I am referring to the character. I think "The Protagonist" is not the main character. I think that is the final twist of the film.
The first thing that I base myself on is what it said in the first IMAX trailer: "New kind of protagonist".
After watching the movie I wonder why "The protagonist" is a new kind of protagonist?
And the second thing I base myself on is the voice-over at the end, which reflects on the lack of historical relevance of the person who dismantles the unexploded bomb. In principle the phrase applies to JDW and the whole team, but if you look at it in depth, Pattison seems to be the secondary, but in the end we discover that he was always ahead of JDW, from the very moment of his presentation.
I don't know if it happened to anyone else, but for several moments in the film I thought there would be a twist that would reveal that Pattison is the protagonist, the chosen one, something like that. And somehow that's what happens in the scene where he says goodbye and gets into the helicopter.
Another point that I rely on is that it's an intelligence film. The CIA and MI6 are hinted at. And if you look at how these intelligence services work, that's exactly how Neil, Pattison's character, acts. Neil is always ahead of the game, he knows more than JDW, but it gives him the illusion of being in control. It's one of the basic tactics when it comes to infiltrating groups and movements. The people of Anonymous believe that they are an independent and anti-system movement, but they are puppets of the CIA. And that's the feeling I get from the protagonist, he's a puppet, to the point that he doesn't question any of the challenges he faces and always accepts them without hesitation. And he is shaken from one place to another to fulfil the mission. No protagonist, not even Jesus Christ himself, is free from doubting his mission at any time.
So I think that Pattison throughout the film has been that man who is defusing the bomb. JDW is getting all the looks, and they even call him, or call himself, "The protagonist". Why? Was it necessary? Didn't it sound a bit strange to you? Why do you think Nolan is making this decision?
For me it would be a great innovation and would give a lot of sense to the film. In a way it's something similar to the end of TDK, where Batman assumes to be the villain, here Neil assumes to give the recognition of us, the viewers, to "The protagonist".
In the end it's just a theory. I may be a victim of cognitive dissonance, since seeing the trailers and knowing Nolan I suspected he could do something like this.
