[SPOILER] Discussion/Speculation Thread

Christopher Nolan's time inverting spy film that follows a protagonist fighting for the survival of the entire world.
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MuffinMcFluffin wrote:
December 23rd, 2020, 2:43 pm
RrobynneUK wrote:
December 23rd, 2020, 11:17 am
Neil says of
his recruitment by JDW, "You have a future in the past."
There's no sensible way that sentence with that syntax can be interpreted as to support anything other than a contradiction of this theory. Without that line it might have been ambiguous but with it it's clear that while it's a nice idea, it's false.
Let's look at the entire line: "You have a future in the past. Years ago for me, years from now for you."

To me, this means that their past selves are influenced by something that Protag will do in that future, which is forming Tenet. I don't know what this has to do with Neil being or not being Max.
No, sorry, not seeing it at all. Neil is as surprised as JDW when they see inversion in practice. There's nothing to suggest he's from the future at all. Also, Max is most likely named after Maxwell's Demon rather than the less common French spelling of Maximilian that people who go with this theory arbitrarily cherry-pick four letters from and claim it as evidence while discarding the rest that don't fit the theory. Any good scientist will tell you that adjusting the evidence to suit the hypothesis is not the way to go. And Nolan himself basically dismissing it when asked seals it.

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I still don’t get why/how there is two Neils at end.
Also I don’t get why he ends the movie with Neil’s narration. And honestly it felt like he shot the scene of Neil talking to someone and he used his dialogue as voice over.
To me this is the most open ended Nolan film, and I hope he has sequel plans in his head already.

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RrobynneUK wrote:
December 23rd, 2020, 11:12 pm
Neil is as surprised as JDW when they see inversion in practice. There's nothing to suggest he's from the future at all.
I love how Tenet has two very plausible ways to look at this..
1: The Protagonist forms Tenet in the future and recruits Neil, who then inverts to the events of the movie.
2: The Protagonist forms Tenet in the future, then inverts himself to several years before the events of the movie, and recruits Neil.

I'm an option #1 guy. And Neil is just playing dumb. They're not going to recruit him into Tenet and NOT show him inversion. "The policy is to suppress." He does this several times. He knows they're after the algorithm, but once again plays dumb - "PROTAGONIST: Bring some lead-lined gloves. NEIL: Jesus. Nuclear?"

Nolan tells us through Priya "Tenet wasn’t founded in the past – it will be founded in the future." So why bother forming Tenet in the future, then inverting and having to form it again in the past? Tenet would just use the same sort of communication that the future did with Sator, Inverting documents/instructions to certain people in the past to set things in motion - like to Priya and Martin Donovan's character.

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SINCEPTION wrote:
December 24th, 2020, 2:44 am
I still don’t get why/how there is two Neils at end.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I understood it is:
The Neil we see at the beginning of the raid sequence is inverted (blue team). Halfway through, he sees Sator's bald goon set the trip mine, so he goes to where Sator's guys are inverting, and reverts himself to normal. Neil basically creates his own temporal pincer movement. The normal Neil tries to stop protag and Ives from entering the tunnel, fails, and then saves them later by pulling them by the Humvee. After he says goodbye to protag, Neil inverts himself, goes to the tunnel and jumps in front of the goon's gun and sacrifices himself.

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Image

During the Freeport fight v.2, past Protagonist is played by JDW's stunt double for a few shots. Might come off as obvious to some, but I honestly thought they would've just used the stunt double in the "future" Protagonist wardrobe for the majority of the fight, and only have JDW in that wardrobe for the close-ups, and when Neil unmasks him.

But based on the Blu-Ray featurette, they stated that JDW had to learn the fight in four "directions" - Past Protagonist forwards and backwards, and future Protagonist forwards and backwards.

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Cilogy wrote:
December 31st, 2020, 11:01 am
SINCEPTION wrote:
December 24th, 2020, 2:44 am
I still don’t get why/how there is two Neils at end.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I understood it is:
The Neil we see at the beginning of the raid sequence is inverted (blue team). Halfway through, he sees Sator's bald goon set the trip mine, so he goes to where Sator's guys are inverting, and reverts himself to normal. Neil basically creates his own temporal pincer movement. The normal Neil tries to stop protag and Ives from entering the tunnel, fails, and then saves them later by pulling them by the Humvee. After he says goodbye to protag, Neil inverts himself, goes to the tunnel and jumps in front of the goon's gun and sacrifices himself.
I rewatched it for the sixth time and now everything makes sense. I had missed a shot or at the time it didn’t click what it meant but now it makes sense. And I made this diagram today. See if you agree with me;
Image

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I also like to hypothetical, and how about if:
She’s Cooper wife? After all she died from cancer as well. Especially if she’s the future scientist. Murph’s law; whatever can happen, will happen 👀

https://imgur.com/gallery/SuBIfqX

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I was thinking about the number of causal loops (or “bootstrap” paradoxes) that exist throughout the film, and I realized that the plot doesn’t just feature a series causal loops, but rather a nested structure of causal loops – the central loop (the Tallinn highway chase) comprises plot points that occur in close proximity, while the outermost loop includes events very far apart in time (The Protagonist’s initial recruitment and his
founding of the Tenet organization in the future).
Not sure if something like this already exists online somewhere, but I made a diagram of all the major plot events in the film that occur as part of causal loops nested inside each other. What’s cool is that the Tallinn highway chase (the central loop) occurs approximately at the halfway point in the film.

Just thought I’d share for anyone interested:
Image

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ok a bit of a meta question, who do you guys reckon would win in a confrontation, Nolan`s batman at his peak, (the dark knight) vs the protagonist after the events of Tenet, bruce has his whole arsenal of gadgets at his disposal and The protagonist can use turnstiles, im not considering a long confrontation but rather a good old fist fight, would bruce figure out what is up with an inverted protagonist and figure out how to fight him ? ir is inversion too op ?

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Nicolaslabra wrote:
May 15th, 2021, 6:40 pm
ok a bit of a meta question, who do you guys reckon would win in a confrontation, Nolan`s batman at his peak, (the dark knight) vs the protagonist after the events of Tenet, bruce has his whole arsenal of gadgets at his disposal and The protagonist can use turnstiles, im not considering a long confrontation but rather a good old fist fight, would bruce figure out what is up with an inverted protagonist and figure out how to fight him ? ir is inversion too op ?
Batman duh, he’s Batman!!

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