After our competition went live last night Nick Clement didn’t waste any time in letting us know just why Tenet was a bad movie.
Overall, I thought this movie was ok.
Just ok.
Certainly entertaining in the moment but in the end far short of my expectations.
It genuinely makes me sad to report this fact as i’ve pretty much loved all of Christopher Nolan’s output up until this point.
Merely “OK” is not what I expect from this filmmaker.
The Prestige and Interstellar remain my two favorites, Dunkirk was exceptional, and the top tier combo of The Dark Knight and Inception.
Tenet just felt poor and miscalculated.
Here’s 6 reasons why TENET sucked.
1. The Nonsensical Narrative.
I’m no moron, I’m able to follow complex cinematic stories, except this time, there just didn’t seem to be a rational entry point, and the entire piece just felt convoluted for no good reason.
Bottom line: I didn’t understand the rules this film was playing by and that was a little annoying.
2. The Poor Sound-Mix
The sound-mix on this film was tragic.
I could barely understand the dialogue during many sequences, and I have a sophisticated surround sound system.
This is not cool.
The musical score was striking – but the mixing job was catastrophic – thus robbing Ludwig Goransson’s work of some of its likely intended nuance.
You don’t expect this kind of amateurish sound design on a multi-million dollar feature film.
3. The Gimmick
The “reversing-the-action” gimmick was fun and nifty at first, then it got kind of silly, before becoming unintentionally funny.
Lots of folks swinging wilding in the air and looking drunk.
Explosions-in-reverse are pretty sweet, though.
4. Odd Pacing
There were so many scenes that just seemed to start and end before they ever totally finished – everything felt oddly paced and edited and presented in many respects.
Experimental? Maybe. Disorienting? You bet.
But the QUALITY of the imagery is undeniable, and the various action set pieces (the MASSIVE climactic battle in particular) were stunning in their visual clarity and seamless CGI application and level of physical production design.
The dedication to “doing it for real” was also very apparent – and this gets a huge amount of respect from me as a viewer.
5. Questionable Casting
John David Washington is an excellent actor but from start to finish he feels out of place and doesn’t allow us to invest in the movie beyond the surface level confusion we’re presented with.
6. Released During A Global Pandemic
Christopher Nolan is a TOTAL CLOWN for demanding that this film be opened on the big-screen last summer, during the middle of a GLOBAL PANDEMIC, but one likely becomes blinded to this fact when they have “first dollar gross.”
The release blew up in his face and Tenet will lose in excess of $100 million.
His continued idiocy about the state of the industry is a turn-off.
Just my two cents.
But wait… we do have some positives to take from TENET.
Robert Pattinson was easily the best part of the movie, I can’t wait to see him in The Batman and he was the only thing stopping me from turning the film off.
and well, that’s about it really.
Maybe you can understand it much better than we could here on Back to the Movies.
JDW was genius casting. RP was excellent. Pacing was off. The experimental backwards scene when fighting was pure class. The movie was about the feeling of it not understanding it. As said in the film. Also the dark night rises was Nolans worst film by quite a long way. I hope you meant the dark night. Lol