😂

I honestly felt so much relief reading this, I thought it was just me who couldn't understand one thing being said and I thought I was going deaf

True 😂

Same here!!! 😂😂😂 And I’m rocking a full 8.2 Dolby Atmos system. And still had to pull the subtitles. For a moment I thought my center channel was failing me 😂

I live in an English speaking country but English isn't my native tongue. I watched this movie with two native speakers and had to ask them if they could hear a word of what was being said. Luckily they couldn't. For a minute I actually started to doubt my command of the language.

@ᴡɪɴᴛᴇʀᴍᴜᴛᴇ _ it's about 60 years of career too late for that

Alfred exposition in Batman was perfect. The Jokers motivation must be explained. 1. Wayne is wring about Joker as another power hungry thug, enabling the exposition. 2. Only Alfred has the rare wisdom and life military experience to know about Joker like, watch the world burn villains. 3. Alfred cares greatly for Wayne, allowing the audience to care about the exposition, that Joker could be a mortal threat to Gotham and Batman. The Jokers exposition to the criminal kingpins gathering was similarly perfect. The visual stunts in the room, henchman murder by pencil, grenade string, cover for it all. Joker exposition to Bat girlfriend with knife works as a dance with that single rising note signaling horror, providing cover. Nolan can do exposition well, just not in Tenet. As Joker said to the mighty, ‘ what happened, your balls fall off?’

😅

And Kenneth Branagh is becoming the rugged version of that

The white Morgan Freeman

Yeah, to the point where it almost sounds like the character is referencing Ghostbusters in shorthand - "Don’t cross the streams" "why?’ "It would be bad" [shortened] "ok, that’s bad". Plus, the second "paradox" line in Inception is just a callback, not exposition itself.

@@Will-kt5jk , I agree. Sometimes it feels that Thomas refuses to accept a movie being movie. :-D A movie is allowed to do winks like that.

Exactly what I thought, nothing wrong with that.

@@4Everlast It's a joke. Sarcasm. Duh.

@@davevenable We're already in the land of nitpickin so, yeah I understand. I really enjoyed the film tho, but I wish they kept the mystery and time traveling aspect hidden.

Nail on head.

Besides that in Arrival they put like 30 minutes of boring needless exposition in the end which ruined the whole experience for me personally

You Arrival yeah not the charlie sheen film

Kids

Thank You for explaining in simple terms why I don't like both of them. Both tell me that I can't have both brain and heart on one movie.

Tenet traveled back in time and made Inception better

Exactly 🤣🤣 It's weird how Tenet has made me appreciate Inception even more and I already loved it. Inception was a movie where all the "Nolanisms" were in perfect measure. He got carried away in Tenet.

Although, Inception has the advantage of being far less complex.

​@@Nineteen1900Hundred Honestly I'm not sure that's actually true. I think it feels less complex because it's explained very well in the movie, but if you actually take the entire plots of the two movies Inception is probably more complicated.

@@bryanchu5379 Maybe I'm missing something but I don't think that's correct. Inception is only about a small team, infiltrating a dream, and manipulating someone to have an idea. I'm not saying Tenet is emotionally complex, nor is the overall plot complicated because its basically a Bond movie. I just mean the technicalities of the rules of the sci-fi plot. Tenet features people and objects moving forwards and backwards, multiple doubles, multiple perspectives. Look at the car chases for example: For Inception, the most complex it gets is a dream above affecting the physics in a dream below. Like how the van spins, so it spins the hotel dream below. In Tenet, there are characters moving backward, driving cars that are inverted. Characters moving backwards that are driving cars that are NOT inverted. Kat is held hostage by an inverted Sator. Nolan even neglects to show where the "Plutonium" ends up more than once. It's dare I say... a mess. There is nothing in Inception's car chase as truly complex as the car chase in Tenet.

Is Michael Caine the real problem? Or the exposition? ha.

it was a clever tease on his part,,,

Michael caine ALWAYS Play same character in all nolan movies & that's really annoying

My Cocaine?

Micheal Caine is the Stan Lee of Nolan movies.

That's exactly what it is, it's especially obvious because of the identical camera angles

I don't agree with anything this guy said.

The fact that he plays them back-to-back makes that even clearer.

@@Ashestoashesjc UM HELLO I LOVE YOUR COVERS LOL

Yes, pretty much like the protagonist mirroring Priya's line "Mission accomplished".

its also because its realisitic. a guy from the future is gonna explain what shit is going down to the uninformed. the problem with something like interstellar explaining crap is they are all scientists who basically know all the stuff already or people over explain stuff when it wasnt needed. to be more like kubricks space oddysey and show, dont tell. let us stand in the wonder of it all without being x-splained eveyrthing

Best uses of exposition: 1. The Truman Show - They hide the exposition under the Christof interview. The info dump about the show, fake actors, brand placement feels very natural because the interview format is a logical place for questions and answers. 2. Inglorious Basterds- It's very natural for Hans Landa to announce who he is and what his mission is to the Frenchman. The exposition is further intensified with the reveal that the Jewish family is hiding under the floor. The shakedown is also a natural place for questions and answers. 3. Back To The Future - The exposition is very tense because it happens right after Marty finds out George McFly is dead. So the audience WANTS exposition at that moment. Doc using the blackboard to explain it is very natural and it really helps the audience understand it. 4. The Matrix - Morpheus using the Loader Program to explain the Matrix also feels natural because Neo just got extracted and he has a lot of questions at that point, so the audience WANTS exposition just as much as Neo. The stylish visuals also help understanding the explanation.

You can see it in this way, Sator might send his son to future ;) but later Sator will tell that his son will also die.

I also laughed out loud.

It’s the only thing I could think of for the 15 minutes that followed

I like the movie. But yeah... that was cringe.

"No shit" was my thought I would really like to have an explanation for the decision of this line, i can't believe no one was against it The movie was ok, but only because of the visual effects and because it's about a topic which isn't overused, but the delivery is horrendous

Changing scenery to continue exposition is TIGHT.

thats because otherwise people would notice the movie is really boring and the dialogue is pretentious drivel

@@TheSuperappelflap i also thought the dialogue came across as pretentious and pseudo intellectual, but then i assumed i was just being pretentious

nolan is falling into this strange trap of like, leaning too hard into the style he's become famous for, and then trying to distinguish his films from his previous films by one-upping himself. so the elements most characteristic of a nolan film just keep getting more and more exaggerated with each successive nolan film. the cerebral themes, the mindbending plots, the technical dialogue, the avant garde sets/locations as backdrops for otherwise boring exposition, etc.

by the way, I actually don't think the dialogue is pseudo-intellectual at all. what it is is WAY overly technical, there's WAY too much dialogue and it's spoken (more like muttered) WAY too fast, so that it's very easy to miss what someone said. and in this film you really can't afford to miss a single line. I can't even imagine trying to watch it in a theater. I had to watch it with subtitles and back it up constantly just because my hearing is not so good and if people mutter their lines, I'm very prone to mishear them. these are huge problems for a film I think. like you just can't relax and take the film in, because you're so worried you're gonna miss the dialogue that's been sprayed at you rapid-fire from an AK-47. I think this might have been a good idea for a book. it's a lot like the three-body problem novel series, which is very successful. in a film I just don't think you can convey all this highly technical information in a single film in a way that's satisfying to the reader. and there just isn't enough of an arc to stretch this into more than one film, so that wouldn't be a solution either. so I think the excess of technical information causes immense problems in this film. but with all that said, it's definitely not pseudo-intellectual. a lot of the technobabble that other writers would shoehorn into scripts to explain the otherwise-nonsensical is replaced in tenet with real scientific or philosophical concepts that do genuinely relate to the story. just as an example, the (admittedly ridiculous) dialogue about positrons and electrons, about relativistic quantum field theories' concept of certain particles being essentially wavefunctions oriented in time in the opposite direction, basically moving through time with the opposite sign, this is all real physics. it's a huge stretch to try and relate that concept to the motion of a macroscopic object through time, like a human, obviously. and it doesn't really make sense for nolan to explain the concept of "reverse chronology" to the viewer by comparing it to positrons, something 90% of viewers have never heard of. even among the 10% of viewers who do know what a positron is, 99% will not have heard of feynman diagrams or will at least not have heard that one way of modeling their behavior is to consider them as electrons moving through time with "negative" sign. so it's completely useless as exposition because you're explaining something super strange and obscure by comparing it to something even more foreign and incomprehensible. anyone who will understand the positron-electron reference will already be so familiar with quantum mechanics that they won't need any help grasping the (comparitively sophomoric) time reversal premise of tenet. the premise already was too difficult to explain without exposition, and now you're explaining it in terms of something else that requires even more exposition... yet at no point in the film does anyone actually explain the positron-electron reference. so what purpose is it serving? it's just increasing the density of the fast-paced expositional dialogue, and the density is already way too high. so it's just stressing the viewer out as they already felt like they couldn't relax, already felt like they needed to sit up straight and listen intently to every line, lest they miss something important. and there are so many points in this film where you're worried you're going to miss something important in the dialogue, but the line ends up being completely pointless. if you didn't know this obscure fact about antimatter, then after you got done intently listening to this line, and didn't understand the reference at all, you probably felt cheated and deceived and frustrated that you were trying so hard to follow the plot but still completely missed the point of the reference. and you would have missed the point not because of your own ignorance, but because despite all the exposition, the film often didn't even succeed at explaining what everyone was talking about. because there was sooo much exposition and it was so dense and rapid in pace, you had to listen to every line as if an explanation was forthcoming, or risk missing the line that would make everything make sense. but for the average viewer, that moment never comes for so many concepts in this film, because the concepts are only ever explained in terms of even more difficult/obscure concepts. it seems less like nolan is trying to explain the concepts to the average viewer, and more like he is trying to guard against naysayers looking for plot holes or trying to find cracks in the realism of his sci-fi universe. which is obviously absurd. nolan jams lots of little random references and factoids into this film, ostensibly in an attempt to make the fantastical elements feel grounded in some verifiable component of reality. of course, they won't be recognizable components of reality for the vast majority of viewers, but they are all verifiable. all of the stuff like that in tenet is ultimately grounded in real physics, cosmology, and philosophy concepts. and I get the distinct sense that that's where christopher nolan ultimately gets his film ideas from - from real physics, cosmology, and philosophy. it's not just random jargon or pseudo-intellectual word salad, like you really do see in so many blockbusters. christopher nolan really is very well educated and in touch with a lot of intellectuals across a huge variety of fields. not just as a verifiable fact but you can also clearly see that in interviews, that he is informed and fluent in subjects far outside his realm of cinema. he's obviously not a scientist but he's clearly a science enthusiast who keeps up with theoretical physics and cosmology. so, I think of him like an interdisciplinary autodidact and I imagine he spends a huge amount of time reading about theoretical physics and cosmology and psychology on the internet when he should be trying to sleep. I see him as a genuine renaissance man but that's one of the reasons I was so disappointed with tenet, it feels like he indulged those technical instincts to extreme excess in this film. I know some people have said that physicists would enjoy it but not laypeople, but I don't even think that's true. obviously the reason I was able to identify these references is because I was familiar with a lot of the supporting information and concepts. but I didn't enjoy them, even a little bit. it didn't feel validating or something. it just felt like wasted screen time that stressed me out because of the insane pace of the dialogue and how quiet and indistinctly the actors mutter their lines. the dialogue does feel realistic in terms of tone and pace. of course it feels forced in the sense that they're often discussing things they should already be aware of, for the "benefit" of the audience. but in terms of the quality of their voices they sound like real people. but that's not necessarily a good thing when they're talking about really convoluted shit. people in the real world mumble. i'm not sure that's worth simulating in what amounts to a physics lecture lol. if those lines were given some time to breathe and were stated more clearly and distinctly so you could reliably understand them without subtitles or rewinding, then I think I wouldn't have minded as much. but in the end, the viewer shouldn't need to take courses in quantum field theory to understand the references in your blockbuster film. so it's a fail either way.

He's a Sherlock Holmes fan, and the Sherlock books were bad about this too. The Sherlock endings were only surprising because they withheld information. For Nolan, The Prestige is an example of this. They don't earn their endings. But yes, I agree with you, every one of his movies has this problem.

Well, I hope your friend told you're wrong - because you are. Because exposition specifically refers to explaining mechanics of the plot, which every plot-heavy movie has. Characters talking to each other in philosophical or internal terms is interaction, not exposition. It exists in literature, so why shouldn't it exist in movies. Besides, exposition is bad only when it's used poorly or is a result of lazy writing. One of my most hated cases of exposition done wrong is in Taika Waitit's awful Thor movies, which are clearly a result of someone working on autopilot and writing lazy nonsense with no care or visuals to accompany it. Like when that awful villains Hela explains her backstory and the story of Asgard and there is no visual callbacks to that and no narrative point, it's just lazy writing to give a one-dimensional character poorly written backstory because they first chose on the villain for the so-called story, but then remembered that villains need motivation. And if you don't think great deal of him as a writer, see, that's is your problem, because he can clearly craft a well-structured story with profound characters, stakes and subversions that actually compliment, not destroy the story. And being a film buff doesn't mean you have to drive yourself into a corner and appease the Taxi Driver aficionados who think "show, don't tell" is an actual rule in filmmaking. No, it isn't. If it was, films would still be silent.

You really wrote all that for nothing. We are saying Nolan often uses bad exposition not that you can't use it at all. Tenet was like the flaws of Inception made a movie on its own. It's basically universally agreed upon that Tenet is the worse of Nolans work. I still love the movie though. ​@@antona.1327

watch enough novel and I just ignore this. When characters are "explaining", it is time to learn the lore or machanic that I couldn't learn elsewhere (in the film)

@@antona.1327 It just have to make sense as to why the exposition is there. Not just for the audience, but for a character and with a certain restriction on how the characters understand or not. It is not imperative that every character should reveal their emotions, intentions and desires. Most of them can show them. Of course, for character development, that have to be shown and told. But for concepts that can't be revealed without being to "wordy"? I mean, it was perfect how the Dreams were relayed to the characters in Inception. It felt natural and it actually made a bond between characters and why the are doing what they are doing. But when you need to tell every single reason why something is how they are, it's pedant. I agree some movies are bad at this with their reasons and motives being shown after, but this is not mutually exclusive. Little information and too much information are just as bad because you end up confused, dazed and without a direction unless you get yourself out of the movie to stop and get what has been said.

Been saying this since it came out - Nolan is by far the best spectacle director of all time. Without a doubt. His weakness is how bad he is at dialogue, characters, drama and exposition. Every single one of those were stripped away for Dunkirk, letting Nolan focus on spectacle and pacing, which are out of this world in that movie.

And yet he still tried to shove in manipulative emotional scenes in it about characters we knew nothing about.

I prefer The Prestige.

Such a flawed film...

i agree. but even in Dunkirk, there's this one unmotivated preachy line from the old boat captain babbling about young men sacrificing for old men blah blah.. that moment in the theater, i thought 'yeah, you can't help yourself, can you? you HAVE TO teach us something."

oh yeah i remember those scenes started to feel a lot less like exposition and a lot more like tragedy "I know you know this already, but you're gonna sit through it again because he has to sit through it every time"

Well it is only natural to explain something to someone that doesn’t know, so showing such exposition is necessary for the audience to understand too. What bothers me in other movies of his such as Interstellar for example that he lets scientists explain other scientists simple stuff they should know from the get go. Exposition only aimed for the audience is just annoying and bad filmmaking in my opinion. His films are not bad overall, but some of them suffer heavily because of that issue. He tries to be soo much like Hitchcock, but ultimately fails.

Did I ever tell you about Sammy Jankis?

This didnt feel like exposition to me at all.

Thing is Nolan used to write with his brother before 2010 so those movies were well written. Now Nolan writes alone and thus......

Like in Ghostbusters when Egon says what happens when you cross the streams "Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light." Then Venkman is like "That's bad, right?"

Including my son ?

Yeah I thought that was a bit nitpicky as well

Yeah why didn't he see that.

It was pretty obviously a joke, but the delivery was pretty poor.

Totally agree with u

@@nekoshbbg1192 Thank the Lord! I was thinking I'm the only one who's actually watched the movie --- don't get why everyone is so hell bent on hating it...

Yeaaa, it be like that bro haha. I think people generally stick with other people with similar opinion and since the video is critiquing the movie, more people having problems with the movie will probably watch and express their opinions too. I'm sure there are other people having similar opinion like us too. I really enjoyed the movie, imo its Nolan's best work so far. Hope you enjoyed it too. Have a nice day :)

@@nekoshbbg1192 Definitely his best work. And the soundtrack was just fine... I heard every dialogue nice and clear, except perhaps 3 lines

"That would be bad, right" for me it felt more like the character being sarcastic or genuinely asking it because he's a secret agent and needs to know the level of threat he's facing in the mission

In Shane Carruth's "Primer" one of the multitudinous Aarons at one point says something to the effect of "I haven't eaten since nine hours from now." That line and it's delivery simultaneously showing just how much Aaron and Abe's way of thinking has had to shift to work with time travel, revealing how blasé the whole thing has become for them both, and working as a moment of comic relief is script economy. Plus, unlike the dialogue in Tenet, you can actually hear it.

rekt

That's funny!!

Best comment

best explanation to the audio problem really. he realised that he was contradicting himself with the 'dont try to understand it..' line which was widely used in trailers and all

@@riddhiman2926 When she told him to not try and understand it I really felt like she was speaking to the audience.

Agree. That’s what I felt.

It was clearly mentioned if he touches himself it'll be annihilation. Hence, the full body covered black suit

I thought it was a stealth Ghostbusters joke.

Yeah, like that was clearly a joke and an expression of character.

"i ordered my hot sauce an hour ago" cracked me up lol

If cinema is also an auditory medium then how do you explain silent films?

@@Alice-me2qk There's a saying that silent films were never actually silent. Are you not aware that they were accompanied by music? They even displayed text narration & dialogue.

I agree. Great point.

Exactly

I swear, it was such a ham fisted line. In effect it's a summary of the shallow characters in the movie. The movie bored me😂

What a Karen

That was not a question though

Would have been great if he turned to her and was like, "....yes, yes of course, he's part of "everyone," are you an idiot or something?"

@@Ebi.Adonkie this movie is too much for shallow minds like yours to comprehend.

Hi Mr. Nolan. Please hire me as one of your staff.

Please Mr Nolan don't hire Grec.....I don't trust him....

😂

@@BlueBARv5 lol

You haven't made a good fim since "The Dark Knight"

That’s what’s missing. No point in caring about all the confusing shit if there’s nothing emotional to hold on too.

In every other Nolan movie, you could answer this question: what is the main character dealing with personally apart from the plot? In Tenet, there is no answer. Thus, no personal connection to the main / audience POV character for the viewer.

No character besides Pattinsons had any depth, or emotional worth... Washington felt so bland, and emotionless. I almost thought after watching it if it was Nolans intention to make us not care about anyone. Also hard to understand what anyone says the entire film. gibberish, and talking to fast... just watch the intro to this video alone.. Did he intend on that? Cause if not, arguably my favorite director of all time has seriously fallen off. Here's to hoping Openhiemer is better than Tenet.

TOTALLY OPPOSITE FOR ME

It sounds like, if people don't get a romantic connect or a parent child connection in a movie, then people can't understand how there are any emotional connections or motivations at all. People can't fathom that the Protagonist is Tenet, empathized with Kat and her child and that was his emotional motivation (as well as not wanting the world to end, seems like enough motivation for me, but I guess I am weird). But because Kat and the Protagonist, never fucked or expressed romantic feelings then people are like "why would he care about this women and her child?" I think that says more about the audience watching the movie then it says about the movie.

..."I know what you are" ..

@@Netoniva "say it!"

lol

@@raquellawlitet2992"out loud"

And there are no friends at dusk

Right?!

Don't try to understand it, feel it Remember?

They should just watch it twice, honestly

Just watch it a second time with subtitles and you'll probably get most of it

that's good. Then watch it again.

That’s absurd.

That’s some of the biggest BS I have ever heard.

sartre wrote something else about it: can you experience pleasure, or be happy, without being conscious of it ? he said you cant, and i think the same way. you cant be happy or have pleasure without knowing it is so. There is no difference between the experience of the feeling and the knowledge of it. That said, I do think that generally, you cant be happy when youre thinking. But theres a difference between being aware of something and thinking about it. tldr: You cant enjoy the best steak without being aware of it being the best steak youve ever had, but when you start to compare it in your mind with some other steak, it kind of ruins the fun

So cartharsis and Eureka doesnt exists?

@@bastiaanschouwink3562 Your TLDR doesn't exactly fit with what you said above. You are saying being concious of happiness. I'd like to say complete opposite of what Sartre says; I think you can be even more happy if you are aware of your happiness. Because unlike the best steak, there is no measure for happiness. The best happiness for a person is the happiness s/he already has. There might be levels of happiness, of course life is not a straight line. But then, when you are not _that_ happy when you were concious of it, you can think those time where you were aware of that and feel grateful.

Not really "the protagonist " isnt really a character

@@matthewbishop8395 Yeah he is? Just because you're incapable of seeing his very strong character traits doesn't mean the rest of us aren't. He was being sardonic as he often is

@@nathancollins1715 he had no emotions lmfao

It's the way he said it and the way this line was set up that makes it dumb

@@divyanshudangayach4607 you've clearly never heard of snark...

I couldn't even tell who they were battling at Stalsk-12, they weren't visually distinct from the protagonists (and that was already confusing with the red team/blue team dynamic). Could have been an amazing scene but it just left me bewildered.

The temporal pincer is the whole movie which also has at least 2 other temporal pincers inside it

@@CTKearns legit didnt see a single enemy that wasnt a red or blue guy. Methinks fuckery is afoot

best gag in this thread ;-)

😂😂😂 you should be top comment!

Half of the comedy comes from the extra L's

All his focus in the film Tenet was ensuring its continuity held up. The fact Kenneth B. learned how to speak Russian backwards. That Washington filmed both sides of himself fighting. Actors acting in reverse. Running film in reverse. It's a technical marvel. The dialog is just there to affirm what's happening, it has a minimalist function for most of its use. And it works imo. Yes doing something intentionally when it's not recommended doesn't always excuse it. But I don't think you can complain about not hearing dialogue and then complain that the dialogue was bad. Nolan knew you only needed to catch enough of what was said to follow along. Hence the score having the ability to overpower dialogue and not risk losing the audience as to what's happening.

@@1992WLK You guys are making excuses... it's easy to say "well it's not the point to care about characters, or dialogue cause that's not what Tenet is about"... but to you guys I say... why not? You could easily make the characters intriguing, have depth, have emotions... The dialogue, is horrendous, the performances, are boring, bland, and meaningless.. they speak gibberish, fast, can't hear them, just a bunch of non-sense... The whole film the audience is going "who, what, where, when, why, how?" You say "the dialogue has a minimalist function" yet it's nothing but dialogue, and exposition for most of the film lol... it's crazy excuses that you think "he just put dialogue there for the audience to follow along" lol what? Especially when most say they can't follow lol. He got too deep, and lost control.. He was too focused on the logic, and laws of Tenet rather caring about characters, and dialogue, that's extremely apparent to me. The audience needs to understand, and care first, and foremost... that other stuff comes later... With Nolan being my favorite director of all time, this was a massive disappointment... It's a great idea, and from a visual, technical standpoint it's incredible, but for a movie experience, I think it's pretty bad.

@@randomrecipes5007 "yet it's nothing but dialogue, and exposition for most of the film lol" "The audience needs to understand, and care first, and foremost... that other stuff comes later..." This. Tenet already did a great job at visually showing the audience it's internal logic and rules. Then, why the heck did Nolan waste almost all dialogue quota to elaborate MORE of it and end up over-explaining? It's completely unnecessary. He should've allocated more of the characters' dialogues to character development, not convoluted physics mumbo-jumbo.

you enjoy watching moving things essentially? Lol these are just a bunch of words thrown together that at best seem barely coherent.

@@ashutoshsamantaray6596 I enjoyed watching a very specific moving thing, for (and in spite of) specific elements and choices Nolan made. I've seen the movie a few more times since writing that comment, and I have come to enjoy it a lot more having taken the time to switch on subtitles or intentionally unpack the narrative beats. So, I am receptive to the argument that Tenet's sound mixing takes away from the film's enjoyment, but there is a far more interesting conversation to be had here about the 'Nolan fan' and their typically pretentious, sometimes elitist, attitude towards filmmaking. I will absolutely put up my hand and admit that I wrote a pretentious comment that was overly dramatic. I am not receptive, however, to your reductionist and dismissive attitude which neither engages with anything in any substance, nor honestly expresses what you really feel, which is you didn't like that I wrote passionately about a movie I cared about.

One hour passes in a Nolan movie, seven years pass on Earth.

Yeah, nobody's ever got any extra questions to clarify anything.

totally! made me feel so stupid when I had to constantly rewind every 10sec to keep track

The complete lack of emotional reaction took me back. Not even a "Wow, ok, let me take 5 seconds to process this is now a thing."

Ya, I don't think that the Protagonist just "got it." I think he just "accepted it." There is a difference. Something a lot of the audience of Tenet struggle to do, just accept the reality of the movie.

It’s Hitchcock’s rule of 3: explain an important plot point at least three different times for the audience to understand it. This doesn’t mean necessarily through dialogue, but visually too. I personally don’t subscribe to this philosophy at all though. It leads to those, “Yeah, no shit,” moments like the one you described. I’d rather a plot point be explained once-or sometimes not at all-and have me figure out the rest as a reward. I get that blockbusters need to cater to a larger audience, but we should really expect more of them at this point.

Yeah it's kinda a Nolan trademark to throw in heavy handed reminders for the audience

But the old guy watching the monitor is the most memorable character in all three Nolan Batman films

This bothered me as well. They are supposed to be intelligence officers, but they speak so openly about plans that would have global consequences. It's just weird and doesn't make any sense, especially not from professionals.

i was saying! on that bus id be one nosy bitch lmao

@@tellybegoin To be fair though, anyone near by wouldn't think much of what was being said. It's a similar thing that causes social anxiety/self-consciousness. Thinking people actually care about your presence and what you're doing and how you look, and what you're saying. Most people are in their own world, and even if you did say or do something embarrassing/damning, most people would forget all about what they saw/heard in less than 5 minutes, and won't give it a single further thought afterwards. So I guess it's realistic If they are making a calculus that people aren't actually playing attention or that they care. Which would be a good calculus. But it's still super unprofessional. And these people are supposedly charged with saving the entire world, lol.

@@DrunKao That's because most of us are talking about what we're having for dinner tomorrow, not HOW TO BOMB AN AIRPORT. Like you're ears aren't going to perk up hearing phrases like NUCLEAR POLICE and AMBUSH.

And I thought calling a joke "exposition" was bad. But "Why would they talk while they're going anywhere?" has to be the most inane nitpick I can imagine. As usual the popularity of a comment spoils my faith in humanity. This whole video is about how the film is trying to write a doctoral thesis to explain to the audience what's going on. No one in the general population of Estonia is getting any useful "Top Secret" information from their little tea parties, and the antagonists are people who can travel backwards through time, it stands to reason that if any of them are in a position to listen to your conversation it won't be because you did a little careless whisper on the L-train. Logically they don't even need to eavesdrop on you to know what you're going to do next. That's archaic to them.

Exactly the same feeling man.

Send them this 20 minute video, they will definitely watch it. Problem solved.

@@baz1184 What kind of friends do you have that are willing to watch a 20 minute video you send them?

@@WhirlingMusic that was the joke.

@@baz1184 That is some weird sarcasm

Yep plus discount Washington can't act.

@@SaiKumar-oc1xu he can definitely act that movie was just so void of any emotional connection to anything

thats about how i act when im trying to wrap my head around a new concept i guess not everyone can be a walking youtube reaction video

@@Knockdownisland it’s must suck not be able to have any emotion

Just not 10 I guess

Yeah I agree but it should have been emphasized more.

That might be true, but it's still weird they would explain it during the mission

@@Apenzuur movies do it a lot, briefing right before the mission, while in reality briefing happens weeks, months, days, before the mission, not the exact hour of the mission.

Thats the definition of exposition

Yeah there's definitely a certain grey area or subjectivity in even defining what "exposition" is. I think you make some pretty valid points here. One of the things I think is interesting about film criticism and critique, is that two people might have the same conclusion- but disagree about certain aspects that lead to that conclusion, or details of the assessment.

Bruh. Please use paragraphs/line breaks. Huge blocks of text like that suck to read.

well said

The idea is you have to watch it again .... don't try to understand it , feel it ...

The symmetry in the scenes is visual. It doesn't also need to be referenced in such an unrealistic verbal way. This is already addressed in the video, keep up

I can take it. I've already tussled with the Marvel folks.

Oh! You're ready for anything

Nolan fans are the worst. They just made nolan soo overrated. He is a good director but not great that many of his toxic fans thinks.

@@shubhagarwal9812 so you get to determine how good of a director he is for everybody?

@@ThomasFlight marvel is the worst

Who were they shooting at?

I know its been two years but... that's Neil who is in the tunnel. They're going in to the tunnel to stop the algorithm (a physical object) being sent into the future (through a container buried by a nuclear explosion) by Sator (the russian bad guy). Neil (twilight actor) was going back in time (blue team) and at the halfway point he went forward in time by going through the enemy inversion machine. So then he decides to go back in again to because he realizes when they are talking that someone opened the door to the nuclear bomb and as he says he's the only one that could. The protagonist knows that he is going to die doing this and Neil kind of reassures him with his whole stick of saying what has happened happened. There are multiple people going forwards and backwards in time fighting for control of the algorithm. The reason why they're fighting at that location is because the nuclear bomb will make it unaccessible until well into the future when they invented all this technology. Sator was able to find inverted gold bars in this nuclear bomb location, so someone in the future went inverted, placed the gold bars into the nuclear container thing and then since it was inverted it travelled backwards in time. Like how the protagonist places a tracker chip in the discarded box and then since he's inverted he is able to track the box that way.

Problem is Protag is American lol

@@kyyy8821 That's true, but I'm American and I interpreted it as a bland, dry joke.

Exactly, charisma is a characteristic of the protagonist

@@wave6604 i swear this guy has social issues

I watch so much British TV that it didn't even occur to me that other Americans would be tripped up by that line lol

The main character was insufferable, the whole movie was built around making him look cool. He was so cool he couldn't be bothered to act, every other actor was doing his job except him cause he was supposed to be too cool to express any human emotion. The actor had no charisma whatsoever and the plot didn't make any sense at all, if I was Robert Pattinson I would have killed the blonde bitch just to make the main character stop compromising the entire operation cause he was simping for her

@@LarryHazard That's your opinion. Seemed to fit his character just fine and reminded me of other spy movie protagonists. Confidence even if perceived by you as too much and unfounded may be a necessary component for a person like him to found Tenet in the future.

@@exilius333 nah it's just bad acting from a nobody actor. Idris Elba would have made more sense. Nolan just wanted to self insert with another gamma male

Yeah. I didn't mind the movie but I concur that linbe of dialogue is what you can expect from that cocky character and not trying to be expositional at all.

Smartass? Cracking wise? "The Protagonist" has basically no personality at all.

U give actual constructive criticism that is helpful. Great work 👏 Also......first reply 😄

You are totally right man, I was also unable to emotionally connect with the movie and I think this was its major drawback

I've loved every one of Christopher Nolan's film before this one, including Interstellar. Tenet just isn't good. It's one huge exposition dump interrupted once in a while by a pretty good action scene. Exposition doesn't even help understand the plot or make sense of the science. I get some of it is supposed to be better understood on second viewing, but it doesn't excuse how boring the first viewing experience was.

The fact that you have to explain that shows how some fans are. I love Steven Spielberg, but I have many criticisms of his films, and that´s fine.

Not sure if this gives the movie brownie points for being self-aware but I wholeheartedly feel like Nolan and company made a conscious and creative decision to not make this movie emotionally connective. It’s more of an “in the middle moment experience.” I harken back to a line from inception, when Leonardo’s character says; “you never really remember the beginning of a dream, do you?” I feel like in tenet’s case, given the concept of time moving forward and backwards simultaneously (never having a clear beginning and endpoint)- is probably why Tenet doesn’t feel like there’s an “origin” or character genesis/exploration involved. It’s kinda ballsy but it’s almost like they’ve already WRITTEN the characters outside of the movie itself and we’re just witnessing the “main/middle” events unfold. Sorta like what he did with Dunkirk. Obviously, if that’s what a certain moviegoer is expecting or wanting out of the film (emotional connections) then I’m sure they’ll be disappointed in some capacity. That said, I really do think it was very, very intentional of them to make the movie the way it was...for better or for worse. In short, don’t believe Nolan was ignorant at all about this when he was directing it. If looking at it this way provides a better, worse or indifferent view of the movie then it’s up to the viewer! Just my two cents!

South Park already explained it and they did it so well that Tenet almost seems like it was using the South Park parody to fuel the dumpster fire

@Meta Man it's weird because none of his films have ever done that for me. I leave thinking "wow that was beautiful and pedantic". That's it. And I don't think I'm stupid, but maybe I am. Haha I did enjoy and get a lot out of inception. But interstellar came off as convoluted and complicated for the sake of being complicated. As if that makes it smart. And then the boring, flat storyline was painted over with visually stunning iconography. I feel like he thinks the more complicated, the smarter it is, and I disagree. It seems based on your comment, youd take Nolan's viewpoint Which is fine but Idk I just see him as subpar overall, but his style just doesnt fit mine in terms of writing so it makes sense. I dont think he deserves to be torn down but I also dont think hes mastered anything but beautiful cinematography (and it's a crutch for him)

not quantum physics but thermodynamics. If you're still interested in the physics you should learn about entropy since the movie plot revolves around the question of "What if humans were able to manipulate entropy?"

@@ginalley Yea you're right, I was thinking about some portion in the movie where I could of swore Pattinson spoke about quantum physics. Funnily enough entropy has always felt awkwardly abstract in comparison to some quantum physics concepts for me.

@@ginalley they loosely connect entropy reversal to time reversal of particles, which results in the antiparticles of relativistic quantum physics (that are interpreted as the same particles traveling backwards in time). This is also the origin of the line about being annihilated when normal and time-reversed version of a person would come into contact. However, actual particle-antiparticle annihilation happens when any pairs of normal and antiparticle come into contact, not just the ones belonging to the same person. So it's a bit of science cherry-picking to have the plot work while also exploring the actually scientific time-reversal ideas. The whole plot really follows the "one electron universe" idea.

Agreed.

Agreed also. Just watched it again today and it's masterful in how the tension builds constantly throughout.

Worst war film ever made.

That’s the genera. Show me any espionage movie and it’ll have a lot of exposition.

@@Lsucasas wtf is genera?

Same I saw the opening scene and was like okay let's rewind and start it off again with subs.

The problem is that Nolan is less funny than a drywall

I thought it was funny too... it shows the character's cockyness and confidence...I think the video maker is too busy critiquing rather than accepting.

@@kwalitykontrol he's a spy.

lol just proves that the performance was not convincing.

@@kwalitykontrol well, the protagonist isn’t just any spy, yes in the beginning of the film he is in the CIA, but the way he acts throughout that whole opera house scene he didn’t seem like WTF is going on and seeing that reverse bullet for the first time too, he showed confusion but it just wasn’t that much shown expressively 🤷 Like, even when that scientist was explaining how these things can be time manipulated he barely showed an expression of freaking out

....Guys i think Nolan's actually just a dummy. Hes Michael Bay with a scarf, an overcoat and an expensive watch.

@@coopermiller3216 Yikes.

@@coopermiller3216 so films like the dark knight or interstellar are michael bay level films to you?

@@coopermiller3216 that’s an extremely pretentious and off-base thing to say. Nolan is not an excellent filmmaker but he doesn’t even have similar qualities to Michael bay. Not even on a visual level

I mean, there is Scorsese.

I agree, but you gotta admit the delivery is very bad.

Zintag true but that’s not Nolan’s fault lmao

The director is the one in charge of the overall movie. If an actor's delivery is bad then the director should tell them what they want or pick a different take with a better delivery. The fact is, he chose that one for his movie. His responsibility

He called it his attempt at humour

I don't see it as a joke, i see it as a failed attempt to make him seen like a badass

Yes! I almost used video essay of an example of "good exposition." One thing I think is interesting though, is that, even within a video essay where it's all kind of exposition there's "direct exposition" and there's still an element of "show don't tell." For example in my videos could just say everything, but I often try to use examples from the films that directly illustrate the point I'm making so that the audience can "see for themselves" what I'm talking about. I don't always do this well, but when I do, I think it's more enjoyable for the viewer.

@@ThomasFlight So you're saying you can do it in your videos coz 'it's more enjoyable for the viewer." But when Nolan does it, it ruins the viewing experience, makes sense.

@@adityashrimali8561 aha . Another Nolan fan who cant take criticism.

@@adityashrimali8561 ????????????

Hahaha ❤️

I agree, I definitely noticed during the movie that they were just saying things to explain it to the audience but that didn’t make me like the movie any less. And after I heard ab the Neil is Max idea it made me think ab all the little things in the movie and I was just laughing because it made sense. I stopped watching Tv and rarely watch movies because they are so predictable. Tenet and most of his other movies make my think and surprise me which I love.

The action is unique, but the story is not. It was already done (much better, in my opinion) with a major character arc in Doctor Who (which may be a rip from something else of which I'm not aware).

Unique? The grand conclusion is that the hero created the solution in the future... so, about the same as interstellar. It's as classic as it gets. Only the visuals are here to salvage it, but if you switch off all sense of logic to what is presented to you. One of the biggest disappointment I got to experience in cinema.

@@maxleveladventures What major character arc?

@@leonmayne797 River Song

At this point, I feel Nolan is just trolling the audience.

But 1) he’s also telling you “this is a mind-bending intellectually engaging action story”. You’re basically turning him into Michael Bay. “Dot think, look at this craaazy visual spectacle!” and 2) it’s very hard to just “enjoy the ride” when you have basically no idea what the fuck is going on. To enjoy the ride in his type of movie needs the viewer to have a sense of what is at stake in the action sequences.

Couldn’t agree more!

@@MrJustSomeGuy87 how does he tell us this?

Overdue or underdue? You know the home is inverted.

And the landlord is a quadruple agent working for a communist revolution, somehow.

YUP!

And the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls.

What is called then?

@@reaniegane Exactly as it's spelled: TEN-NET. There is no second N.

@@andmicbro1 sound of violence: Batman kzfaq.info/get/bejne/l991aax82JiZemw.html&ab_channel=HowItShouldHaveEnded

“Who tf doesn't know what the grandfather paradox is?!” Like, pretty much, 99% of the people?

@@MistorDi 99% of the people have never heard or read about time travel? Grandfather paradox is time travel 101.

@@MistorDi yeah but the protagonist wasn’t like the 99.99% of the people. He is supposed to be really smart and knowledgeable

Pretty sure most people don't know what that is.

@@DesVoador most people are getting gonna know what that is let alone a whole grown man. I can excuse a wormhole but not this

That would be a documentary 🤣

Please don't leak my scripts.

@Meta Man Is this a copypasta like the Rick & Morty one? 😅 Tenet will stay with me for a long time, sure, but not in the way Inception does. I'll mostly use it for jokes and making fun of someone.

He hates using extensive CGI so I don't see it being possible.

@@raidenthenctzenwithinsomni4961 lol he doesn't hate it, Just prefers practical effects. He has done amazing cgi in most of movies. Like that black hole part in Interstellar, They simulated real blackhole physics in an engine (commonly used in labs but not in movie) but on a movie, They could also get away with photos from internet and editing. No he doesn't hate CGI

I've actually thought about that. I loved Gareth Edwards' take on Godzilla and I feel like Nolan would do something very similar with it.

Who tf watches these godzilla king kong trash movies except some 12 year olds binging energy drinks

@@michaelangelo0305 There's nothing wrong with kaiju movies as long as they are well made, nor with the people who watch them. If anything, there's something very wrong with you, if you really believe what you just said.

Yeah fr

Very obvious.

He does say he recognizes it could have been humor, but a bad attempt at it. Even that in that moment

Dry humor that is clearly just there for exposition though...

If you accept it's just humor then you have to admit it's lazy low-tier "understatement in the face of doom" humor, and the film could do without it

On paper, but the delivery doesn't make it so obvious.

The main actor has the same expression on his face almost the entire movie. Really bad acting on his part and bad actor directing from Nolan's.

@@finnd3mpster203 It's called "deadpan". Not out of character at all.

@@vegeta4693214 Lack of intense facial expressions doesn't equal bad acting. Some people in real life, even emotional ones, are like that.

@@Pandamasque Takeshi Kitano is the best example

Exactly

The "my son" line is the worst line in the whole movie. I just sneered and put the movie away till further notice. I've completed the movie. Glad I didn't watch it in the cinema. Imagine taking your girlfriend, she'll ask you so many questions you got no answer for

@@Ebi.Adonkie why would she be asking you?

@@hermirony123 Unfortunately, I think you've correctly identified the implication here.

@@jonh2853 sadly I think I may have. I was wondering if I was missing something. Perhaps all this thinking is too much for my tiny lady brain to handle :P

@@hermirony123 Now now, stop being hysterical. :)

Also people seem to forget he goes off mission and risks his life at the very beginning of the movie to save the cheap seats. He will do what he feels his right. This supports him looking out for Kat even further. "Not our mission." "It's mine now."

Stop simping for Nolan

@@Ebi.Adonkie I ain't, he ain't the greatest but for the tone of the film it wasn't out of character to do what he did. The band wagon goes both ways. Some people think they're smart by hating, some people think they're smart by simping. Or we could all be objective, but this is the internet, like that would ever happen.

But you had to explain all that. You had to exposit it. And so did the film. I think that's the point.

Yep, this is exactly how I felt too. Lost interest in solving the puzzle because the characters were all flat. Its like a jigsaw with all white pieces.

A

@@jabronijackpot perfectly said!

Have you heard ab the Neil is Max theory? It made me rethink the movie and like it more. Basically Neil is the main character but we see the movie through “the protagonist” POV.

@@willhoward3178 If you need to fanfic the movie to hell and back to reach the level of caring about the characters the movie has failed.

Ironically that's what Nolan was going for.

Watch tenet for free on any device - ww4.0123movie.net/movie/tenet-101355.html Ps: sometimes you might get pop up ads and if you do just exit out of em and hit play again.

My thoughts exactly

Totally agree with this... This is the exact reason i didnt enjoy or feel immersed watching inception.. Thank you for this video

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