Tenet User Reviews/Reactions [Possible SPOILERS]

Christopher Nolan's time inverting spy film that follows a protagonist fighting for the survival of the entire world.
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so basically no one is allowed to outsmart the critics, huh? Fortunately i live a country where i can never watch Tenet on the big screen and i shall watch the 4k version a hundred times and enjoy it till Nolan's next film comes out. and I'm sure i won't have the sound problem you guys are having, so the joke is on you :)))) as for the negative reviews, i wouldn't worry about it, most of them clearly admit that movie needs a second watch which we fans eventually will do and discover all the details. so stop being such a weenie some of you!

those who have seen the movie more than once,any oscar nominations in technical categories?

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What is this movie. I saw it yesterday evening and I’m still thinking. No spoilers in this brief review. Just an overall sense of my impression. I may give more short reviews after I rewatch the movie.

It’s chaotic, it’s huge, the pace is blisteringly fast and the action scenes are gigantic. For me, personally, it felt like a surreal experience, almost like a trip. Nolan is purposely speeding up the pace, creating a feeling of desorientation and overall... weirdness, or something like that. It’s such a surreal movie. The action sequences are incredible (I’ve literally never seen something like it before) but the way they’re incorporated into the movie makes them go by in a haze because your eyes, ears and mind are overwhelmed.

I think that’a the word to desctibe this movie. It’s overwhelming in all of its aspects. I didn’t understand everything, and this must be on purpose because the desorientation absolutely contributes to the experience and it feels like all these feelings build up to the climax of the story. When I left the theater, it had shook me to the core.

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I have seen the movie on the 26th in 70mm on Italy's largest screen after a 200 miles trip to the theatre.This was my first time I saw a Nolan film that way and it has been a privilege and an unforgettable experience.This theatrical experience is overwhelming, and the sound system really made the seats tremble expecially in the third act.The fact that I've seen the dubbed versionin Italian surely helped, the dialogue audio was very clear.I liked everything about this movie,the soundtrack in particular is devastating!I will see it again in OV in my hometown, again in 70mm on a smaller screen this time, to catch some particulars I have missed on the first viewing.I give it a 9/10 because starting from the second half of the movie, you are bombarded with so much information, action, and pulsating score that it is almost impossible to pay attention to all the details that are essential to fully understand the plot.

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Watched it yesterday at London's Empire Leicester Square IMAX (dual 4K laser, widest screen in the UK - I generally find the sound quality here above BFI IMAX and a better experience in general unless it is a 70mm film).

While the theater's state-of-the-art sound system kept up with the huge audio scope of the film, never losing clarity on sound effects, explosions, score, etc - I couldn't hear 25% of the dialogue and did miss some key parts that would've helped me enjoy the film more.

I do agree with the criticism of lack of character development, especially for JDW. I left the theatre comparing it to The Bourne Identity.
In The Bourne Identity we are as clueless about the protagonist's past, and end the film with very little extra information, but have developed a connection with him, perhaps due to his fight for survival and understanding of his origins.

In Tenet, we find ourselves in a similar position, but the more bond-esque plot of villain trying to end the world mixed with a future society trying to prevent global warming prevent us from connecting with the Protagonist. Yes, by the end we know he probably founded Tenet, but are left wondering about Martin Donovan's character involvement, who are the few others who have passed the suicide pill test and so on...
In terms of editing, I feel like the film was too fast-paced. It did not feel like a 150 minute movie and I believe it could've easily benefited from another 30 minutes. Someone asked about how it compares to Craig's bond movies - I feel that on recent 007s they were able to capitalize a lot more on their global set locations, while here we are jumping from scene to scene without time to breath and absorb the plot (except for the Italy scenes). Obviously, from a plot-perspective, the bond movies are much simpler.

The action scenes are plenty and masterfully executed. I'll disagree with everyone so far and say that the best sequence is the one where they're sailing in Italy - it was literally breathtaking and reminded me of Interstellar and Dunkirk.
My only criticism would be for the Eagle Mountain sequence. I feel that there were compounding effects 1) the plot and execution of the temporal pincer movement and 2) the scale of the fight and explosions. To make things worse, the key moment where the Protagonist is trying to save The Algorithm inside the mountain lacked visual clarity. I think Inception's mountain scene had a much better execution with clarity and elegance, elevating the importance of the moment. It is easy to miss that the door is locked, there's a dead body that springs back from the dead to save the Protagonist.
The score is good but not great. I agree with a previous poster who said it is heart-pumping but not necessarily heart-thumping. It is less instrumental and more electronic. Perhaps it will grow on me after a few viewings, but it will definitely not top Interstellar, Inception or even TDKR.

As for the plot, the physical premise is indeed simple to understand and the explanations for the phenomenon are sufficient. However, its implications and how the characters choose to use it get really confusing by the third act.

Some points that I'm still thinking about:
  • Why aren't bystanders noticing inverted people traveling backwards, as in the plane crash scene?
  • Before the Eagle Mountain sequence we have Neil and the Protagonist in the forwards timeline (but having gone to the past once through the Tallinn and Oslo turnstiles - there are in fact two of them in this POV). They separate into teams, red and blue. From the Protagonists perspective, as the battle unfolds there must be two blue teams: one waiting for the 10 minutes to pass and invert and another who came from 10 minutes into the future and are moving in the backwards timeline. I need to re-watch to understand where exactly the blue team was and if they were using 'portable' turnstiles. In other words, it is not clear to me how exactly the temporal pincer movement was executed by the good guys.
  • The Algorithm has been invented at most ~20 years into the future, as Neil needed to be old enough to understand the mission and age in 1:1 ratio in the backwards timeline to be as old as he appears in the Protagonist's POV.
  • Since Neil dies in the Eagle Mountain sequence and has saved the Protagonist in the Opera house, it must mean that the Opera event happened after the explosion in the forwards timeline. But for that to be true, the nine pieces of the algorithm couldn't have been assembled.
I'm going to rewatch at BFI IMAX next weekend and hopefully pick up some extra clues.
Last edited by arturhoo on October 31st, 2020, 1:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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arturhoo wrote:
August 28th, 2020, 5:26 am
Watched it yesterday at London's Empire Leicester Square IMAX (dual 4K laser, widest screen in the UK - I generally find the sound quality here above BFI IMAX and a better experience in general unless it is a 70mm film).

While the theater's state-of-the-art sound system kept up with the huge audio scope of the film, never losing clarity on sound effects, explosions, score, etc - I couldn't hear 25% of the dialogue and did miss some key parts that would've helped me enjoy the film more.

I do agree with the criticism of lack of character development, especially for JDW. I left the threatre comparing it to The Bourne Identity.
In The Bourne Identity we are as clueless about the protagonist's past, and end the film with very little extra information, but have developed a connection with him, perhaps due to his fight for survival and understanding of his origins.

In Tenet, we find ourselves in a similar position, but the more bond-esque plot of villain trying to end the world mixed with a future society trying to prevent global warming prevent us from connecting with the Protagonist. Yes, by the end we know he probably founded Tenet, but are left wondering about Martin Donovan's character involvement, who are the few others who have passed the suicide pill test and so on...
In terms of editing, I feel like the film was too fast-paced. It did not feel like a 150 minute movie and I believe it could've easily benefited from another 30 minutes. Someone asked about how it compares to Craig's bond movies - I feel that on recent 007s they were able to capitalize a lot more on their global set locations, while here we are jumping from scene to scene without time to breath and absorb the plot (except for the Italy scenes). Obviously, from a plot-perspective, the bond movies are much simpler.

The action scenes are plenty and masterfully executed. I'll disagree with everyone so far and say that the best sequence is the one where they're sailing in Italy - it was literally breathtaking and reminded me of Interstellar and Dunkirk.
My only criticism would be for the Eagle Mountain sequence. I feel that there were compounding effects 1) the plot and execution of the temporal pincer movement and 2) the scale of the fight and explosions. To make things worse, the key moment where the Protagonist is trying to save The Algorithm inside the mountain lacked visual clarity. I think Inception's mountain scene had a much better execution with clarity and elegance, elevating the importance of the moment. It is easy to miss that the door is locked, there's a dead body that springs back from the dead to save the Protagonist.
The score is good but not great. I agree with a previous poster who said it is heart-pumping but not necessarily heart-thumping. It is less instrumental and more electronic. Perhaps it will grow on me after a few viewings, but it will definitely not top Interstellar, Inception or even TDKR.

As for the plot, the physical premise is indeed simple to understand and the explanations for the phenomenon are sufficient. However, its implications and how the characters choose to use it get really confusing by the third act.

Some points that I'm still thinking about:
  • Why aren't bystanders noticing inverted people traveling backwards, as in the plane crash scene?
  • Before the Eagle Mountain sequence we have Neil and the Protagonist in the forwards timeline (but having gone to the past once through the Tallinn and Oslo turnstiles - there are in fact two of them in this POV). They separate into teams, red and blue. From the Protagonists perspective, as the battle unfolds there must be two blue teams: one waiting for the 10 minutes to pass and invert and another who came from 10 minutes into the future and are moving in the backwards timeline. I need to re-watch to understand where exactly the blue team was and if they were using 'portable' turnstiles. In other words, it is not clear to me how exactly the temporal pincer movement was executed by the good guys.
  • The Algorithm has been invented at most ~20 years into the future, as Neil needed to be old enough to understand the mission and age in 1:1 ratio in the backwards timeline to be as old as he appears in the Protagonist's POV.
  • Since Neil dies in the Eagle Mountain sequence and has saved the Protagonist in the Opera house, it must mean that the Opera event happened after the explosion in the forwards timeline. But for that to be true, the nine pieces of the algorithm couldn't have been assembled.
I'm going to rewatch at BFI IMAX next weekend and hopefully pick up some extra clues.
Leicester Square isent dual laser, its only 16:9 format. enjoy BFI.

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arturhoo wrote:
August 28th, 2020, 7:22 am
danevito wrote:
August 28th, 2020, 7:07 am
Leicester Square isent dual laser, its only 16:9 format. enjoy BFI.
I always thought it was, given empire's own website says so, plus

https://www.imax.com/content/imax-and-o ... e?page=234
https://www.screendaily.com/news/imax-t ... 35.article
https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a6665 ... er-square/
None of those websites says explicitly that Leicester square will have dual laser system. It might have dual laser, but its not for the 1.44 format then. Maybe the size of the screen determins if you need dual to keep the pixels small enough. But its deliberately done vague from IMAX I believe. They don't want people to have less expectations from any theater so they are deliberately keeping specifications on details like aspect ratio away from critics and journalists. Leicester square is a LIEMAX.



compare to BFI IMAX 1.44 AR

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All digital IMAX theaters have a dual projector system. 2K Xenon or 4K Laser, 1.90:1 or 1.43:1.

A dual projector system isn’t exclusive to 1.43:1 screens. But the 4K laser projectors can cover the entire 1.43:1 screen while the Xenon projectors cannot.

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danevito wrote:
August 28th, 2020, 8:00 am

None of those websites says explicitly that Leicester square will have dual laser system. It might have dual laser, but its not for the 1.44 format then. Maybe the size of the screen determins if you need dual to keep the pixels small enough. But its deliberately done vague from IMAX I believe. They don't want people to have less expectations from any theater so they are deliberately keeping specifications on details like aspect ratio away from critics and journalists. Leicester square is a LIEMAX.



compare to BFI IMAX 1.44 AR
The theatre is very different today than it is shown in your first video. Even though it is not purposely built for IMAX (and no 1.43:1 ratio), it seems IMAX has invested quite a bit into making it as good as possible:




Note the stadium style seats in these videos. The projectors have been upgraded to laser somewhere around 2015/16 and remain dual.

The size of the screen definitely comes into play, but I believe two projectors improve 3D quality and well as brightness.

As far as LIEMAX, call it what you want... I've been to LA's Universal, BFI, London Science Museum (which is due to receive two laser projectors as well [1]), I can honestly say I prefer Leceister Square for films shot digitally. I remember watching Blade Runner 2049 on both BFI and Leicester Square and preferring the latter by a good margin.

[1] https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/about- ... mp-science

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Tarssauce wrote:
August 28th, 2020, 8:13 am
All digital IMAX theaters have a dual projector system. 2K Xenon or 4K Laser, 1.90:1 or 1.43:1.

A dual projector system isn’t exclusive to 1.43:1 screens. But the 4K laser projectors can cover the entire 1.43:1 screen while the Xenon projectors cannot.
There is also a 4K Laser system with a single projector and that one is only able to run in the 1.9:1 aspect ratio. But these should have better video quality and definitely better sound quality than the auditoriums featuring the dual 2K Xenon setup.

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