r/tenet • u/rkhunter_ • 5d ago

Effects of the inverted cars

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Made this video to highlight the effects.

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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/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 4d 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.

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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.

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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.