A Tenet think piece: did Christopher Nolan try to troll us, or did we troll him?

Going to an empty movie theater is weird. It’s truly a bizarre, surreal experience walking through the lobby, nodding to one guy behind the concession stand, he points to you which direction to go, and then you sit in an empty auditorium wondering if you just interacted with a ghost.

Was he dead this entire time, that one concession stand worker? Is this theater haunted? How and why is this theater still open? Why did no one buy any tickets to see this showing of Tenet? Is there no one else around? Who starts the movie? Maybe I’m the one who’s actually dead.

Anyways, I still sat there, alone, with my mask on, watching 15 godawful minutes of trailers I’ve either seen, or new ones with November release dates that will have to be updated soon with “2021, only in theaters” to save the studios’ face. And yeah, you might say I risked my life to see Tenet, even though it was an intentionally empty theater. I used hand sanitizer before and after, didn’t speak a word to anyone in or out, so I think I’m safe. The only thing at risk is having all of these hot Tenet takes bottled up inside, and no one to share them with, since no one in this stupid country will see this movie until Warner Bros. releases it on HBO Max.

In what has to be one of the strangest, wildest, most insane meta-narratives in movie history, Tenet missed its palindromic release date and sparked a thousand video essays and Twitter threads about the state of the industry and the economy and the future of movies and yadda yadda. The same aura of magnetism, mystery, sorrow, and anticipation surrounded a Nolan film before with The Dark Knight and Heath Ledger, and now a global catastrophe has done the same to a movie about trying to prevent a global *temporal* catastrophe. The irony is not lost on me.

I think people talking about the circumstances of Tenet will outweigh and outnumber the actual conversations about Tenet once everyone has seen it, and I have no doubt the collective internet hive-mind will coalesce on the same group of talking points; everyone will agree on the pros and cons of the movie, turn it into a Honest Trailers poking fun at it, and be done with it until a Nolan podcast years from now touches upon that weird time in our lives where we couldn’t leave our homes.

But what’s remarkable to me and my twisted perspective, about this movie in particular, is that it was a huge missed opportunity for Chris Nolan. Not to market and sell his movie, or to make money, but to troll us all, in only the unique way he can. I sat there after it ended, and the first thing to pop up into my head was “boy, this really was the ultimate attempt to stick it to so many people, and it’s a shame the message was lost on us all”. It turns out the world trolled Nolan by robbing him, and ourselves, of a normal successful debut, so the troll job didn’t land as it should have.

Almost everything about this movie, in my view, was tailor made to take jabs at the audience, his fans, critics, and other filmmakers. In a British, cheeky way, of course, I’m not suggesting he has a spiteful bone in his body. But Nolan continues to make the best Bond films without the license, and either this is his attempt to get the job or to rub it in the faces of everyone who wouldn’t let him take on the property and iconic character. I cannot imagine seeing No Time to Die in a post-Inception and now post-Tenet world, because everything those films tried to do were done better before, aped, or one-upped completely. Moonraker after Star Wars, Casino Royale after Mission Impossible, Skyfall after The Dark Knight, Spectre after Austin Powers; it all just feels like others are doing Bond better than Bond at this point, and Nolan just re-proves it and shows his chops over and over again with bigger and better set-pieces.

That’s the best part of Tenet: the action here is the best I’ve seen yet. It’s main competition is Inception, but I think those moments work better within the entire film whereas these scenes might just work better when you watch them on YouTube a year from now and remember how good they were individually, and not collectively. That’s because in between jaw dropping spectacle is a meandering plot, thin characters, inaudible dialogue, a confusing story, no strong themes or point to any of it.

A scientist says “don’t try to understand it”, a shot at everyone who demanded to know the workings of Inception and all time travel movies. [Editor’s note: this joke was already done in Looper, when Bruce Willis talks to JGL in the diner]. There’s a line at the end lifted from Casablanca. The protagonist of the film is literally called The Protagonist, they openly talk about it, name drop antagonists, and maybe the winks and nods from the actors were left on the cutting room floor in editing, I don’t know. Even the score, which is BRILLIANT was not done by Hans Zimmer, but by a very talented imposter in Ludwig Goransson. I was shocked to learn it wasn’t Hans, it felt like such a ripoff. Not to say it’s derivative of his work already, but it expands on it, including all the fun backwards music made famous by Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

You’ll never be able to understand everything the characters say, nor able to remember any of their names. You won’t know who is going where or why, or who they’re shooting at, but it’s a joy to behold otherwise. This is such an endlessly fascinating film to think about, because it’s incomprehensible and yet riveting at the same time. It’s so obvious where the movie is going, and what its big “twist” is, but at no point do you question it. You might have to sit around and wait for things to go in reverse, tread the same ground, but it’s such eye candy you don’t mind it.

Style over substance can be a good thing, depending on the art form and the context. The choreography, the acting, the soundtrack, the editing, the shots and ideas and locations and settings and costumes, it’s all top notch. It just could have been so much more, and you can painfully see what can be improved. I just think Nolan either doesn’t care to know or does know and doesn’t want to change. He needs a writer to hang his hat on, but there is no one better in the business of conjuring up movie magic and then getting to explode a fucking airplane. A real one, not a fake one. No one gets to play in avant-garde territory in blockbuster land except a handful of people, and Nolan takes advantage with tempo, rhythm, timing, pace, and flow.

I heard this movie was joyless, initially. The first review said so, and I just don’t see it. Insomnia is a (purposefully) joyless film because it’s a thriller without any humor. This had humor, and lots of fun! It’s a fun action movie, through and through. There are memorable moments, and lines (if you can hear them). Michael Caine plays a man named Sir Michael! Nolan makes fun of himself and his suits! Elizabeth Debicki gets to be tall! None of her parts of the story work at all, but am I glad this movie got made and that I saw it? Hell yes! Did I not already mention Debicki gets to be tall?

I wanted to love this movie, I really did. I wanted it to be a surprise Inception sequel, which it is not, sadly. I wanted John David Washington’s character to have a name and an identity. I wanted Robert Pattinson to tell me how he gets his hair to look like that, but alas that did not happen. At the end of the day, this might have been a mid-tier Nolan film if things were normal in 2020, but the legacy of this time and place, and this movie, will live on and give it new life.

Until a video essay goes viral ripping it to shreds, and then maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know. But he crashed a real plane into a building, TWICE, and got hundreds of extras to pretend to be asleep during a firefight. How bad can it REALLY be?