. Mann or whatever was definitely the most believable human character.
Yeah I found that quite annoying. And it seemed like there might have been spoilers for other movies as well. I haven't seen Prestige yet and want to without it being spoiled.
I think thats why I like this film. I wanted a dumb spy movie with a wacky mechanics and thats exactly what it is. The story is meh, but to mey it feels like a puzzle where everything falls into place as the film continues. It is still pretty shallow though, so there's that..
It's an experiential movie (I realize how that may sound pretentious but that's clearly the goal when the main character is literally called "The Protagonist") To be frank, Bond movies have always put story behind as an afterthought. What matters is the thrills, chills, excitement, tension and the globetrotting scale.
One thing everyone who has an opinion on this movie should watch, is "Tenet:The Best Kind of Failure" by The Closer Look,really the best most balanced video made about this topic.
Everything Michael said was true, but I still love the movie. I don’t remember the character at all, still don’t know their name, but the concept alone does it for me. I joined it, ponder about how time works for at least a couple days after the theater viewing and will probably watch it again someday.
We understood the movie just fine, we also thought the characters were weak as hell except for the wife and that villain guy who I thought both had good moments. Overall though thought it was pretty decent.
I wouldn't say it was "true", it was more like his preference. Not all movies should focus on the main character, there are so many stories with big and interesting worlds that wouldn't be told if all stories were based only on characters. Something that I really enjoy in videogames like Skyrim.
Please explain, because I don't get it. Lol, imagine making a movie where your main character is a souless boring vessel and people say that it was the point. This is not an experimental film, Nolan is just really far up his own ass and people are still clapping.
@@MumRah357 if you need backstory to care about a person, maybe you need to go get checked to see why you lack empathy. People had this same complaint about Dunkirk too, "I don't know anything about a character, why should I care". You should care because you should empathise with the situation they're in, you don't need to know if someone has 3 sister and a dog named Jimbo to care for that character.
@@dm2060 I get your point, but I don't think you got my complaint. I said the "main character" lacked something, anything, for me to care for them and want to accompany them on this journey that, again, they are the most important person in the story. I'd say that's a pretty big misstep in screenwriting. You can have movies with characters who have no real "character" per say and still work (Dunkirk is an example, although I do feel the lack of characterization hurts that movie in the long run, I got what Nolan was going for), but in Tenet, this aspect just was really badly implemented imo. I don't need every human being in a movie ever to have a backstory, for me to have empathy for them, jesus, sorry if that's how I came across
@@MumRah357 ah so character development you mean. I guess that'd be down to personal preferences. In a story driven movie I don't really care as long as what's happening in the story is engaging, but I can see why it might affect some people's immersion in the story.
I didn't think anything went wrong, it was just a lot to take in, but only because it offered a lot. It's definitely a film that will be remembered in decades to come, from an audience that is willing to embrace it's complicated plot in return for how novel and exciting this film will be for years.
@@kliljkip3184 it'll probably be remembered as an interesting detour like Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon" or Tarantino's "Death Proof" . When director's like Nolan have cult followings behind them, its inevitable
I think Nolan did us all a favor by proving that big concepts alone won't make you care about the movie if the characters are bland and uninteresting. I remember being entertained by Tenet while watching it. But I didn't think about it at all after leaving the theater. Once the plot was discussed with my friends we all just shrugged and moved on and no one felt the need to revisit or talk about implications. Compare that to the ad nauseam discussions we've had about Inception or the Prestige or Memento where the concept had stakes and felt pertinent and important to unravel.
It was the opposite for me and my friends. We talked spent so much time discussing the concepts of each scene and how it wasn't important to have an emotional attachment to the characters
Guess that means 2001: A Space Odyssey, widely called the best movies of all time, was actually terrible since the audience didn't feel a connection to the characters and the plot was confusing and didn't make sense?? Hilarious that soo many people here were manipulated by Wisecracks' lazy argument that 'good' movies need interesting characters and structured plots.
I’ve watched it 6 times now, couldn’t agree more! Inception was my favorite but I think Tenet now rivals it. I remember watching it the first time and could not stop talking about all the philosophical ideas and mechanics of something this wild.
It gives me goosebumps now that so many theories emerge, niel dies in the end but it's the beginning of the protagonist, and if its a temporal pincers, protagonist is trying to save niel
I really am curious: why do you all watch this movie more than once? This isn’t the first time I read this in the comments and it’s something I can’t understand. I don’t want to sound rude but isn’t it a huge waste of time to watch the same two hour film again and again, over and over - up to six times and more?
@@tessavergissmeinnicht5142 waste of time is an interesting phrase here. What makes watching a movie not a wast of time? Maybe you’re saying, if you watch the same movie over and over, especially if you didn’t like it the first time, you’re losing time in finding great movies. However, I would disagree that movie watching is about finding great movies. To me it’s about finding something in the movie that interests you. I think these guys who watched Tenet multiple times are doing that. I’ve personally watched the Master like 10 times. And I don’t just say the typical, I find new things in it every time. I just love rewatching parts I really enjoy. Maybe every time I watch it I miss out on finding another great movie, but I don’t take it that seriously.
I guess I'm in the minority here. The concept of this film alone is all it took to make it a winner for me. Everything else is just secondary. People complaining about films that stray from the norm is why films always follow the same boring structure over and over again.
@@benzemamumba you're right. Opinions other than your own don't matter. Everyone who enjoyed the film is wrong and should be ashamed of themselves. How silly of me to disagree.
I'm not really sure why it got that much stick, it's not all that hard to make sense of it and poses a lot of interesting questions about fate and free will.
@@santiagobauza4257 It's not the the concept is that hard to wrap your head around. It's that who is doing what for what reason isn't established AT ALL. Like the bad guys are some vague shadow figures from the future that just kind of want to destroy the world. The good guys are good so they want to stop them... It's so bland and dull when you take away the hyped up sci-fi concept of things moving backwards through time. They literally go out of their way to make sure you know that they don't want you to know any details, which is just a complete waste of a good sci-fi concept.
@@andylofi4448 More like shite writing.....There are some ideas which should be just ideas....Filmento did a better video on this and this explains why this movie was a atrocity Respect for Nolan tho...I like his films...but yeah...Tenet is his grand failure
I felt the same urge to dismiss it because of that line. But i didnt, cause Looper pulled the same shit and that movie rules. But looper didnt spend the rest of the time trying to explain itself regardless.
I think Tenet is misunderstood... and is quite imperfect but actually brilliant. It shows what time travel might actually be like. It points out some simple things we take for granted, like the flow of life.
The concept is really interesting but there's so much of the movie that is just exposition and pointless conversations with characters that are boring at best
Thing that irks me is when theyre moving backwards, the characters so much more often still move forward. I.e. inside a boat thats moving backwards, but inside, theyre all living forward.
i think the point is that in a deterministic universe, there is no protagonist, no real agency, no feel-good emotional connection for any character, only the frustration of seeking meaning where there is none.
He might have wanted to make a cynical movie about determinism but that doesn’t make it watchable. Especially when he makes it out of a reverse timetravel gimmick and a bunch of James Bond tropes.
Honestly I think the movie is just way to “advanced” for a casual viewer, it took me wildly long to understand the bases of entropy in uni but to understand how the arrow of time and entropy “could” be related from a philosophical or physics point of view in the time span of a movie would be wildly impressive. In the end of the movie most people just feel like they entered a confusing lecture with students and a teacher they don’t know and didn’t really get to know by the end of the lecture
Answer to the question posed by the video title - "Nothing went wrong." I mean, if people don't know what a Christopher Nolan movie is by this point, then there's not much one can do about that. (Or he just might not be for you, which is totally fine. Different strokes for different folks). The first time I watched it, there were questions floating around in my head, but because I know who's telling the story I know it'll all come together by the end - like all of his puzzles/movies. I felt like most of the criticism I read about it were people saying they were lost and it didn't make sense, and I just didn't get that at all. Watch it again, after you know what's happening and you'll be more impressed (if you weren't already). Each subsequent viewing gets better and better, but I'll admit it's the Nolan-iest Christopher Nolan movie ever, and I'm here for it.
I think it's intentional that Nolan gives so little character background of John David Washington's character. He didn't even have a name because if time and fate are predetermined and absolute, the protagonist himself is merely a plot device to fulfill his mission regardless of his motivation
@@TheUSDebt i disagree, his action in the whole movie speaks a lot about his character without a flashback; tho i agree that neil and kat are more interesting by how neil is sent to repay the protagonist by saving his life and kat was inspired by her own self to break through abuse
Lore wise it would be important to be a blank slate because information is a tool to be used by future adversaries. That said, Nolan hand waives the tech and reduces the protag in order to inform the audience that this isn't an inception type thriller and we can comfortably shut our brains off and enjoy the ride. Which is why it's a shame that wisecrack focused on the most tertiary part of the movie (the characters).
"Bad" is definitely not the right word for Tenet. It's obvious that Nolan just wanted to do a movie with backwards action scenes. There isn't much more to the movie than that, and it's not on the level of Nolan's other works, but taken as simple spectacle, it's serviceable. Just because it's not a cinematic masterpiece doesn't mean it's bad.
Inception is not a complicated movie, it has three, colour coded, parallel but almost completely independent paths and a premise which is clearly and slowly explained. But Tenet seems to be a movie that does not want to be understood, let alone do any of the explaining itself. I managed to keep up until the beginning of the finale but it completely lost me as soon as it started wrapping up
go watch the "heavy spoilers" YT channel. not every tenet video is a must-see, but watch them in chronological order, i.e. the oldest ones he released first. probably the most important one is about sator's son. there are also detailed analyses about the central set pieces (esp the finale can get confusing, admittedly, but his video provides first-person-perspectives, so the inversions are un-tangled)
Okay let's maybe ease off a little. Let's be clear, he has been bad in a lot of movies, including Remember Me (which, to be fair, was a bad movie, but he was truly awful in the emotional climax scene, where he yells at this father), Waiting for the Barbarians, and, frankly, his most recent film, Devil All The Time. Somewhat like Jake Gyllenhaal, he excels at weird characters (although Gyllenhaal is able to give convincing performances of relatively normal characters). You could imagine him eventually being an Oscar nom for one of those roles . But the point is: he is very hit and miss right now. I'm curious to see what he does with the Batman film, whenever that eventually comes out.
@@kenmina-hs1wb sorry part of my comment clearly got cut off---I clarified now. The reason I compared him to Jake Gyllenhaal was that he excels at playing weirdos---Lighthouse is a great example. (Although I think Gyllenhaal can play a normal character more competently than RP has thus far)
I'm so happy that video's like TeneT are made even though a lot of people don't get it. They can watch all kinds of other (Hollywood's) movies explaining all in the movie itself by an actor or narrator and do not require any intelligence what so ever to digest it. Just be numbly entertained. Great choices everywhere!
I love Tenet simply because Nolan decided to do something crazy and pushed the boundaries. Instead of making 20 Transformers or Fast and Furious movies, he said fuck it, smoked a blunt, some LSD and ran with this crazy idea. This in itself has value in today's money grabbing aiming for the lowest apple movie industry.
The only character I actually cared even a little bit about was Elizabeth Debicki's character. She was pretty much the only one who had a personal connection to the villain and had relatable goals and motivations.
She was like princess peach, just getting captured the whole time... Saving her over the world, had me perplexed. Yes, she's a whole snack, but they were chasing her the whole movie...
I'm not trying to imply that she is a well written or original character but comparatively to the main character she was more interesting. At least she had a few character traits.
a movie about a horse falling into a soap shaped like Lincoln while playing the clavinet, surrounded by tiny needles there you go, it's an original idea for a movie! just because it's original it's good? stop being dumb
@@dimitreze Did you watch the video before making your own comment? What you described was incoherence, not originality. That's not what Wisecrack complained about.
But, it’s a spy movie. With the exception of Daniel Craig’s Bond, in a spy movie, the audience goes all the way through the 3rd act without knowing anything about the super-spy protagonist’s back story.
@Pranav M Well, let me be more specific: The Bond series except for Daniel Craig. The audience is given the same amount of knowledge about Bond’s past, and it’s been that way for decades. And besides, in Tenet, we do get a sense of The Protagonist’s moral compass. He is deeply concerned about the welfare of his crew, so much so that he sheds tears for them and is willing to die before ratting them out and getting them killed. He also has a heart for people’s welfare in general. In the planning of the plane heist, he’s concerned about not hurting civilians. So, why can’t you, Pranav, root for him? Maybe your mind was busy with the numerous machinations of the plot/rules of the world building and when they’re laid out? Where you concerned about the sound?
@@d3j4v00 It’s true that we never get his name, but so what? And his feelings about each situation he was in were pretty apparent to me. He just faced each problem with this glib super-confident attitude kinda like, well, James Bond. That’s what I think Nolan was going for, but it seems like you didn’t see it that way
@@JustinRevis I did see the glib super confidence but it didn't turn into a character flaw like it does for Bond. The more I learn about bond the longer his odds seem, the more I am impressed and relieved when his confidence pays off. The more I learn about the Protagonist the more I realize he's already won and there's nothing he can do but go through the necessary motions. Bond is overconfident and messy but lucky enough to make up for it and the stakes are high enough that the ends justify the mess. With this guy I think he's going to be like that but no, his glib overconfidence is met by plot armor, we find out in the airport that he's already won. He has more and more capable supporting characters appear out of nowhere as the movie processes at the perfect time. The stakes are life and death at the beging and lower through out the runtime. By the end the protagonist is not a flawed hero who overcame but a Syssiphus who is damned to live out his days orchestrating an operation that already happened.
@Pranav M Again, you’re talking about Daniel Craig’s Bond which is the most emotional Bond of them all. Of course we feel what he feels. His emotions are far more apparent than his predecessors, so we feel his pain. Have you ever watched Sean Connery’s Bond? He has the same level of confidence. I guess he was more of icon of success generation. A wish fulfillment fantasy for young men of the time to place themselves in. He didn’t need to have so much depth. Now perhaps, in Tenet, we have the Protagonist to be a kind of “wish fulfillment fantasy” for young black men? Up until now, I’ve hardly ever seen that kind of success in hands of a black man on screen; not without them being drug dealer or sports star, but I digress. I certainly DO NOT want to tell you how to feel. I just want to present to you what the Writer was going for, and how it worked for me. :)
Not setting up your protagonist was the point, it's the idea that he had to do what he needed without prompting him. Like dr strange not telling tony until moments before you know. In tenets case the audience was supposed to ride along without perception. So reverse inception?? IDK
Watching this made me realize: I like the concept/idea of fighting villains going backwards in time (plot) more than I like the overall movie. The choreography and some of the big reveals were amazing when it all clicked. But I'm couldnt relate/love many of the characters in the movie. By the time you gain interest in many the movie is wrapping up. Maybe it's due to that final premise when Neil says this was the end but the protagonist starts. The intro to his arch/story. A concept that starts/begins at the ends. A trilogy series that must to understand the value of the 1st film. But then again a tenant of movies are that each individual movie should be able to stand alone.
Short version: Tenet is a good puzzle, an amazing picture and a bad movie. All the characters are no more than puzzle pieces with no personality, no motivation, with only some actions to perform. But as a puzzle - damn it's good! Google 3d visualisations of the inverted scenes. It's blows my mind thinking how they organized that on set.
This is the best description. It works on a cognitive level because the viewer is trying to solve the puzzle. I enjoy that tremendously, and with each viewing I unlock a little bit more. But the video is also right that it fails on an emotional level for all of the reasons described. Since I enjoy the cognitive level so much, I love this movie. However... there may be a limit to this and once I sense I have gotten as much out of this puzzle as I can, I will probably lose interest.
I'm so tired of critics telling me that movies need relatable characters to be good. That is not true, and (for me) never has been. Characters can be mere vehicles to move the spectacle forward. That is what Nolan was doing with the Protagonist. Wisecrack hints at this, but I don't think you really get it.
Trying to stop ww3 isn’t enough for you to invest in? They also added a woman fighting for her son and most likely rising to be the head of the organization that tries to stop this war? Still not enough? Do you go on about character development in regular war movies?
I find (almost) every downside you mentioned benefitting my experience with this movie. I love when I can sense the existence of the big story and big plot somewhere behind the things happening on the page/screen. It allows imagination run wild. Vagueness in a story with such world-breaking technologies is a must. I mean, if the viewer is presented with solid rules, most of the time it opens up giant holes in the setting and the plot. ("You have this fantastical ability and you use it like this?! And world still looks like this?!") By concealing some details movie/book allows reader to fix these glaring problems using the imagination. And by giving reason to conceal these details it doesn't look lazy. Also cardboard characters are better (for me) than cliche love/friendship stories, especially if they aren't serving to the plot. IMHO, movie missed the mark in some regards too. But breaking narrative formula was totally warranted
I loved it. Easily one of Top 5 Chris Nolan films for me. It challenges you and demand you to understand the story on an absolutely different basis in comparison to 99% of Hollywood films. After every rewatch, Tenet just gets better, deeper and more fascinating to me.
Honestly loved this movie, it's a sucky feeling to have wisecrack insinuate that I'm dumb or less than for seeing this movie for all it has to offer :/
I paid to see it twice as well as picked up the steelbook. This film just get better with every viewing. Each time, you learn more and more about the loops, the palindromes, and the art that this film is. This video just sounds like a complaint that it wasn’t a normal movie that was a complete experience the first (and only) time through. If you watch this film once, you won’t appreciate it very much.
@@KatAspen see, I have only watched it once (so far), and I still absolutely loved it. Sure, the mechanics of inversion were kind of dumb (inverting people makes sense, inverted objects make no sense and are barely used in the movie; and why did we need the whole “inverted fire/oxygen” thing?), and there are a lot of random feeling side quests that I feel could have been better designed (what good would destroying evidence of fraud really do when we know the guy is an arms dealer who regularly has people murdered? Does she really think he would just let her go because there is nothing else he can do legally?). But I love movies that are open about how deterministic they are. Fiction is always deterministic; it is always following the authors plan. A film where the “author” is in a very real way “the protagonist” is just fantastic (the movie went from interesting to fantastic in my mind with Pattinson’s line about the whole thing being one temporal pincer movement). And the action scenes and how well it all fits together (other than the aforementioned questionable side elements that really didn’t matter) were masterful. My favorite Nolan movie, and top ten movies all time after one watch.
It was hard to follow, bad conversations and the love story was stupid, but the concept was okay and the philosophical point was amazing. I' m quite divided
@@richardesponja693 I thought the dialogue was perfect. Not a line said (or even audible) that doesn't need to be. As for a stupid love story, the only love story I take from the film is a mother's love for her son.
@@theheeze For sure, that one was so hard to understand! I have never seen a movie I wanted to watch again right away. Hope that these more complex non standard story arcs keep coming out.
@@theheeze Yyyup, puzzle box! I get what Micheal talks about building the whole movie on that one mechanic breaks so many storytelling conventions, it probably loses interest from a huge part of the audience thus bad movie. But I just loved it. And in a sense being this devisive means the movie actually stood out for an idea. And that demands respect. Tho not the only reason why I loved it. Remember Dr. Stange's line from Endgame: "If I tell you what happens, it won't happen." The whole movie is built on this idea and how the protagonist has to understand that for himself and going through the motions with him unlocks the paradox of free will vs predestination not to be mutually exclusive. Also the characters are not bland... just subtle and I prefer that to the low effort forcefed norm.
I watched the film, and I found the third act answered my questions about the first act. Although I won't lie that it took a lot more brain power than normal to follow along. Although I won't deny that outside of Dunkirk and first two batman films, Nolan's films are difficult to follow for me.
What if Nolan is making a second movie, which reflects the other side of the Temporal Pincer move, which fills in all holes in this movie. Both are needed to understand
Tenet may not be Nolan's best, but saying its "really bad" with a smug face is classic youtube video essay hyperbole bullshit, and I think everyone expects better from this channel.
But it is objectively bad. No one's hating you for enjoying it but it was poorly edited, the sound mixing was bad, the script was lazy, and there was no emotion or character.
REPORTER: You've just released a new movie with the title of "Tenet". Can you briefly tell us what is this all about? NOLAN: It's about the protagonist... REPORTER: Who is the protagonist? NOLAN: That's him.
I studied metaphysics of time in college. My wife really likes complex spy thrillers. We rented out a theater t ok watch this on a big screen for my 40th birthday (surprisingly cheap when theaters aren't able to sell regular tickets). There were parts that got us both lost, but between the two of us, we understood the whole thing well enough. We enjoyed it.
I think most people expected a complex time travel movie and totally missed the spy thriller. Once you begin to see the Bond tropes, you start enjoying the movie.
In theater I understood it well enough to know essentially wha was going on and enjoy it. On rewatch (with subtitles) I understood a lot more and got a new level of enjoyment. I think this one just works in layers.
The Nolan magic is real! And Tenet is his biggest achievement to date: Here is a movie where you can't hear the dialogue, can't follow the plot, and ends in front of you like a plate of uneaten spaghetti -BUTTTT! I loved it!!!! TA-DAH!
I thought it was lit, but I'm also a sucker for Nolan films and time travel. Sound mixing was a bit messy, but I thought the story made perfect sense as long as you pay attention.
this was Nolan's most complicated premise...he made the conscious choice to remove the heroes back story, character to meet the run time and reduce the burden on the viewer..... he was making it digestible for most audiences I was totally ok with it
I was with you until you said “while this makes for a great convo over bong rips and hot pockets, it doesn’t make for an entertaining movie” this movie may not be cinematically stereotypical, it’s entertaining af
All true what you said. I still like the movie. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It was really chaotic, and I didn't understand what was going on the whole time. When I left the cinema was the moment the film got into my mind. I thought the whole way home about what future generations will think about us. What prize the future pays for our carelessness? Can we save humanity from a harder life on this planet? I read a review that drew parallels with Interstellar later. Asking similar questions. So the hour after I left the cinema was the value I gained from it. And I want to rewatch it. Something I can not say about Inception.
the "why did we all hate tenet? " quote in the description could be further form the truth, most fans loved it myself included, its an odd film, its ok to dislike it, but mark my words, in 10 years time people will be kinder to this one, you see films is like music, experimentation is best attempted at one of the key areas at a time, you can make a song with very complex rythms, but you perhaps sacrifice the melody to do so, i believe this is the case with films also, Tenet deals with a very interwoven plot, so theres no time to tell you why you need to feel for the characters, and i for one dont think thats a crime, for me Tenet is an incredible film, and we wont probably see stuff this brave for a while, on a blockbuster scale that is.
When you see the movie a second time, you will understand a lot of the "it's dangerous to know" part. I caught even more on a third viewing, and a film that rewards going back to it is definitely great in my book.
watch the "closer look" regarding tenet as tenet acording to nolan is a study for screenwriters to learn how a film with a complex plot can't always make a film good as the audience only truly connects to characters and their emotions through their emotional jounrey
I think it was a genius exposition of the premise which is "what if we could reverse entropy?" something no one has done before in a story (I think) It has amazing and clever situations, but yes, at the end it's an experience, a case study, but not a regular movie with a character driven story to care about, it's kind of like many videogames where the game mechanics and playable scenarios come first and the story comes second. So, I guess what I'm saying is: I want the TENET game!
I have watched this movie 3-4 times since it’s release, and I can wholeheartedly say that it does not get any better with repeat viewings. I was surprisingly more confused watching more times. I do believe that Nolan intentionally wanted us to not know anything about the main character. But in a movie structure, it just doesn’t pan out. We end up not caring about anything that he’s doing on screen. And that’s tragic
This is one of those “deep and smart” movies that feels like it’s aimed at intro to philosophy students with Fight Club posters on their dorm room walls. I love a lot of Nolan’s movies but this was so needlessly convoluted and messy
Hated this movie. Nolan is so preoccupied with being clever that he forgets he has a story to tell. I mean it's his art and if he can get people to pay for it, more power to him. But he clearly has little regard for the audience. Something I don't think is worth financing.
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Rank your fav Nolan films... we're curious! Also don't forget to check out World of Tanks here: tanks.ly/3t2BXlZ and use the code GIJOE21 for in-game perks. Thanks to World of Tanks for sponsoring this video!
I cannot decide between Inception and Interstellar. Both of them!
Momento has been my favorite Nolan film. It’s structure makes it incredibly rewatchable
i don't think all physics ideas should make philosophical sense
case in point : spooky action at a distance or "Quantum entanglement
"
the "reverser machine" actually makes time of objects effected by consciousness not just reversing how the object is moving back in time but that happens because the observer wants it
I don't think you guys actually understand the fact that conciseness effects time in the "movie" and more importantly only effects objects that have been reversed ((because objects have been reversed from the observer point of view))
Don't quote me on any of this i don't claim I'm a "physicist" but that's what happened in the movie "i think"
The Prestige. It's the only Nolan-film whose characters intrigue me as much as the world that was built.
Tenet in my top 5 Nolans, probably because I have a curious spirit and I don't get exhausted and mean when I get tired of thinking and I don't take it out on the thing I get tired of.. I just figure it out or don't. I usually do and then help ppl along find the stuff they can like when they thought there was stuff that was stopping them from liking things
Nolan wasn't shooting this film, he was catching it.
First comment before this blows up ☝
so today I wasn't just doing my business until I saw this video? I started my day by being ready to write this comment, until the video was finally uploaded?
@@veero25 That's not how time inversion works.
@@elbaecc why not🤨?
Don't try to understand it,
Just feel it
It's a low blow to refer to Pattinson as Cullen. His performance in Tenet was quite good.
And now in 2022 as The Batman. I think he has outshined his cringy past and then some.He has been on a slow methodical roll and I cannot wait to see him in what he is in next.
@@traviswallace1696 meh. The black dude from tenet is the only deeeeelicous part of the movie. You know you want his chocolate.
@@blackleague212 weirdo
He was one of the best parts of this film. Sadly, it still sucks.
I got 2 feelings watching Tenet.
1. While editing Dunkirk, Nolan must have seen some of the action scenes played in reverse and thought “I can make a movie out of this”.
2. Nolan must have been approached to do a Bond movie or wants to be approached to do a Bond movie. This feels like Nolan’s take on a Bond movie.
Nolan has said that he very much wants to make a Bond film.
Nah he had been working on Tenet for like 10 years. Read the screenplay I have no idea how he was able to get that made on screen it's worse to read but it's also so good
He said it was inspired by the opening scene of Memento where a bullet travels back into the gun. After that the rest was history.
Agreed. I did feel like I was watching Bond the entire time.
A really lame one.
Every time you said a reason it was bad I thought "yeah I kinda liked that". I suppose not every movie need be identical in structure and Tenet, for me, was good because it was different.
same :D
Just say you enjoy bad movies
Maybe it will make more sense when the 4 hour long Zach Snyder’s Tenet version is released.
I want to watch that.
Lmfaooooooo
Imagine pitching a Tenet reboot to the producers. Genius!
Hahaha
Imagine all the reverse sequences but this time in _Slooooooow motioooooon!_
😳🤯
I believe that Nolan came up with the idea for the reverse car chase scene, then wrote a movie around it.
Nah man it was definitely the scene where the building fixes itself and then blows up forward and backward in time.
I was soooooo disappointed in that car chase
You should watch the video that the closer look did in order to fully comprehend how genious this movie is.
also the idea of a conversation between 2 characters, one going forward and the other backwards
he was watching old episodes of red dwarf
Calling him Cullen I feel is a bit lazy. Pattinson did a good job with what he was given. Having never watched Twilight, he is a pretty good actor.
Agreed. As bad as Tenet is, Pattinson has shown us (since Twilight) that he is a rather great actor.
Yeah feels like a cinema sins move. Little disappointed.
Even in twilight he’s clearly a standout among the cast (not that it says a ton lol) but he’s great all around
Bill nyferler
It was a good movie
You are dumb
I didn't know who Pattinson was until someone said its Cullen from Twilight and I was dragged to see that chick flick "Twilight" back then otherwise I would had never known who Pattinson was in my lifetime.
In short, more people know Cullen than Pattinson.
I honestly wouldn't watch anything with Pattinson as the main interest of a movie.
Despite it being super confusing, respect to Nolan for experimenting with traditional writing practices
Honestly he did this way better with Memento
Yeah, nice to have a big sci-fi and/or fantasy film that's not part of a huge franchise. Too bad I couldn't follow, connect with, or see the value of many of the choices made :/
Nolan needs to go back to film school…
he never went to film school...
@@acfan8253 I've not seen any masterpieces from film school graduates in the last five years...
I was stupid enough to drive 8 hrs to watch this movie in IMAX DURING A PANDEMIC and honestly I'm glad I did :) it may have been confusing, but experiencing an original mind bending concept w/ a great score was a subtle highlight in a horrible year.
I also got a citation on my way to see this movie. The most money I've spent to see a movie. Lol!
I dunno… I consider a film a “Fail”, if I care more about “YOUR” story arch than any character in the movie 🤨
Where do you live? On the moon?
@@nobodydoe he clearly lives in an area with no IMAX theatre, smartass
Why didn't you invert and make the police officer ticket himself
I enjoy driving, do you?
Honestly I enjoyed the movie, it felt more like a puzzle to solve than a story to watch though. I enjoyed piecing together the timeline in my head as the time loops started to intertwine
Exactly. It's pretty well thought from that perspective.
Exactly this! Sure the story is a bit weak but I thoroughly enjoyed piecing the puzzle together
It didn't seem that complicated to me. I enjoyed the shit out of it
It's a movie that undergoes some kind of metamorphosis whenever I rewatch it with the knowledge I have from every prior viewing. I love that effect
This would be fine if you were making a toy or a puzzle. This is a film, so it's not - any more than if I made a toy or puzzle with strong characterisation but broken moving parts.
Say what you will, and it’s probably very valid, I remember leaving the theater and thinking the characters are weak, but this was one hell of an experience, nothing I’ve ever seen before, I really enjoyed it.
I was also thinking it’s very cold outside, but that had nothing to do with the movie
Not at all a perfect movie, but I was fully engaged and entertained.
it wasn't that cold
My thoughts were similar. While Nolan's characters in previous movies had such depth to them (their motivations/past experiences/attachments) this film did not provide a lot of exploration on the protagonist or any of the characters stories (perhaps K.B's character?). Which led me to conclude Nolan did this on purpose; the characters are as cold as the frequent military / communist-reminiscent locations where the scenes were shot and as cold as the music (which contrasts greatly to Hans Zimmer's non-stop feels in his other films). Seemed like he was trying something new out, a detachment from sentiment, perhaps echoing a current paradigm of disconnection.
I agree very different but when they get too the reversing room I was like ok this needed to be broken down for us premtively so I could understand what was happening in real time. Also couldn’t hear shit
well I have to disagree with you, it wasn't that cold that day man, come on. oh and yeah, I agree with the other part, great comment
I believe this was a brilliant experiment by Nolan, trying to make a movie with 200% story and 0% characters
Not really, and I wouldn’t call it an “experiment”. This concept has been done before and so so so effectively in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey
There's not much of a story either. I mean things happen but I wouldn't call it much of a story
He did that with Dunkirk
@@timothyday5187 I see we fail to detect sarcasm. Everything okay back home, dude?
Yes. He knew exactly what he was doing when he named his protagonist "Protagonist". And imo, he succeeded, or at least: he did not fail. Both concept and pacing are amazing
I believe Tenet is meant to be viewed backwards. If you knew the relationship between the protagonist and Neil, Astor’s tragic marriage with Kat, you’d be invested in the characters. But you can’t . So you watch the movie and then are meant to *rewatch* it. Then it hits differently.
You got it perfectly
To many viewers, the closing of TENET's 3rd act is the end of the movie. For some, it's the beginning of another entertaining watch.
Same as memento, you have to view it first normally, and the in chronological order so all makes sense.
Neil was friends with Protagonist at the very start of the movie. Or so it seemed.
Maybe that’s the message. If we fully understood the future, we would be more invested in the now?
Really thin points youre making here, and in my opinion this critisim comes from the fact that this film is different to standard Hollywood movies and isnt guiding you super clearly into what exactly is happening. Seen Tenet about five times, and I love it. Its fresh and innovative!
I was like “Yeah I disagree, it’s a clever movie, I’m clever, I got it, yey me” until you hit me with “If you got it you probably don’t care very much for the characters”... I was more interested in the world and the rules than the characters, as you said they were bland and uninteresting
Characters don't have to be the focus of the story, in Halo Reach
@@CHIEF__ nor in Halo 1
And halo 2
And halo 3
And that's it for halo xD
@@SilvershoresRecords
I disagree.
I tend to agree, but just like strong characters don't always have a good story, good stories can exist without the having the strongest of characters. A lot of times when someone says they loved the story in this game or that movie, they are referring to the characters and how events that happened to those characters made them feel, not the actual story-line.
That's why we cast Superstars in our movies - they are well versed in getting us to care about their character, even if the movie sucks. Notice how you probably cared a lot more about Neil (the best actor/biggest star in this movie) than anyone else?
Nolan has always been more interested in plotting a stronger story than strong characterization, but has traditionally had such a strong cast that they fill out what might be sometimes be missing. No slight to Tenet's actors, but when you compare them to the cast of The Prestige, The Dark Knight, and Inception, its clear Tenet would have fared better with more star-power. Think DeCaprio or Jackman in the role of the Protagonist, and that fixes nearly every issue raised.
I said all that to say this; I loved Tenet, it was a good movie, and I personally found J.D. Washington a compelling lead actor, probably because (much like many people feel about Keanu Reeves) I found myself connecting with an actor that mirrors my aesthetic, regardless of the strength of his acting. Maybe a let some things slide because I was so happy to see some protagonist representation from my favorite director.
This is the problem with movies today. If it's story driven, instead of character driven, people will call it a bad movie. In comparison to Transformers and other mindless action movies, Tenet was kinda cool and tried something different.
Nolan made an entire movie where time moves backwards, with amazing characters and a great first act where literally they show you the end of the film, abd it is amazing. I am speaking of course of Memento.
And done with a quarter of Tenet's budget.
Goldfish like memory
Irreversible did it better.
@@angelurbina8158 Actually just 4,5 % of Tenet's budget.
It's interesting, people like Ebert back in the 2000s ALSO called Memento a gimmick.
Wisecrack tells us how bad Tenet is, but first informs us how incredible world of tanks is.
I get it’s their sponsor, just ironic.
Capitalism at its finest
i think quite the opposite in fact. they're not shitting on the script or the idea of the movie, mostly just it's screenplay (the face value of the movie). whereas world of tanks has the face value, but is lacking in depth. ironic nonetheless
@Kevin Votaw I feel like this comment was more waaay more observant than Michael's video. Who I sometimes feel, takes himself too seriously and reaches a bit.
If only world of tanks was playing backwards
Just a few nitpicks up top. That opening scene does give us some idea of who the Protagonist is:
-He's good at his job
-He's not above killing someone
-He goes out of his way to protect the innocents, and doesn't let the sleeping audience at the opera house "wake up dead." (shout out Scary Movie 3)
-He's deeply resilient, and able to take a lot of punishment without breaking.
Obviously your mileage may vary, but just some points I picked up on:
My biggest issue with this video (which was very well done): None of it dealt with the AESTHETICS of TENET. And so much of this video is about our expectations for a Nolan movie and not engaging with what Nolan wants to do with this flick. He doesn't name or give a backstory to JDW's character because he doesn't want you to engage without him beyond his actions in this story. He truly is what this character is in every film. A series of choices and observations played out over the course of a feature length. You can say, "Oh I believe Doc Brown is a real guy outside of the margins of Back to the Future," but that isn't true, and you couldn't realistically get a picture of his childhood by his appearance in that film. It's an illusion that Nolan does away with in this movie. One of my biggest issues with Nolan's work is his reliance on the TEXTUAL to do what the VISUAL should communicate. Even the clips you showed from THE PRESTIGE and INCEPTION have this problem, where the characters outright explain exactly what needs to be communicated with a gesture or a visual motif. TENET just throws away exposition as if to say, "None of this actually matters, look at what's happening," and I really respect that.
Now to the visuals. This movie is purely a reflection of the chaos of when man tries to reorient our perception of the natural world. We only engage with time in ONE direction, so the very idea of being able to movie in the opposite is an entire upheaval of what we have always known. So the film reflects that chaos. It's thrilling and baffling seeing this movie for the first time. Because it doesn't make sense (how could it?!). Everyone has dreams, but NO ONE has ever been inverted, and bypassing the mechanics just further pushes us into the chaotic path of this story. Does it really matter how it works? (No.) How does the dream suitcase work in INCEPTION? (NO ONE CARES). So that's kinda my take with this.
One last thing, think about the great films of all time. While many have great screenplays (like THE APARTMENT or ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND), most are made purely by the AESTHETICS of the flick. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, SPRING BREAKERS, and MULHOLLAND DRIVE are not made by it's tight screenplays. They're made by the means by which the visuals communicate their points of view. THE SHINING makes no real sense. How does Danny's "shine" work? Why don't the ghosts haunt him and instead of Jack who doesn't seem to Shine at all? Why are the ghosts malicious in the first place? None of that matters because Kubrick is using the AESTHETICS of the film to tell us that this world is UNREAL and that human logic can't be applied to the sequence of events. What matters is the IMMEDIATE DANGER posed by a mad man and how a child with magical abilities is able to see the doom before we do. That's what's relevant, so the backstory on the Torrance family or the Overlook is completely useless.
If you dislike TENET, that's fine. Plenty of ppl smarter than me do. I just happen to love it, and love it more and more the more I see it. TENET isn't OUT OF SIGHT (a perfect movie with a perfect structurally sound screenplay and a perfect director to match). It has more in common with A CLOCKWORK ORANGE or MIAMI VICE (the movie) than it does INCEPTION. And I think the biggest fault with this video is that it views TENET thru the prism of what Nolan has done before and not what Nolan is trying to do now. DUNKIRK (my favorite Nolan movie) was dinged for, "not having relatable characters" which was a fault of how people viewed that movie. So Like DUNKIRK, I feel somewhat defensive of TENET.
Sorry for the novel haha, hopefully someone reads some of this (also also, I really love the sound design of TENET. In the theater and with HEADPHONES the sounds of bullets and footsteps and punches are so intense and feel so real. Felt like I was ducking bullets in the theater; unlike any movie I had ever heard before. Pay attention to that next time you check it out.)
Thank you for pointing out that a film can still be amazing even when it doesn't follow established norms. I kept watching this video thinking "They're missing the point. They're missing the point."
Your first point hit the nail on the head. Basically all of the talk about Tenet is about how it didn't meet people's expectations for a Nolan film. Most were expecting the next Inception or Prestige or Momento. Tenet wasn't that for them so they deemed it a bad movie.
TALK TO EM!
Thank God someone said it. This entire video, while well put together, is just upset that it doesn't follow a linear 3-act structure. Big deal. As you said, there's so much going well for this film and in him taking chances that to get hung up on "this doesn't make sense" is a pointless argument because that varies on everyone's perception.
I don't know man, he literally says in the film "Don't try to understand it, just feel it." And that's so literal in this case.
Every time I watch this film (and i've seen it maybe 6 times now) it gets more fun and makes more sense. It's literally a film that challenges the audience to pay attention and watch it a few times instead of the spectacle of a film thats easy to digest and only needs to be seen once to appreciate it. This is an artist making ART and asking the audience to participate.
Couldn't agree more. Moreover I think the characterization is in the protagonist understanding of the mechanisms. The first time you see him fighting himself he is actually learning how the other guy moves during the fight and he uses that knowledge during the rest of the movie. He is learning in sync with the audience. It isn't necessarily spoken aloud, but all done internally. I love this character for it
To be fair, it's hard to understand Tenet without watching Oneno through Ninenin.
What?
@@dmc1943 Tenet, ninenin, eighthgie, seveneves, sixis, fivevif, fouruof, threeerht, twowt, oneno.
elevenevele twelvevlewt thirteeneetriht
Sixtynineninytxis
I didn't get it at first but was intrigued. I was thinking, are these other two Nolan movies? Then I read the thread and laughed. Now I get it 😅😅
Don't care how well reasoned your argument is, I still love this movie! Not a perfectly made film but if you can get on board with the story then it can be a 10/10 viewing experience.
Had the biggest "Ohhhh holy shit!" moments when the Protagonist fought himself in the hallway and suddenly everything in the film started to make a lot more sense! Really enjoyed that moment.
The movie lost me at the war scene at the end. Those people jogging backwards was kinda cringe.
I think that if Tenet where a TV show, the longer run time could have given it time to shine. But that's just me
It would be like westworld
Actually, a longer run time would cause more problems, since there is more stuff to account for when looping the events of the movie around.
@@vidroiualin2060 You need to watch Dark. It is a 3 season long show full of time travel paradoxes without a single plot hole and has really great characters.
@@vipul5340 thank for the recommendation, it sounds actually interesting
You'd have another Lost.
This movie is a temporal pincer, first time you watch it, you're supposed to lose on purpose. when you go back you will win.
Underrated comment
Lol so true
Win what?
There's no winning with those boring cardboard characters
Okay, I'll watch it again. You've cofivced me.
I feel like nolan wanted to show off an exercise in reverse photography on the studio's dime. And this was the bare minimum story he needed to achieve this.
It's not even good at that. It's quite obvious when the actors are acting "backwards". Especially when they try to run or walk quickly.
@@snowballeffect7812 ya I kinda agree its definitely jarring but I still found the action cool.
@@wibblewobble3 Some parts were enjoyable and the the time pincer thing was a neat idea, but time travel always breaks down under the lightest scrutiny, so that didn't really help the movie either. It was definitely an ambitious endeavor, I'll give it that.
personally I thought that the movie’s complexity made it more fun to watch multiple times. Like solving a puzzle.
Agree
I loooove puzzle movies and that's why I hate Tenet. There's no puzzle to figure out, just the illusion of a puzzle. It's like doing a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don't fit
People really dont like puzzles these days lmao
@@nevbezaire nah the pieces fit bro you just gotta watch it 8 times 🥴
@@FireShell7 no number of watches would explain what either Sador or Protagonist does during the car chase (for example) let alone all the logic errors related to time inversion (most of which exist solely to allow the plot to happen). Such a dumb movie posing as a smart one. I wish it just accepted its dumbness and let it be just the fun ride it is
There are enough videos on the platform discussing the matter of why the obsession with characterization will be the doom of original story writing. Wisecrack living up to their name with this take
Do you have a recommendation for such a video? I'm intrigued
I never heard that. Which video talks about that?
"It doesn't make for an entertaining movie"
I was pretty entertained when I watched this movie.
ohh men not blatantly insult you is one of the hardest things I had to avoid doing, at least in recent memory, i was suprised by the effort it went in to make this movie as incoherent and unenjoyable as possible
@@Altjoni I have no idea why you would want to insult me. In actual fact, there is no reason why anyone should want to counter my comment because being "entertained" is subjected. You countering my comment is just as silly as the statement that Tenet "...doesn't make for an entertaining movie". While I think the points that this video makes are straight on, it will never change the fact that a lot of people found it entertaining. I always find it silly that TH-camrs, and a lot of movie critics, always want to equate 'enjoyable', 'entertained', 'fun', to successfully executing storytelling methodologies. You're welcome to talk about how character building was bad, etc. but don't come here telling people that that makes the movie unenjoyable. I can tell you 100s of films that follow typical story structures and they are boring, because the filmmakers think that they can pick up a screenwriting book like Save The Cat, and instantly entertain people.
@@Mlu007M This ^
@@Mlu007M Allow me to offer several AMENs to your comment!!!!! 🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽
And I wasn't just entertained watching the movie, I was entertained twice. There's not that many movies that explicitly reward multiple viewings, and it's particularly well done that a movie about time travel and the rewards of foreknowledge also grants the same reward to viewers.
The movie also is proof that the idea of time travel doesn't have to be stale and boil down to "when it works, nothing will have happened." So far I have seen more disappointing than good time travel movies, but Tenet is among the best.
Gods... you can see his soul fleeing him as he talks through the G.I. Joe sponsorship thingie.
What are you breaking his balls? Lay off. He didn't come down to where you work and slap the broom out of your hand
That sponsorship looks dodgy, to be honest. Its basically, spend a lot to get so and so stickers and then play this here generic game...
@@markmaurer6370 fucking hell.
@@elbaecc I think you misunderstood the ad. When you sign up, you get a bunch of free stuff. You also get some missions you can complete to get additional free stuff.
And it's a bit unfair to call World of Tanks a generic game. It's been out for quite a while, and been so successful that they created additional games, like the one with ships and the one with planes.
I've tried playing it a few times over the last 6 or 7 years, never had any fun with it. But a lot of people do love it. 5 years ago in college half the computer science people I knew were playing. A lot of the war vets I work with also greatly enjoy the game.
I wouldn't really consider it too dodgy. And it's definitely miles better than a Raid Shadow Legends ad
Gotta get that bread being a philosopher doesn't pay well
Y’all did Pattinson dirty by calling him Edward each time lmao
Yeah, that’s Cedric Diggory right there!
Neil was easily the most compelling character. I wish the movie were about him.
Cross your fingers and might get a Neil back story if Nolan feels like it, hinted in the movie
Neil could be Sator's son! Nolans supporting characters are always the most interesting. Eames and Saito in Inception. Borden and Tesla in The Prestige. Joker and Dent in The Dark Knight. Bane and Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises.
@@RedCloudGawdian fair point. tars and case from Interstellar. Not even joking.
@@thecloofer1255 tars, case and matt damon were the best characters in that film by a long shot. That movie has the weakest main character and most pretentious plot Nolan has ever attempted to pull off.
@@RedCloudGawdian love the premise. Didn't love the execution. Same with Tenet for me. And yes, DR. Mann or whatever was definitely the most believable human character.
"I'm gonna talk about Tenet. So spoilers ahead for Tenet, Inception and The Prestige."
Yeah I found that quite annoying. And it seemed like there might have been spoilers for other movies as well. I haven't seen Prestige yet and want to without it being spoiled.
I'm still watching it again. It isn't a good story, but it is hell of an experience. And it is unique.
A unique blunder, that's what it is.
Yeah but that's what they said about cats
I think thats why I like this film. I wanted a dumb spy movie with a wacky mechanics and thats exactly what it is. The story is meh, but to mey it feels like a puzzle where everything falls into place as the film continues. It is still pretty shallow though, so there's that..
It's an experiential movie (I realize how that may sound pretentious but that's clearly the goal when the main character is literally called "The Protagonist")
To be frank, Bond movies have always put story behind as an afterthought. What matters is the thrills, chills, excitement, tension and the globetrotting scale.
@@michaelotis223 exactly, i haven't seen such a backlash against Bond movies.
One thing everyone who has an opinion on this movie should watch, is "Tenet:The Best Kind of Failure" by The Closer Look,really the best most balanced video made about this topic.
Was that the video by Sp-ns-rBl-ck?
Everything Michael said was true, but I still love the movie. I don’t remember the character at all, still don’t know their name, but the concept alone does it for me. I joined it, ponder about how time works for at least a couple days after the theater viewing and will probably watch it again someday.
We understood the movie just fine, we also thought the characters were weak as hell except for the wife and that villain guy who I thought both had good moments. Overall though thought it was pretty decent.
I wouldn't say it was "true", it was more like his preference. Not all movies should focus on the main character, there are so many stories with big and interesting worlds that wouldn't be told if all stories were based only on characters. Something that I really enjoy in videogames like Skyrim.
@Stellvia Hoenheim who's isaiah?
@@fielalmanga you dont know Isaiah? He's friends with joe
I believe that was the point, the protagonist doesn't matter on purpose, so that it's a surprise that he is the one that starts Tenet in the future
Please explain, because I don't get it. Lol, imagine making a movie where your main character is a souless boring vessel and people say that it was the point. This is not an experimental film, Nolan is just really far up his own ass and people are still clapping.
@@MumRah357 if you need backstory to care about a person, maybe you need to go get checked to see why you lack empathy. People had this same complaint about Dunkirk too, "I don't know anything about a character, why should I care". You should care because you should empathise with the situation they're in, you don't need to know if someone has 3 sister and a dog named Jimbo to care for that character.
@@dm2060 I get your point, but I don't think you got my complaint. I said the "main character" lacked something, anything, for me to care for them and want to accompany them on this journey that, again, they are the most important person in the story. I'd say that's a pretty big misstep in screenwriting. You can have movies with characters who have no real "character" per say and still work (Dunkirk is an example, although I do feel the lack of characterization hurts that movie in the long run, I got what Nolan was going for), but in Tenet, this aspect just was really badly implemented imo. I don't need every human being in a movie ever to have a backstory, for me to have empathy for them, jesus, sorry if that's how I came across
@@MumRah357 ah so character development you mean. I guess that'd be down to personal preferences. In a story driven movie I don't really care as long as what's happening in the story is engaging, but I can see why it might affect some people's immersion in the story.
The film 'Arrival' approached a similar idea of a circular narrative and did so so much better at it.
Time for a Wisecrack video about Arrival!
It was a confusing mess but the action scenes were jaw dropping
I really tried to like it like I did inception, but I think the concept was better than the execution this time.
No they weren't
@@tumadrexuxa yes they were
@@tumadrexuxa reversed martial arts aren't as cool as I would think
it was confusing, but a mess? shut up.
I didn't think anything went wrong, it was just a lot to take in, but only because it offered a lot. It's definitely a film that will be remembered in decades to come, from an audience that is willing to embrace it's complicated plot in return for how novel and exciting this film will be for years.
This movie will not be remembered that much is for sure
@@kliljkip3184 it'll probably be remembered as an interesting detour like Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon" or Tarantino's "Death Proof" . When director's like Nolan have cult followings behind them, its inevitable
I just watched it and loved it
It's going to be a cult.
I think Nolan did us all a favor by proving that big concepts alone won't make you care about the movie if the characters are bland and uninteresting. I remember being entertained by Tenet while watching it. But I didn't think about it at all after leaving the theater. Once the plot was discussed with my friends we all just shrugged and moved on and no one felt the need to revisit or talk about implications. Compare that to the ad nauseam discussions we've had about Inception or the Prestige or Memento where the concept had stakes and felt pertinent and important to unravel.
It was the opposite for me and my friends. We talked spent so much time discussing the concepts of each scene and how it wasn't important to have an emotional attachment to the characters
Guess that means 2001: A Space Odyssey, widely called the best movies of all time, was actually terrible since the audience didn't feel a connection to the characters and the plot was confusing and didn't make sense??
Hilarious that soo many people here were manipulated by Wisecracks' lazy argument that 'good' movies need interesting characters and structured plots.
@Pranav M What a load of lies. I bet you don't even remember the characters names 😂
@@johnwhereareyou you ok g?
@@johnwhereareyou Dave.
This Movie gets better every time I rewatch it.
Exactly
I’ve watched it 6 times now, couldn’t agree more! Inception was my favorite but I think Tenet now rivals it. I remember watching it the first time and could not stop talking about all the philosophical ideas and mechanics of something this wild.
It gives me goosebumps now that so many theories emerge, niel dies in the end but it's the beginning of the protagonist, and if its a temporal pincers, protagonist is trying to save niel
I really am curious: why do you all watch this movie more than once? This isn’t the first time I read this in the comments and it’s something I can’t understand. I don’t want to sound rude but isn’t it a huge waste of time to watch the same two hour film again and again, over and over - up to six times and more?
@@tessavergissmeinnicht5142 waste of time is an interesting phrase here. What makes watching a movie not a wast of time? Maybe you’re saying, if you watch the same movie over and over, especially if you didn’t like it the first time, you’re losing time in finding great movies. However, I would disagree that movie watching is about finding great movies. To me it’s about finding something in the movie that interests you. I think these guys who watched Tenet multiple times are doing that. I’ve personally watched the Master like 10 times. And I don’t just say the typical, I find new things in it every time. I just love rewatching parts I really enjoy. Maybe every time I watch it I miss out on finding another great movie, but I don’t take it that seriously.
I guess I'm in the minority here. The concept of this film alone is all it took to make it a winner for me. Everything else is just secondary. People complaining about films that stray from the norm is why films always follow the same boring structure over and over again.
It's garbage no matter how try to rationalise it.
@@benzemamumba you're right. Opinions other than your own don't matter. Everyone who enjoyed the film is wrong and should be ashamed of themselves. How silly of me to disagree.
@@benzemamumba I agree, this video is total garbage.
@@derektanner7144 ah so you get it. 😉
@@benzemamumba get what? That you're right and I'm wrong? Sure dude. Whatever makes you happy.
The movie was unique and original. The special effects are facing was off the charts amazing and special.
Yhe concept was unique and originalbrhe execution however was terrible.
You can't set up the backstory of the protagonist! That would invalidate the whole story
How?
Honestly it sounds like a sequel tbh.
How lmao
Yes, but you have to give the audience SOMETHING to latch onto. Otherwise, your audience doesn't know why they should care.
see: Fight Club
I enjoyed watching this movie. And it was even better the second time.
Same.
I'm not really sure why it got that much stick, it's not all that hard to make sense of it and poses a lot of interesting questions about fate and free will.
Same, enjoyed it in the theatre and recommended it to some friends. Not the best film I've ever seen but certainly above average imo
@@santiagobauza4257 because some people just can't let go of their bullshit and just enjoy something.
@@santiagobauza4257 It's not the the concept is that hard to wrap your head around. It's that who is doing what for what reason isn't established AT ALL. Like the bad guys are some vague shadow figures from the future that just kind of want to destroy the world. The good guys are good so they want to stop them... It's so bland and dull when you take away the hyped up sci-fi concept of things moving backwards through time. They literally go out of their way to make sure you know that they don't want you to know any details, which is just a complete waste of a good sci-fi concept.
I remember mentally tapping out of the movie the moment that women said "Don't try to understand it" 0:57
Weak mind, huh? 😂
@@andylofi4448 More like shite writing.....There are some ideas which should be just ideas....Filmento did a better video on this and this explains why this movie was a atrocity
Respect for Nolan tho...I like his films...but yeah...Tenet is his grand failure
same here ... it was pretentious af, and after another 30mins I just stopped watching.
@@mandelbro777 Open your eyes even further... and your mind as well and you will get it eventually. 😉
I felt the same urge to dismiss it because of that line. But i didnt, cause Looper pulled the same shit and that movie rules. But looper didnt spend the rest of the time trying to explain itself regardless.
I think Tenet is misunderstood... and is quite imperfect but actually brilliant. It shows what time travel might actually be like. It points out some simple things we take for granted, like the flow of life.
The concept is really interesting but there's so much of the movie that is just exposition and pointless conversations with characters that are boring at best
Thing that irks me is when theyre moving backwards, the characters so much more often still move forward. I.e. inside a boat thats moving backwards, but inside, theyre all living forward.
I think tenet is fuckin awesome. I think it’s so rewatchable like other Nolan movies.
I agree I love this movie especially watching it at full volume it’s a blast...I think if you don’t understand it it’s a you problem
Yes it's awesome..... It's not for all though.... This wisecrack guy cannot jus say its bad if he doesn't like it...... he is just plain stupid......
i think the point is that in a deterministic universe, there is no protagonist, no real agency, no feel-good emotional connection for any character, only the frustration of seeking meaning where there is none.
Yep, and the result is a shit movie. Nolan, most overrated filmmaker of all time, forwards and backwards.
Which would be interesting if the universe was deterministic.
@@zootsoot2006 certainly looks like it. I think Jonathan is probably the talented one, or at least there's a halfway decent filmmaker between the two.
He might have wanted to make a cynical movie about determinism but that doesn’t make it watchable. Especially when he makes it out of a reverse timetravel gimmick and a bunch of James Bond tropes.
Honestly I think the movie is just way to “advanced” for a casual viewer, it took me wildly long to understand the bases of entropy in uni but to understand how the arrow of time and entropy “could” be related from a philosophical or physics point of view in the time span of a movie would be wildly impressive. In the end of the movie most people just feel like they entered a confusing lecture with students and a teacher they don’t know and didn’t really get to know by the end of the lecture
I liked this movie. Didn't understood all of it but the part I understood I liked
The plot in my opinion is that niel is being saved by the protagonist but niel doesn't know it
Answer to the question posed by the video title - "Nothing went wrong."
I mean, if people don't know what a Christopher Nolan movie is by this point, then there's not much one can do about that. (Or he just might not be for you, which is totally fine. Different strokes for different folks).
The first time I watched it, there were questions floating around in my head, but because I know who's telling the story I know it'll all come together by the end - like all of his puzzles/movies. I felt like most of the criticism I read about it were people saying they were lost and it didn't make sense, and I just didn't get that at all. Watch it again, after you know what's happening and you'll be more impressed (if you weren't already). Each subsequent viewing gets better and better, but I'll admit it's the Nolan-iest Christopher Nolan movie ever, and I'm here for it.
2 years from now, these guys will be praising this film.
I think it's intentional that Nolan gives so little character background of John David Washington's character. He didn't even have a name because if time and fate are predetermined and absolute, the protagonist himself is merely a plot device to fulfill his mission regardless of his motivation
just because it's done on purpose, doesn't mean it's not bad
@@TheUSDebt i disagree, his action in the whole movie speaks a lot about his character without a flashback; tho i agree that neil and kat are more interesting by how neil is sent to repay the protagonist by saving his life and kat was inspired by her own self to break through abuse
Lore wise it would be important to be a blank slate because information is a tool to be used by future adversaries. That said, Nolan hand waives the tech and reduces the protag in order to inform the audience that this isn't an inception type thriller and we can comfortably shut our brains off and enjoy the ride. Which is why it's a shame that wisecrack focused on the most tertiary part of the movie (the characters).
"Bad" is definitely not the right word for Tenet. It's obvious that Nolan just wanted to do a movie with backwards action scenes. There isn't much more to the movie than that, and it's not on the level of Nolan's other works, but taken as simple spectacle, it's serviceable. Just because it's not a cinematic masterpiece doesn't mean it's bad.
Inception is not a complicated movie, it has three, colour coded, parallel but almost completely independent paths and a premise which is clearly and slowly explained. But Tenet seems to be a movie that does not want to be understood, let alone do any of the explaining itself. I managed to keep up until the beginning of the finale but it completely lost me as soon as it started wrapping up
go watch the "heavy spoilers" YT channel. not every tenet video is a must-see, but watch them in chronological order, i.e. the oldest ones he released first. probably the most important one is about sator's son. there are also detailed analyses about the central set pieces (esp the finale can get confusing, admittedly, but his video provides first-person-perspectives, so the inversions are un-tangled)
Bruh calling Robert Pattinson Edward Cullen is a super dick move. He's an amazing actor and deserves to be recognized for far more than twilight.
Okay let's maybe ease off a little. Let's be clear, he has been bad in a lot of movies, including Remember Me (which, to be fair, was a bad movie, but he was truly awful in the emotional climax scene, where he yells at this father), Waiting for the Barbarians, and, frankly, his most recent film, Devil All The Time. Somewhat like Jake Gyllenhaal, he excels at weird characters (although Gyllenhaal is able to give convincing performances of relatively normal characters). You could imagine him eventually being an Oscar nom for one of those roles . But the point is: he is very hit and miss right now. I'm curious to see what he does with the Batman film, whenever that eventually comes out.
@@DanielFolsom Have you seen the lighthouse? Water for elephants? The rover? High lif?e
@@kenmina-hs1wb sorry part of my comment clearly got cut off---I clarified now. The reason I compared him to Jake Gyllenhaal was that he excels at playing weirdos---Lighthouse is a great example. (Although I think Gyllenhaal can play a normal character more competently than RP has thus far)
I'm so happy that video's like TeneT are made even though a lot of people don't get it. They can watch all kinds of other (Hollywood's) movies explaining all in the movie itself by an actor or narrator and do not require any intelligence what so ever to digest it. Just be numbly entertained. Great choices everywhere!
He's not Edward Cullen anymore. Now, he is "vengeance."
I love Tenet simply because Nolan decided to do something crazy and pushed the boundaries. Instead of making 20 Transformers or Fast and Furious movies, he said fuck it, smoked a blunt, some LSD and ran with this crazy idea. This in itself has value in today's money grabbing aiming for the lowest apple movie industry.
The only character I actually cared even a little bit about was Elizabeth Debicki's character. She was pretty much the only one who had a personal connection to the villain and had relatable goals and motivations.
She was like princess peach, just getting captured the whole time... Saving her over the world, had me perplexed. Yes, she's a whole snack, but they were chasing her the whole movie...
but literally her only personality trait was "abused wife"
While I agree. Her character’s story was so painfully generic in the end I wasn’t that interested either.
I think she's an interesting take on the Bond Girl
I'm not trying to imply that she is a well written or original character but comparatively to the main character she was more interesting. At least she had a few character traits.
Wisecrack watching the movie: there are so many things wrong with Tenet
Me: whoah, coolness...
I’m stuck in temporal time loop watching Tenet again and again.
"Nothing is original any more"
An original idea
"Omg this is bad, it doesn't follow the rules"
a movie about a horse falling into a soap shaped like Lincoln while playing the clavinet, surrounded by tiny needles
there you go, it's an original idea for a movie! just because it's original it's good? stop being dumb
@@dimitreze Did you watch the video before making your own comment? What you described was incoherence, not originality. That's not what Wisecrack complained about.
But, it’s a spy movie. With the exception of Daniel Craig’s Bond, in a spy movie, the audience goes all the way through the 3rd act without knowing anything about the super-spy protagonist’s back story.
But we usually know their name and at least one thing that motivates them, and or how they feel about the situation there are in.
@Pranav M Well, let me be more specific: The Bond series except for Daniel Craig. The audience is given the same amount of knowledge about Bond’s past, and it’s been that way for decades. And besides, in Tenet, we do get a sense of The Protagonist’s moral compass. He is deeply concerned about the welfare of his crew, so much so that he sheds tears for them and is willing to die before ratting them out and getting them killed. He also has a heart for people’s welfare in general. In the planning of the plane heist, he’s concerned about not hurting civilians. So, why can’t you, Pranav, root for him? Maybe your mind was busy with the numerous machinations of the plot/rules of the world building and when they’re laid out? Where you concerned about the sound?
@@d3j4v00 It’s true that we never get his name, but so what? And his feelings about each situation he was in were pretty apparent to me. He just faced each problem with this glib super-confident attitude kinda like, well, James Bond. That’s what I think Nolan was going for, but it seems like you didn’t see it that way
@@JustinRevis I did see the glib super confidence but it didn't turn into a character flaw like it does for Bond. The more I learn about bond the longer his odds seem, the more I am impressed and relieved when his confidence pays off. The more I learn about the Protagonist the more I realize he's already won and there's nothing he can do but go through the necessary motions. Bond is overconfident and messy but lucky enough to make up for it and the stakes are high enough that the ends justify the mess. With this guy I think he's going to be like that but no, his glib overconfidence is met by plot armor, we find out in the airport that he's already won. He has more and more capable supporting characters appear out of nowhere as the movie processes at the perfect time. The stakes are life and death at the beging and lower through out the runtime. By the end the protagonist is not a flawed hero who overcame but a Syssiphus who is damned to live out his days orchestrating an operation that already happened.
@Pranav M Again, you’re talking about Daniel Craig’s Bond which is the most emotional Bond of them all. Of course we feel what he feels. His emotions are far more apparent than his predecessors, so we feel his pain. Have you ever watched Sean Connery’s Bond? He has the same level of confidence. I guess he was more of icon of success generation. A wish fulfillment fantasy for young men of the time to place themselves in. He didn’t need to have so much depth. Now perhaps, in Tenet, we have the Protagonist to be a kind of “wish fulfillment fantasy” for young black men? Up until now, I’ve hardly ever seen that kind of success in hands of a black man on screen; not without them being drug dealer or sports star, but I digress. I certainly DO NOT want to tell you how to feel. I just want to present to you what the Writer was going for, and how it worked for me. :)
Not setting up your protagonist was the point, it's the idea that he had to do what he needed without prompting him. Like dr strange not telling tony until moments before you know. In tenets case the audience was supposed to ride along without perception. So reverse inception?? IDK
Watching this made me realize: I like the concept/idea of fighting villains going backwards in time (plot) more than I like the overall movie. The choreography and some of the big reveals were amazing when it all clicked. But I'm couldnt relate/love many of the characters in the movie.
By the time you gain interest in many the movie is wrapping up. Maybe it's due to that final premise when Neil says this was the end but the protagonist starts. The intro to his arch/story.
A concept that starts/begins at the ends. A trilogy series that must to understand the value of the 1st film. But then again a tenant of movies are that each individual movie should be able to stand alone.
Literally just did a spit take at "for all those defending Tenet online... I really hope it works out for you." It just sounded so genuine 😂
Short version: Tenet is a good puzzle, an amazing picture and a bad movie. All the characters are no more than puzzle pieces with no personality, no motivation, with only some actions to perform.
But as a puzzle - damn it's good! Google 3d visualisations of the inverted scenes. It's blows my mind thinking how they organized that on set.
This is the best description. It works on a cognitive level because the viewer is trying to solve the puzzle. I enjoy that tremendously, and with each viewing I unlock a little bit more.
But the video is also right that it fails on an emotional level for all of the reasons described.
Since I enjoy the cognitive level so much, I love this movie. However... there may be a limit to this and once I sense I have gotten as much out of this puzzle as I can, I will probably lose interest.
I'm so tired of critics telling me that movies need relatable characters to be good. That is not true, and (for me) never has been. Characters can be mere vehicles to move the spectacle forward. That is what Nolan was doing with the Protagonist. Wisecrack hints at this, but I don't think you really get it.
Why should we care about the spectacle though?
@@dorukkaptan9926 Why do we care about fireworks? Spectacle isn't contingent on characters (see Mad Max: Fury Road.)
Yeah you’re clowning around if you want the blackops time warrior to have a fleshed out background
Trying to stop ww3 isn’t enough for you to invest in? They also added a woman fighting for her son and most likely rising to be the head of the organization that tries to stop this war? Still not enough?
Do you go on about character development in regular war movies?
I find (almost) every downside you mentioned benefitting my experience with this movie. I love when I can sense the existence of the big story and big plot somewhere behind the things happening on the page/screen. It allows imagination run wild.
Vagueness in a story with such world-breaking technologies is a must. I mean, if the viewer is presented with solid rules, most of the time it opens up giant holes in the setting and the plot. ("You have this fantastical ability and you use it like this?! And world still looks like this?!")
By concealing some details movie/book allows reader to fix these glaring problems using the imagination. And by giving reason to conceal these details it doesn't look lazy.
Also cardboard characters are better (for me) than cliche love/friendship stories, especially if they aren't serving to the plot.
IMHO, movie missed the mark in some regards too. But breaking narrative formula was totally warranted
I loved it. Easily one of Top 5 Chris Nolan films for me. It challenges you and demand you to understand the story on an absolutely different basis in comparison to 99% of Hollywood films. After every rewatch, Tenet just gets better, deeper and more fascinating to me.
Honestly loved this movie, it's a sucky feeling to have wisecrack insinuate that I'm dumb or less than for seeing this movie for all it has to offer :/
I think this video was just clickbait and comment bait.
I paid to see it twice as well as picked up the steelbook. This film just get better with every viewing. Each time, you learn more and more about the loops, the palindromes, and the art that this film is. This video just sounds like a complaint that it wasn’t a normal movie that was a complete experience the first (and only) time through. If you watch this film once, you won’t appreciate it very much.
@@KatAspen see, I have only watched it once (so far), and I still absolutely loved it. Sure, the mechanics of inversion were kind of dumb (inverting people makes sense, inverted objects make no sense and are barely used in the movie; and why did we need the whole “inverted fire/oxygen” thing?), and there are a lot of random feeling side quests that I feel could have been better designed (what good would destroying evidence of fraud really do when we know the guy is an arms dealer who regularly has people murdered? Does she really think he would just let her go because there is nothing else he can do legally?).
But I love movies that are open about how deterministic they are. Fiction is always deterministic; it is always following the authors plan. A film where the “author” is in a very real way “the protagonist” is just fantastic (the movie went from interesting to fantastic in my mind with Pattinson’s line about the whole thing being one temporal pincer movement). And the action scenes and how well it all fits together (other than the aforementioned questionable side elements that really didn’t matter) were masterful. My favorite Nolan movie, and top ten movies all time after one watch.
It was hard to follow, bad conversations and the love story was stupid, but the concept was okay and the philosophical point was amazing. I' m quite divided
@@richardesponja693 I thought the dialogue was perfect. Not a line said (or even audible) that doesn't need to be. As for a stupid love story, the only love story I take from the film is a mother's love for her son.
Tenet felt different. For some reason having to watch more hours in TH-cam explainers then the movie was still satisfying.
It's like a weird little puzzle box. That interrogation scene, I've watch at least 10 videos explaining it and it still intrigues me.
@@theheeze For sure, that one was so hard to understand! I have never seen a movie I wanted to watch again right away. Hope that these more complex non standard story arcs keep coming out.
@@theheeze Yyyup, puzzle box!
I get what Micheal talks about building the whole movie on that one mechanic breaks so many storytelling conventions, it probably loses interest from a huge part of the audience thus bad movie.
But I just loved it. And in a sense being this devisive means the movie actually stood out for an idea. And that demands respect. Tho not the only reason why I loved it.
Remember Dr. Stange's line from Endgame:
"If I tell you what happens, it won't happen." The whole movie is built on this idea and how the protagonist has to understand that for himself and going through the motions with him unlocks the paradox of free will vs predestination not to be mutually exclusive.
Also the characters are not bland... just subtle and I prefer that to the low effort forcefed norm.
@@janosd4nuke it is a living breathing rubik's cube
I watched the film, and I found the third act answered my questions about the first act. Although I won't lie that it took a lot more brain power than normal to follow along.
Although I won't deny that outside of Dunkirk and first two batman films, Nolan's films are difficult to follow for me.
I don't agree with the premise that we all hated it.
I absolutely loved this film 🎥
Dude...he is Nolan...know more about structure of a movie than anyone on this planet...re-watch it..u will love it.
What if Nolan is making a second movie, which reflects the other side of the Temporal Pincer move, which fills in all holes in this movie. Both are needed to understand
Tenet may not be Nolan's best, but saying its "really bad" with a smug face is classic youtube video essay hyperbole bullshit, and I think everyone expects better from this channel.
Couldn’t have said it better
Exactly
Nah, it's objectively really bad. Only diehard Nolan fans can tolerate it.
But it is objectively bad. No one's hating you for enjoying it but it was poorly edited, the sound mixing was bad, the script was lazy, and there was no emotion or character.
REPORTER: You've just released a new movie with the title of "Tenet". Can you briefly tell us what is this all about?
NOLAN: It's about the protagonist...
REPORTER: Who is the protagonist?
NOLAN: That's him.
I studied metaphysics of time in college. My wife really likes complex spy thrillers. We rented out a theater t ok watch this on a big screen for my 40th birthday (surprisingly cheap when theaters aren't able to sell regular tickets). There were parts that got us both lost, but between the two of us, we understood the whole thing well enough. We enjoyed it.
I think most people expected a complex time travel movie and totally missed the spy thriller. Once you begin to see the Bond tropes, you start enjoying the movie.
In theater I understood it well enough to know essentially wha was going on and enjoy it. On rewatch (with subtitles) I understood a lot more and got a new level of enjoyment. I think this one just works in layers.
The Nolan magic is real! And Tenet is his biggest achievement to date: Here is a movie where you can't hear the dialogue, can't follow the plot, and ends in front of you like a plate of uneaten spaghetti -BUTTTT! I loved it!!!! TA-DAH!
Years later and this Wisecrack video has aged like milk
me looking at the title: There was something wrong?
I thought it was lit, but I'm also a sucker for Nolan films and time travel. Sound mixing was a bit messy, but I thought the story made perfect sense as long as you pay attention.
Fair points. Tenet has it's problems but it's the first time a director has tried to make a movie out of a concept like this.
this was Nolan's most complicated premise...he made the conscious choice to remove the heroes back story, character to meet the run time and reduce the burden on the viewer..... he was making it digestible for most audiences I was totally ok with it
I was with you until you said “while this makes for a great convo over bong rips and hot pockets, it doesn’t make for an entertaining movie” this movie may not be cinematically stereotypical, it’s entertaining af
All true what you said. I still like the movie. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It was really chaotic, and I didn't understand what was going on the whole time. When I left the cinema was the moment the film got into my mind. I thought the whole way home about what future generations will think about us. What prize the future pays for our carelessness? Can we save humanity from a harder life on this planet?
I read a review that drew parallels with Interstellar later. Asking similar questions.
So the hour after I left the cinema was the value I gained from it. And I want to rewatch it. Something I can not say about Inception.
the "why did we all hate tenet? " quote in the description could be further form the truth, most fans loved it myself included, its an odd film, its ok to dislike it, but mark my words, in 10 years time people will be kinder to this one, you see films is like music, experimentation is best attempted at one of the key areas at a time, you can make a song with very complex rythms, but you perhaps sacrifice the melody to do so, i believe this is the case with films also, Tenet deals with a very interwoven plot, so theres no time to tell you why you need to feel for the characters, and i for one dont think thats a crime, for me Tenet is an incredible film, and we wont probably see stuff this brave for a while, on a blockbuster scale that is.
The movie had a cool concept, great acting and a lot of spectacle, but the “it’s too dangerous to know” approach to the story is pretty frustrating
When you see the movie a second time, you will understand a lot of the "it's dangerous to know" part. I caught even more on a third viewing, and a film that rewards going back to it is definitely great in my book.
watch the "closer look" regarding tenet as tenet acording to nolan is a study for screenwriters to learn how a film with a complex plot can't always make a film good as the audience only truly connects to characters and their emotions through their emotional jounrey
I think it was a genius exposition of the premise which is "what if we could reverse entropy?" something no one has done before in a story (I think) It has amazing and clever situations, but yes, at the end it's an experience, a case study, but not a regular movie with a character driven story to care about, it's kind of like many videogames where the game mechanics and playable scenarios come first and the story comes second. So, I guess what I'm saying is: I want the TENET game!
I kind of feel that Nolan did a Memento but with time, when everybody was expecting, well, anything else with time.
"a Memento, but with time" -- that movie is called "Memento" and it's so much better than this one :')
What? People thought tenet was bad? It was brilliant!
Indeed, most won't understand it but people who understand it can't explain it
Brilliant lol.
Its basically a schrodinger's cat interpretation on steroids
I have watched this movie 3-4 times since it’s release, and I can wholeheartedly say that it does not get any better with repeat viewings. I was surprisingly more confused watching more times. I do believe that Nolan intentionally wanted us to not know anything about the main character. But in a movie structure, it just doesn’t pan out. We end up not caring about anything that he’s doing on screen. And that’s tragic
What went wrong? The film came out during a pandemic when cinemas were only intermittently open and then closed altogether. That's what went wrong.
This is one of those “deep and smart” movies that feels like it’s aimed at intro to philosophy students with Fight Club posters on their dorm room walls. I love a lot of Nolan’s movies but this was so needlessly convoluted and messy
I was entertained, and had to think a bit, too. Didn't ask for, or even expect any more.
I liked it, especially the second watch
Even better when you watch it in reverse
It only gets better, this will be studied by scientists
You got it all wrong! The 1st act is actually the 3rd and vice versa! Also, Tenet and Racecar are both words. Clever stuff!
Oh a palindrome! That's neat. I hadn't realized that.
Hated this movie. Nolan is so preoccupied with being clever that he forgets he has a story to tell. I mean it's his art and if he can get people to pay for it, more power to him. But he clearly has little regard for the audience. Something I don't think is worth financing.