speedy117 wrote: ↑

September 8th, 2020, 12:06 am

Jayp wrote: ↑

September 7th, 2020, 11:56 am

speedy117 wrote: ↑

September 7th, 2020, 10:19 am

I've only watched the film once and have some basic questions if anyone can answer them that'd be great:

1. Can someone explain the hypothermia explosion? How does that work?
2. Does the Protagonist create TENET in the future or the past?
3. How does a temporal pincer work and what is the point of it?
4. How much of the opera scene was a test? The Protagonist's colleagues died because of it.
5. Is "We live in a twilight world" some sort of code between special agents or something?
6. What are they trying to stop? A bomb that goes forward and backward through time?
7. Can someone explain the entering the turnstile thing? As you enter the turnstile, what would you see on the other side? I remember reading that if you don't see yourself on the other side it means you died but I don't understand how.

Sorry if these are dumb questions. Like I said I've only seen the film once.

1.hypothermia is state where your body looses heat faster than it can produce heat as Blast produced heat but as JDW was inverted he catched it like cold
2.Future
3.Temporal pincer is like pincer but for time. You make two teams. One inverted other normal. Normal teams starts the battle progresses towards end. Inverted team start from end of battle progresses towards start. They exchange information between them to have upperhand at enemy. Sort of communicating with the future
4.Whole, his colleagues died bcoz they either gave names or info I guess
5.yes like tenet and hand gesture
6.It’s not literally bomb but more destructive than that. It’s an algorithm which can reverse the direction of universe causing apocalypse for us so future generations can live on earth with natural resources.
7.Turnstile simply inverts the entropy of a person or object i.e. direction of time is changed for person entering. So when entering turnstile to invert yourself or uninvert yourself, you will always see yourself on other side because time just changed direction so when you are entering to invert you will see yourself on other side travelling backwards also when you are entering to uninvert you will still see yourself on other side travelling backwards. So If you are dead you won’t see yourself on other side is totally wrong and unthoughtful.
I tried my best to answer please let me know if it worked for you or not

quervo wrote: ↑

September 7th, 2020, 2:08 pm

speedy117 wrote: ↑

September 7th, 2020, 10:19 am

I've only watched the film once and have some basic questions if anyone can answer them that'd be great:

1. Can someone explain the hypothermia explosion? How does that work?
2. Does the Protagonist create TENET in the future or the past?
3. How does a temporal pincer work and what is the point of it?
4. How much of the opera scene was a test? The Protagonist's colleagues died because of it.
5. Is "We live in a twilight world" some sort of code between special agents or something?
6. What are they trying to stop? A bomb that goes forward and backward through time?
7. Can someone explain the entering the turnstile thing? As you enter the turnstile, what would you see on the other side? I remember reading that if you don't see yourself on the other side it means you died but I don't understand how.

Sorry if these are dumb questions. Like I said I've only seen the film once.

Let's see...

First of all, I don't think there are specific answers for many of these questions, because we don't see the past (or future) of Tenet. Here are my thoughts:
1. No. Ask Kip Thorne.
2. He creates it in his own, subjective future, if he's really the one who creates it. I watched it several times, and he is The Protagonist, yes, but I can't remember him saying he is the founder. He is the boss, but he doesn't need to be the first boss.
3. You can gain information from the future and you can go backwards to use it. I can't find a good, simple example, but in the battle: the blue team sees the outcome of the battle, they can see where the explosions took place because of the red team, so they gain info from them. And red team gains information from the blue team about the future.
4. We can't be sure, but a future Protagonist in the past knew everything about the siege, so he gave order to Neil and Donovan's character to save him. It is said it was a test, but he always passed it, so now I think it wasn't a test at all, that's something Victor (are we sure, it is his name?) was told.
5. Yes, definitely.
6. The bomb we see isn't the inversion-bomb, it's just a regular bomb that buries the algorithm for hundreds of years. The watch on Sator's arm sends the coordinates to somewhere at the moment he dies.
7. I don't think you die, seeing yourself on the other side is just a visual confirmation that the machine works properly. If you enter, for the world you seem to disappear, because you leave to the past. If you enter as inverted, the world sees you appear both sides, because you came from the future, and only present and past can be seen.

This is great thank you guys. I would just like some more clarification about the temporal pincer. So red team will live the battle up until the end and then report to the blue team, and then blue team will live the battle backwards until the beginning and report to red team? If that's the case, how is that beneficial?

Vader182 wrote: ↑

September 7th, 2020, 6:16 pm

Tarssauce wrote: ↑

September 7th, 2020, 5:48 pm

Vader182 wrote: ↑

September 7th, 2020, 4:36 pm

Thanks for the response. That's what my primary assumption was, but this gets muddled with:

1.) In the conversation with Poésy, doesn't she talk about how it's a bomb from the future that can move through time to our present? The Protagonist then says "they can do that?" and it set up this expectation it's an algorithm in the future that can destroy the past. Am I misremembering? I thought that was the whole deal.

2.) The physical bomb that's actually counting down is confusing since the explanation that it's to "protect" the bomb from Tenet isn't clear.

3.) Assuming you're right that the black lego boxes are the "time bomb" that reverse time, Nolan never, ever should have named this thing an "algorithm" and have sentences like "activate the algorithm." We need something clear and intuitive, like "TIME BOMB" or whatever, especially when a movie is this fast and chaotic and this poor a sound mix.

-Vader

It’s literally an algorithm but in physical form - that’s what was said in the film. The best place to hide those pieces are highly secure nuclear containment centers.

People in the future have figured how to reverse the entropy of single objects but this algorithm reverses the entropy of the whole world.

Sator’s plan was to burry it in the dead drop and sends its location the moment he dies which would automatically means people in the future would have it and use it. Tenet’s mission is to find all pieces of the algorithm (by using Sator) and then hiding the pieces again themselves.

It can be extremely confusing on a first watch and I think I fully understood the whole algorithm thing after my second or my third viewing.

okay but this is where it loses me:

how the hell can algorithms be "in physical form." For example, bombs are chemical reactions... not.... math(??) or equations(??) in "physical forms" that are "activated."

It would makee more sense that these are bombs/devices that are made with the algorithm, but the movie states (as you point out) the modernist lego is the algorithm, which....

am I crazy, or is that complete nonsense and makes more or less zero god damn sense

help me out here lol


-Vader

Jayp wrote: ↑

September 8th, 2020, 6:14 am

Vader182 wrote: ↑

September 7th, 2020, 6:16 pm

Tarssauce wrote: ↑

September 7th, 2020, 5:48 pm

It’s literally an algorithm but in physical form - that’s what was said in the film. The best place to hide those pieces are highly secure nuclear containment centers.

People in the future have figured how to reverse the entropy of single objects but this algorithm reverses the entropy of the whole world.

Sator’s plan was to burry it in the dead drop and sends its location the moment he dies which would automatically means people in the future would have it and use it. Tenet’s mission is to find all pieces of the algorithm (by using Sator) and then hiding the pieces again themselves.

It can be extremely confusing on a first watch and I think I fully understood the whole algorithm thing after my second or my third viewing.

okay but this is where it loses me:

how the hell can algorithms be "in physical form." For example, bombs are chemical reactions... not.... math(??) or equations(??) in "physical forms" that are "activated."

It would makee more sense that these are bombs/devices that are made with the algorithm, but the movie states (as you point out) the modernist lego is the algorithm, which....

am I crazy, or is that complete nonsense and makes more or less zero god damn sense

help me out here lol


-Vader

Let’s say I am a mad scientist and I developed a formula or algorithm to reverse entropy of whole universe and thus wiping out previous generations so my generation could live with plenty of natural resources.
So I wrote the formula on a paper and made a version of it like H2O is formula and Water we can see in physical form.
Now I realised what great mistake I am making by wiping out my previous generations I am risking my own generation’s existence.
So what I did was I torched the formula written on paper. So no one can know the formula. I sent back in time the one I made physically called as “Algorithm” also I killed myself.
Now people of my generation still want to try and wipe out previous generations. They had 3 options
1.Force me to make another “Algorithm” which is not possible because I killed myself or I won’t like Protagonist I won’t give up infront of their torture.
2.Formula written on Paper but I burned that paper so only place it lives is in my head or was in my head
3.The one physical formula “Algorithm” which is sent back in time.
So they chose or only had 3rd option.

I have tried my best still if you got questions I am ready to answer

Jayp wrote: ↑

September 8th, 2020, 5:57 am

See mate, it may sound paradoxical but when you play with time you will 100% deal with paradoxes. Like Neil says in movie “whatever happened, happens” so both team will work according to intel given to them by each other
This may seem lengthy but just bare with me
There is a concept called bootstrap paradox which is common in time travels or modifications
Let’s say I got a book at my doorstep at 10:00 AM. I read the book and gave it to you at 2PM you read the book and somehow time travelled to 10:00AM and left the book at my doorstep. So there is no origin of book, it only exist in universe outside of space-time continnum. Now Change book with info and you and me with red team and blue team
I hope this helped

LelekPL wrote: ↑

September 7th, 2020, 4:27 pm

Vader182 wrote: ↑

September 7th, 2020, 3:48 pm

so

the modernist lego algorithm is...doing what exactly? Those black boxes aren't the actual "time bomb," since Sator is trying to bury the "time bomb" so people in the future will go dig it up decades from the events of Tenet? And his "dead man's trigger" is to use regular explosive to bury those pieces? Or are algorithm lego already the "Time bomb" made and sent back into the past, so that's what will wipe everything clean?

And if the answer is the former, and it's "just" the algorithm, what does "activate the algorithm" actually mean, and why are they in these weird, again, modernist lego boxes.

i've talked to loads of people about this, including people who've seen it multiple times, and nobody has the exact same understanding. it's still unclear to me. IMO, the fact the stakes are so god damn hazy is half of Tenet's problem for why it loses people in the third act. That whole action sequence is visually spectacular but narratively obtuse.


-Vader

I thought it was pretty clear in the film

The algorithm is a device that has the ability to reverse the entropy of fhe universe. Once the algorithm does its job, time will start to flow backwards. As such, the past would be erased but all life on earth would die as well. Why the detonatio? To trigger the device and to bury it, presumably hiding it from anyone who would have the means to survive in the inverted world (like our protagonists) and switch off the device.

Oku wrote: ↑

September 8th, 2020, 8:52 am

LMAO, LelekPL said "I thought it was pretty clear in the film" and then proceeded to give an explanation that is completely wrong! XD But I am not making fun of you, please don't misunderstand. I am laughing in sheer amazement at how incomprehensible this movie is. Because I saw it four freaking times and, like you, I thought that I had understood what the baddies were trying to do...only to stumble upon an explanation post a few days ago similar to Clownmount's and realize that I had completely misunderstood it.

If it's just buried there for the "people from the future" then why wouldn't the Tenet organization just dig it up before the "people from the future"? Why the need for the countdown and the battle at all then if they could just retrieve it later? Does the film ever mention they don't have the technology to dig? or maybe it's because of some sort of deadly radiation in Stalsk that will only subside in the future?

Also to my point above why wouldn't the "people from the future" just invert themselves to the point right before the scientist sends the algorithm to the past and kills herself, steal the algorithm from the scientist and activate it, instead of having this convoluted messaging system with a Russian oligarch in the past? I thought they wanted it to be used in the past... but now it's just a mess.