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banned from Starbucks
Jul 18, 2004




I've read 3 spoiler filled reviews of this movie and still have no clue what its about.

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magiccarpet
Jan 3, 2005




I would blow Dane Cook posted:

Sorry I haven't seen him in anything before.

Bust Rodd
Oct 21, 2008

by VideoGames

sethsez posted:

It's been almost a decade since the last Twilight movie and he's been in quite a few fantastic things since then, any one of which should have proven that he's more than just Edward Cullen and which collectively should have smashed that notion to pieces by now, but I guess for some people he's still in that Leo-after-Titanic phase of his career.

Also, everything I've been reading about this gives me the impression that Tenet is exactly the movie that Inception's detractors claimed that movie was.

That’s kind of how Iconic roles work. 25 years from now someone is going to back multiple dump trucks full of money of to his palatial mansion and we’ll get a trilogy of vampire movies about Edward opening a school for wizard vampires.

Like, seriously, just look at Mark Hammil. Dude has been working steadily in Hollywood for 40 years and most people can probably name 2-3 of roles at best, and they are always gonna be Luke and Joker.

More or less the same thing happened to Johnny Depp. His major roles have completely subsumed anything smaller he’s ever done. Now he’s just the Hunter Thompson Pirate guy (unless you have sadbrains, then he is scissorman)

Jose Oquendo
Jun 20, 2004

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a boring movie

Bust Rodd posted:

Like, seriously, just look at Mark Hammil. Dude has been working steadily in Hollywood for 40 years and most people can probably name 2-3 of roles at best, and they are always gonna be Luke and Joker.

That's because after Star Wars, Mark Hamill was in pretty much nothing but really bad movies. He's not really that great an actor. He's a much better voice actor.

Pattinson on the other hand is a legit amazing actor who has been in a TON of good stuff since the Twilight flicks. He's just now getting back into the big studio film world with Tenet and then The Batman

SixFigureSandwich
Oct 30, 2004
Exciting Lemon
Supposedly the trailer for Dune will be playing before this, but not until the end of the month.

wizardofloneliness
Dec 30, 2008

Jose Oquendo posted:

That's because after Star Wars, Mark Hamill was in pretty much nothing but really bad movies. He's not really that great an actor. He's a much better voice actor.

Pattinson on the other hand is a legit amazing actor who has been in a TON of good stuff since the Twilight flicks. He's just now getting back into the big studio film world with Tenet and then The Batman

Yeah, Pattinson rules. I can't think of any outright stinkers he's been in since Twilight ended. There's that one romance movie where he dies in 9/11 at the end but I think that may have been concurrent with Twilight so I'll give him a pass for that. But he's basically the only reason I'm interested in the new Batman movie.

The Cameo
Jan 20, 2005


Nearly everything Pattinson's done since Twilight has been extremely small scale movies, so it's understandable people don't quite realize he and Stewart have both immediately managed to carve out stability for much longer careers beyond that (hell, for Stewart, Twilight's just a blip that made her incredibly rich, she was working well before it and has kept on after) by doing whatever the hell they feel like doing. Until The Batman's out, at which point things might flip from "he's a glitter vampire" to "HE'S THE BAT-MAN", a lot of people are just gonna perceive him as the former unless they stumble upon The Rover or Good Time or High Life or The Lighthouse on streaming somewhere between now and next October. Or, as people go "oh I know Christopher Nolan, I like those movies, let me rent this Tenet film" because most people aren't going to go out to the cinema for it, they'll have the reaction IwbDC had.

Most people probably figure they fell off a cliff or something, the way most sudden breakthrough stars do, and will think when they pop up again in a big movie that "oh it's their comeback".

Bust Rodd
Oct 21, 2008

by VideoGames
Batman is also not the prestigious and exciting role it used to be, because Bale and Affleck loving sucked so insanely bad at it.

Gatts
Jan 2, 2001

Goodnight Moon

Nap Ghost
LMAO - Affleck is the best Bruce Wayne and Batman.

Jose Oquendo
Jun 20, 2004

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a boring movie

Bust Rodd posted:

Batman is also not the prestigious and exciting role it used to be, because Bale and Affleck loving sucked so insanely bad at it.

Huh? Bale's movies were insanely popular and were hits critically and financially. Affleck...maybe? But what those actors did doesn't really have any bearing on the role being prestigious or exciting. I can guarantee you that there's a long list of A and B list actors who would jump at the chance to be Batman in a big budget Hollywood movie.

Bust Rodd
Oct 21, 2008

by VideoGames

Gatts posted:

LMAO - Affleck is the best Bruce Wayne and Batman.

I’m sorry but there’s just no universe where this opinion is popular or widely accepted. I’m not saying you didn’t enjoy him, but Ben Affleck is very widely regarded as a absolutely dogshit Batman absolutely everywhere online.

Jose Oquendo
Jun 20, 2004

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a boring movie

Bust Rodd posted:

I’m sorry but there’s just no universe where this opinion is popular or widely accepted. I’m not saying you didn’t enjoy him, but Ben Affleck is very widely regarded as a absolutely dogshit Batman absolutely everywhere online.

Not in a world where Batman and Robin exists.

LesterGroans
Jun 9, 2009

It's funny...

You were so scary at night.

Bust Rodd posted:

I’m sorry but there’s just no universe where this opinion is popular or widely accepted. I’m not saying you didn’t enjoy him, but Ben Affleck is very widely regarded as a absolutely dogshit Batman absolutely everywhere online.

That's not really true (a lot of people who hated the film thought he was one of the better parts) but it's an especially funny thing to say after posting that Christian Bale playing Batman took all the prestige away lol

Bust Rodd
Oct 21, 2008

by VideoGames
Hey I very intentionally didn’t say Worst Batman. If you write George Clooney he’ll mail you the cost of your ticket for that film in cash, he’s that embarrassed by it.

LoL I just googled it and apparently Batman & Robin was such a disaster that its what caused Clooney to start to take his career more seriously and drive him to only be in good movies from now on

Bale was a good Bruce Wayne, he was just a lovely Batman. His Bat-Voice was insane i can’t believe they went with that

The REAL Goobusters
Apr 25, 2008

Bust Rodd posted:

Batman is also not the prestigious and exciting role it used to be, because Bale and Affleck loving sucked so insanely bad at it.

Lol oh for sure dude. totally

sethsez
Jul 14, 2006

He's soooo dreamy...

Bust Rodd posted:

Batman is also not the prestigious and exciting role it used to be, because Bale and Affleck loving sucked so insanely bad at it.

Bale may not be the reason The Dark Knight became a massive sensation, but it was still a massive sensation that DC's been trying to chase ever since, and about the worst criticism I've seen of Bale in it was "his voice was kinda silly sometimes."

That's a pretty goddamn far cry from "Christian Bale sucked so hard as Batman that the role itself became less desirable."

garycoleisgod
Sep 27, 2004
Boo

banned from Starbucks posted:

I've read 3 spoiler filled reviews of this movie and still have no clue what its about.

Well, this is an explanation of the movie, I don't really know how the time reversal thing worked or what the exact nature of the end of the world threat is (I get the general gist, but the details were lost in me not being able to hear all the dialogue). The movie actually takes the shape on a palindrome. By which I mean, the word TENET right, no matter which end you start at you go through T to E to N... and so on. Put another way if you start at T, you go through E, to N and then REVERSE COURSE, you will go through the same journey you just took, but backwards and the end is the beginning is the end.

I know that sounds like some Johnny Five Aces "time works the same way" crap and it kinda is, but that is how the movie is structured. Just go with it I guess, the movie isn't as clever as it would like to be. It's at its best when it's just a Bond film, you know, evil madman with a destroy the world plot, he's got a lady who the hero spy gets involved with, a main henchman who's huge (and in my head I was calling him Mr Stamper or Jaws because I couldn't tell you the characters actual name) and action set pieces.

As for specifics (MASSIVE SPOILERS, LITERALLY THE ENTIRE MOVIE DO NOT MOUSE OVER) we have irreversibly hosed the worlds climate and the future people (who are never seen, only talked about in hard to hear dialogue) are mad at us. They have invented tech that can reverse the entropy of things and so they can send messages/tech back through time. It's very terminator. They sent a message to Kenneth Branagh (if they know who you are and where you will be at certain times, i.e. you wrote emails detailing this poo poo they can read in the future, they will be able to send objects back so they know you will be there to get them with messages like "Hey man, loved you Shakespeare stuff, wanna blow up the world? Here's some future gold to fund it"), he is dying of cancer and wants to take everyone with him so he says OK.

A scientist lady in the future developed THE ALGORITHM, which, uh, reverses the entropy of everything and will make it so the whole world not only ends, but will have never existed? Like I said, unclear dialogue. Anyway, she tried to hide it by splitting it up and sending it to the past so her fellow future people can't use it to kill us. They get Branagh to find all the bits of THE ALGORITHM, and bury it again they so can use it in the future to kill us. Won't that kill them you ask? Uh, maybe? Grandfather paradox, they think maybe not?

Our hero Protagonist and R. Patz + others team up to do action movie stuff at them and save the world. They succeed and Lizzy Debicki gets to live happily ever after with her son. The movie is basically just a loop and it's implied (although not certain) that you can't change the past, so once something has happened, that's it, but maybe not?


Basically, they should give Nolan a bond film so he gets it out of his system and whenever he tries to insert non-linear storytelling in it they should smack him on the hands with a ruler and make him sit in the naughty corner. If you've seen the way Inception and Interstellar are structured, you've seen the better version of this movie already.

But hey, cool stunts and Pattinson is a goddamn star, there will be think pieces demanding he be the next Bond in the wake of this for sure.

Violator
May 15, 2003


Bust Rodd posted:

Bale was a good Bruce Wayne, he was just a lovely Batman. His Bat-Voice was insane i can’t believe they went with that

I actually kind of agree with this. I was thinking about this earlier, and Bale’s character was neither really Bruce Wayne or Batman. He become them and used them, but his true self was the one who gave up his life and lived in solitude after his love died. Wayne and Batman were his alter egos and the guy in the French cafe was the real man.

Affleck is my favorite Bruce Wayne and Batman, though. I loved everything he and Snyder did with the character.

Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:

Bust Rodd posted:

Batman is also not the prestigious and exciting role it used to be, because Bale and Affleck loving sucked so insanely bad at it.

Yeah they completely failed to reach the bar set by George Clooney. :wtc:

Kalko
Oct 9, 2004

I loved Interstellar and definitely noticed Nolan's peculiar sound mixing technique in that movie and the ones following it, but Tenet is the first time it actually interfered with my ability to understand what was happening. I could tell there were various points throughout the movie where Something Important was happening because of the music swells but damned if I could work out what it was.

I guess it didn't help that the time travel gimmick was convoluted and didn't really have much impact on anything, and as others have said, it just seemed like an excuse to show people and objects moving backwards, which was cool the first few times but the way it was used failed to add any tension to the action sequences (which I'm assuming was its intended purpose).

Especially at the end of the film, the big firefight had lots of uniformed people moving backwards and forwards firing lots of rounds and blowing poo poo up, but I couldn't tell who they were shooting at and the whole thing just seemed like chaos for the sake of it. And it was also loud. Really, really, loud. Then something happened in the tunnel with a door that was locked and then unlocked, then there was a struggle and uh, I guess it all worked out in the end because Robert Pattinson went backwards again or something.

I don't regret seeing it as it looked great and I enjoyed the performances, but I suspect that if I had actually heard all of the plot-heavy dialogue throughout the movie it still would've been an oddly unsatisfying experience.

well why not
Feb 10, 2009




Interstellar's mix is bad enough that I had unprompted conversations about the mix with a friend who works in video production as his S/O was complaining that she couldn't hear poo poo. So it wasn't just nerds noticing the mix being poo poo. The scene with Michael Caine whispering was inaudible, even at one of the best chain cinemas around. Dolby certified, all that.

The organ was motherfuckin present, however.

I would blow Dane Cook
Dec 26, 2008
The music in this is seriously about as unsubtle as it gets, no wonder Nolan doesn't want to turn it down so you can understand the dialogue.

Zenithe
Feb 25, 2013

Ask not to whom the Anidavatar belongs; it belongs to thee.
Hearing more and more reports of people not being able to hear poo poo (and not just bogans like me who live in regional 'Straya). If this isn't fixed by the time it's released worldwide I'm gonna need some more popcorn.

Hedrigall
Mar 27, 2008

by vyelkin
Hearing all this is making me extremely happy about my decision to wait for VOD

I would blow Dane Cook
Dec 26, 2008
Oh yeah the suits look great in this movie.

Mokelumne Trekka
Nov 22, 2015

Soon.

Lotta "haven't seen GoodTime because Robert Pattinson =Twilight" vibes ITT

BigglesSWE
Dec 2, 2014

How 'bout them hawks news huh!
Subtitles to the rescue!

Didn’t have a problem with following the dialogue, so that’s good I suppose. I think I conceptually like what this movie is doing, but I don’t think it does it quite well. There’s also certain character motivations I just don’t find plausible.

Also, Pattinson rules and anyone who still holds Twilight against him is a rube.

sethsez
Jul 14, 2006

He's soooo dreamy...

garycoleisgod posted:

Well, this is an explanation of the movie, I don't really know how the time reversal thing worked or what the exact nature of the end of the world threat is (I get the general gist, but the details were lost in me not being able to hear all the dialogue). The movie actually takes the shape on a palindrome. By which I mean, the word TENET right, no matter which end you start at you go through T to E to N... and so on. Put another way if you start at T, you go through E, to N and then REVERSE COURSE, you will go through the same journey you just took, but backwards and the end is the beginning is the end.

I know that sounds like some Johnny Five Aces "time works the same way" crap and it kinda is, but that is how the movie is structured. Just go with it I guess, the movie isn't as clever as it would like to be. It's at its best when it's just a Bond film, you know, evil madman with a destroy the world plot, he's got a lady who the hero spy gets involved with, a main henchman who's huge (and in my head I was calling him Mr Stamper or Jaws because I couldn't tell you the characters actual name) and action set pieces.

As for specifics (MASSIVE SPOILERS, LITERALLY THE ENTIRE MOVIE DO NOT MOUSE OVER) we have irreversibly hosed the worlds climate and the future people (who are never seen, only talked about in hard to hear dialogue) are mad at us. They have invented tech that can reverse the entropy of things and so they can send messages/tech back through time. It's very terminator. They sent a message to Kenneth Branagh (if they know who you are and where you will be at certain times, i.e. you wrote emails detailing this poo poo they can read in the future, they will be able to send objects back so they know you will be there to get them with messages like "Hey man, loved you Shakespeare stuff, wanna blow up the world? Here's some future gold to fund it"), he is dying of cancer and wants to take everyone with him so he says OK.

A scientist lady in the future developed THE ALGORITHM, which, uh, reverses the entropy of everything and will make it so the whole world not only ends, but will have never existed? Like I said, unclear dialogue. Anyway, she tried to hide it by splitting it up and sending it to the past so her fellow future people can't use it to kill us. They get Branagh to find all the bits of THE ALGORITHM, and bury it again they so can use it in the future to kill us. Won't that kill them you ask? Uh, maybe? Grandfather paradox, they think maybe not?

Our hero Protagonist and R. Patz + others team up to do action movie stuff at them and save the world. They succeed and Lizzy Debicki gets to live happily ever after with her son. The movie is basically just a loop and it's implied (although not certain) that you can't change the past, so once something has happened, that's it, but maybe not?


Basically, they should give Nolan a bond film so he gets it out of his system and whenever he tries to insert non-linear storytelling in it they should smack him on the hands with a ruler and make him sit in the naughty corner. If you've seen the way Inception and Interstellar are structured, you've seen the better version of this movie already.

But hey, cool stunts and Pattinson is a goddamn star, there will be think pieces demanding he be the next Bond in the wake of this for sure.

Of all the things I expected this to remind me of, I wasn't expecting Final Fantasy VIII.

PuntCuncher
Apr 21, 2007

I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!
Saw this last night, and because I don’t (currently) live in a covid hell world, I was thrilled to get out and see a new movie again.

I think I hated it, but I’m glad I got out of the house.

Anne Frank Funk
Nov 4, 2008

I also saw this and the disappointments just kept on piling on. This is the movie where Nolan did it, this is the movie which will brake brains of even the combined forces of redditors and youtubers

Ruffian Price
Sep 17, 2016

poo poo. I liked it. :smith:

Agreed that the best action sequences barely involved the gimmick, the vehicle box-in was easily the highlight and simply characters coming up with a plan and executing it well.

Worst parts were the eye-rolling sator square references and the grandfather paradox dialogue, which has nothing to do with the internal logic of the film - they simply needed to pretend there are still stakes after explaining to the audience that the entire plot is a stable time zigzag (it's pretty much Primer if they could leave the box when going backwards)

If you're waiting until next year, don't worry about spoilers IMO. All dominoes are being set up in full view (although I think Patterson's exaggerated acting in his first scene was intended as an "ah!" moment for repeat viewings, but it's too conspicuous already) and you'll be able to tell how most of it will go. The fun is in watching the dominoes fall :3: Some of the sequences are masterfully executed.

The score was also surprisingly... normal? Inception, Interstellar and Dunkirk all heavily influenced trends in film music, this was just your regular pulse-heavy score, even felt dated at times

Robert Deadford
Mar 1, 2008
Ultra Carp
I saw it this afternoon.

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

  • Whole thing looked gorgeous, some spectacular locations, kind of like a Bond film in that respect.
  • Great fight choreography
  • Some spectacular action scenes involving vehicles, i'm surprised i'm not bored of car chases after seeing them in a million different movies.
  • Michael Caine wonderful as always
  • The music is about as subtle as being hit by a bus, he didn't use Hans Zimmer on this one so more synthy and less classical.
  • Is the movie difficult to understand like 2001 or eyes wide shut because there's a lot going on here and you need time to process it all or does it just not make sense? Reasonable people will disagree I suppose.
  • It's loving loud, not as loud as Dunkirk (that was super loud on purpose) but there's a definite choice to go with loudness here.
  • Nice to see Robert Pattinson in something that isn't that stupid Twilight poo poo. Apparently he prepared for his part by watching Christopher Hitchens videos.
  • The women characters were good.
  • Without the time element, it would basically be a bond film, the villain and his henchman are super cliche.
  • The script was well written (when you could hear it).
Ultimately yeah it's polarizing and if you didn't like Interstellar or Inception you aren't going to like this.

Also yeah the audio mixing was atrocious

I agree with all of this. I've enjoyed everything of Nolan's that I've seen except for The Dark Knight Rises, but this didn't engage me quite as much as Interstellar or Inception. At its best, it's really drat good.

I found the first act a little annoying, with abrupt exposition dumps, but the quality of the action choreography and cinematography is high enough to that it wasn't a problem. The film proceeds well enough until the third act when the action gets confusing visually. The central conceit of the film is interesting, although I feel it could have been utilised a little differently - the Grandfather paradox is never challenged at all, which is a pity. Was Sator always doomed to fail? The heroes certain to win? It's a time travel movie so timeline fuckery is to be expected.

Yes, it's a puzzle box movie, but underneath the filigreed Nolan philosophizing it's not as clever as it thinks it is, or perhaps as clever as people think it should be. Its mechanics are deliberately opaque, McGuffins inside McGuffins, and no amount of picking at it will unravel its knot, because no real effort is made to explain it, and that is probably for the best. Nolan's ability to get long, expensive and narratively complex films made in this age of minimal studio risk is his true talent.

Still, I went along for the ride and enjoyed it.

mousku
Jun 2, 2011

Robert Deadford posted:

Still, I went along for the ride and enjoyed it.
How I felt about this film. Even if a lot of time I wasn't sure what they were doing and what the end goal was, it was very fun to watch for the great action choreography.

I would blow Dane Cook
Dec 26, 2008
It was nice to be able to go see a movie after months of lockdown too.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
Saw it tonight and liked it more than Interstellar and subjectively enjoyed :norway: it more than Inception even though Inception is probably a better movie measured by objective standards. It wasn't a perfect movie though, and it was very obvious to me that the man who came out of the time portal was the main character from the future coming back in time - that's a time traveling trope almost as old as time travel stories.

Robert Deadford posted:

the Grandfather paradox is never challenged at all, which is a pity. Was Sator always doomed to fail? The heroes certain to win? It's a time travel movie so timeline fuckery is to be expected.

We do see the heroes failing to change events some of the times, and that demonstrates what was said in dialogue: If we change the past too much, we lose the information that we used to plan the changes, which means making too dramatic changes gives the enemy the upper hand. They also do answer this problem in a way: If there are infinite possible existences, then does that really matter to you unless your're there to perceive it?

Robert Deadford
Mar 1, 2008
Ultra Carp

Vir posted:


We do see the heroes failing to change events some of the times, and that demonstrates what was said in dialogue: If we change the past too much, we lose the information that we used to plan the changes, which means making too dramatic changes gives the enemy the upper hand. They also do answer this problem in a way: If there are infinite possible existences, then does that really matter to you unless your're there to perceive it?

Fair point.

That's the fun of time travel narratives. What I was thinking about was time travel narratives in general: is the timeline in this film like the one in, say, Avengers Endgame, where visitors from the future can come back, change something major and head into a different branch of the multiple universe they live in, or is it like in Back To The Future, where Marty can erase himself from the one, singular timeline?

Escobarbarian
Jun 18, 2004


Grimey Drawer
I had a good time watching this but it’s almost definitely the worst Nolan I’ve seen. All of his flaws are super amplified - there’s almost nothing in the way of genuine emotion, the concept seemingly just exists to be heady and seem cleverer than it is, and Debicki’s character is just terrible - she felt like such an antiquated character in that she mostly just exists to act sad and occasionally get slapped around. The editing in every scene that isn’t an action scene is awfully rushed, too, and I can’t tell if it’s because Nolan wanted to get it down to a certain length or just genuinely doesn’t give a poo poo about anything other than providing the most basic information in between the action.

But god drat, the spectacle is fantastic as usual, with the concept lending itself to excellent unique action, and it’s super well-shot and the cast crush it. I don’t think anyone who doesn’t want to go to a cinema at the minute needs to regret missing out on this right now (I work at one so I just saw it there), but it was still cool.

One thing I wasn’t expecting is it feels like it almost sets up a sequel? There’s the hanging thread of the future people who we never see or hear from / Branagh’s character feels like a miniboss, if that makes sense - and we could see the organisation with Washington at the head.

Ruffian Price
Sep 17, 2016

ROMA is already taken though.

rolleyes
Nov 16, 2006

Sometimes you have to roll the hard... two?
For the love of god watch it with captions if you have the option. If you thought Dark Knight Rises was bad, this involves masks and even worse sound mixing at the same time. Given there's a lot of characters explaining the plot to you whilst wearing masks in noisy locations, this is... unfortunate.

Apart from the minor issue of being unable to hear dialogue crucial to understanding the plot, the film is visually spectacular which is to be expected from Nolan I guess.

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Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
I had no problem hearing all the dialogue. Granted, we had Norwegian subtitles, and it's possible that I'm subconsciously reading them, but I wasn't paying attention to them.

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