ahalpert
Major Contributor
It was actually also very effective just watching it on my wife's phone - the silence and the whole sequence that followed. It was a surprisingly emotional sequence for me, almost spiritual
Last edited:
Tenet
- Thread starter Liam Hall
- Start date
It was actually also very effective just watching it on my wife's phone - the silence and the whole sequence that followed. It was a surprisingly emotional sequence for me, almost spiritual
Andrew Stone
Veteran
For those who are interested, Quantum Mechanics was in full swing in the 20s so it has been around around as theoretical thought for 100 years and some place it earlier with Max Planck's work on similar ideas. Heisenberg's work was underway in the 20s.
Liam Hall
Veteran
It currently is the 20s...
Andrew Stone
Veteran
^^ 1920's not the 1960s, as it was inferred.
filmguy123
Veteran
Kind of, the idea of an inverse parallel universe is something scientists are speculating on. Reverse of entropy is correlated but distinct, and Tenet employs both and sort of marries the fictional concept with the actual scientific theoretical concept.
I'd say Tenet is more a speculation on the intersection of how science may shed light on things historically considered in the realm of mysticism.
jackramirez
New member
Finally watched, when I saw it available for streaming on HBO Max. Unfortunately I didn’t last very long - I bailed about at the time when our hero talks with the wife of the Indian arms “dealer” (so about 25 minutes in).
I tried very hard to stay with it, but life’s too short. My rule these days is that if it reaches a pain treshold, I bail, regardless of what promises are made for what supposedly will follow. I’m glad I wasn’t stuck in a theater watching this pile of doodoo.
To anyone who argues - about ANY film - “but it becomes a masterpiece at minute X:YZ”, I have the same reply: I don’t care if the chef promises me the best sandwich in the world, if the top layer is a bowel movement. I am not going through that, in order to get to the “good part”. Beyond a certain level of “bad”, I am not enduring it for whatever “masterpiece” supposedly follows (which, btw., for 99.999% of the time in my experience never actually follows... it just remains cr@p and all you’ve done is wasted more time).
The fundamental issue for me, was that it broke the #1 rule (and the only unbreakable rule of art IMO) - it was not ENGAGING (for me). Unless you can engage the audience, you have failed, period. And if you can engage the audience, then it doesn’t matter what other “rules” your’re breaking as they’re all subordinate to that one overwhelming principle.
And to me, Tenet, was simply a bore. I didn’t care one whit about the subject matter or any of the characters or goings on. Now, I am generally put off by nonsense time travel and films which rely on impossible physics where the filmmaker is trying to have his cake and eat it too - on the one hand demanding we follow the supposed “logic” of his impossible-based physics based narrative, and on the other hand when you point out the contradictions they take refuge in “poetic license” and “it’s a film, not a physics paper”. Make up your mind. If it’s all poetic licence, then don’t demand I rigorously follow nonsense rules and smugly assert how smart it all is. A succesful time travel theme movie is like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure - the premise of time travel is used without demanding that we follow some supposed iron logic otherwise we’re not smart enough to solve a puzzle. If you posit impossible physics, then there is no puzzle to solve, period, there’s only different degrees of nonsense.
And that’s how Tenet is fundamentally broken - it’s like the hanging a premise on a perpetual motion machine: we know perpetual motion is impossible. If you now use that premise to build a movie around, we can accept it as “poetic licence”, but if you now want to delve into the supposed calculations of how this works, then it’s just as boring as any of a million crank websites and papers from mental cases who claim to have invented a perpetual motion machine - boring in the extreme... we know it’s impossible and to wade through a thousand pages of calculations to spot where exactly the crank missed a step which brings down his whole calculus is just a waste of time.
And that’s basically what happens in what I saw of the Tenet. There’s some action sequence and then there’s interminable minutes of utter boredom when the characters jabber on and on (and on) about some utterly uninvolving, inane and stilted expository dialouge that only superhuman curiosity would make one actually listen to - just as it take superhuman curiosity to wade through a thousand pages of a crank’s impossible physics machine. It’s nonsense at great length.
Here’s what Mr. Nolan seems not to understand. Imagine we play along with his conceit. Perphaps his argument is “I need to spend a lot of time on technical details so that the audience can then appreciate what I do with that premise and how amazing it will be”.
Fine. I buy it. EXCEPT - and listen carefully, because this is Art 101 - as an artist you are OBLIGATED to make the technical explanation itself artful and engaging - if you do not, you have FAILED AS AN ARTIST. The artist “smuggles” the truth, or the message, without battering the audience with unappealing lectures. The entire failure of communist countries movies was that they put propaganda front and center, and any “art” was an afterthought. If you do that, you are not an artist. You cannot say to the audience - eat it, it’s “good for you” or “for the social good” like a bitter medicine to fix what ails society (or makes your later art). If you want to deliver such a message - do it ARTfully, meaning in such a way that the audience doesn’t ever feel it’s “bitter medicine”.
And here Nolan did not manage to make all those expository elements entertaining. Instead they were deadly boring. It completely killed the movie for me. It failed. And so him saying “I needed to do that, so that later I would have room for fantastic effects”, is exactly the case of the chef who says “yes, I covered the bread with doodoo, but I needed it for the amazing content inside” - it is a complete FAIL. A failure as an artist - if you cannot make all the elements of your movie engaging, then you have failed AS AN ARTIST, your artistry is absent.
Tenet belongs to a category of films that insiders in hollywood call a “dumb film for people who like to feel smart”, something which I find very wearing in directors who reach a stage of career where they’ve crawled so far up their own behinds that they’ve gotten hopelessly lost - out of touch with artistic reality. It is good to have people around you who will point out that your new garments for the king are not visible - when you lose those people, you put out self-indulgent dross like Tenet.
I tried very hard to stay with it, but life’s too short. My rule these days is that if it reaches a pain treshold, I bail, regardless of what promises are made for what supposedly will follow. I’m glad I wasn’t stuck in a theater watching this pile of doodoo.
To anyone who argues - about ANY film - “but it becomes a masterpiece at minute X:YZ”, I have the same reply: I don’t care if the chef promises me the best sandwich in the world, if the top layer is a bowel movement. I am not going through that, in order to get to the “good part”. Beyond a certain level of “bad”, I am not enduring it for whatever “masterpiece” supposedly follows (which, btw., for 99.999% of the time in my experience never actually follows... it just remains cr@p and all you’ve done is wasted more time).
The fundamental issue for me, was that it broke the #1 rule (and the only unbreakable rule of art IMO) - it was not ENGAGING (for me). Unless you can engage the audience, you have failed, period. And if you can engage the audience, then it doesn’t matter what other “rules” your’re breaking as they’re all subordinate to that one overwhelming principle.
And to me, Tenet, was simply a bore. I didn’t care one whit about the subject matter or any of the characters or goings on. Now, I am generally put off by nonsense time travel and films which rely on impossible physics where the filmmaker is trying to have his cake and eat it too - on the one hand demanding we follow the supposed “logic” of his impossible-based physics based narrative, and on the other hand when you point out the contradictions they take refuge in “poetic license” and “it’s a film, not a physics paper”. Make up your mind. If it’s all poetic licence, then don’t demand I rigorously follow nonsense rules and smugly assert how smart it all is. A succesful time travel theme movie is like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure - the premise of time travel is used without demanding that we follow some supposed iron logic otherwise we’re not smart enough to solve a puzzle. If you posit impossible physics, then there is no puzzle to solve, period, there’s only different degrees of nonsense.
And that’s how Tenet is fundamentally broken - it’s like the hanging a premise on a perpetual motion machine: we know perpetual motion is impossible. If you now use that premise to build a movie around, we can accept it as “poetic licence”, but if you now want to delve into the supposed calculations of how this works, then it’s just as boring as any of a million crank websites and papers from mental cases who claim to have invented a perpetual motion machine - boring in the extreme... we know it’s impossible and to wade through a thousand pages of calculations to spot where exactly the crank missed a step which brings down his whole calculus is just a waste of time.
And that’s basically what happens in what I saw of the Tenet. There’s some action sequence and then there’s interminable minutes of utter boredom when the characters jabber on and on (and on) about some utterly uninvolving, inane and stilted expository dialouge that only superhuman curiosity would make one actually listen to - just as it take superhuman curiosity to wade through a thousand pages of a crank’s impossible physics machine. It’s nonsense at great length.
Here’s what Mr. Nolan seems not to understand. Imagine we play along with his conceit. Perphaps his argument is “I need to spend a lot of time on technical details so that the audience can then appreciate what I do with that premise and how amazing it will be”.
Fine. I buy it. EXCEPT - and listen carefully, because this is Art 101 - as an artist you are OBLIGATED to make the technical explanation itself artful and engaging - if you do not, you have FAILED AS AN ARTIST. The artist “smuggles” the truth, or the message, without battering the audience with unappealing lectures. The entire failure of communist countries movies was that they put propaganda front and center, and any “art” was an afterthought. If you do that, you are not an artist. You cannot say to the audience - eat it, it’s “good for you” or “for the social good” like a bitter medicine to fix what ails society (or makes your later art). If you want to deliver such a message - do it ARTfully, meaning in such a way that the audience doesn’t ever feel it’s “bitter medicine”.
And here Nolan did not manage to make all those expository elements entertaining. Instead they were deadly boring. It completely killed the movie for me. It failed. And so him saying “I needed to do that, so that later I would have room for fantastic effects”, is exactly the case of the chef who says “yes, I covered the bread with doodoo, but I needed it for the amazing content inside” - it is a complete FAIL. A failure as an artist - if you cannot make all the elements of your movie engaging, then you have failed AS AN ARTIST, your artistry is absent.
Tenet belongs to a category of films that insiders in hollywood call a “dumb film for people who like to feel smart”, something which I find very wearing in directors who reach a stage of career where they’ve crawled so far up their own behinds that they’ve gotten hopelessly lost - out of touch with artistic reality. It is good to have people around you who will point out that your new garments for the king are not visible - when you lose those people, you put out self-indulgent dross like Tenet.
Matt Gottshalk
Resident Preditor
Well said, and I agree.
filmguy123
Veteran
lol, tell us how you really feel Old Corpse!! :grin:
That was a pretty impassioned rant... longer to write than you lasted in the film I imagine. Lots of good points in there about how to smuggle ideas into a film or any piece or art while still being artful and engaging the audience.
I think the biggest thing lacking was not feeling invested or attached to the characters because I was not clear what was happening. There was not a sense of investment because there was not clear motivation - neither the audience or characters really knew what was happening.
Yet, I still felt engaged regardless, but that may well be because of my pre-existing and innate interest in topics such as fate, freewill, philosophy and quantum mechanics. So for me it never committed the cardinal sin you mention, and had my from start to finish. I can see why it would fail to engage you, but for me, it worked.
That was a pretty impassioned rant... longer to write than you lasted in the film I imagine. Lots of good points in there about how to smuggle ideas into a film or any piece or art while still being artful and engaging the audience.
I think the biggest thing lacking was not feeling invested or attached to the characters because I was not clear what was happening. There was not a sense of investment because there was not clear motivation - neither the audience or characters really knew what was happening.
Yet, I still felt engaged regardless, but that may well be because of my pre-existing and innate interest in topics such as fate, freewill, philosophy and quantum mechanics. So for me it never committed the cardinal sin you mention, and had my from start to finish. I can see why it would fail to engage you, but for me, it worked.
Batutta
Major Contributor
This was succinct and reserved for Old Corpse.
OldCorpse has hinted a larger point... noticing in a lot of recent films that the "why the flip do we care about these people" is wrongly taken as a given with great frequency. It's as though there's an assumption of "well, the camera is following them, so obviously we should sympathize with them."
No.
Thinking even through some dippier 80's action flicks, there was usually a whole first act with a bunch of talking and emotion and stuff where we got intimate with the main character(s) and their role as the "everyman/woman"... Sarah Connor messing up restaurant orders and getting stood up in Terminator... Martin Riggs lamenting over his wife's picture and in Lethal Weapon... most modern action-y films don't wait ten minutes before everything starts simultaneously exploding and the CGI team in Hyderabad starts earning their $2.50/hr.
It's like where Breaking Bad lost me, somewhere around mid-late season 1, when I realized, "hey... these are all terrible people and I sincerely don't care what happens to them."
Arguably, the degredation of anything that could be seen as an objective morality or a commonly identifiable "everyman/woman" has made this all a tricky are for screenwriters (don't want to clearly make the protagonist from this week's chosen symbol of systemic whateverism), and they just punt. "Here's this person, we have a camera on them, so care, ok?"
No.
Thinking even through some dippier 80's action flicks, there was usually a whole first act with a bunch of talking and emotion and stuff where we got intimate with the main character(s) and their role as the "everyman/woman"... Sarah Connor messing up restaurant orders and getting stood up in Terminator... Martin Riggs lamenting over his wife's picture and in Lethal Weapon... most modern action-y films don't wait ten minutes before everything starts simultaneously exploding and the CGI team in Hyderabad starts earning their $2.50/hr.
It's like where Breaking Bad lost me, somewhere around mid-late season 1, when I realized, "hey... these are all terrible people and I sincerely don't care what happens to them."
Arguably, the degredation of anything that could be seen as an objective morality or a commonly identifiable "everyman/woman" has made this all a tricky are for screenwriters (don't want to clearly make the protagonist from this week's chosen symbol of systemic whateverism), and they just punt. "Here's this person, we have a camera on them, so care, ok?"
Luis Caffesse
Admin
I come in for a lot of well deserved ribbing about my prolix posts, but you’ll be astonished to know that I actually make an effort to be less garrolous 
In that spirit, I had a lot more to say about Tenet, but I deliberately cut it short in that post, lol! However, now that the discussion continues, I’m going back to my old ways and serving up more words... I’m bad, I know, but I can’t help myself OK, I’ll confine myself here to actors, so still cutting short, ha!
So, yes, there are problems with the characters as show in the first 25 minutes - not just the characters but the actors too. Mcbob hinted at the lack of sympathetic characters, but even more broadly, characters we find involving at all on any plane - we don’t know who they are and what they represent, so... SHRUG. I mean, we’ll watch a BAD guy, an unsympathetic character, as long as it’s involving. There was nothing involving in ANY of the characters, on ANY plane in that 25 minutes of Tenet.
The biggest problems are always the most fundamental. It’s like a director reaches a level of success and thinks that no rules apply to him/her, and they can do anything and the audience will just lap up their genius. And so, they ignore cinema 101 level stuff. To begin with, if you have characters who don’t give anything away (who they are, what they are doing etc.), and what they are doing seems pointless and not involving, then you still need a reason to watch them and be involved as an audience. The simplest way this was solved back in the day - cinema 101 - was to cast charismatic actors, actors who had SCREEN PRESENCE. That’s not the same thing as star power, although star power helps. We’ve all had this experience in casting sessions, where you film a bunch of actors - all unknowns - and one or two JUMP OFF the screen, because they’re charismatic... and we watch them not because they are stars (they are unknown, after all), but because they have screen presence. Of course, a star can have screen presence too. There’s something about them that compells our eye. Humphrey Bogart had it - he could be doing anything, and we’d watch him - even if he’s playing a character that gives away nothing and does nothing much. That’s why they had a thing called “screen test” - you simply film the actor and see if they “got it”. Because it’s invaluable. It has not much to do with how “good” an actor is skill-wise.
In this context, unfortunately, in the 25 minutes I saw, Nolan seems not to have grokked that - he had uninvolving characters with uninvolving dialogue scenes and he didn’t have the good sense to at least give us actors who hold our attention despite these challenges in the film. I’m sorry, but Washington is a competent enough actor - but does not have that “magic” that makes him watchable even if he’s reciting the phone book. Samuel Jackson has it - we’d watch him do exactly the same scene Washington does, and we’re involved. I read some interviews after Get Out, where AA actors were criticizing the casting of Daniel Kaluuya “why go abroad, when we have a ton of black actors right here in America!”. LOL, these critics are morons. It’s really simple. Daniel Kaluuya has a modicum of screen presence magic. It’s rare. F*** yeah, you’re gonna go to the ends of the earth to find one and cast him/her if you are a director with a brain and an eye and come across one - you don’t care where they come from, you cast them because you care about making your film effective. Now, we do have other AA actors with screen presence here in the states (Jamie Foxx, Wesley Snipes, Marlon Wayans and many others), but Nolan didn’t cast from those. Undoubtedly, Washington has acting skills, but unfortunately, screen presence is a metric where he doesn’t move the needle. Often it is better to cast for charisma and look than acting skill, unless the role is super demanding (Polanski famously said he always tries to cast for the look as the first criterion - if the actor looks the part, you’re 50% there already).
All this to say, you just give the audience SOMETHING to get them involved - along SOME plane. If it’s not the characters, or what’s happening, at least give them an actor to hang their eyes on. Now, there is a limit - a charismatic actor will get you through rough spots, and a boring stretch or two, but will rarely rescue a super boring idiotic movie. I’m afraid Tenet was beyond rescue, but I find it notable that Nolan didn’t even try - I mean, if you know you have a lot of boring technical dialogue to get through, at least show you understand the challenge by casting an involving actor so we can be pulled through that “bitter medicine” - but no. Washington is a competent actor, but he can’t make us watch boring material. A Samuel Jackson level charisma might have pulled us along at least some of the way (of course here Jackson would’ve been too old, but someone of his charisma). This tells me that Nolan doesn’t even understand that he has a problem. In the first 25 minutes, there wasn’t a single memorable character or actor - and it’s just a testament to why studios often inflict a “star” on a director - because it works. They wouldn’t do it otherwise - a star costs money, they’d rather save. No, they do it because it works. Now, it doesn’t have to be a star, but give us screen presence if you have challenging material! Think “My Dinner with Andre” - you had to have someone like Wallace Shawn to pull it off - he’s not a star, but has that complusive “can’t take my eyes off him” quality.
All in all, Tenet is an unbelievable failure along almost every axis - almost. Because I can’t deny that Nolan has a certain level of technical skill. The opening symphony attack sequence was done very professionally and was effective - it was well executed and we watched it. That’s saying something. I cannot tell you how many films I’ve seen that open with masked black clad characters robbing a bank or whatnot and I’m already bored to tears, because it’s so badly done and so, so, so uninvolving despite all the gunplay. I gotta give Nolan that much - he knows how to execute such sequences. So he has some skills. What he seems to have forgotten is that you still need other elements to make an involving film.
In that spirit, I had a lot more to say about Tenet, but I deliberately cut it short in that post, lol! However, now that the discussion continues, I’m going back to my old ways and serving up more words... I’m bad, I know, but I can’t help myself
OK, I’ll confine myself here to actors, so still cutting short, ha!So, yes, there are problems with the characters as show in the first 25 minutes - not just the characters but the actors too. Mcbob hinted at the lack of sympathetic characters, but even more broadly, characters we find involving at all on any plane - we don’t know who they are and what they represent, so... SHRUG. I mean, we’ll watch a BAD guy, an unsympathetic character, as long as it’s involving. There was nothing involving in ANY of the characters, on ANY plane in that 25 minutes of Tenet.
The biggest problems are always the most fundamental. It’s like a director reaches a level of success and thinks that no rules apply to him/her, and they can do anything and the audience will just lap up their genius. And so, they ignore cinema 101 level stuff. To begin with, if you have characters who don’t give anything away (who they are, what they are doing etc.), and what they are doing seems pointless and not involving, then you still need a reason to watch them and be involved as an audience. The simplest way this was solved back in the day - cinema 101 - was to cast charismatic actors, actors who had SCREEN PRESENCE. That’s not the same thing as star power, although star power helps. We’ve all had this experience in casting sessions, where you film a bunch of actors - all unknowns - and one or two JUMP OFF the screen, because they’re charismatic... and we watch them not because they are stars (they are unknown, after all), but because they have screen presence. Of course, a star can have screen presence too. There’s something about them that compells our eye. Humphrey Bogart had it - he could be doing anything, and we’d watch him - even if he’s playing a character that gives away nothing and does nothing much. That’s why they had a thing called “screen test” - you simply film the actor and see if they “got it”. Because it’s invaluable. It has not much to do with how “good” an actor is skill-wise.
In this context, unfortunately, in the 25 minutes I saw, Nolan seems not to have grokked that - he had uninvolving characters with uninvolving dialogue scenes and he didn’t have the good sense to at least give us actors who hold our attention despite these challenges in the film. I’m sorry, but Washington is a competent enough actor - but does not have that “magic” that makes him watchable even if he’s reciting the phone book. Samuel Jackson has it - we’d watch him do exactly the same scene Washington does, and we’re involved. I read some interviews after Get Out, where AA actors were criticizing the casting of Daniel Kaluuya “why go abroad, when we have a ton of black actors right here in America!”. LOL, these critics are morons. It’s really simple. Daniel Kaluuya has a modicum of screen presence magic. It’s rare. F*** yeah, you’re gonna go to the ends of the earth to find one and cast him/her if you are a director with a brain and an eye and come across one - you don’t care where they come from, you cast them because you care about making your film effective. Now, we do have other AA actors with screen presence here in the states (Jamie Foxx, Wesley Snipes, Marlon Wayans and many others), but Nolan didn’t cast from those. Undoubtedly, Washington has acting skills, but unfortunately, screen presence is a metric where he doesn’t move the needle. Often it is better to cast for charisma and look than acting skill, unless the role is super demanding (Polanski famously said he always tries to cast for the look as the first criterion - if the actor looks the part, you’re 50% there already).
All this to say, you just give the audience SOMETHING to get them involved - along SOME plane. If it’s not the characters, or what’s happening, at least give them an actor to hang their eyes on. Now, there is a limit - a charismatic actor will get you through rough spots, and a boring stretch or two, but will rarely rescue a super boring idiotic movie. I’m afraid Tenet was beyond rescue, but I find it notable that Nolan didn’t even try - I mean, if you know you have a lot of boring technical dialogue to get through, at least show you understand the challenge by casting an involving actor so we can be pulled through that “bitter medicine” - but no. Washington is a competent actor, but he can’t make us watch boring material. A Samuel Jackson level charisma might have pulled us along at least some of the way (of course here Jackson would’ve been too old, but someone of his charisma). This tells me that Nolan doesn’t even understand that he has a problem. In the first 25 minutes, there wasn’t a single memorable character or actor - and it’s just a testament to why studios often inflict a “star” on a director - because it works. They wouldn’t do it otherwise - a star costs money, they’d rather save. No, they do it because it works. Now, it doesn’t have to be a star, but give us screen presence if you have challenging material! Think “My Dinner with Andre” - you had to have someone like Wallace Shawn to pull it off - he’s not a star, but has that complusive “can’t take my eyes off him” quality.
All in all, Tenet is an unbelievable failure along almost every axis - almost. Because I can’t deny that Nolan has a certain level of technical skill. The opening symphony attack sequence was done very professionally and was effective - it was well executed and we watched it. That’s saying something. I cannot tell you how many films I’ve seen that open with masked black clad characters robbing a bank or whatnot and I’m already bored to tears, because it’s so badly done and so, so, so uninvolving despite all the gunplay. I gotta give Nolan that much - he knows how to execute such sequences. So he has some skills. What he seems to have forgotten is that you still need other elements to make an involving film.
filmguy123
Veteran
For me, what wasn't there in character was there in concept, and that was enough to engage me. The mystery is the mechanic itself, the backwards bullet at the opening, the mysterious waking up. The notion that effect IS cause. It's Nietzsche eternal recurrence (or eternal return), "the idea that all events in the world repeat themselves in the same sequence through an eternal series of cycles" or that events in the future impact the present as much as events in the past do.
That was the mcguffin itself, the mystery of that being illustrated and how it would come together was enough to grip me, like watching a rubiks cube folding in over itself. Perhaps it's why Nolan named the lead the "protagonist" - it's not a story about a character, it's a story about an abstracted process.
Certainly not everyone's cup of tea, but in this viewers opinion, it didn't make it any less artful or engaging, it just made it an inherently non-character driven piece of art.
That was the mcguffin itself, the mystery of that being illustrated and how it would come together was enough to grip me, like watching a rubiks cube folding in over itself. Perhaps it's why Nolan named the lead the "protagonist" - it's not a story about a character, it's a story about an abstracted process.
Certainly not everyone's cup of tea, but in this viewers opinion, it didn't make it any less artful or engaging, it just made it an inherently non-character driven piece of art.
Batutta
Major Contributor
I come in for a lot of well deserved ribbing about my prolix posts, but you’ll be astonished to know that I actually make an effort to be less garrolous
That is astonishing. As someone who is generally very reserved, people like you intimidate me. We probably couldn't be more different in temperament and sensibilities. As a writer, I'd say I'm more Hemingway, and you're more Harlan Ellison. I agree the film has fundamental problems and doesn't really work. I originally gave this movie a B but that was too generous. I'd say it's a C minus purely for technical skill and conceptual audacity.
filmguy123
Veteran
The concept would have probably made better for a roguelike video game of sorts (eh eh Norbro?). In such a case, you the player are the protagonist, and a game design where when you die the time-loop starts in reverse, essentially moving you backwards and forwards through the game until you reach the "middle" of time (which would be the end of the game).
You would need to solve situations through time reversal - doing things backwards so that they play out a certain way after your next death when you come back through in the other direction. Game design which plays with effect/cause reversal, where things in one timeline change your alternating timeline.
In that event, you ARE the protagonist and the gameplay itself is engaging... allowing for the concept to explored.
There's my slightly OT pontification on how certain themes/concepts/ideas may translate better to different art forms. I really like Nolan's concept here but perhaps film just wasn't the best medium to explore it.
You would need to solve situations through time reversal - doing things backwards so that they play out a certain way after your next death when you come back through in the other direction. Game design which plays with effect/cause reversal, where things in one timeline change your alternating timeline.
In that event, you ARE the protagonist and the gameplay itself is engaging... allowing for the concept to explored.
There's my slightly OT pontification on how certain themes/concepts/ideas may translate better to different art forms. I really like Nolan's concept here but perhaps film just wasn't the best medium to explore it.
filmguy123
Veteran
MAX PAYNE! Miss those days.
We probably couldn't be more different in temperament and sensibilities. As a writer, I'd say I'm more Hemingway, and you're more Harlan Ellison.
I kinda work in a bi-mode. When I write these posts, I’m in a “academic” mode, wherein I was trained to be comprehensive in my arguments, which unfortunatelly leads to great length. When I’m in a “fiction writer” mode, I do prize economy, although ultimately, I try to do “what works” and don’t fetishize economy above all. Speaking of Hemingway and economy, there’s the story credited to Hemingway as an example of the shortest story - only six words, yet so affecting. Here is the entire story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn”. Can’t quarrel with that!
For me, what wasn't there in character was there in concept, and that was enough to engage me. The mystery is the mechanic itself, the backwards bullet at the opening, the mysterious waking up. The notion that effect IS cause. It's Nietzsche eternal recurrence (or eternal return), "the idea that all events in the world repeat themselves in the same sequence through an eternal series of cycles" or that events in the future impact the present as much as events in the past do.
That was the mcguffin itself, the mystery of that being illustrated and how it would come together was enough to grip me, like watching a rubiks cube folding in over itself. Perhaps it's why Nolan named the lead the "protagonist" - it's not a story about a character, it's a story about an abstracted process.
Certainly not everyone's cup of tea, but in this viewers opinion, it didn't make it any less artful or engaging, it just made it an inherently non-character driven piece of art.
That’s totally legit - you were involved thanks to the plot, so you treated it as a plot driven movie. That is certainly a modality of involvement, but it works for some, but not for others, and that can be for a variety of reasons. Some just find those concepts not terribly involving. Some find the concept itself extremely wanting - at the uni, I studied philosophy. As a result, these concepts were something that was explored at length, and the clumsy and contorted noodlings of Nolan are merely tiresome. It’s like that for anyone who happens to know something about a subject matter - they tend to be rather intolerant of flaws that the general public doesn’t care about. For example, the trope you sometimes see in movies where you have a character discover something in a photograph when they zoom in - the general public accepts it no questions asked. But a photographer might be bothered if it’s clear that the resolution is such that zooming in affords no more data, so the whole thing is stupid - they can’t enjoy the movie where THE WHOLE MOVIE PLOT hinges on this wrong info. If it’s in passing, that’s fine (see the zooming into the photos in Blade Runner), or if it’s just a device, that’s fine, but NOT THE WHOLE MOVIE - example in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, what if the filmmakers instead decided that Bill and Ted will spend the whole movie exploring how the time machine works... that would be a total bore. Or if in Terminator, the whole movie focused on the physics of time travel instead of the heart pounding cat and mouse between the robot and the human. We don’t care about implausible takes on medicine, law, photography or physics if it’s incidental to the plot, but if the plot IS the mechanics of medicine or law or photography or physics, then most of the general audience will be bored, and a few (such as me) will be offended on top of it, because it’s BAD physics (or whatnot). I’m not about to invest my time in highschool noodlings about entropy that a first year student in the relevant discipline will see right through. So your choice as a filmmaker is to either stop relying on flawed physics (or whatever discipline) as the main driver of the plot, OR make the physics LEGITIMATE - now it’s game on, and I’ll explore the puzzle, because it’s legit. There are movies like that, which turn on technicalities of medicine or law that are actually TRUE (and many movies where the details are NOT true). Unfortunately, Nolan picked something where the physics is too flawed for those who know physics and too abstruse for those who don’t care - so the number of those who are somewher the middle (such as you) is too small for the movie to be successful.
You mention the “mcguffin” which is a Hitchcockian concept - and means the opposite of a plot driven film. It’s the notion that the plot device, or the object of pursuit is completely unimportant in itself. The film resides everywhere else but that device - the device is just an excuse to create the rest of the movie. There is a lot of power in that notion - it is an opportunity to exercise all the other muscles of involvement mechanics to engage the audience. It’s interesting that you mention “the moment of awakening” in Tenet as thrilling - to me that was the exact moment when my heart fell and I was only hanging on watching from sheer momentum and some kind of grim duty because “it’s a Nolan film” so he deserves enough respect for me to suffer a bit more. But it was disheartening in the extreme. The symphony attack opening was OK - unknown characters doing puzzling things (do we pull for them to succeed or fail?), the scene where Washington is tied to a chair was already a huge letdown purely technically - I found the way it was shot completely uninvolving (really a bad job). And then he wakes up and the conversation that follows killed me with boredom - it was just a PASS. A more uninspiring pair of characters would be hard to find. Getting back to casting actors cleverly - imagine now that someone with the charisma of Samuel Jackson wakes up, even though the other guy is a total dud, at least it’s still holding SOME interest purely from raw charisma. But Washington? Sorry, no - you fart into the couch and reach for another nacho. Either deliver me an interesting event, or interesting character or an actor who can make a lame event and lamer characters still somehow involving. That’s too much to ask of poor Washington (perfectly adequate and skilled actor though he is). Character based films still try to employ charismatic actors - imagine any number of films where the mcguffin doesn’t matter, but we still watch for the character, and now try to remove the actor and substitute someone with no charisma... it fails immediately. We don’t care about the niceties of the law in The Pelican Brief - but we’ll watch Tom Cruise the way we won’t watch Daniel Dae Kim in exactly the same role in exactly the same film with exactly the same mcguffin [ I mention Daniel Dae Kim randomly here, because I just recently watched a stupid movie “Stowaway” purely because charismatic Anna Kendrick was in it and it’s fascinating watching her - while Kim is a good actor unfortunately with zero charisma... btw. the movie was still extremely poor, and Kendrick couldn’t rescue it... still, I watched it to the end!]. The point being, you need to cast your characters well, if you are going to have a boring mcguffin.
I’m just grateful that Nolan didn’t make Terminator, because he’d spend the whole time jabbering about the intricacies of time travel paradoxes, while the Terminator would be played by Dustin Hoffman (fine actor though he is).
I kinda work in a bi-mode. When I write these posts, I’m in a “academic” mode, wherein I was trained to be comprehensive in my arguments, which unfortunatelly leads to great length. When I’m in a “fiction writer” mode, I do prize economy, although ultimately, I try to do “what works” and don’t fetishize economy above all. Speaking of Hemingway and economy, there’s the story credited to Hemingway as an example of the shortest story - only six words, yet so affecting. Here is the entire story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn”. Can’t quarrel with that!
For me, what wasn't there in character was there in concept, and that was enough to engage me. The mystery is the mechanic itself, the backwards bullet at the opening, the mysterious waking up. The notion that effect IS cause. It's Nietzsche eternal recurrence (or eternal return), "the idea that all events in the world repeat themselves in the same sequence through an eternal series of cycles" or that events in the future impact the present as much as events in the past do.
That was the mcguffin itself, the mystery of that being illustrated and how it would come together was enough to grip me, like watching a rubiks cube folding in over itself. Perhaps it's why Nolan named the lead the "protagonist" - it's not a story about a character, it's a story about an abstracted process.
Certainly not everyone's cup of tea, but in this viewers opinion, it didn't make it any less artful or engaging, it just made it an inherently non-character driven piece of art.
That’s totally legit - you were involved thanks to the plot, so you treated it as a plot driven movie. That is certainly a modality of involvement, but it works for some, but not for others, and that can be for a variety of reasons. Some just find those concepts not terribly involving. Some find the concept itself extremely wanting - at the uni, I studied philosophy. As a result, these concepts were something that was explored at length, and the clumsy and contorted noodlings of Nolan are merely tiresome. It’s like that for anyone who happens to know something about a subject matter - they tend to be rather intolerant of flaws that the general public doesn’t care about. For example, the trope you sometimes see in movies where you have a character discover something in a photograph when they zoom in - the general public accepts it no questions asked. But a photographer might be bothered if it’s clear that the resolution is such that zooming in affords no more data, so the whole thing is stupid - they can’t enjoy the movie where THE WHOLE MOVIE PLOT hinges on this wrong info. If it’s in passing, that’s fine (see the zooming into the photos in Blade Runner), or if it’s just a device, that’s fine, but NOT THE WHOLE MOVIE - example in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, what if the filmmakers instead decided that Bill and Ted will spend the whole movie exploring how the time machine works... that would be a total bore. Or if in Terminator, the whole movie focused on the physics of time travel instead of the heart pounding cat and mouse between the robot and the human. We don’t care about implausible takes on medicine, law, photography or physics if it’s incidental to the plot, but if the plot IS the mechanics of medicine or law or photography or physics, then most of the general audience will be bored, and a few (such as me) will be offended on top of it, because it’s BAD physics (or whatnot). I’m not about to invest my time in highschool noodlings about entropy that a first year student in the relevant discipline will see right through. So your choice as a filmmaker is to either stop relying on flawed physics (or whatever discipline) as the main driver of the plot, OR make the physics LEGITIMATE - now it’s game on, and I’ll explore the puzzle, because it’s legit. There are movies like that, which turn on technicalities of medicine or law that are actually TRUE (and many movies where the details are NOT true). Unfortunately, Nolan picked something where the physics is too flawed for those who know physics and too abstruse for those who don’t care - so the number of those who are somewher the middle (such as you) is too small for the movie to be successful.
You mention the “mcguffin” which is a Hitchcockian concept - and means the opposite of a plot driven film. It’s the notion that the plot device, or the object of pursuit is completely unimportant in itself. The film resides everywhere else but that device - the device is just an excuse to create the rest of the movie. There is a lot of power in that notion - it is an opportunity to exercise all the other muscles of involvement mechanics to engage the audience. It’s interesting that you mention “the moment of awakening” in Tenet as thrilling - to me that was the exact moment when my heart fell and I was only hanging on watching from sheer momentum and some kind of grim duty because “it’s a Nolan film” so he deserves enough respect for me to suffer a bit more. But it was disheartening in the extreme. The symphony attack opening was OK - unknown characters doing puzzling things (do we pull for them to succeed or fail?), the scene where Washington is tied to a chair was already a huge letdown purely technically - I found the way it was shot completely uninvolving (really a bad job). And then he wakes up and the conversation that follows killed me with boredom - it was just a PASS. A more uninspiring pair of characters would be hard to find. Getting back to casting actors cleverly - imagine now that someone with the charisma of Samuel Jackson wakes up, even though the other guy is a total dud, at least it’s still holding SOME interest purely from raw charisma. But Washington? Sorry, no - you fart into the couch and reach for another nacho. Either deliver me an interesting event, or interesting character or an actor who can make a lame event and lamer characters still somehow involving. That’s too much to ask of poor Washington (perfectly adequate and skilled actor though he is). Character based films still try to employ charismatic actors - imagine any number of films where the mcguffin doesn’t matter, but we still watch for the character, and now try to remove the actor and substitute someone with no charisma... it fails immediately. We don’t care about the niceties of the law in The Pelican Brief - but we’ll watch Tom Cruise the way we won’t watch Daniel Dae Kim in exactly the same role in exactly the same film with exactly the same mcguffin [ I mention Daniel Dae Kim randomly here, because I just recently watched a stupid movie “Stowaway” purely because charismatic Anna Kendrick was in it and it’s fascinating watching her - while Kim is a good actor unfortunately with zero charisma... btw. the movie was still extremely poor, and Kendrick couldn’t rescue it... still, I watched it to the end!]. The point being, you need to cast your characters well, if you are going to have a boring mcguffin.
I’m just grateful that Nolan didn’t make Terminator, because he’d spend the whole time jabbering about the intricacies of time travel paradoxes, while the Terminator would be played by Dustin Hoffman (fine actor though he is).