Location: We can't stop here, this is Bat Country!
Most of these reviewers are rightfully praising the film under the "good for the sheer spectacle" and "great action scenes" rhetoric while admitting the logic and/or story are convoluted, baffling and nonsensical, even in some cases mentioning that the characters are also somehow soulless and dull. In multiple reviews they cite the quote: "Don't try to understand it" as a nice, funny quip for the audience to just relax, enjoy the set-pieces and don't think too much about it.
Most mainstream American critics have come to the consensus that Nolan well deserves, despite and on top of all things, the ultimate Disney/Marvel protection and this is a very good thing!
In the appalling case the film were to flop and have overall terrible reviews, the director might've considered making an ambitious 20 million dollar movie that's not a mandatory PG-13/Summer/Action film. Maybe a little character driven film-noir type movie like the old days.
In the absence of Nolan’s longtime musical collaborator Hans Zimmer – reportedly too busy as he has been composing the score for next year’s release of Dune – composer Ludwig Göransson (Black Panther) has taken his place and provided an oddly but appropriately Zimmeresque score.
“Tenet” operates on a physiological level, in the stomach-pit rumbles of Ludwig Goransson’s score, and the dilated-pupil responses to Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematography, which delivers the same magnificence whether observing a narratively superfluous catamaran race, or the nap and weave of Jeffrey Kurland’s immaculately creaseless costumes.
However, he’s hobbled throughout Tenet by some other common missteps: a dark, droning score (by Ludwig Göransson, subbing in for Hans Zimmer) that likely sounds great in isolation but otherwise steps on the occasional moments of levity; and muffled sound design that obscures nearly half of the spoken dialogue, which doesn’t help our comprehension either.
Ludwig Göransson (stepping into the shoes of Nolan’s usual collaborator, Han Zimmer) creates a score built of low, anxious vibrations that pulsate through even the most incidental of scenes.
The soundscapes are as blasting as ever, with Ludwig Göransson’s droning soundscapes providing a different take on the Nolan “Brahhhmmmm” we’ve come to expect from collaborations with Hans Zimmer and others.
The thrills come from the set pieces and Ludwig Göransson's innovative score (which also messes about with time, naturally), and not from any concern about the characters' fates.
The blams come thick and fast. Tenet, in fact, might be Christopher Nolan’s blammiest film yet. BLAM! A terrifying thing just happened. BLAM! A shocking moment of revelation. BLAM! Here’s a speedboat. (There really is a massive blam accompanying an otherwise ordinary shot of two people on a speedboat.) It’s not even Hans Zimmer this time — here the great Ludwig Göransson (Black Panther, The Mandalorian) is on scoring duties, making it all his own (you will nod your head intensely) but without ever scrimping on the blams. Because if a Christopher Nolan film doesn’t sound like the end of the world, then something’s wrong. And this one really is about the end of the world.
The first sound we hear in the film, after all, is that of an orchestra tuning up, before composer Ludwig Göransson — more than ably filling in for Nolan standby Hans Zimmer — thunders in with his own thrilling percussive clatter.
In 70mm IMAX it’s an overwhelming assault on the senses, one bolstered by Ludwig Göransson’s propulsive, rib-cage-rattling score, which itself plays with time in compelling ways.
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