Summary

• 4 years after its release, certain aspects of Tenet have aged poorly.
• Tenet's emphasis on spectacle over plot coherence detracts from the film's overall impact.
• The exorbitant budget of $205 million for Tenet is arguably unnecessary and not effectively utilized.
• The film's technical flaw of bad sound mixing and its underdeveloped female characters contribute to its status as one of Nolan's weakest works.

As a fan of the director, it is not easy to rewatch Christopher Nolan’s Tenet four years after its release. Nowadays, Nolan’s name is synonymous with the huge success box office of Oppenheimer, last year’s incredible biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer. The film earned Nolan his first Best Director Oscar and saw Academy Award wins for cast Robert Downey Jr. and Cillian Murphy. On top of Oppenheimer’s awards success, it was a box-office marvel, making almost $1 billion over the course of its run.

Fresh off of Oppenheimer's success, it may at first be easy to forget what the acclaimed biopic follows up: Tenet. The narrative of Tenet could not be more different than that of Oppenheimer. Rather than critically lauded, Tenet’s reviews were extremely divided, sparking debate over the film’s merit. Additionally, pushing its release forward to 2020 despite the pandemic, Tenet also struggled at the box office. These statistics alone may be enough to reflect upon Tenet, but other aspects of it also didn't age well in the last four years.

8 Tenet Emphasizes Spectacle Over Plot Coherence

Tenet's Scenes Sometimes Seem Superfluous

As in the case with most Nolan films, Tenet is geared to be a cinematic experience. Gone are the days of the director’s early films like Following and Memento. Now, the director puts ample effort into making sure his films are as big as possible so that their ideal release platform is an IMAX screen. This tends to work well for Nolan, as it drives up IMAX ticket sales.

Tenet, however, leans into this particular quality of the director far too heavily. At times, the film seems to devote more time to huge stunts than to let the audiences understand the physics of the complicated world of Tenet. A prime example of this is the scene wherein the characters scheme to crash a commercial plane by driving it into a building. While the stunt is impressive, the scene is fast and loud enough that it is more a shock to the eardrums than anything that significantly moves the plot along.

7 Tenet’s Exorbitant Budget Is Unnecessary

Tenet Was Made For $205 Million

In order to create such a spectacle as portrayed in the movie, Tenet needs to rely on a massive budget. For Tenet, this comes in the form of an estimated $205 million budget [via Elizabeth Debicki’s character Kat and her husband and help establish the relationship between Kat and the Protagonist.

Here, the massive budget that Tenet is awarded arguably becomes a disservice to the sequence, as the extravagant boats distract from the character dynamics at heart.

For the character relationships, this could have been a more understated moment to unveil the friction and build up the character dynamics. Instead, Nolan chooses a huge action scene that is not necessary for the plot. Here, the massive budget that Tenet is awarded arguably becomes a disservice to the sequence, as the extravagant boats distract from the character dynamics at heart. Nolan has said more recently that he is only interested in making large-scale films, but with those high budgets comes risk and responsibility that, in this case, isn't used wisely.

6 The Play With Time Is Not As Tight As It May Seem

Tenet Is Based On Shoddy Science

Perhaps Tenet’s most innately appealing element is its play with time. Time is a trademark Nolan theme, and in the world of Tenet, the directionality of time becomes vitally important. Bullets can move backwards and car chases can go in multiple directions. ittedly, Tenet’s inversions and reverse time travel lead to the film’s most impressive and climactic moment, wherein two teams fight each other while moving in opposite directions.

While Tenet does create a visual marvel surrounding the use of time, it overall hinges on science that is widely agreed to not exist. This includes reverse entropy, a concept to which a lot of time is dedicated throughout the film. While Tenet is a science-fiction movie, the more one scrutinizes it, the more it becomes clear the extent to which the film leans into the “fiction” element of things. In this regard, Tenet does not stand up even nearly as well as Nolan’s other time-centric works such as Interstellar or Dunkirk.

5 Christopher Nolan Misuses Fantastic Actors

Robert Pattinson Is Too Fantastic To Waste

Nolan’s work has led to some all-time great film performances. This includes Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight, as well as Guy Pearce’s amnesia-riddled Leonard in Memento. Tenet is not one such film, for it relies much more heavily on action than devoting time to bringing out great performances. Any character beats are typically cut away from too quickly to be enjoyed, leaving little room to appreciate the actors at the core of the film.

This is a huge missed opportunity for Nolan, as he equipped himself with a talented cast for Tenet. This most notably includes Robert Pattinson, a former Twilight star who has turned into an indie darling through acting in acclaimed works such as Good Time and High Life. Debicki also had huge potential to be better used in Tenet, as she is a talented actor who has been twice nominated for an Emmy in the TV show The Crown. Instead, Nolan once again values spectacle, quashing what could have been fantastic performances.

4 Tenet Over-Relies On John David Washington's Protagonist

John David Washington's Protagonist Is Boring In The Film

While Tenet underestimates the abilities of Pattinson and Debicki to carry the film, it over-relies on the central performance by John David Washington. The son of Hollywood legend Denzel Washington, the actor has been in several films, most notably Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman and Sam Levinson's Malcolm & Marie, where he co-starred with Zendaya. Unfortunately, Washington’s Protagonist is pretty plain and dimensionless in Tenet, and that's an issue since the film spends the bulk of its time following him.

Some of this may be intentional, as the nameless character is far more of a figurehead — a vessel for the plot to happen — than anything else. Given, however, that the Protagonist is positioned as the main action hero in the film, a lot of screen time is devoted to Washington. This emphasis hinges on a great performance, which, sadly, isn't delivered.

3 Tenet Highlights A Frustrating Christopher Nolan Technical Flaw

Tenet Has Frustrating Sound Mixing

While there are a number of story flaws present in Tenet, the film also carries with it one notable technical folly: bad sound mixing. The sound mix is always a controversial element of a Nolan film, as his work is often criticized for being ear-splittingly loud. Despite that, his work often gets awards for sound, as the musical compositions and sonic attempts are often magnificent. His last several works are all inundated with sound, including Dunkirk, Interstellar, and Oppenheimer.

Nolan and his team had the opportunity to do some really interesting things sonically to represent the movement of objects in reverse motion in Tenet, but any attempt at subtly is quashed by an oversaturated sound mix.

Tenet seems to be the most glaring example in recent Nolan years of a poor sound mix. ittedly, the film's dialogue could also have been better, but it would still be best if the viewers could actually hear the characters. Unfortunately, they cannot often be heard over all the noise going on within the movie. Nolan and his team had the opportunity to do some really interesting things sonically to represent the movement of objects in reverse motion in Tenet, but any attempt at subtly is quashed by an oversaturated sound mix.

2 Tenet Ignores Its Women

Kat Is A Weak Female Character

Another main character-based flaw in Tenet is that it does not do justice to its female characters. Kat is the female lead in Tenet, but instead of receiving her own bold action plot, she is relegated to the background, and her character arc is too often explored through the lens of men. Though she is self-driven by these goals, they are also only loosely connected to the plight of Neil and the Protagonist. This ultimately relies on the conventional portrayals of women in Hollywood.

In the wake of Oppenheimer, Tenet’s grappling with Kat, and overall refusal to create a dynamic female character, is even more troubling. It is easy to take issue with Oppenheimer’s portrayal of women as well, including Kitty’s lack of autonomy and the distillation of Jean Tatlock into a character who spends too many years pining after Oppenheimer. With Oppenheimer and Tenet being back-to-back Nolan releases, the director’s mistreatment of female characters is rounding out to be a frustrating trend.

1 Tenet Is One Of Christopher Nolan’s Weakest Movies

Christopher Nolan Missed With Tenet

Overall, all these factors build to perhaps the harshest reality upon rewatching and reflecting on Tenet: the film is one of Nolan's weakest works thus. It has all the threads of a great Nolan film — the play with time, the great cast, strong potential for action — but ends up executing said elements so poorly that it becomes a mess. While some die-hard Nolan fans can make excuses for the film, objective viewers can recognize the massive shortcomings that led to the film becoming a disappointment.

Detailed above, said flaws are a lot of what led to Tenet being Nolan’s most divisive work yet. In the years since Tenet’s release, there has been talk of the potential for Tenet 2. While making another franchise out of any Nolan film would be exciting, reflections upon Tenet make it seem more and more like Tenet 2 would be a bad idea. Perhaps Nolan could partially rescue Tenet by making a better sequel, but given the response to the project, it might be better for him to just take on a new narrative.