Tenet Thought Experiment: Everything Wrong with Nolan's Time Travel

This is a continuation of my analysis of Christopher Nolan's latest movie Tenet, which I found loathsome (slight exaggeration––it had some cool things) and reflective of SO much of the bad filmmaking (and film culture) we find ourselves embracing today. Here I look at specifically the time travel, and how for me it was one of the most irritating of the film's many flaws. As the linchpin idea of the story, consistency with the time travel was vital and I found it completely lacking.

Hopefully I can fix it all up next time I get fast internet; but for now I thought I might as well move forwards with the content I do have prepared!

Enjoy!

[earapp]

Hearing you talk about the time travel in Tenet reminded me just how annoying and confusing it was. I think my brain came to the same paradoxical conclusions you did while watching the film, although I definitely didn't venture down the thought experiment rabbit hole as far as you, or with as good of understanding. I think what was so frustrating about Tenet is that it framed its time travel as totally legitimate. It had the guise of being completely fool proof physics. Movies like The Prisoner of Azkaban, Arrival, and The Butterfly Effect all had equally problematic time travel, but I never got distracted by it. Probably because the time travel elements, while crucial to the story, are far from the main focus. I am not saying all of those are amazing films, just that the time travel elements in these films never got in their own way.

Let me see if I understand your thought experiment. If a man traveling backwards met a man traveling forwards, and the man traveling backwards killed the man traveling forwards, then the man traveling forwards would continue on being dead in the future of his forwards reality. However, the man traveling backwards would be going further into the past of forwards man's forwards reality, where he is still very much alive. Does that mean it is impossible for the backwards man to ever kill the forwards man in his own backwards reality. Let's say he does kill the forwards man. How would he ever be able to confront him in the first place, since the forwards man would be dead in the backwards man's reality during the conflict leading up to his death.

This is total insanity. Christopher Nolan really bit off more than he could chew with this one. I have a feeling this film was created after he learned about tachyons and thought they were neat. Thank you for helping me grasp why the time travel in Tenet aggravated me so much.

[andrewkidder]

Neil mentions that inverted objects in regular environments are eventually taken over by the surrounding entropy. If an inverted bullet was embedded in a wall it would continue to exist into the past until the entropy takes over. It reverts itself and inhabits the same space as itself from the future. They annihilate each other which means the bullet never exists in its final resting place but it does cause a lot of damage to get there. From a normal timeline perspective the wall would become more and more damaged (from reverse damage slowing down and reverting. Like the glass cracks in the first turnstile scene) until a bullet materializes inside the damage (from annihilating itself in reverse) is pulled into a gun and eventually disappears in a turnstile with its’ forward time self.

[LB]

4:48 i agree that the very concept of tenet is paradoxical (same with any form of backwards time travel that doesn't sidestep the paradox issue with branching multiverses), but what you have presented here with an inverted guy killing a dead guy isn't a paradox.

the movie takes the view that there is one single, consistent, timeline. so if an inverted guy killed a non-inverted guy, he would first encounter the non-inverted guy's corpse, and the corpse would rise from the dead. the inverted guy then either stabs or shoots the non-inverted guy, but from inverted guy's perspective, the non-inverted guy is injured before the shooting/stabbing, and is completely fine after the shooting/stabbing.

we see this happening in the movie- an inverted sator shoots a non-inverted kat. from the inverted sator's perspective, kat is injured before he shoots her, and she is fine afterwards.

if the two guys continue to fight, then it would not be possible for the inverted guy to kill the non-inverted guy a second time. again, this is because the movie has a single, self-consistent timeline. so during the fight, inverted guy would find it impossible to kill the non-inverted guy.

[sidewaysfcs]

The impossible situations you are describing are in fact impossible, which is why they never take places in the movie.

In fact, despite the female researchers in the 1st act saying that people still have free will, the movie clearly shows that there isnt any free will in this framework, since the characters cannot actually make decisions that would overrite the future's perspective on the events, so for example the past Protagonist cannot kill the future Protagonist, he simply cannot physically make that decision and carry it out, he can try and he attempts in the movie to defend himself, but he cannot actually kill him since that would cause a paradox.

Now, for the Neil death scene, there is no paradox here either, just because Volkov doesn't know about the dead body on the ground doesn't affect this, you asking "but if what if he DID know and chose not to even aim the gun at him?" Well he can't, he doesn't have any free will to do that, Volkov must kill Neil in reverse, and Neil must die, this is simply how it has to happen.

Whatever happens, happens. This is actually the tenet of the movie that suspends our laws of physics, the whole idea of a movie si to suspend reality and enjoy an alternate view of a different kind of reality.

[Theyungcity]

Are you going to make a video explaining how all of the impossible super powers in all superhero movies are indeed impossible? ...

[alecavidac]

i think the problem is that you’re overthinking it and creating “what if” scenarios when Tenet’s universe is based off one timeline where whatever happens happened which means whatever happens was determined already since the past present and future are one. what if scenarios cannot be brought in to critique the film.

[NathanWienand]

Niel said it what has happened, happened. Everything you see is in this movie is the only reality that ever was... There are no multiple futures and pasts... One timeline...

[thenorup]

"Don't try to understand it, feel it"
-Instruction manual for Tenet

[patinho]

The movie doesn’t ignore these problems.
What happens has to be pre-destination paradox. Which IS the structure of the story.
The impossible stories you tell are exactly that.. impossible to happen.

[prariedogg]

Your initial concern is explained through the "wind of entropy". Inverted objects are always swimming "upstream". The idea is that eventually inversion cancels out and the object "annihilates". The other idea of the movie is that you can't do something that messes up the order of time. Free will is subject to whoever has the upper hand in a "temporal pincer". Since the protagonist is "ahead" of everyone else, he has set up the pieces to fall the way he wants, and everyone's "will" is subject to his.

[udbhav]

For your paradox, I think this might help...

POV of the Normal Guy: He finds the inverted guy and starts fighting. Inverted guy then kills him and that's it. Normal Guy's body lies there.

POV of Inverted Guy: He sees a dead body which comes to life and attacks him. The normal guy now fights him and the inverted guy flees away in the end.

Also, let's say the inverted guy is the normal guy after he goes the through turnstile. If the normal guy is making it through the turnstile, it means his inverted self will not be able to kill him. But if the normal guy kills his inverted self, then the normal guy is going to die when he goes through the turnstile and comes across his past self.

Regd. Neil's death, the goon must have used the rope to go down the tunnel instead of the gate. He saw a dead body there with a gun. For safety he took the gun (which is inverted too). He doesn't know that the dead body is inverted so while trying to fire Protagonist with the inverted gun, he unfires the bullet from Neil's face bringing him back to life.

[TR]

I think "what's happened, happened" solves pretty much all your critiques

[gutzz]

You are missing the point. Nothing else ‘could’ have happened. This is because it is established the everything that plays out in the film is a closed loop meaning that everything that always happens is always supposed to happen and cannot be changed. One example of this is when future Kat jumps off the boat after killing sator making past kat think that sator was cheating on her which is what the kat that killed sator also thought before realising she was the woman who dived off the boat. Nothing can be changed. All the inversion and action and events plays out the same and can never be changed because again it’s all a closed loop.

[MoleyMoleo]

At ~8:00 you suggest Neil could shoot the goon.

Neil knows he can't hit the goon. Any shot he fires will/did miss, because the goon is not already dead from his gunshot when he arrives.

If Neil can kill the goon, then the goon's body would be already dead with his bullet in him, and he'd pull the bullet through his dead body and revive him in order to be the one to cause his death.

Inverted and uninverted people find it hard to shoot each other, because it is very easy to miss someone who you have to shoot before you see them die!

You later note that shooting dead inverted warriors to bring them to life is a bad idea. But it is not! It is the only way to make them die! If you don't do that, then they survive the battle and will have already made things worse for your team (unless you have you're own inverted Warriors who can simply shoot at them and aim normally).

If you don't "revive" inverted enemies, then that means they avoided death. Every inverted enemy you see stand up and run away is a blessing, because it means they *did* die, and hence cannot fight another day, nor contribute more to the (past) of the current fight.

[brown]

I think you're completely missing the point. Saying it's impossible is no different then saying anything we think of as impossible, is impossible. So comparing it as worse then other time travel movies makes no sense, if anything this movie handles time travel better then any other movie before it. Just because you can't wrap your head around it as easily as every other time travel movies you've seen, doesn't mean it's done a worse take then other time travel movies before it. Every other time travel movie to date has seemed just as, if not far more impossible then Tenet was. Tenet wraps everything up in a neat package at the end - unlike many other time travel movies - no matter how impossible it seems.

So basically every time you feel like something doesn't make sense because you're imagining how it could have played out differently, the answer is - the outcome simply would have turned out differently in the movie so that everything inverted that interacted with something that wasn't inverted - would have happened in a different way to fit whatever scenario you're imagining. So every scenario you're picturing with Neil's death scene, had it happened in those ways, Neil's body simply wouldn't have ever been there dead in the first place when they arrived and the reverse death never happens. If you can get your hands on a copy of the movie that you can watch and rewind at will when something seems confusing, and try to get the full picture of how everything plays out, you'll see that everything is consistent. As valid as the questions about the people interacting with the inverted objects while the protagonist is training are - the easiest way to explain things being conveniently in place for him are open to interpretation, and might seem far fetched - but since we know the protagonists future self will be spending a lot of time setting up his past from his future, we can insert any number of explanations for that. Since we know he will be spending a number of years with Neil as Neil Travels from his past to his future death in the present, it makes sense that they would just leave those details to imagination.

The way you have to picture Neil's life is like this: Neil's dead body has slowly been coming together, making it's way to the spot where he died since the begging of time - assuming no one decided to intercept his dead body and turn it forward - if we can suspend our disbelief for the movie then the atoms that make up Neil will slowly come together with their reversed entropy until his dead body is eventually at the spot where he's shot in reverse, comes to life and picks the lock. The only other possibility for how his dead body made its way there would be if the Tenet team interfered with the past - making sure his dead body ends up in that spot - in the event that something else in the past could have interfered with his body ending up there. It's another detail that makes sense to leave open to interpretation. Finding out the movies finale is just the beginning of one big temporal pincer for the protagonist is a brilliant way to end it and tie everything together. One way or another Neil's dead body will end up in that spot, regardless of how we want to imagine it got there. Ironically enough, time is a one way street in this movie - inverted or not - things always played out that way.

Now Neil has revived and picked the lock. Thinking forward in time, Neil has weaved himself back and forth so many times that his past self will continue on helping them in all the ways we've seen throughout the movie and so on. Now the two Neil's we see in the cave at the end - one running backwards and one forwards - running to the machine, enter the turnstile and he disappears into the past forever, from the perspective of anyone following his timeline. From Neil's perspective he enters the machine for the last time, becomes inverted to pick the lock, is shot in the back by a reverse bullet, killing him, and he experiences death exactly the same way as every other person experiences death. R.i.p Neil.

Had Neil survived and made it back to normal time, then we would've had a scenario with three Neil's that played out like it did when they entered the turnstile after the car chase and he'd need to exit a turnstile somewhere in the past, like they did at the museum. Picturing it in forward time, had Neil survived, then at the exact moment 2 Neil's would have seemed to appear out of nowhere from a turnstile somewhere before he picked the lock, the third Neal is simultaneously making his way to the turnstile in the cave. Just like when the 2 protagonists seemed to appear out of nowhere in the first museum scene, the Neil who appears and exits the turnstile in forward time will be his future self, while his present and inverted self make their way to the turnstile in the cave. On the way to the turnstile in the cave, inverted Neil picks the lock, then inverted Neal and present Neal enter the turnstile and disappear into the past leaving future Neal by himself and closing the loop.

[nayR]

2:38:
Inverted POV: gun picked up, shot and taken by a uninverted person.
uninverted POV: person has a gun, the gun is taken from him by an inverted person, the inverted person reverse fires the gun, the gun is then put down.
3:43:
Inverted point of view: person walks into room, wall explodes, causing person to fall out of room.
Uninverted point of view: person is thrown into room by inverted explosion, thus trapping them in the room, person walks out of room.
4:46:
uninverted POV: gets attacked, killed, ded.
inverted POV: uninverted person undies, inverted person attacks him in someway having been startled and/or threatened, inverted person goes on with his life.
P.S.
This does get addressed in the movie.
5:02:
No, the fight begins at point 2. (Or from an uninverted perspective ends at point 2 and begins at point 1)
5:32:
Yes
5:39:
Yes
6:24:
You can't die twice, not sure what you're asking
7:52:
This is essentially the same question as 4:46. The only way an inverted person killing an uninverted person or vice versa works is if that is the beginning of the fight for the killer. Like I said:
Inverted POV: gets attacked, killed, ded.
Uninverted POV: uninverted person undies, inverted person attacks him in someway having been startled and/or threatened, inverted person goes on with his life.
8:57:
still the same question. If the goon were to have intentionally shot Neil, if he know who that was and what he was there for, then Neil would undies just as being shot and continue his forward-time existence since he is moving backward through time, this is the end of his backward time existence.
9:30:
true, the only way an inverted person can kill an uninverted person or vice versa is if the murder weapon eventually exits the dead person's body. Say the thingy protagonist stabs his inverted self with at the Freeport, if it were to have remained in his arm, then it would be there for his entire percievd existence past that point all the way up to and past when he was inverted. Meaning the moment he stabbed himself, that same weapon would just have appeared in his own arm. The only way it makes sense is if it somehow got in his arm earlier (or from an unknverted point of view, taken out).

[polivkamikulas]

If I recall, Neil talked about grandfather paradox and said they just don't know what would happen. On the other hand, they said that coming into contact with your past self (if the particles actually touch), it would cause anihilation.

[ronaldp.vincent]

"Didn't find it compelling".

*Dedicates a youtube video to questions about plot interpretations.

You are not using the "grandfather paradox" correctly. The questions like "they will never meet and fight?" make zero sense because they DID meet and fight as you described it. When you ask "can something happen, " the answer is always yes, but the past and present would change accordingly.

Your use of "fail to explain" is also strange. The questions are deliberately not answered to allow for interpretation, like the spinning top in Inception. It's what will make the movie discussed for years.

[randywhite]

Great video, Jesse. Nolan is so inconsistent with his premise that it was painful to watch. For example, Nolan apparently want us to believe that all of Sator's henchmen working in the tunnels at just stepped over Neil's skeleton by the door for years and let it "undecay" into a fresh corpse that could rise up and "untake" a bullet. I might have been more forgiving if Nolan had developed the characters or even innovative SFX, but personally I found them both to be flat and uninspired.

[tauhid]

The idea of time traveling at least in the past on itself is a paradox. It can't never happen...
So trying to resolve paradoxes in time travel is damn near impossible...there will always be one.