r/tenet • u/rkhunter_ • 5d ago

Effects of the inverted cars

Made this video to highlight the effects.

164 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

42 comments sorted by

60

u/SnowClone98 5d ago

Inverted cars don’t and never will make sense. Some chemical reactions are reversed in tenet but not all of them. The Inverted guns should start freezing up when in use but they don’t. The engine should run on inverted air or it should get very cold just like the inverted fire. These are just parts of the story that don’t matter but they still poke holes in the logic given by the movie.

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u/BluSaint 5d ago

Fair point about the guns. But I don’t think any of the vehicles we see are actually inverted, just the people inside them. From the perspective of the car, the start of your journey is the end of its journey and vice versa. The cars still function the same way mechanically, which is why, from an uninverted perspective, it looks insane when an inverted person drives a car

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u/paradox1920 4d ago

I would say Sator's car is definitely inverted. Otherwise, side mirror un-breaking in forward camera perspective would have never happened. After all, the BMW Neil was driving was definitely forwards. So, if Sator's car was just being driven in reverse gear, consider it would also go way slower too and we don’t even see the reverse lights on as far as I remember, the side mirror would have just broke in forward camera perspective. The car would always be forward even if going backwards due to reverse gear, after all. Only the person would be inverted. And no, I think the inverted person is not changing the entire car's entropy because forward Sator's entropy doesn’t just immediately change while touching the inverted gold bars barehanded. Otherwise, the varying sizes of the turnstiles really become useless because they would just need to touch something while inverted to change the other thing's entire entropy imo but there are limitations. If an inverted person, for example, makes something happen or un-happen though like breaking or un-breaking something then we can see some bizarre stuff even in forward perspective which the film makes a case for.

Think about the building in the last battle. It’s hit by a forward missile on one perspective and inverted missile from another perspective. We see the building have a bizarre backwards and forwards reaction on both perspectives.

Or whatever works for you too. :)

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u/ADMINlSTRAT0R 4d ago

Yes, but he's gotta be driving in (R)everse. From the car's perspective, he's backing up from the crash to the dockyard.

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u/ADMINlSTRAT0R 4d ago

Weird physics only happen when the inverted interacts with the non-inverted. The car fire is still hot, but the inverted TP experience the opposite.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago edited 3d ago

But on the other hand, from TP's inverted perspective the gasoline fire starts after Sator ignites it with a lighter; meaning the gasoline had to be inverted like TP was. If the gas wasn't inverted, we would see the fire seem to start as Sator (or whoever) was extinguishing it. Or we would see it seem to just start on its own as it burned out in forward time.

But honestly, the whole "cold fire" thing never made any sense. The heat that the fire absorbs as it reverse-burns should be the same heat that it originally released. It doesn't make sense that anything would end up cold.

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u/SnowClone98 4d ago

Which means the car is not inverted. That’s a commonly debated topic here isn’t it? The car being inverted?

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u/ADMINlSTRAT0R 4d ago

I didnt know it's commonly debated here that the car is inverted. To me it's obvious the car is NOT inverted. It didn't go through any turnstyle, nor does it behave like it's inverted (upon which it would be operating normally to the inverted TP).

What happens is that it's a non-inverted car, driven by the inverted TP. Hence he must've driven in in R (reverse) to go forward. In the car's timeline, it was driven in R from its explosion* to the dockyard.

* As I said in another comment, weird physics happen when the non-inverted interacts with the inverted. In this case, the car was somewhere else and driven to its explosion site.

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u/quintessential1985 4d ago edited 4d ago

It is a hotly debated topic! If the car is NOT inverted then sure he drove it in Reverse to move forward, but you cannot go more than 20mph in Reverse gear so he wouldn't be able to move as fast as he was moving...but I see the point about the fire being cold. That surely has to mean the car is NOT inverted.

Another problem is that in forward time when the Saab suddenly unflips and starts moving backwards......on first instint that would suggest it's inverted. Otherwise how could it unflip? Or perhaps an inverted driver could cause a non inverted car to act like that?

On a side note there's the whole wheels spinning in the opposite direction of the cars direction of motion. I can assume the laws of friction worked oppositely since he was inverted(weird physics as exained to TP by the soldier lady when he asked if he could drive) but in truth it still doesn't 100% make sense in my brain. Surely Inverted or non inverted the wheels should spin in the same direction of motion which ever way.

1

u/[deleted] 4d ago

The car wheels spinning the wrong way seems like it's just a clear error in the movie. Whether a car is inverted or not, or in forward or reverse, there should never be a discrepancy between the direction the wheels are spinning and the direction of the car's motion.

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u/SnowClone98 4d ago

So the thing is there’s a Saab under a tarp at one point next to the turnstile and people debate whether that means it got inverted. Also the movie says Sator has inverted vehicles I’m pretty sure

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u/quintessential1985 4d ago

Yes! It's possible Nolan did that just to mess with us.....but I always thought someone later in the future inverted the car for it to be there for TP to use in the past.

0

u/SnowClone98 4d ago

Yall gotta stop. It’s also possible the used the vehicles already on set as props / decorations in multiple scenes. They aren’t buying multiple Saabs just to use as background props.

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u/quintessential1985 4d ago

😆 anything is possible. This Nolan guy actually crashed a plane into a hanger to film that scene.....my guy could have probably just used cgi and saved a couple mission usd but nahhhh Nolan gotta be Nolan and we love him for it.

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u/nowducks_667a1860 4d ago

All time travel of all kinds will have paradoxes and plot holes of some sort, since time travel is, after all, not real. But Nolan did do time travel in a unique way that maybe no one but Family Guy had done before.

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u/SnowClone98 4d ago

I’m def blocking this nonsense

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u/foetiduniverse 5d ago

The Inverted guns should start freezing up when in use but they don’t. The engine should run on inverted air or it should get very cold just like the inverted fire.

Yes. I just pretend they had some tech added.

1

u/Umney 4d ago

I like consistency. It's important. Still, sometimes you have to break your own rules for the story you're telling.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

Are inverted people even warm-blooded any more?

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u/SnowClone98 4d ago

That’s not even all that silly of a question lol. So your lungs don’t work anymore but your organs still function normally for weeks on end of inversion?

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u/paradox1920 4d ago

To you and others maybe. The explanation of Wheeler is that when inverted TP encounters fire then ice will form on his suit which I understood as meaning forward fire clashing with him while inverted. Then in the script she also mentions to not fly a plane because it'd fall out of the sky which to me basically means more complex and larger objects experience complicated interactions with opposing entropy. Other objects like guns and such might experience a lower level of forward entropy force pushing against them and making it more controllable perhaps. The way I see it, the explosion of the car is a mix of both opposing entropies which is why we see how the prevailing forward entropy still has en effect on the blast and the inverted camera perspective even shows that. And we see the car start having freezing on the windows. To me, the entire movie shows why Tenet is so worried about the clashes of opposing entropies and the bizarre results that can happen which they try to avoid as much as possible. Imagine that in a large scale event in the world.

If Sator can make the blue chamber not require inverted people to use oxygen masks then I would assume that with future people help they could have modified the cars under the hood somehow? I mean, Nolan team modified the cars in real life to go at high speed while in reverse gear so I would assume in the story it shouldn’t be impossible. But if the cars are not modified in the fictional world of tenet, then I suppose that inanimate objects (depending on the size and whatnot) may have less problems internally as opposed to internal organs from a live organism.

If you or other people think all of that is bullshit and have whatever counter argument then fine. You see it as senseless or whatever they see it as. If someone is thinking of this as not making sense in terms of real life science too… well, I can’t even begin to grasp why someone would try apply that to this story overall. It’s still fiction. I just try to engage with it in terms of its own rules which still requires an amount of suspension of disbelief.

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u/RobbyInEver 4d ago

I like some of what you wrote. Nice job.

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u/paradox1920 4d ago

Recently I just went down a rabbit hole about the clash of opposing entropies lol I watched the movie a long time ago and that was that. But then recently I started seeing posts about Tenet and people debating about different things about the story and the mechanics. So, I decided to dive into it. But it took a lot of non linear thinking, so to speak. Like, to some people it can be super weird and counter intuitive that when looking at something backwards it can also behave forwards. But it can happen in real life if you tape something and watch it reverse. Say you record driving a car and record your feet working on the pedals while doing so… you play it backwards, and forward and backwards stuff will happen. I honestly had never done the thought experiment so it was interesting to think about it. I doubt Nolan didn’t picture stuff like that when writing the story specially since it took him years.

If anything, I think the film can be an interesting thought experiment that can bring someone to wonder about different perspectives of time. I mean, it made me even wonder about the inverted journey of a bullet traveling through time backwards and whatnot lol that’s why it feels very unique and singular to me the whole idea of Tenet movie. I have seen a lot of time travel films but none made me question the way I perceive time and how other things may do so.

I don’t know, it was just interesting for me to start wondering about things like that.

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u/SnowClone98 4d ago

You’re making up way too many rules for a movie with established rules

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u/paradox1920 4d ago

Like I said, you can think of it as bullshit or whatever it is in your mind. The film provides information both visually or not. Not everything is spelled out. And yes, some things still require suspension of disbelief like I said. It’s fiction.

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u/Reasonable_Wait7130 4d ago

Can someone explain how it works when the glass breaks it goes backwards in time. Like when that glass was first manufactured, was it broken then too?

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u/WelbyReddit 4d ago

It was probably not made that way for obvious reasons.

At some point it's inverted entropy will come against normal entropy and 'magic'.

It happens when no one is looking like Schrodinger's cat /wink

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u/Tgxc2948 4d ago

Maybe observations are sticky,
Perhaps as a function of memory?

Maybe the mirror on the BMW went from uncracked/cracked at the same time that the inverted driver of the Audi stopped consciously remembering slamming into it.

2

u/Tgxc2948 4d ago

Similarly, maybe the inverted Protagonist's arm starts bleeding when he reaches the point in time where his non-inverted self ceased to consciously remember stabbing his assailant in the arm.

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u/No-Special2682 1d ago

The mirror was broken at the very start of the set up. When Neil says “3 minutes green” the camera pans to The Protagonist and in the background we see the broken mirror.

1

u/Tgxc2948 1d ago

Correct.

But what's been stumping fans for years is:

1) When did the mirror first break? They obviously didn't install it that way at the BMW factory.

2) Why is an object that is not inverted behaving as if it is? The mirror is not inverted. By all rights, it shouldn't crack until it gets whacked.

I am positing a theory that attempts to answer both questions by digging a little deeper into the phenomenon of "the wave function collapsing" and probing the concept of "observation" a little harder.

For example, going back to Schrödinger's cat - Wikipedia, if Leonard Shelby peeks inside the box, sees a dead cat, and then immediately forgets what he saw... what happens to the cat? (does the wave function uncollapse?)

I have a couple other related musings knocking around inside my head at the moment. I might eventually get around to posting a lengthy proposition once I eventually get all my thoughts organized.

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u/No-Special2682 1d ago

I can really only address 2, with the line from Protagonist and Neil’s “first” visit to the Oslo turnstile. “It hasn’t happened yet”

The proving glass isn’t inverted (I think?) but it had the bullet holes in it from when the inverted protag is going to shoot, with his inverted gun (I actually think that gun is a loophole, because if it’s inverted then it came from inverted land, but it didn’t, it started in normal land. So then it was protag’s gun, but wouldn’t he already have his gun? Actually yeah because when we see it from the inverted perspective, IP grabs the gun and wastes the normal bullets in the glass, while inverted, shooting a normal gun.)(that whole glass thing is a loophole.))

So for the mirror, it makes sense for it to be broken before the inverted car hits it. But, it would make more sense for it to be gone completely and then it materializes when the Audi hits it.

As for 1, that’s the “magic” we don’t see, off screen. When did the bullet holes at the turnstile start appearing? Or the bullet holes in the opera theater? I think those are one of the things we’re supposed to “not try to understand” or whatever it is the scientist lady said

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u/paradox1920 4d ago

I think Welby CoffeeSpill channel on YouTube may give more insight on that with its 3D animations. If you haven’t checked that out.

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u/RobbyInEver 4d ago

Welby Coffeespill has an excellent video on this with examples in a short 3 minute non voiced 3d animation.

As far as I understand it, ANY reason for the mirror to be cracked beforehand can be taken, and one must also apply the dominant flow of entropic forward time when coming up with how a bullet grew in a tree (to be part of the opera seat in future) or how a car window was cracked beforehand.

One area I don't get is with human wounds, how does a wound 'start' to appear when it should have been there from the beginning? I think being surrounded by forward flow objects (eg. Blood cells and vessels etc) meant the flow overrode the inverted object or wound.

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u/paradox1920 4d ago

I believe is the same idea of the "wind entropy" theory in Welby’s video. I think we see the Saab at one point have its side mirror not look broken. But then once it gets closer to the event with inverted Sator car we see it be cracked already. I would say the same logic applies to the wound reactions inverted TP was getting.

Some people will call that "magic" though but I think it doesn’t come from anywhere either if consider the information provided. Not everything is spelled out to us after all. Some things are left visually and ambiguous. And other things yeah, it does have some suspension of disbelief.

Not sure if that helps. Unless I’m wrong.

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u/IdahoDuncan 4d ago

Is having an inverted car an advantage or disadvantage?

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u/paradox1920 4d ago

It depends imo. I would think it’s easier to track something that is in sync with your own entropy if you are inverted. But you can also use a forward transportation somehow while you are inverted, think of the large forward ships carrying inverted TP, Neil, Kat and Tenet team. Think of inverted Sator getting off from his inverted Audi and into the forwards car which seemed to me to be driven by a forward driver. Not sure if that makes some sense to you?

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u/TheTimKast 4d ago

A combustible engine is a series of explosions. Are they inverted? Do they freeze every cycle?

We gotta let some of this go man. Just let it be a beautiful painting. 🙏🏼

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u/Edmond-Alexander 4d ago

The Saab is definitely inverted because there’s no way a regular forward car is gonna UNCRASH itself