Tenet

Tenet is a 2020 science fiction action thriller directed and written by Christopher Nolan, who also produced with his wife Emma Thomas. A co-production between the United Kingdom and the United States, it stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh. The film follows a former CIA agent who learns how to manipulate the flow of time to prevent an attack from the future that threatens to annihilate the present world. Nolan continued his relationship with Warner Bros. and his production company Syncopy for the film's production and distribution. It is the 923th installment in the theatrical Disney Movieverse canon (also the 653th Warner Bros. feature film)
Nolan took over five years to write the screenplay after deliberating about Tenet's central ideas for over a decade. Pre-production began in late 2018, casting took place in March 2019, and principal photography lasted six months, from May to November, in Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shot on 65 mm film and IMAX. After being delayed three times because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tenet was released in the United Kingdom on August 26, 2020, and in the United States on September 3, 2020, in IMAX, 35 mm, and 70 mm.
It was the first Hollywood tent-pople to open in theatres during the pandemic and grossed $365 million worldwide on a $200 million budget, making it the fifth highest-grossing film in the 2020s but also a box office failure. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its ambition, direction, musical score, VFX, action sequences, and cast performances (particularly Washington, Debicki, and Pattinson), but received criticism directed towards its sound mixing. It was nominated for two awards at the 93rd Academy Awards, winning Best Visual Effects, and received numerous other accolades.
==Plot==
An unnamed CIA agent, the "Protagonist", participates in an undercover operation at a Kyiv opera house. He is aided by a masked soldier with a distinctive trinket, who appears to "un-fire" a bullet through a hostile gunman. After rescuing an exposed spy and seizing a strange artifact, the Protagonist is captured by Russian mercenaries. He endures torture via tooth pulling before consuming a cyanide pill. He awakens to learn the pill was a test of his loyalty; his team has been killed and the artifact lost.
The Protagonist learns that he is now employed by a secret organization called Tenet, whose mission involves the human race's survival. He is directed to Barbara, a scientist studying bullets with "inverted" entropy which allows them to move backwards through time. She believes they are manufactured in the future, and there exists a weapon that can wipe out the past.
The Protagonist traces the bullet cartridges to Mumbai-based arms dealer Priya Singh. Assisted by a local contact named Neil, he confronts Priya, who turns out to be a member of Tenet. Her cartridges were purchased and inverted by Andrei Sator, a Russian oligarch originating from Stalsk-12, a former Soviet closed city, and who can apparently communicate with the future.
The Protagonist approaches Sator's estranged wife Kat, an art appraiser who unknowingly sold Sator a forged Goya drawing. Kat reveals that Sator uses the drawing to keep her under his control. To enlist Kat's help, the Protagonist plots to steal the drawing from Freeport, a facility within Oslo Airport. Inside Freeport, they find a machine (later referred to as a "Turnstile") from which two masked men emerge; the inverted one attacks the Protagonist, while Neil chases after the normal one, whom he manages to unmask. Neil prevents the Protagonist from killing the inverted man, adding that he "took care" of the other one. Priya explains that the Turnstile is developed in the future and can invert the entropy of objects and people, and that the two masked men were the same person.
In the Amalfi Coast, believing the drawing was destroyed, Kat introduces the Protagonist to Sator, only to learn later that the drawing is still intact. The three go boating and Kat attempts to drown Sator, but the Protagonist saves him. Posing as a freelancer, he offers to help Sator retrieve a case of Plutonium-241.
In Tallinn, the Protagonist and Neil ambush an armoured convoy and steal the "Plutonium," which is actually the artifact lost in the botched Kyiv opera house siege. His escape is compromised by two vehicles driven by inverted individuals, one of which is Sator, who holds Kat hostage. The Protagonist gives Sator an empty case. Sator retreats, leaving Kat in the speeding vehicle. After saving her, the Protagonist is captured and taken to Sator's warehouse containing another Turnstile. In a confusing interrogation, an inverted Sator (who shoots Kat with an inverted round) and a normal one demand the location of the artifact, about which the Protagonist lies. Just then, a team of Tenet operatives led by Ives arrive in an ambush and comes to the Protagonist's aid while Sator escapes.
The Protagonist, Neil, Ives and his operatives take the mortally wounded Kat through Sator's Turnstile to invert her whole self, reversing the effect of the round. He returns to the ambush site and chases after Sator. His vehicle is overturned and Sator sets it on fire. He is saved by Ives' team again. Neil reveals that he has secretly been a member of Tenet from the beginning. They travel back to Freeport a week earlier. There, the Protagonist fights his past self before reaching the Turnstile and un-inverts himself. Neil takes Kat through the Turnstile which un-inverts both of them.
Priya explains that the artifacts are parts of an "Algorithm" capable of catastrophically inverting the entire world. Future humans had been using Sator to assemble it. Priya plans for Sator to gather all nine parts of the algorithm scattered across nine different countries with nuclear weapons in one place, which he now does. Kat reveals that Sator is dying from pancreatic cancer, and they deduce he will trigger the algorithm with a dead man's switch, believing that the world should die with him. Kat believes Sator will kill himself during their vacation in Vietnam when they were last happy together. The Protagonist, Neil, Kat, and the Tenet forces invert back to that day so Kat can delay Sator's death while Tenet secures the algorithm.
Tenet tracks the assembled algorithm to Stalsk-12, located in Northern Siberia. They commence a "temporal pincer movement"; red team troops move forward in time, while the blue team troops move inverted. In Vietnam, Kat surreptitiously boards Sator's yacht when her earlier self goes ashore with her son. In Stalsk-12, the Protagonist and Ives are prevented from reaching the algorithm by a locked gate; an inverted masked corpse with a red trinket on its backpack springs to life, saves the Protagonist from a gunshot, and unlocks the gate. Kat, unable to let Sator die believing he succeeded, prematurely kills him just as the Protagonist and Ives secure the algorithm. Kat dives from the yacht's deck, witnessed by her earlier self.
The Protagonist, Neil, and Ives break up the algorithm's components and part ways. The Protagonist notices a red trinket on Neil's rucksack. Neil reveals that he was recruited by the Protagonist years earlier, and this mission is the end of a long friendship. In London, Priya attempts to have Kat assassinated, but is killed by the Protagonist, who has realised that he is the future mastermind behind Tenet.
==Cast==
* John David Washington as the "Protagonist", a CIA operative, and later revealed as the founder of Tenet
* Robert Pattinson as Neil, the Protagonist's handler
* Elizabeth Debicki as Katherine "Kat" Barton, niece of Sir Fredrick Barton, art appraiser and Sator's estranged wife
* Dimple Kapadia as Priya Singh, an Indian arms trafficker
* Michael Caine as Sir Michael Crosby, a British intelligence officer, and a contact of Priya Singh.
* Kenneth Branagh as Andrei Sator, a British-domiciled Russian oligarch from the fictional Soviet-era closed city of Stalsk-12, who is communicating with the future
* Martin Donovan as Fay, the Protagonist's CIA boss
* Fiona Dourif as Wheeler, leader of the Tenet Blue Team
* Yuri Kolokolnikov as Volkov, Sator's bodyguard
* Himesh Patel as Mahir, a fixer hired by Neil
* Clémence Poésy as Barbara, a Tenet scientist
* Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Ives, a Tenet military commander who rescues the Protagonist, Neil and Kat in Tallinn
Also appearing are Jefferson Hall, the Well Dressed Man, who the Protagonist tries to rescue (with the package) at the Kyiv opera house; Andrew Howard as [Kyiv] Driver, who sabotages the CIA's Kyiv operation and tortures the Protagonist; Wes Chatham as SWAT 3, a member of the Protagonist's covert CIA team in Kyiv; Denzil Smith as Sanjay Singh, Priya's husband; Jeremy Theobald as the steward at Sir Michael Crosby's club; Laurie Shepherd as Max, Kat and Sator's only son; and Jack Cutmore-Scott as Klaus, an employee at Sator's Rotas freeport in Oslo.
==Production==
===Pre-production===
Writer and director Christopher Nolan conceived the ideas behind Tenet over the course of twenty years, but began working on the script in 2014. The title is a palindrome, reading the same backwards as forwards. Nolan made a conscious effort to abstain from any influence of the spy genre other than his own memory. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) inspired the screenwriting. Theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who worked with Nolan on Interstellar (2014), was consulted on the subjects of time and quantum physics. Pre-production lasted from late 2018 until early 2019, leaving department heads five months to prepare. Special effects supervisor Scott R. Fisher watched World War II movies and documentaries to find reference points for realism. Production designer Nathan Crowley requested Hamilton Watch Company to manufacture around thirty military wristwatches, each analog with a digital countdown. Nolan and Crowley traveled to scout for locations in February and April 2019. Disappointed with the Royal Swedish Opera as a potential spot for the Kyiv Opera House, Crowley switched it to the Linnahall, which fit his affinity for Brutalist architecture. Shree Vardhan Tower was chosen instead of Antilia, as the latter had too high security; the National Liberal Club took the place of Sotheby's, whose management refused to participate; and they arrived at Cannon Hall once Thornhill Primary School in Islington and Channing School had been deemed unsatisfactory. Prop prototypes were often 3D printed. Costume designer Jeffrey Kurland and his team cut and stitched the clothing in the United States, manufacturing them for the main cast and thousands more.
===Casting===
John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, and Elizabeth Debicki were cast in March 2019. Washington, Pattinson, and Debicki were each only permitted to read the screenplay while locked in a room. Nolan chose Washington for his performance in BlacKkKlansman (2018). Washington kept diaries in which he would expand the Protagonist's backstory. Seeing Pattinson in Good Time (2017) made a considerable impression on producer Emma Thomas. Pattinson based his character's mannerisms on those of author Christopher Hitchens. While Kat was originally going to be an older woman, Debicki's appearance in Widows (2018) convinced the filmmakers otherwise. The casting of Dimple Kapadia, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Clémence Poésy, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh was announced as filming started. Kapadia's screen test was put together by director Homi Adajania while working on his 2020 film Angrezi Medium. Poésy was pregnant with her second child at the time, something Thomas opted to keep visible. Caine was merely given his pages for one day of work. Branagh rescheduled production on his own directorial venture Death on the Nile (2020) to do the part, claiming to have studied the manuscript more times than any other in his career. Himesh Patel joined in August. Martin Donovan was revealed in the first trailer. Fiona Dourif and Yuri Kolokolnikov were included later on. Dourif's role Wheeler is a reference to theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler.
===Filming===
Principal photography, involving a crew of 250 people, began in May 2019 on a soundstage in Los Angeles and took place in seven countries—Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, and United States. Filming in Estonia happened in June and July, with the Linnahall, Pärnu Highway, and adjacent streets closed to facilitate it. Kumu Art Museum doubled as the fictional "Oslo freeport". Barbara's office was built in a former law court, the Tallinn Freeport exterior was at the city docks, and a room at the Hilton Tallinn Park Hotel was also utilized. Mayor Mihhail Kõlvart expressed concerns about potential disruptions as the shooting schedule required that the arterial Laagna Road be closed for one month. A compromise was eventually reached, involving temporary road closures and detours. Scenes were shot on the Amalfi Coast (Italy), the Solent, at the Reform Club, Locanda Locatelli, and Cannon Hall (England) from July to August, on the roof of the Oslo Opera House, at The Thief hotel (Norway), and in Rødbyhavn at Nysted Wind Farm (Denmark) in early September. A five-day shoot occurred later that month in Mumbai, specifically Breach Candy Hospital, Cafe Mondegar, Colaba Causeway, Colaba Market, Gateway of India, Grant Road, Royal Bombay Yacht Club, and the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. A restaurant named "Chaand" was erected near the hotel, but never used, serving only as an alternative. Forty boats were positioned at the Gateway of India, where the crew rescued a man who had attempted suicide. They proceeded to Los Angeles soon after. Hawthorne Plaza Shopping Center functioned as the interior set of an icebreaker and a shipping container. The Victorville Airport was disguised as Oslo, with more than ninety extras involved. Instead of using miniatures and visual effects (VFX) for the plane crash sequence, Nolan determined that purchasing a Boeing 747 proved more cost effective. October saw them in Eagle Mountain, where an abandoned town had been constructed and hundreds were clothed in military camouflage uniforms. Over thirty buildings were prefabricated in Los Angeles and shipped to the site. Four Boeing CH-47 Chinooks were loaned out for four days. Outside shots of a tunnel were done in the desert, while the insides of the Hypocenter were fashioned on a soundstage. Tenet wrapped on November 12, after ninety-six days.
Director of photography Hoyte van Hoytema employed a combination of 70 mm film and IMAX, prioritizing Panavision lenses that would best accommodate lower light. Segments that concerned time inversion were captured both in backward and forward mobility and speech. To ensure proficiency in handling firearms, Washington and Pattinson attended the Taran Tactical firing range in Simi Valley. They also did some of their own stunts. Over one hundred watercraft were recruited, together with catamarans, the megayacht Planet Nine (onto which an Mi-8 helicopter would land), icebreakers, speed- and fishing boats, and a cargo tanker. The windfarm vessel Iceni Revenge was brought through Denmark, Estonia, and Italy for all three months.
===Post-production===
Ludwig Göransson was chosen as the composer as Nolan's frequent collaborator Hans Zimmer had committed himself to the 2021 film Dune. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Göransson recorded musicians at their homes. Researching retrograde composition caused him to generate melodies that would sound the same forward and backward. He experimented with distorted industrial noise and, to represent Sator's irradiated breathing, asked Nolan to tape his own in studio. Göransson produced ten to fifteen minutes of music each week. The first scoring session was held in November 2019, continuing into early 2020. The Tenet soundtrack contains "The Plan," a song by Travis Scott. Jennifer Lame replaced Nolan's long-time editor Lee Smith, who was occupied with 2019's 1917. Lame was tasked with unsupervised editing during the principal photography and would look at dailies. DNEG created about 280 VFX shots. Sound designer Richard King sent a team to Eagle Mountain to record the Chinooks and Mi-8, and to Southampton for the F50 catamarans. Others were hired for the aural atmosphere of Oslo, Mumbai, and Tallinn. King got the audio of both live and blank automatic weapon rounds at a gun range in San Francisquito Canyon and rented a runway to test how the vehicles sounded.
===Marketing===
In August 2019, Warner Bros. Pictures debuted a forty-second teaser ahead of Hobbs & Shaw previews. It was attached to Indian showings of Joker in October. The first trailer was published online in December, when a cinema-exclusive prologue played in certain IMAX theaters before Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. The prologue was introduced during Indian IMAX screenings of Birds of Prey in February 2020. A TV spot appeared that May, promoted in the video game Fortnite. The logo, stylized by Nolan as TENƎꓕ, was altered for this trailer due to its similarity with that of a bicycle components manufacturer. The final trailer, out in August, featured Scott's single. An exclusive making-of video was uploaded on August 26.
== Release ==
=== Theatrical ===
Warner Bros. originally scheduled Tenet for a July 17, 2020, release in IMAX, 35 mm, and 70 mm film. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was delayed to July 31, and then August 12. The studio finally arranged for the film to be released in seventy countries, with a run time of 150 minutes, on August 26, following preview screenings in Australia and South Korea on August 22 and 23. The film opened in select cities in the United States on September 3, gradually expanding in the ensuing weeks. On September 4, it was released in China. Tenet was the first Hollywood tent-pole to launch in theaters following their prolonged shutdown. The lack of available movies afforded it more screens per multiplex than would otherwise have been possible.
On March 2, 2021, Warner Bros. announced that, in light of the New York state government allowing film theaters in New York City to re-open on Friday, March 5, following a nearly year-long shutdown (causing theaters in the city to miss out on the film's initial theatrical run), they would be re-releasing Tenet at select theaters in the city.
In the Philippines, the film was released on HBO Go streaming platform on June 12, 2021, following the year-long indefinite closure of theaters in the country in response of a potential COVID-19 surge, becoming the last major Asian country to do so.
=== Home media ===
The film was released on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD, and digital download on December 15, 2020. It was added to HBO Max on May 1, 2021.
===Soundtrack===
Ludwig Göransson was chosen to compose the film's music after Nolan's frequent collaborator and first choice, Hans Zimmer, turned down the offer in favor of the 2021 film Dune. Researching retrograde composition led Göransson to generate melodies that would sound the same forward and backward. He experimented with distorted industrial noise and, to represent Sator's irradiated breathing, asked Nolan to tape his own breath in a studio. Göransson produced ten to fifteen minutes of music each week. The first scoring session was held in November 2019, and sessions continued into early 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Göransson recorded musicians at their homes. The Tenet soundtrack contains "The Plan", a song by Travis Scott, which plays over the film's closing credits.
==Reception==
===Box office===
As of October 18, 2020, Tenet has grossed $50.6 million in the United States and Canada, and $283.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $334 million. With a production budget of $200 million, Tenet is Nolan's most expensive original project. IndieWire speculated that the marketing could push the final sum to $300–350 million, though analysts predicted lower advertising costs than usual, owing to inexpensive live sports ads. The Observer estimated it would need to make $450–500 million in order to break even; in October 2020, Variety expected the film to "lose millions" during its theatrical run. Nolan was reported to receive twenty percent of the first-dollar gross.
According to industry tracking, Tenet was projected to take $25–30 million internationally over its first five days. In South Korea, pre-sale tickets sold out all IMAX screenings and weekend previews totaled $717,000 from 590 venues. Another four days there yielded $4.13 million from about 2,200 screens, bringing the cume to $5.1 million by the end of the week. The film debuted to $53 million in forty-one countries, grossing $7.1 million in the United Kingdom, $6.7 million in France, and $4.2 million in Germany. Tenet made $58.1 million in its second weekend, with China ($30 million from first showings), the U.K. ($13.1 million), France ($10.7 million), Germany ($8.7 million), and South Korea ($8.2 million) as its largest markets. Its third weekend garnered $30.6 million, comprising $16.4 million from the U.K., $13.2 million from France, $11.4 million from Germany, $10.3 million from South Korea, and $10.2 million from China. Two weeks in Japan accumulated $11.4 million.
With 65% of the American and Canadian theaters operating at 25–40% capacity, the first eleven days acquired $20.2 million from 2,810 theaters; $2.5 million in Canada, $12 million in the U.S., and the rest from previews. The second, third, and fourth weekends added $6.7 million, $4.7 million, and $3.4 million, respectively. Tenet remained atop the box office in its fifth weekend with $2.7 million, before ceding to The War with Grandpa in its sixth weekend.
===Critical response===
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Tenet holds an approval rating of 71% based on 272 reviews, with an average rating of 6.93/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "A visually dazzling puzzle for film lovers to unlock, Tenet serves up all the cerebral spectacle audiences expect from a Christopher Nolan production." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 69 out of 100 based on 47 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported 80% of filmgoers gave it a positive score, with 65% saying they would recommend it.
Guy Lodge of Variety described Tenet as a "grandly entertaining, time-slipping spectacle." The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw felt it was both "madly preposterous" and "amazing cinema". Kevin Maher of The Times awarded the film a full five stars, deeming it "a delightfully convoluted masterpiece." Robbie Collin of The Telegraph likened it to Nolan's Inception and praised the "depth, subtlety and wit of Pattinson and Debicki's performances." In his review for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers praised the film for being "pure, ravishing cinema." A review for The Dispatch called Tenet "the perfect movie to mark the return of theaters because it captures so much of what makes the medium of cinema great." James Berardinelli noted that, "[Tenet] may be the most challenging of Nolan's films to date when it comes to wrapping one's mind around the concepts forming the narrative's foundation: backwards-moving entropy, non-linear thinking, temporal paradoxes ... The film contains some of Nolan's most ambitious action sequences to-date but one wonders whether the plot density—a not inconsiderable obstacle for some who prefer not to devote their undivided attention for ​2 1⁄2 hours—might prove to be problematic." Mark Daniell of the Toronto Sun gave the film four out of four stars, deeming it "the cinematic equivalent of a Rubik's Cube, presented in towering Imax and featuring a polished cast set amidst some of the world's most gorgeous locations." Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it ​3 1⁄2 out of 4 stars, and noted that the movie "reaches for cinematic greatness and, though it doesn't quite reach that lofty goal, it's the kind of film that reminds us of the magic of the moviegoing experience."
Jessica Kiang of The New York Times described it as Nolan's "time-bending" take on James Bond, praising the film's cinematography, score, editing, acting and "immaculately creaseless costumes", while also deeming it a "hugely expensive, blissfully empty spectacle". LA Weekly's Asher Luberto also highlighted the similarities between Tenet and the James Bond films, but also felt it was "a daring, surprising and entirely original piece of work, reverent in its spectacle and haunting in its mesmerizing, dreamlike form." Branagh's Andrei Sator was described by some critics as a stereotypical Russian villain. Christina Newland of New York noted that Sator is "played by a silly-accented Kenneth Branagh as a Bond-villain-esque Russian mastermind." Leslie Felperin of The Hollywood Reporter felt Washington was "dashing but a little dull," but remarked that Debicki's performance "adds a color to Nolan's palette, and [she] has persuasive chemistry with Branagh in their joint portrait of a violent, dysfunctional love-hate relationship." She further concluded that Tenet makes "for a chilly, cerebral film—easy to admire, especially since it's so rich in audacity and originality, but almost impossible to love, lacking as it is in a certain humanity."
Mike McCahill of IndieWire noted that it was "the summer's most keenly awaited event movie" but gave it a "C-" grade and called it "a humorless disappointment". Poor sound mixing on 35 mm movie film "often" rendered dialog inaudible, stated Brian Lloyd of Entertainment.ie; viewing the film on Digital Cinema Package files reduced the problem. Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune awarded the film 2 out of 4 stars, writing, "I wish Tenet exploited its own ideas more dynamically. Nolan's a prodigious talent. But no major director, I suppose, can avoid going sideways from time to time." New York Post's Johnny Oleksinski also gave it 2 out of 4 stars, calling it Nolan's most "confusing" work so far, but acknowledged being "swept up by Nolan's incomparable cinematic vision. He is one of the few directors working today who consistently churns out visually seismic, sophisticated action films".
==Gallery==
File:Tenet.jpg|The picture of Tenet.
File:Tenet with the cast.jpg|Tenet's picture with the cast.
File:Tenet's IMAX Banner.jpg|The IMAX banner of Tenet.
File:Tenet - Vertical Picture.jpg|Tenet - Horizontal Picture
File:Horizontal Tenet Wallpaper.jpg|The Horizontal Tenet Wallpaper.
==External links==
* The official website for Tenet
==References==
Category:2020 Films
Category:Domestic Films
Category:American Films
Category:Warner Bros. Pictures Films
Category:Syncopy Films
Category:Time Travel Films
Category:Action Films
Category:Films Impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic
Category:PG-13-Rated Films
Category:Disney Movieverse Films