I share most of my opinion with Gato, but I'm not sure if I quite liked the movie as much as he did. At certain points I got very frustrated with the film and literally got a headache trying to figure it out. We had to pause and talk several times.
I really disliked it at first, and even jokingly theorized that it was purposely bad, and then halfway through they were going to go back in time and show you why everything you saw was actually good. And to my amazement, that is literally what happened. Once they start going back, it becomes thrilling and incredible as you start to piece together what exactly happened, and how.
The issue for me is that the first half does not really get justified completely by the latter half. You are led to believe one explanation for time travel (it is the weapons themselves that just "fire backwards" somehow) and the movie does not follow that rule at all. So it was just confusing and completely disengaging. I kept trying to understand what was happening through this premise, and it frustrated me because it made no sense. Of course, later on you find out that it is something completely different, that it is people going backwards in time firing the weapons. Then it all makes sense.
But why the false premise? I think I would've preferred that the movie tell me that I don't know (perhaps through the Protagonist, our audience surrogate, stating our audience's confusion through dialogue. After all, he doesn't totally get it yet either), and then assure me that answers are coming later. Rather than lead me to believe the rules of this movie are one thing and then frustrate me when it doesn't follow them.
I was trying to think of applicable examples and what came to mind happened to be two Hitchcock films, Psycho and Vertigo. Both of these movies make you think you're watching a different kind of movie until the midway switch. Psycho makes you think one character and one plot point is important, before switching to a different one. Vertigo takes this even further by almost changing genres completely by presenting itself as a ghost story at first, and then kind of a crime mystery.
But both of these films work to keep you following along before the big twist; you understood the movie under one set of rules, and then it switches to a new one. In Tenet, you don't really get any rules or any real perspective to understand the movie until the midway point, which made it very frustrating to me.
I know with any criticism like this I risk being just called a smooth brain who isn't smart enough to get it, but that's how I feel. The whole thing makes sense when you look back at the movie as a whole, but I think the first half could be reworked in a way that suggests you can still be engaged even though our understanding will be delayed a bit (more acknowledgement of the weirdness of everything from the Protagonist would be one way to do that, as I suggested earlier).
I really disliked it at first, and even jokingly theorized that it was purposely bad, and then halfway through they were going to go back in time and show you why everything you saw was actually good. And to my amazement, that is literally what happened. Once they start going back, it becomes thrilling and incredible as you start to piece together what exactly happened, and how.
The issue for me is that the first half does not really get justified completely by the latter half. You are led to believe one explanation for time travel (it is the weapons themselves that just "fire backwards" somehow) and the movie does not follow that rule at all. So it was just confusing and completely disengaging. I kept trying to understand what was happening through this premise, and it frustrated me because it made no sense. Of course, later on you find out that it is something completely different, that it is people going backwards in time firing the weapons. Then it all makes sense.
But why the false premise? I think I would've preferred that the movie tell me that I don't know (perhaps through the Protagonist, our audience surrogate, stating our audience's confusion through dialogue. After all, he doesn't totally get it yet either), and then assure me that answers are coming later. Rather than lead me to believe the rules of this movie are one thing and then frustrate me when it doesn't follow them.
I was trying to think of applicable examples and what came to mind happened to be two Hitchcock films, Psycho and Vertigo. Both of these movies make you think you're watching a different kind of movie until the midway switch. Psycho makes you think one character and one plot point is important, before switching to a different one. Vertigo takes this even further by almost changing genres completely by presenting itself as a ghost story at first, and then kind of a crime mystery.
But both of these films work to keep you following along before the big twist; you understood the movie under one set of rules, and then it switches to a new one. In Tenet, you don't really get any rules or any real perspective to understand the movie until the midway point, which made it very frustrating to me.
I know with any criticism like this I risk being just called a smooth brain who isn't smart enough to get it, but that's how I feel. The whole thing makes sense when you look back at the movie as a whole, but I think the first half could be reworked in a way that suggests you can still be engaged even though our understanding will be delayed a bit (more acknowledgement of the weirdness of everything from the Protagonist would be one way to do that, as I suggested earlier).
