Did the Protagonist Need a Backstory in Tenet?
By: Brett Seegmiller
Tags: Storytelling, Cinema, Film, Writing, Movies

Christopher Nolan’s more recent films have, in one way or another, been polarizing, to say the least. Whether it was the narratively messy The Dark Knight Rises, or the heavy-handed dialogue found in Interstellar, or the lack of character development in Dunkirk, there is no shortage of criticism that can be found being levied against Nolan films.

And yet, for how prevalent this is for Nolan’s work, the criticism and critiques never seem to stick, at least not in the same way that it has for the likes of M. Night Shyamalan; which effectively sunk his career and reputation in a big way.

The why behind Nolan’s success is truly fascinating. For while we can criticize his storytelling style all day long, we always find ourselves coming back for more.

Which brings us to Nolan’s latest polarizing project, Tenet.

Tenet is a fascinating character study — not of the protagonist, the, uh, Protagonist — but of Nolan himself. Tenet, probably more so than any other of Nolan’s recent projects gives us a glimpse into how he approaches his minimalistic storytelling process.

The protagonist, the Protagonist

Ironically, the most fascinating criticism about Tenet isn’t the preposterously crazy take on time travel, but about how the film presents its lead character, the protagonist who is purposefully known literally as the Protagonist.

Many have taken humorous jabs at Nolan for this seemingly on-the-nose creative self-indulgence. After all, on the surface, naming your protagonist the Protagonist seems like the sort of thing a film student would do in an attempt to be artistically edgy and unique, but is instead groan-inducing.

And while I’m not saying that Nolan couldn’t have nor shouldn’t have come up with a more appropriate naming convention, it makes me wonder, how much focus did Nolan plan on putting into Tenet’s main character in the first place?

After all, the Protagonist feels like a shell of a character. He seemingly doesn’t have a fleshed-out backstory, and his motivations are unclear at best. While defenders of Tenet have tried to explain away the Protagonist’s coldness and aloofness, you can’t deny that those elements definitely exist within the character.

Which I guess is kind of the point. At the end of the day, all you really need to know about the Protagonist is that he’s cold, efficient, and incredibly competent at his job. Only in very subtle instances do we see cracks in his exterior that hint at an underlying softness in his stoic shell.

So while the Protagonist doesn’t have genuine character development, he does have character.

Seeing a character react to their situation is character, whereas challenging the belief systems of a character is character development.

With the Protagonist, we see him react to plenty of unusual circumstances, but we never get a firm grasp of why he has chosen to face these challenges in the first place or how it makes him feel.

After all, you can’t have character development if the character doesn’t grow or shift their mindset in a meaningful way. And the problem with the Protagonist is that we have no idea what he believes.

But by naming the protagonist the Protagonist, Nolan effectively stripped the character down to its naked core.

In a way, Nolan naming the main character the Protagonist is simply his way of saying, ‘This story isn’t about the character. It’s about the story. Oh, and by the way, he’s the good guy, and he knows he’s the good guy.’

In the tech development industry, many teams have adopted the Lean methodology. Simply put, Lean is meant to help product teams focus on small, doable tasks while cutting out the fat of digital products. In this way, you focus on expanding the elements of your product that are essential.

In much the same way, Tenet seems like part of an extended experiment on Nolan’s part in a quest to find the most efficient way to tell overly complicated stories.

No matter whether you think the use of the title protagonist is fitting or inherently silly, you have to admire Nolan for creating such a complicated story in such a lean, efficient way.

Do Characters Need Backstory?

But all this got me thinking. Is the Protagonist a cold and aloof character simply because he has no backstory, or is there more to the story itself?

After all, the Protagonist is far from the first action hero that has no backstory. The first example that came to mind for me is one of my favorite heroes, Ethan Hunt, in the Mission Impossible franchise.

For as iconic of a character that he is, what do we really know about Ethan, exactly? The first film alludes to his upbringing in a small rural town and mentions his mother and Uncle Donald, but besides that, we know nothing about Ethan’s past. Was he in the military or CIA before joining the IMF? Does he have siblings? What did he have to overcome personally and professionally to get to be an IMF agent?

The fact is, we simply don’t know.

Funnily enough, Tom Cruise’s spy character in the criminally under-appreciated Knight and Day has more backstory than Ethan Hunt does in the Mission Impossible films.

And what about characters like Jason Bourne, which is a character who’s past is deliberately held back from the audience. (Except for Matt Damon’s last entry into the franchise, but we don’t talk about that.)

How is it that a character can be successful like Jason Bourne when the only things we know about him are the same things that the character knows about himself?

The answer is that in these cases, their past simply doesn’t matter. What matters is how the characters react and respond to obstacles in the moment.

In The Bourne Identity, we see Bourne struggle with his amnesia, even going so far as to lash out verbally due to his frustration. We also are able to get into his mind to see how he solves problems, such as when he’s escaping from the embassy.

With Ethan Hunt, we get emotionally invested with him as he deals with the turmoil of seeing his team murdered right in front of him in the original Mission Impossible film. We get to see the aftermath as he struggles with figuring out what to do next, while also dealing with emotional fatigue.

These are only a couple of examples that would seem to suggest that characters don’t need backstories for us as the audience to identify and empathize with them. Which raises the question, are backstories even necessary at all?

Depends On the Story

It’s been posited by some online commentators that backstories are unnecessary. I’ve heard arguments be made that you can watch The Dark Knight without having seen Batman Begins and still be able to understand and become engaged in Bruce Wayne’s story.

While this is true, it’s a fact that even though they’re in the same trilogy, The Dark Knight has a totally different story to tell than Batman Begins.

You can’t just simply take the storytelling style of the Dark Knight and make Batman Begins. It just wouldn’t work, and vice versa.

Including a backstory or not is completely predicated on the type of story you want to tell. Are you telling a tight, lean spy story that’s mostly focused on espionage and mind-games, or are you diving into a character study where the character’s depth is important to the story and the progression of the plot?

While The Dark Knight is, at its core, a crime thriller, Batman Begins is a character study about Bruce Wayne’s childhood trauma. Both are great stories in their own right, but they’re not equal because they’re not the same.

So no, backstories are not a tool to simply be thrown away. At the same time, not every story ever written needs one either.

Ultimately, it just depends.

Every type of story has pros and cons. With a character study like Batman Begins, you gain the ability for the audience to empathize and become emotionally invested in the hero’s journey, whereas with a crime thriller like The Dark Knight, you can place all your focus on the character’s actions and reactions.

What about Tenet?

I went to go see Tenet in theaters with a couple of my brothers, and afterward, while discussing the film, one of my brothers pointed out that in Tenet, it wasn’t the Protagonist’s lack of backstory that was the problem with his character, but that we didn’t get to see him respond in a human way to the obstacles he encounters.

With every new obstacle or piece of information he learns, he accepts everything in stride without ever reacting in a relatable way for the audience to empathize with.

For all intents and purposes, the Protagonist is effectively emotionless. David Washington does what he can with the character, and I quite liked him in the role, but his character almost felt more robotic than human, like an AI always trying to figure things out while not having any underlying emotions to connect with.

Yes, we get to see him making difficult decisions, but we don’t really get to see the effect that those decisions have on him as a person.

On top of that, the Protagonist only asks direct questions and doesn’t ask for elaboration. For someone who is experiencing a scientific anomaly, he seems numb for most of the runtime since nothing that happens in the course of the story seems to pique his curiosity in the slightest. In a way, the Protagonist feels more like he’s caught up in the current of the story and is just along for the ride as opposed to being an active participant in the plot.

Which, once again, might be kind of the point, but I won’t go into spoilers here.

Ultimately, with Christopher Nolan’s screenplay, the themes, concepts, and storytelling beats took precedence over the characterization of the characters.

Which, in a way, is logical and totally warranted. Tenet has so many complicated twists and turns that it’s hard to just keep up with what’s happening in the story. If Nolan had inserted deep characterization into the plot, it potentially could have just become too bloated to be engaging.

In essence, Nolan sacrificed characterization for the sake of the plot. Was that the right decision to make?

Well, not only does a story depend on the type of story that the storyteller intends to tell, but it also depends on what the audience expects of certain stories as well.

After Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, I was expecting Tenet to be more of a visual and audio spectacle more than a deep character study. In that sense, Tenet totally paid off for me, because while I didn’t become emotionally attached to the characters, I was fully engaged with the story.

So while I sympathize with people who saw Tenet and were disappointed at the lack of characterization — and I’ll readily admit that they’re definitely not wrong for thinking so — I’m not convinced that Christopher Nolan made the wrong decision to forego characterization for the sake of the story.

While I think a more nuanced director like Doug Liman could have turned Tenet’s protagonist into a more relatable character — which probably would have translated into a better movie overall — I’m also simultaneously amazed at the sheer scope and visceral energy of Tenet’s story and filmmaking.

Tenet is one of those movies that keeps you thinking about it for days afterward.

Conclusion

While Tenet told its story in a lean and satisfactory way, it was missing a human element to ground the story on an emotional level.

What this boils down to is that Tenet is one of Christopher Nolan’s lesser movies, but also one of his most fascinating. Tenet tells a story that doesn’t resonate with me emotionally, but the plot keeps the analytical side of my mind constantly engaged.

Much like Ad Astra, that was so cold and emotionless as to render the audience numb, Tenet ultimately was a lesser film because it only hooked me intellectually, not emotionally.

In general, the best films are able to do both, but that doesn’t mean that Tenet was a mistake.

In short, Nolan knew the story he wanted to tell, and he did it in the most efficient way possible.

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