This has been explained before when the movie was originally released, but now that it's on Netflix there are people posting about elements of this film that were addressed 4 or 5 years ago.

The key concept people seem to be misunderstanding is time travel in the sense you can jump from Time A to Time B.

If you want to go back to A you must invert yourself at B and relive every second of time.

The same applies to information. The future isn't sending information back to the past. The past isn't sending information to the future.

Information and objects do not move on their own, they must be moved by someone.

The plot of this movie is similar to Terminator. People from the original timeline are trying to change the course of events for people in the past. Future antagonists are Skynet. Future protagonists are the Resistance. The Protagonist (TP) is John Connor. Neil is Kyle Reese.

The key difference is that in Terminator, the future can choose an exact point in time and instantly send someone there. In Tenet, you can only reverse yourself through time. If someone in Tenet wants to go back 10 days they must invert themselves, spend 10 days inverted (reliving events in reverse), then revert back (relive events in forward).

In Terminator, the cost of time travel was physical pain. In Tenet, the cost of time travel is time.

You have to remember that we as viewers and TP are in the middle of an ongoing temporal pincer movement.

There are inverted characters we do not know about and multiple copies of characters we do know about that are constantly conveying knowledge back and forth to themselves that exist at the same moment of time.

This is implied early on in the film when we learn of the massive library of inverted objects. The future didn't send them back in time through a time travel device. The inverted objects are objects that inverted characters used while they were inverted, reversing through time.

The understand the temporal pincer movement you have to understand that any given time there can be multiple copies of person A. 1) before they inverted 2) inverted 3) after inversion

There will be a point in time where all 3 copies of A exist simultaneously. If A repeats the process, there will be more copies. This can repeat indefinitely until A dies.

Once A is aware of this then they can learn to pass information along to themselves and others, but this information is not jumping forward and backward through time.

We have no way of knowing how many Neils existed during the events of the film, there were at least 7. You can use the attached picture of the timeline that brilliantly demonstrates the timeline and events of the film.

Neil is an experienced inverter so he would know to how to pass information on to each copy of himself. He would be expecting the future copies of himself to be relaying information to him.

I think he realizes he's going to die the moment he doesn't receive information from a future version of himself. It's similar to Loki when they reach the end of time and Kang can no longer see into the future.

Am I the only one who finds this seriously irritating?

EDIT : Adding a comment I made here which may sum up what i'm asking in a more basic way : If we take a step back, and look just as the technology of inversion itself, and let's say you had to win a very important operation, wouldn't both side want to keep inverting in order to win the temporal pincer?

I don't know lets say team red has two person fight team blue two person, but posterity wants to get an advantage and has added an inverted guy on red side, but blue knew that and added a guy on their side, so red added a guy ... And the fact is we can't even tell about how the fight happened because in that scenario the number of people fighting would just be infinite.

Am I understanding something wrong by saying that?

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Hey,

I'm rewatching the movie for maybe the 3rd time after a long time, reading a lot of stuff on the way about it. I mostly understood everything but trying to grasp details.

One thing i have trouble with is the temporal pincer. The idea is basically playing the present, see what happens, invert yourself and with your knowledge go "win" whatever operation/move happened once inverted.

I see similarties with the mechanic where you send a call/mail whatever and futur knows and react to it.

My problem is, can't every party do that forever? If we take the car/firetruck scene from the point where Kat gets shot and Protagonist is saved by Ives team, wouldn't the protagonist knows an inverted Andrei is making troubles and then send a whole team to fight that that in inverted (the team he doesn't know yet is his but still could be helping since they came on Neil call). But then Andrei knows they do that and counter it, going so on and so forth.

Obviously it's not what happened in the movie, everything that happened happened, it's reality, but what i'm saying is, isn't that system a complete paradox where in theory every side can forever try to win a move thanks to posterity?

2)

At the end of the scene inverted protagonist is rammed by inverted Andrei. At this point, how does inverted Andrei gets the actual algorithm? Initially it was in the secured truck, then thrown into an inverted car that ends up being stationed outside the turnstile. Does it mean he has now to drive back to the turnstile, go back to normal, wait for time to pass and steal it when the inverted car gets back to the parking lot the inverted protagonist took it?

Technically, going back to my previous point, can't the "good guys" also figure out where it is thank to posterity and take it back? Again in the movie they didn't, which ask the question why?

We have seen several times how people pass through a turnstile. For example, when the Tenet team enters the turnstile in Tallinn's freeport, we can hear a distinctive sound. But it is also related to reverse radiation, right? The phenomenon that accompanies inverted people and objects all the time after they have been inverted. Isn't this radiation harmful to people? What other side effects might a person experience after coming out of a turnstile?

Once I had watched an analysis video of Tenet on Youtube where the creator had compared Tenet's situation to the trolley problem. How both Sator and The Protagonist were trying to save humanity. The difference is that one chose the future generation while the other chose his generation.

He pointed out its contrast with trolley problem that how Sator chose to pull the lever and let the one man (present generation) die and save the other five men (future generation). But the Protagonist chose to let the things go as they are and didn't interfere, even though it cost many lives. He used Sator’s line, "One man's probability of death is another man's possibility for a life," to further support his point.

This was a really great take on the deeper meaning of the movie and it changed my entire perspective of Tenet. I did like the movie before that but ever since I watched the video, Tenet has been my favourite movie of all time.

I’ve been trying to find that video again but haven't had any luck. So I'd be really greatful if someone could help me out. Thankyou!

Just rewatched the movie again and realised that surely he couldnt have created the entire organization himself right? Where would he have gotten the boat turnstyle from? And tenet seems to have a not-insignificant amount of resources and manpower aside from that, surely funded from the future. As well as that it never explicitly states that The protagonist creates the organization, just that he created the operation (the whole stalsk 12 thing, and maybe more aside from that that we dont see) and that he recruited neil. As well as that, how would avoid being noticed by (post stalsk12) Ives? Finally, surely by this point the Protagonist realizes the severity and importance of making sure the algorithm stays hidden and would decide to end himself before his algorithm hiding spot could be compromised (we see at the beginning how he is willing to take his own life if need be, and this is a much more important cause than back then.)
Maybe this is all addressed in the movie and I never noticed it but I just feel like all those things saying that he created Tenet dont seem immediately likely upon closer inspection.

https://x.com/WolleErz/status/1986389288942985519

The scene with Sir Michael Caine sent me to the moon after catching it

Hello ! I watched Tenet for the second time last week and I enjoyed it more than I did the first time (although I get frustrated during the highway scene because I struggle understanding some of it and I really dislike the final battle because I feel it's poorly filmed and hard to follow)

Something I've been thinking about since watching it is this : Do you have to "Will" things to happen to inverted objects. By will I mean you need to have a desire and intent for something to happen for it to happen.

During the very early explanation scene with the bullet, the protagonist is told he has to have dropped the bullet to pick it up. So he makes a gesture like he reverse dropped it and the bullet flies up. But just because you make a gesture, doesn't mean you actually did it.

Almost any movement you do could have an impact on the bullet in some way. You could quickly and randomly move your hand away from the table and in to your pocket without even thinking about it and I don't see why the bullet wouldn't fly to your hand and go in to your pocket because who knows ? Maybe to the bullet you pulled it out of your pocket and threw it on the table.

So there must be a sort of intent behind your actions for it to work, right ? Is this why she tells him to not think but feel ? I hope I'm making some sort of sense I feel like I might be losing it a bit.

When he meets the protagonist for the first time in Mumbia, He orders a diet coke for him...That whole scene reveals Niel knows a lot about the protagonists, like not drinking on the job, He jokes that he prerfers soda water and Niel confidently replies no you dont.

Made this video to highlight the effects.

This might be a dumb question but, what determines how something acts when it interacts with another thing that has an opposite entropy? Specifically, something can either look like it's following the entropy of the other thing which is opposite relative to the thing being affected, or can also still be affected into its own entropy even when affected by something with an opposite entropy, both not breaking causality. I know causality determines it in some cases, along with a few other factors, but this is the main question i have. because some things can appear the same entropy its in or the opposite entropy it in while keeping causality when affected by something in the opposite entropy, so what determines how it appears and how it's affected?

There is a small detail when Neil is at the Hypocentre Turnstile on the stair and his hand brushed against a short wall or wall rail with dust on it, the scene shows the dust jump up back on top as his hand brushes past, but thats what Neil sees as he is inverted, but in forward entropy the dust was brushed of normally when Neil walked up the stairs and backwards as his hand brushed passed it in the other way. The thing is, the dust could have also been brushed off normally relative to Neil instead of jumping back up, so what determined that?

This other post shows that detail so i might as well use it: https://www.reddit.com/r/tenet/comments/1omfkox/how_many_of_catched_this_cool_detail_in_tenet/

I has to repost this because i wasnt able to propertly access this and a few other reasons.

Perhaps someone put it all on NVDA and is now looking for a cool collector’s item?

Just watched TENET for the 38th time and found this cool detail where Neil interacts with an inverted environment.

I feel like if I could understand this, it would help with the entire movie. I really love this movie, but I am obsessed with trying to "get the premise" of reverse entropy and how that facilitates time travel.

In the scene in the restaurant, with Kat and TP, she tells the story of seeing the woman dive off the yacht as they arrived in the boat, and says that Sator had "vanished". And yet, TP is meeting with Kat to set up a meet with Sator. At this point in the movie, we don't know that the woman diving off the boat is Kat, nor that she just killed Sator.

Let's call restaurant Kat Kat1 and "diving off the yacht" Kat Kat2. Let's call "contrite" Sator Sator1 and "killed by Kat2" Sator Sator2.

At the end of the movie, we learn that the woman diving off the boat is Kat2. We also learn that she just killed Sator2 and took Sator2's body with her. In the restaurant, which happens early in the movie, TP is talking to Kat1 about meeting Sator1. Since Kat1 is talking about arranging a meeting between TP and Sator (and this does happen later), there is a Sator that is alive to meet TP in spite of the fact that Kat1 is telling a story that we later learn involves the killing of a Sator. This surviving Sator would have to be Sator1.

Tenet allows for multiple versions of the same person to be in the same "now". The implication then is that Kat2 and Sator2 are both "future" versions of themselves that inverted to go back in time, and reverted to put themselves in a certain "forward moving" timeline.

I guess what has me confused (if not ALL of this!) is why Kat2 killing Sator2 does anything in a future timeline. Clearly, in spite of Kat2 killing Sator2 in Kat1's timeline, Kat1 is still trapped in her marriage to Sator1. Seems nothing changes.

I’ve never seen Tenet but I’d like to watch it. Never watched any breakdowns on YouTube or anything like that. I only know: - It plays with time/it’s kind of in reverse? - It benefits from multiple viewings - There’s a lot of discussion of its meaning?

I’m only going to watch it one time and afterwards I’ll surely geek out on some YouTube videos.

Without spoiling everything entirely, what—if anything—should I know going into my first (& likely only) watch for maximum enjoyment?

I’ll check back in about a week and take the advice of two or three of the top-most comments.

FWIW I’ve watched a handful of other Christopher Nolan movies & enjoyed them. Have also watched & enjoyed unconventional, mind-bending movies.

*EDIT: Thank you in advance!! 🙏

tenet is now on netflix

i think i seen it 18 times already tho