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Basebf555 posted:At the end when Washington and Aaron Taylor-Johnson get to the locked door where the dude is about to end the world by dropping the thing into the hole, there's a dead guy laying there. Then, at exactly the right moment, the corpse rises up, unlocks the door and takes a bullet to the head that was meant for Washington. I get that's what was meant to happen, I think, but it's not what actually happens? Volkov approaching the door to shoot the protagonist. Neil's body begins to twitch, the door unlocks, the body rises, inverts a bullets into Volkov's gun, Neil opens the doors and begins picking it. I think I understand the lock opening by itself based on the rules of the movie (the bullet's demo you have to have dropped it) but that was with a bullet that had reverse entropy. How did the lock/door end with reverse entropy? Does interacting with something while reversed imbues your entropy on the object? Second, Volkov taking an inverted bullet off the body instead of shooting the body in reverse make no sense... i think? Same with Neil picking the lock of an open door? If Volkov shooting Neil is the end of the line for Neil where does everything else Neil does come from. In reverse his death happens, he opens/picks the door then heads for the turnstile at which point he is now moving forward from the time of his death to basically... live for however long the rest of his adventure/life is with the understanding he needs to come back to this moment at some point to close the loop/die in reverse? Happy Noodle Boy fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Dec 30, 2020 |
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Dec 30, 2020 20:21
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:I get that's what was meant to happen, I think, but it's not what actually happens? Volkov approaching the door to shoot the protagonist. Neil's body begins to twitch, the door unlocks, the body rises, inverts a bullets into Volkov's gun, Neil opens the doors and begins picking it. I think I understand the lock opening by itself based on the rules of the movie (the bullet's demo you have to have dropped it) but that was with a bullet that had reverse entropy. How did the lock/door end with reverse entropy? Does interacting with something while reversed imbues your entropy on the object? Second, Volkov taking an inverted bullet off the body instead of shooting the body in reverse make no sense... i think? Same with Neil picking the lock of an open door? Oh yea, sorry, if you're interested in getting that deep into the minutiae of it I'm not gonna be able to help you. I just know the broad strokes.
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Dec 30, 2020 20:27
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No. His death is the end of everything he does. He's gone into the turn style multiple times before that. Doing the little things to help the facade of burying the formula and going all the way back to the opera house. He does alot of things before his death. It doesn't have to happen all in one instance. That's the power of what they're doing. That's why we think he's the grown up son because it all fits.
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Dec 30, 2020 20:42
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Basebf555 posted:Oh yea, sorry, if you're interested in getting that deep into the minutiae of it I'm not gonna be able to help you. I just know the broad strokes. TENET: I just know the broad strokes.
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Dec 31, 2020 08:27
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I’ve read through the thread and people have summarized the relevant problems with it, but I just want to restate how much I hate the reverse bullet physics and how it only seems to work if a forward person uses a reverse gun (and even then only kind of). A reverse person with a reverse gun shooting a forward person makes so little sense, that singular point alone ruins the movie for me, let alone the inability to understand half the dialog or tell what’s going on sometimes with so much camera view swapping. I really wanted to like this. I’m able to suspend disbelief in most of his other movies but this just went too far.
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Dec 31, 2020 16:37
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I watched it on a TV with my parents on Christmas and we didn't have any issues with the dialogue. I'm kinda sad I didn't experience the original poo poo mixing. Even though I enjoyed the movie I don't buy that Nolan was working on it or thinking about it as long as he's claimed. It does come across as a first pass.
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Dec 31, 2020 16:56
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I don't understand why he cut all the dialog like it was an action scene. The editing made it feel so rushed. I'm amazed at Nolan's ability to make a movie feel too short and also be too long at the same time.
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Dec 31, 2020 18:32
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gently caress SNEEP posted:I don't understand why he cut all the dialog like it was an action scene. The editing made it feel so rushed. He's running a temporal pincer on your attention span.
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Dec 31, 2020 19:37
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It’s ironic that everyone says that the opera is the scene that they liked the most, because that (although I did enjoy it), was the most confusing scene for me. I understood the time travel stuff more. There are apparently four different factions: Real Ukraine SWAT CIA pretending to be Ukraine SWAT Russians who help, then betray CIA (mercenaries? Local assets?) Terrorists The CIA are there to be extract suit guy, a CIA agent who did some kind of deal to get a algorithm part. The adversary (Russia? Ukraine?) is apparently aware of this and is using the terrorist attack to disappear him. Does this mean the Ukraine SWATs and terrorists are apparently on the same side? Is this why some of the SWATs are placing bombs? One of the SWATs that was placing bombs was shot by the terrorists, so they don’t seem to be totally on the same side, Because they do clearly legitimately shoot at each other. I do on some level kinda enjoy Nolan’s “I’ll explain it once and once only. Pay attention if you want to understand” approach to exposition, but sometimes it leaves me feeling a little lost.
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Jan 1, 2021 03:36
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latinotwink1997 posted:I’ve read through the thread and people have summarized the relevant problems with it, but I just want to restate how much I hate the reverse bullet physics and how it only seems to work if a forward person uses a reverse gun (and even then only kind of). Was thinking about the gun thing the other day. The movie exploits the fact that most people don't think too deeply about how guns and bullets work mechanically when watching a movie. A complete reverse bullet with its projectile + powder + casing like the one spinning on the table is one that is harmless in the forward timeline because it has unfired itself already. The only way to shoot it in the forward timeline would be to put it in a turnstile to essentially have it normal again. A reversed bullet will not do anything in a forward gun. By that logic you would need a reverse gun to fire a reverse bullet. If you keep following that logic from a mechanics standpoint you would need a reverse finger to pull the trigger and all the way up the chain of reasoning to the point where the whole universe would have to be reversed. It just doesn't seem like the scenario in the movie is possible.
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Jan 2, 2021 05:11
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The early scene with the scientist establishes that in order to interact with reversed objects you need to pretend to do the opposite thing. Thematically, it's presenting the idea that, for example, pretending to undrop a reverse bullet isn't that different from dropping a real bullet, which theoretically might be an interesting idea to someone.
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Jan 2, 2021 05:23
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Yeah, for as much as it tries to be scientific and logical, it just makes up magical rules about "feeling" your interactions with reverse objects and how they don't operate fully independent of our reality because they're essentially "swimming against the current" of forward time. That just allows the movie to have a bazillion plot holes and wave it away with some nebulous "well that's just how it works."
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Jan 2, 2021 05:44
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So what would happen if, the first time you approached the turnstile, you got freaked out by the sight of your inverted self reverse-exiting it and decided "gently caress that, I'm not going in there"? Do the time travel rules say that you've already gone through, so there's nothing you can do to prevent it however hard you try - and what does that say about the nature of free will?
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Jan 2, 2021 09:21
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Payndz posted:So what would happen if, the first time you approached the turnstile, you got freaked out by the sight of your inverted self reverse-exiting it and decided "gently caress that, I'm not going in there"? Do the time travel rules say that you've already gone through, so there's nothing you can do to prevent it however hard you try - and what does that say about the nature of free will? Well, you couldn't get so freaked out that you wouldn't have gone in, because in that case you'd never see yourself come back out.
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Jan 2, 2021 10:21
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Snowman_McK posted:Well, you couldn't get so freaked out that you wouldn't have gone in, because in that case you'd never see yourself come back out. We should have gone back to see Neil entering the turnstile for the last time and you don't see him on the other side
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Jan 2, 2021 12:21
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JazzFlight posted:Yeah, for as much as it tries to be scientific and logical, it just makes up magical rules about "feeling" your interactions with reverse objects and how they don't operate fully independent of our reality because they're essentially "swimming against the current" of forward time. It kinda feels like the whole thing with the inverted bullets and stuff actually work against the movie instead of for it. It gives you enough information that it feels like things should start making intuitive sense, and when they don't it stops the movie in its tracks. And at that point they've already gone too far into the mechanical specifics that handwavey moments like "grandfather paradox doesn't apply because it would be inconvenient to the plot" just come off as extra frustrating. The explanations were just giving the movie enough rope to hang itself with. Probably should have just pulled a Looper-style "These are the rules, no they don't make sense, stop worrying about it" from the beginning.
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Jan 2, 2021 13:30
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Did they say it doesn't apply? I thought Neil said if we're in a multiverse it wouldn't but they seem to be of the belief that if the future succeeds everyone's hosed.
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Jan 2, 2021 18:51
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Groovelord Neato posted:Did they say it doesn't apply? I thought Neil said if we're in a multiverse it wouldn't but they seem to be of the belief that if the future succeeds everyone's hosed. I think I may have mixed up paradoxes, actually. I was thinking of the scene where the protagonist concluded "If the future had won, all the past would have been destroyed instantly and we wouldn't be here. We still exist, ergo the future is not going to win". To which Neil replied something along the lines of "Yeah, I guess, but let's pretend it still might because technobabble". It was pretty remarkable cause I can't recall another movie so plainly telling its audience that there's not gonna be any tension left and everyone's only going to be going through the motions. Perestroika fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Jan 2, 2021 |
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Jan 2, 2021 19:22
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I just have to rant again about everyone on the internet misinterpreting what the Algorithm was, just a testament to how poorly Christopher Nolan explained the macguffin of the film. So many reddit posts state that the Algorithm was the actual doomsday device, like it was a physical bomb that would go off when dropped in that pipe at the end (or that Sator had a dead man's switch that would activate it when he died). However, it was not. It was simply the formula for the machine. The idea was that Sator would bury it in a secret location and send the location via "email burst" to the people in the future when he died and to us, it would instantaneously activate because the only people who would dig it up would be the future people (let's say ~100 years from now). The problem is that Tenet knew where the location was by the climax and could have just dug it up whenever they wanted, negating the "secret location" advantage that Sator had. I'm looking directly at the script here for my evidence: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-T3zyGiaNczvSvASWD_T8WCcv3aMcGLG/view quote:PROTAGONIST quote:KAT Okay, you could argue that we only have our heroes' guesses to go on here, but let's take that as gospel, since it's the only theory the film gives us. Again, they're saying that all the magical nuclear horcrux thing is is a formula! And their logic is flawed because a few scenes later, they know where the dead drop is! Part of the plot is that they need Sator to die thinking he's made the drop so that I guess he doesn't change the location. Then why even make the attack at the end? Just let the drop happen, kill Sator, then dig it up before ~100 years go by! I HATE THIS STUPID MOVIE! JazzFlight fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Jan 3, 2021 |
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Jan 2, 2021 20:08
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I do kind of agree that they should have just had the balls to go with “no one knows how this works. We have a working knowledge that allows us to do some things reliably, but we don’t understand the deeper mechanics.” and had all of the characters be as confused as the audience.
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Jan 3, 2021 00:10
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JazzFlight posted:I just have to rant again about everyone on the internet misinterpreting what the Algorithm was, just a testament to how poorly Christopher Nolan explained the macguffin of the film. So many reddit posts state that the Algorithm was the actual doomsday device, like it was a physical bomb that would go off when dropped in that pipe at the end (or that Sator had a dead man's switch that would activate it when he died). However, it was not. It was simply the formula for the machine. This part was pretty straightforward so it is odd people aren't getting it. Maybe they're trying to rationalize the issue that you described and that we've discussed in the thread - that Tenet could just dig it up. The "appears instantaneously" thing only works the other way.
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Jan 3, 2021 00:55
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gregday posted:There ought to be a FAQ about this. oh ok *frisbees this movie into the trash* *holds out hand waiting for it to return* no, nothing? shame.
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Jan 3, 2021 02:15
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Still Dismal posted:I do kind of agree that they should have just had the balls to go with “no one knows how this works. We have a working knowledge that allows us to do some things reliably, but we don’t understand the deeper mechanics.” and had all of the characters be as confused as the audience. I think they do say that alot, just in slightly different terms. Alot of "feel it, don't think" stuff.
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Jan 3, 2021 02:22
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Still Dismal posted:I do kind of agree that they should have just had the balls to go with “no one knows how this works. We have a working knowledge that allows us to do some things reliably, but we don’t understand the deeper mechanics.” and had all of the characters be as confused as the audience. the actors were apparently confused as gently caress about what was happening which is hilarious to me loved how this saved cinema by the way my av is a palindrome and a looping gif, i LOVE primer, i'm like the target audience for this kinda bullshit and i disliked this greatly. zer0spunk fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Jan 3, 2021 |
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Jan 3, 2021 02:25
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like I said before in this thread, the movie only somewhat works because it's a movie and nothing exists before or after each scene, so "when did the bullets first appear in the chair in the opera or in the laboratory wall (from our forwards time perspective)" is handwaved away
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Jan 3, 2021 03:34
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Still Dismal posted:I do kind of agree that they should have just had the balls to go with “no one knows how this works. We have a working knowledge that allows us to do some things reliably, but we don’t understand the deeper mechanics.” and had all of the characters be as confused as the audience. That is the line they went with. Neil says as much in a conversation with P, specifically in the context of why they have to stop Sator's plan even though Sator's plan makes no sense and shouldn't work.
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Jan 3, 2021 04:21
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Perestroika posted:I think I may have mixed up paradoxes, actually. I was thinking of the scene where the protagonist concluded "If the future had won, all the past would have been destroyed instantly and we wouldn't be here. We still exist, ergo the future is not going to win". To which Neil replied something along the lines of "Yeah, I guess, but let's pretend it still might because technobabble". It was pretty remarkable cause I can't recall another movie so plainly telling its audience that there's not gonna be any tension left and everyone's only going to be going through the motions. Huh? No? Its just saying that we can't assume its a grandfather paradox because its not like its something you can second guess and you have to try, no matter what. It could be Back to the Future time travel for all they know. Youre saying Bill and Ted or Terminator 1 are pointless too, which is weird. I mean, I'd never assume a grandfather paradox that presented itself unless it worked against me, in which case I d try to fulfill it so history recorded something different than what actually happened (ie. faking my death).
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Jan 3, 2021 04:37
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JazzFlight posted:I just have to rant again about everyone on the internet misinterpreting what the Algorithm was, just a testament to how poorly Christopher Nolan explained the macguffin of the film. So many reddit posts state that the Algorithm was the actual doomsday device, like it was a physical bomb that would go off when dropped in that pipe at the end (or that Sator had a dead man's switch that would activate it when he died). However, it was not. It was simply the formula for the machine. They don't explain how it would work. The algorithm is put together in that hole, then when it goes off with the switch, *something* happens. Before they know for sure where it is they suspect email blast or whatever. Because they arent sure, just like how they are about time works, they are trying to stop it from going off.
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Jan 3, 2021 04:49
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Darko posted:They don't explain how it would work. The algorithm is put together in that hole, then when it goes off with the switch, *something* happens. Before they know for sure where it is they suspect email blast or whatever. Because they arent sure, just like how they are about time works, they are trying to stop it from going off. The email blast is giving the location so the future can see it from addresses they're monitoring. I can't remember if it's said explicitly but it's pretty clear he's burying it so they can get it in the future and then doing their thing.
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Jan 3, 2021 05:11
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Groovelord Neato posted:The email blast is giving the location so the future can see it from addresses they're monitoring. I can't remember if it's said explicitly but it's pretty clear he's burying it so they can get it in the future and then doing their thing. That was a guess, but once the location is known, they're just trying to stop the countdown from going off for the same lack of surety about how time works is what I got on my singular viewing. The whole group is based on "since we are not sure how this works for sure, were gonna try and stop everything."
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Jan 3, 2021 05:15
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Darko posted:That was a guess, but once the location is known, they're just trying to stop the countdown from going off for the same lack of surety about how time works is what I got on my singular viewing. The whole group is based on "since we are not sure how this works for sure, were gonna try and stop everything."
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Jan 3, 2021 05:31
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It’s clear enough how the plot works. The plot works to the effect that the characters are uncertain, and they are acting in light of that uncertain. Their uncertainty is quite clear.
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Jan 3, 2021 05:48
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Perestroika posted:It kinda feels like the whole thing with the inverted bullets and stuff actually work against the movie instead of for it. It gives you enough information that it feels like things should start making intuitive sense, and when they don't it stops the movie in its tracks. And at that point they've already gone too far into the mechanical specifics that handwavey moments like "grandfather paradox doesn't apply because it would be inconvenient to the plot" just come off as extra frustrating. The explanations were just giving the movie enough rope to hang itself with. Looper's depiction of time travel is actually consistent with itself. The characters don't fully understand it (closing your loop feels more like superstition than anything else) but the rules, as shown, are easy to grasp and work the same way each time.
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Jan 3, 2021 05:52
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Since interacting with inverted objects causes them to do things just because a person feels it, anyone inverted with a firm grasp of the concept could do whatever they want. In the scene where Neil's death "unhappens" we see him come back to life, take a bullet, unlock the door, and run backwards into the tunnel. From Neil's perspective he comes out of the tunnel to see a reverse struggle and an open door. Why do anything at this point? You came from a personal past where you know the protagonist won the struggle so you could just set a lawn chair out and watch and feel the world go back to a set of circumstances that suits your narrative. Maybe the henchman's gun ricochet'd and hit the lock. Maybe it misfired and the protagonist was able to get through because the bolt was old and rusty and broke or the henchman didn't lock it correctly.
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Jan 3, 2021 06:12
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Amarcarts posted:Since interacting with inverted objects causes them to do things just because a person feels it, anyone inverted with a firm grasp of the concept could do whatever they want. I'm pretty sure he gives a bullet, not take it, which makes even less sense
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Jan 3, 2021 06:14
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Amarcarts posted:Since interacting with inverted objects causes them to do things just because a person feels it, anyone inverted with a firm grasp of the concept could do whatever they want. That is not how the Tenet organization...ethos? Works. They talk about this when they have the conversation going back to Oslo. "Us" existing is not proof of our success. We are making the choice to get involved and we will be the cause for the world not ending. Because someone eventually has to do it, and that someone is us.
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Jan 3, 2021 06:39
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Amarcarts posted:Since interacting with inverted objects causes them to do things just because a person feels it, anyone inverted with a firm grasp of the concept could do whatever they want. In fact the protagonist throughout the entire movie has had the necessary dedication in the same way: this is why he was recruited. What he gains over the course of the movie is a deeper understanding of what that requires. But really nobody has much of an idea of what it requires since nobody really has much of an idea how any of this inversion poo poo works. They only know enough to do what we see them do in the movie.
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Jan 3, 2021 07:10
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They really missed the chance to mess with each sides information, like the bad guy has time travelling people telling him what is going to happen, but what if they good guys had subverted a couple of those dudes? Then all his actions would be based on faulty info. And max dying at the end, they never saw his face, that guy could just have given that little key chain to some other dude at tenet that he doesn't really like.
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Jan 3, 2021 09:21
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I assumed (or was it stated offhand like many things?) that allowing the algorithm to be buried is bad because Tenet can't easily dig it up, like it's buried so deep it'll require a ton of effort and heavy machinery (that's not a stretch, that's why Sator chose the underground location and big bomb). Tenet and the future people are not evenly matched, in fact Tenet is vastly outnumbered and they can only hope to get an edge with total dedication to their cause including willing suicides to prevent information from leaking. Under that premise, no way they have the ability to extract the algorithm without the future people interfering, because if both Tenet and them know where it is, the side with vastly more resources and power (read: not Tenet) will win.
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Jan 3, 2021 09:57
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TychoCelchuuu posted:Ultimately this is the whole point of the movie. As GoutPatrol points out, everyone involved in Tenet is doing this on faith, and specifically on faith that what they're doing is necessary. That's the central tenet. It's possible they could be wrong, since nobody really understands what is going on, but the stakes are very high and these people are self-sacrificing and so they assume that what they are doing is what must be done to save everyone. Neil is the ur-example of this, and his actions throughout the film are what demonstrate the ideology to the protagonist, who by the very end grasps the full extent of Neil's dedication. I get that but it's a hard sell to count that as faith. Putting in effort when the outcome is uncertain definitely counts as faith. The movie shoots itself in the foot with the premise of the interaction between the forward and reverse. They say you can't change the past (What's happened happened) but then they show someone making a bullet levitate off the table into their hand by feeling that they've dropped it. That's agency. You can't really have it both ways. Others have pointed out that the physics logic falls apart when the scene ends (Was the car built with a broken mirror? Why did none of the baddies notice a rebel corpse at the hypocenter?) Here's another one. How exactly does the bullet work that kills Neil? It's a forward bullet and he's inverted. The movie cheats by having Kat not actually die from her reverse wound before she is inverted and by having P have a reverse knife wound, which IRL would have a chance of healing over time and not be deadly. Neil looks pretty good for a man who has lived his whole life with a devastating head wound from a bullet that goes back into a gun from his perspective at the time it happened.
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Jan 3, 2021 12:39
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