Every day, WordPress emails me one writing prompt. Today’s writing prompt is:
Critique a Piece of Work
Can we all agree Tenet is not a supernatural, mind-bending thriller but instead a spy movie? I think Christopher Nolan missed that memo in the making of his latest film. While Nolan does a fantastic job explaining how the inverted objects and time paradoxes work, the actual plot of the movie is ten times more confusing. This results in the first half of the film sludging through whistlestop cameos, heavy exposition dumps, and perplexing motivations. While the long introduction was probably needed to plant the seeds for the second half of the film, everyone acts so blase it’s hard to care about anything. Even when the Protagonist tampers with the Inverted Objects, he is barely phased or feigns the slightest amount of interest.
But once the film gets into the Invertedness – the Tenet-esqe qualities, if you will – the film blossoms. Smart little details reward the keen-eyed, and a few jaw-dropping moments gave me goosebumps. The fight scenes are tense, and the stakes become much clearer, although parts of what the hell is going on remain obstinately undecipherable. Speaking of undecipherable, was it just me, or could no one else hear what anyone else was saying? I’m not too fond of the prospect that I’m going deaf at the ripe old age of 24.
The acting was fine, although Robert Patterson is fabulous and, in my opinion, steals the show. He’s been killing it with indies like The Lighthouse, and I’m hyped as anything to see him as our new Batman.
Tenet, however, feels like it’s missing something. Nolan needed an overhaul of the plot to make Tenet a smash-hit. There is genius and a suave James-Bond-esqe style hiding in this flick, but the structure needed a good feather-dusting to really let those elements shine.
[9 minutes]
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