Review of Tenet (2020) by Teatom — 17 Aug 2021

The dialogue in Tenet is much like the positive reviews for the movie; So desperate to offer insight, and meaning, that they go on for twice as long as they should, only to find they have still said nothing worth hearing.

Unfortunately, Tenet is mostly empty dialogue, from start to finish. There's a small, interesting idea here. 'Your perspective on time is just one, of many, here, let Nolan show you more.'

It's not unlike, 'what if people could enter and alter your dream? Let Nolan show you more.'

The major difference, here, between Tenet and Inception, is that Inception was a finished script, doubtlessly re-written many times, to ensure it's both legible and fun, all the way through. Tenet has not had even a first of second pass. It has not had a good writer come along and say "Hey, Chris, why are you telling instead of showing. This is boring. Let's start again, without all the exposition that goes nowhere and try and craft a more interesting story around your central concept.".

The entire movie feels like Nolan is stuck, writing page, after page, after page of exposition, to try and explain the story to an editor or producer, but they just got so bored, they turned around and said **** it, yeah, sounds great, Chris, do that, I trust you.".

The result is massively bad.

Beyond bad, in fact, as it's the first unwatchable film Chris Nolan has made, which makes it disappointing, too. We can only blame ourselves. We thought he was incapable of making a bad movie, just as the studio clearly did, when they let him go ahead with such a poor screenplay.

The truth, of course, is never that complicated.

Sometimes people waffle and don't produce anything worth hearing, no matter who they are.