No one can understand all the little question marks in Tenet’s article that answer you.

August 22nd was the earliest time for the release of comments in Tenet media field, when almost all comments at home and abroad were surprisingly consistent — — "No, look, understand!" Today, this movie is officially released in China, and it’s time to challenge everyone’s IQ.

There is absolutely no shame in not understanding Tenet.

Nolan doesn’t intend to let the audience understand it once unless you have done your spoiler homework in advance. First of all, the concepts in this film are very advanced, involving inverse entropy, time reversal, time-pincer movement, grandfather paradox, etc. Secondly, the plot developed from this is multi-line and loop narrative, with seamless conversion of positive and negative perspectives of different characters, and some plots are left blank, which need to be supplemented by their own brains.

In addition, some important information in the film is post-positioned. First, shoot the event process, and then remind you what is going on in a line of a certain character, so it is difficult to put the information puzzle together for the first time. If you are distracted for a few seconds during the movie, you may not be able to connect the story before and after.

If someone claims to understand it once, you can try two brushes and three brushes — — You will find that the more you look at it, the more problems you have. This is a movie with a clear overall story, but the details of brain burning can be infinitely memorable. The author has brushed it three times, and I dare not say that I have completely understood this work.

Someone asked, is Tenet a spiritual sequel to Inception?

Yes, not really. You can simply say that Tenet is Memento+Fatal Magic+Inception+Interstellar, and Nolan didn’t take over 007, which is an overwhelming game of time and space and a human adventure to pass on the firewood.

Today, with the development of film for more than one hundred years and the maturity of genre narration, it is a good director’s "creed" and a blessing for fans to have a director like Nolan who persistently sticks to film shooting and tirelessly innovates in narrative methods, and firmly occupies a place in the commercial kingdom with a distinctive author label.

After watching Tenet, it’s normal not to worry about "100,000 whys" popping up on your head. Today, we will answer your questions one by one.

The previous part can be understood before watching the film, and it doesn’t involve the core doubt — —

[How to understand the title of TENET? ]

First of all, this title has a lot of room for interpretation. As for Chinese translation, Hong Kong and Taiwan are called Tianneng, and a combination point is found between transliteration and free translation. It is said that the mainland publisher once wanted to call it "Time and Space Chasing", which is more in line with the traditional four-character title of the market and briefly summarizes the content of the story, but it always feels a bit too straightforward.

Finally, the mainland film was called TENET, and the original English name was Tenet, which I personally agree with.

Expand the brain hole, and this title can have the following meanings:

1, is the name of the mysterious organization in the film;

2. Tenet is a palindrome, similar to level, and it is the same in both forward and backward writing, suggesting that this film is related to reversal. This word once appeared on a square of Seto in the ancient city of Pompeii, and several words on the stone tablet also formed the backbone of this film, which will be expanded later;

3. Look at this palindrome again. Does it look like everyone looks in the mirror before entering the gate? Especially when the last t is printed backwards.

Four or ten minutes is the duration of two key tasks in the film — — The man and Pattinson met for the first time, and the request was that they only needed to meet the Indian arms dealer for ten minutes; In the last ruins war scene, the fighting time of the red and blue teams is also ten minutes, and they are divided into the positive team and the negative team, "ten-net" is tenet；;

5. When the structure of the whole movie is taken apart, it is actually like the five plates represented by the five letters T-E-N-E-T — — The protagonist and his party first rescued the hostages at the National Grand Theatre in Kiev, Ukraine, then went to the Freeport in Oslo to destroy the paintings, and then hijacked the car and confronted the warehouse in Tallinn.

Then they crossed back and went back to Oslo to save the heroine. Finally, the heroine and the heroine split up and went back. One went to the ruins to dismantle the algorithm, and the other went back to Vietnam to stall the villain. The date was the same as the earliest grand theater play.

6, the black man has no name, and he seems to be the embodiment of the "creed" — — He would rather kill himself than betray his teammates, and refused to take women and children as hostages. Only when he assassinated an arms dealer would he not feel guilty. He repeatedly confirmed that there would be no casualties when the plane crashed into the building, risking his life to save the theater audience and hostess in danger, and he had no wild thoughts about the beautiful hostess … …

He is a special agent in a thousand, a warrior who shoulders the hope of all mankind, and a man with pure morality and noble behavior like a mythical hero. He is the best interpretation of the word "creed".

[What core concepts do you need to understand to watch this movie? ]

At the end of Tenet’s credits list, Kip Thorne, the great god of contemporary physics, once advised Nolan’s last film, Interstellar. It is unknown what concepts he contributed in Tenet. Anyway, Nolan’s new film continues to be at the forefront of physics theory.

Look at Tenet, we need to "understand" the concepts are:

1, entropy. The word originated from thermodynamics, and Professor Hu Gangfu skillfully added a fire word next to "entropy" in his free translation, which was roughly used to describe the change of the internal nature of a system.

Later, the word was extended to many fields, such as astrophysics, life science, probability theory, cybernetics, and even economics and sociology. "Increasing entropy" is a spontaneous process from order to disorder. To put it bluntly, your room is getting more and more messy, that is, the "entropy" is getting bigger and bigger.

According to the laws of thermodynamics, heat is always transferred from a high-temperature object to a low-temperature object. For example, if you put an ice cube next to a candle, it will melt soon. Energy has a direction of motion, and the energy flow between them is determined by the entropy of two objects.

With the development of quantum mechanics, scientists have found the phenomenon of reverse flow in quantum experiments. It is assumed that the process of entropy increase and decrease is reversible through certain technical means. In the movie, an unknown female scientist in the future ("Oppenheimer in the future") invented a technology that can reverse the entropy of objects, so that some objects and people can be "reversed". The bullet can shoot backwards, and the explosion will freeze.

2. Time-pincer movement, also known as time attack, means that one group of people advance according to normal time, and another group of people reverse back from the future, telling people in the past what will happen in the future, so that people in the past can gain more experience. In the film, the villain Sator was one step ahead everywhere, which once made the man wonder if there was a traitor in the team, all because the villain mastered the means of time attack. Finally, the red team and the blue team also used this method.

3. Grandfather Paradox, also called Grandmother Paradox, was put forward by French science fiction writer René Barjavel in the 1940s. That is, if you travel back in time and kill your grandfather, how were you born? How can you kill him without you? This paradox has no conclusion, and it is a problem-free problem similar to chicken laying eggs and laying chickens.

In the film, the man asks Pattinson a question for the audience: If people in the future want to destroy the present human beings, then they will be gone, too. We are still here, does it mean that we have succeeded in saving the world? Pattinson’s answer is: My idea is not important, they (future people) think it is right to do so; Theoretically, we will succeed, but the relationship between multiple realities and consciousness is not clear to us.

4, fortunately, this movie has not involved parallel time and space, otherwise it would be even more dizzy. But at the same time, even in the same place, it is reasonable to have multiple same characters in this film. For example, three male lords appeared at the revolving door in Oslo, and the positive and negative ones were sent to both sides of the revolving door in Tallinn. The female lords who crossed back to Vietnam almost ran into themselves at that time, and finally there were two villains and two Pattinson.

How long the "doppelganger" can exist is not explained in the film, but they will eventually return to the normal timeline, which is their "fate". What would happen if one died? The film didn’t show the result.

Another law is that you can’t meet yourself, otherwise the positive and negative particles will disappear when they meet. The solution is not difficult, just wear a suit like the man who went back to Oslo.

5. Finally, we must adapt to the transformation of positive and negative perspectives, so that two key scenes, carjacking and ruins war, can be understood. The protagonist turns into a reverse, and he sees that the whole world is reverse, which is a subjective perspective, but in fact only he himself is reverse; For the reverse person, what happens first should be done last, just want to understand this.

[What are the meanings of the names and places in the film? ]

The names and places in Tenet are not taken casually, and they all have deep meanings.

First of all, let’s look at a piece of The Sator Square unearthed from the ancient city of Pompeii, which is located in the first century AD:

What is written on this slate is a Latin palindrome poem, the general idea of which is about the rotation of the wheel of time, and several words themselves are also positive and negative. The stone tablet of Seto is regarded as the originator of crossword puzzles.

Nolan’s writing of Tenet’s plays not only draws lessons from his palindrome structure, but also several key words should come from this slate — —

Sator, the surname of the villain Andrei Sator, may be given to the Soviet boy in the future;

Arepo is the surname of Thomas Arepo, a fake painter;

Tenet, creed organization;

Opera, referring to the engagement of the opera house, is also a secret language for the male master to lure the villains to meet;

Rotas, rotation; It is also the name of Oslo Freeport Construction Company. The confrontation between Rotas and Sator seems to imply that the establishment of this company is related to villains.

The film also pays tribute to the ancient city of Pompeii, where the woman has always wanted to accompany her son to play.

Look at the role name again. The man, Anonymous, conforms to the background of an agent and seems to indicate his extraordinary status in the future;

Kat, short for Katherine, comes from old English, which means innocence and purity, and conforms to the angelic image of Derbyshire;

Neil, played by Pattinson, the second male student, originated from Irish Christian name and Gaelic, meaning winner, and entrusted his crossing mission;

The villain Sator, some people say, comes from the Latin meaning of seeder and creator.

Max, the son of the hostess, symbolizes the biggest and most important thing. The hostess always puts her son in the first place. Even the first reaction when she hears that the world is going to be destroyed is "Then my son is gone".

Priya, a female arms dealer, is a common name in India, so it may be an alias.

The choice of geographical location, Oslo means "the land of God" and "the valley of God", is the place where the villain’s secret career (claiming to be a god) is located. The choice of Kiev, Tallinn and Siberia also accords with the plot time. As for your unique complex about Vietnam, you may have to ask Nolan.

[Spoiler Tip]

Next, there is the part that involves details spoilers.

Readers who haven’t seen the film can consider reading it first — —

[Who hit who at the opening of the opera house? ]

As soon as the film came out, it was an opera house scuffle, and many viewers still didn’t understand who was hitting who and what the goal was … …

This scene is about the protagonist and his party who were mixed into the Ukrainian special police force during the CIA agent period, with the aim of saving American diplomats and protecting the package (plutonium element). When the Ukrainian SWAT team exchanged fire with terrorists (in fact, it was the villain Sator, and both sides came to grab the package, regardless of the audience’s life and death), the male host covered the diplomat to the basement, let the diplomat and a teammate exchange clothes, and the diplomat fled. The male host and the agent wearing the diplomat’s clothes decided to return to the theater and dismantle the bomb to rescue the unconscious audience.

When the last bomb was dismantled, the man was caught by a Ukrainian special police officer (the epaulettes were temporarily attached). At the critical moment, a mysterious man saved the man’s life with a reverse bullet (it was finally confirmed that the mysterious man was Pattinson), and the man threw all the bombs at the second floor box at the last moment and escaped.

The man and the fake diplomat fell into the hands of Ukrainians, and under torture, the man still refused to betray the whereabouts of the diplomat and other teammates. The man tried to kill himself by swallowing a special capsule made by CIA. Unexpectedly, it was just a coma drug that could disguise his death. This action was also a test of his loyalty.

The man is nominally "dead" and his teammates have all died, so he can no longer work for the CIA. But his superiors told him that he would be faced with the important task of saving all mankind. At present, all he can tell him is the word "creed".

He needs to report to this "creed" organization after a period of anonymity in the offshore wind power company. The female researcher didn’t tell him any information, but only taught him about antimatter. The goal, method, teammates and leaders all need the male owner to find clues by himself.

[Goya’s painting is how to return a responsibility? ]

There are two identical Goya paintings in the film, both of which were made by the painter Arbor. One was because the woman was too close to Alber, and she bought it as a real painting, and then auctioned it to her own husband at a high price of $9 million. After the husband learned that it was a fake, he kept it in Oslo Freeport as a handle to threaten his wife, and also had an excuse to often go to Oslo Freeport (actually to the revolving door);

The other one was taken by the man from Sir crosby, played by michael caine, as a stepping stone to get close to the Sator. The man claimed to the woman that he got the painting from Alber, but the lie was soon debunked by the woman, because Alber’s leg was interrupted by Sator, and he couldn’t walk or make a phone call. But she had no choice but to cooperate with the man.

The man wanted to go to Oslo to help the woman destroy the first fake. Unexpectedly, he discovered the secret of the revolving door and was ambushed (only to know later that it was himself), so he had to retreat first. The villain has taken out the painting in advance through the ability of "predicting the future", and his wife’s fate is still firmly in his hand.

[Do you have to hit the building with a plane? ]

As we all know, Nolan basically doesn’t use special effects, and everything he says is a real shot. The scene where the plane crashed into the warehouse in the film was really destroyed by a plane and a bunch of cars (anyway, the budget of Nolan crew, a Credo organization, was enough), which was needed by the plot, not a spectacle.

Why use the plane to crash into the building? The key line is that airport security is not afraid of robbery, but of rising temperature. Therefore, it is necessary to make the whole building explode and catch fire, so as to distract the attention of all security guards at the airport, and let the "Pentagon security level" art warehouse automatically reset to the factory setting, release halogenated fire-fighting gas to scare off the warehouse staff, so that the male owner can pry open the doors of each warehouse one by one within the time limit of holding his breath and look for paintings and reverse weapons that may be kept here.

[What is the villain’s goal? ]

The villain Sator comes from Stalask-12, an industrial waste city in the Soviet Union. Because the disintegration of the Soviet Union was the most frequent historical period of underground trading of nuclear materials, Sator in his youth obtained guidance documents and start-up funds from "future people". Since then, he has been dealing with radioactive materials all his life (which may be why he suffered from pancreatic cancer), and for many years, he has been looking for nine scattered algorithm components in nine countries with nuclear weapons (the nuclear-weapon countries are wary of each other, so female scientists think it is safest to hide the algorithm components in the nuclear raw materials).

He was originally a Russian oligarch. After being expelled from Moscow, he settled in London. He claimed to start with natural gas. His actual business was selling plutonium and arms. The ultimate goal was to collect nine parts, activate the algorithm, reverse the entropy of the whole earth, and let all mankind be buried with him in the late stage of cancer.

The reason why "future people" want to destroy previous human beings is similar to that of Thanos, and it is also the exhaustion of resources and the rise of sea level … … Destruction is rebirth. Sator hypnotized himself and sealed himself as a "god".

Sator will always check the heart rate on his bracelet. Once he dies and his heart rate drops to zero, some distant monitor will start the algorithm and end the whole world.

So when and where will he choose to end his life? This information was pieced together by the man and the woman — —

The female speaker said that when they went to Vietnam for vacation, the villains disappeared for a while. After the villain came back, the conversation at sunset was the last moment of warmth for the couple, so it was speculated that Sator would choose to end his life at this time;

The male owner also confirmed this speculation. He heard from Jazz that on the day of the explosion of the Ukrainian Grand Theatre, the abandoned city of Stalask-12 in the Soviet Union was monitored for signs of nuclear detonation. On the whole, it should be that day (14 days ago).

(Pattinson also knows all the ins and outs, just pretending not to know in front of the man. )

[Why do some people wear breathing masks and others don’t? ]

The setting in the movie is that when you turn from forward to reverse, the direction of air flow in the lungs will also reverse, so you must wear a special breathing mask. This has also become the key symbol to distinguish between the characters in the whole film. But if you reverse it and then reverse it, you don’t need to wear it, or you don’t need to wear it in a specially modified container.

For example, in Tallinn’s car chase, the villain wearing a breathing mask is the reverse. He hijacked the positive female host, and after entering the blue room (reverse space) in front of the rotating door, the villain did not need to wear a mask, but gave the female host a mask. At this time, there are positive villains hiding in the isolation room of the red room next to them, ready to intercept the position information of plutonium in advance and complete the time attack.

[The hostess started early, why did she succeed in saving the world? ]

Traveling back to 14 days ago, the heroine of Vietnam "can’t play any more" and shot her husband in advance, but the world didn’t end. Why?

First of all, you don’t have to blame the female host’s brain impulse. At that time, the villain began to suspect that the female host had multiple "doppelgangers". The female host who came back through saw that she would soon bump into herself at that time, so she had to end the task ahead of schedule. She believes that the man will succeed.

Secondly, the female host is originally a "backup" (backup, alternative scheme). The first scheme is that the male host and Pattinson and other troops take out nine algorithm components in the ghost town, cut off the signal, and let the villain die alone without knowing it. Plan B is the female host to watch the villain, stall for time, and let him not commit suicide first.

However, according to the results, it seems that both schemes have been successfully implemented — — The villain should not be dead yet, tied to the back of the boat and floating on the sea, and learned that the plan to destroy the world failed. The vengeful wife made him experience the feeling that his next life was worse than death … …

The revolving door in Tallinn originally belonged to the villain, and then reinforcements led by Ives arrived and occupied it. The reverse bullet of the villain in the heroine’s body, because it follows the law of inverse entropy, will continue to deteriorate in positive space-time, so it can only be treated in reverse space-time.

So the protagonist decided to take the hostess and Pattinson to reverse, and was transported to Oslo airport a week ago in a container to find a chance to heal her.

Why did you choose Oslo airport a week ago? Because the revolving door in Tallinn was guarded by the rebel forces before, the man was definitely shot dead when he came back from the reversal, so he had to find another exit.

A week ago, Oslo was in chaos because of the plane crashing into the building, and it was left unattended, which just happened to turn back to the positive direction. In terms of time, the journey time from the tower to Oslo is enough for the hostess to recover.

It is also because you don’t need to wear a mask, so even the wily villain (he also crossed back at this time, and he is still in the Ukrainian theater in the normal timeline) didn’t find that the last female host crossed back for revenge.

[What happened to the last ruins war? ]

The last battle on the ruins of Stalask-12 is the most complicated scene in the whole film, with a positive red team, a negative blue team, a positive enemy, a negative enemy, Pattinson, who once secretly turned positive, and parallel editing with the Vietnam Holiday Branch. The actual date coincides with the Ukrainian Grand Theatre, and the perspective is changeable and the role is divided, making people dazzled and fascinated.

If in the first half of the film, the man often gave the audience a lecture on popular science, Nolan had completely ignored the audience’s ability to keep up and let go of the filming himself. This scene is really wonderful, and it successfully pulls the emotional climax.

The red and blue teams fought against each other for ten minutes. When the red team starts, the blue team ends, and the blue team’s combat experience can be shared with the red team. The blue team is responsible for clearing the obstacles, and the red team rushes to the vicinity of the underground explosion source to cover the secret squad (composed of the red team captain Ives and the male leader) to take out the algorithm, and at the same time create the illusion that the bomb has failed (the villain installed the bomb to bury the algorithm underground, and the countdown is a bomb).

When the red and blue teams counted down for five minutes, the two teams bombed a building at the same time, and the cover team took the opportunity to enter the underground tunnel.

From the perspective of Pattinson Neil, the blue team, he saw a Russian mercenary who was against him ambush explosives at the entrance of the tunnel. So he quickly found the revolving door and turned forward, driving a jeep, trying to catch up with Ives and the man to remind them that there was a trap, but he didn’t catch up with it after pressing the horn for a long time (this part was taken from the perspective of the red team in the movie, showing that the entrance was bombed first, so I might not understand this part the first time).

The man and Ives forgot to bury the exit, found the algorithm and the mercenaries guarding it, and saw a sacrificial teammate with copper coins on his backpack lying on the ground. The villain arranged cages and locks here in advance, but the man couldn’t get in and watched the bomb explode.

On the eve of the explosion, the teammates lying on the ground suddenly stood up, blocked the bullets shot by mercenaries for the man, and then helped them open the lock. The man took the algorithm, and his teammates turned and ran out of the tunnel, driving a jeep and pulling the man, Ives and the algorithm up with a thick rope. The task was successful.

From Pattinson’s point of view, the last step was positive. He first pulled them up with a rope, then turned back in the opposite direction with the revolving door again, went down and opened the lock, and finally stopped the gun for the protagonist to die.

Fired a reverse gun at the Ukrainian Grand Theatre, stopped the man from killing himself masked in the Oslo Freeport, brought reinforcements led by Ives in Tallinn to rescue the man and the woman, dragged the man out of the frozen explosion car, pulled the rope with a jeep in the ruins battlefield, and finally blocked the bullet for the man … … Pattinson saved the man’s life at least six times in secret, and he is the patron saint of the man.

[So Neil finally died? ]

Yes, he died in that tunnel forever because he blocked the gun and exploded for the protagonist.

Who said goodbye to the man at the end of the film? Neil was secretly turned into a positive and temporary state in the middle of the war.

Neil told the man that we met in my past and your future. In other words, Neil was recruited by the future man (the real leader of Credo) and sent to travel back to the past to guide the young man to complete the task of saving the world. The whole movie shows a huge Temporal Pincer Movement.

The man and Neil have actually known each other for many years in the future and are close comrades-in-arms and friends. There is a hint at the beginning of the film, that is, Neil knew from the first meeting that the male host likes to drink diet coke.

So Neil has always been an informed, needle-piercing helper. He is nominally a middleman, and the actual goal is to protect the safety of the male owner — — At the expense of yourself.

He also knew his ending for a long time. The man asked if this was fate. His answer is reality. The first half of the film actually discussed the paradox of "free will" and "destiny takes a hand".

Pattinson’s role is by no means a tool for soy sauce. Only by understanding this film can we understand how affectionate and righteous Nolan has given him. The last farewell scene is so sad. Some netizens said Neil was "the most heartbreaking angel man this year".

??— — Neil explained what "I am waiting for you at the end of time" with life.

There are still many viewers wondering how to understand "dead in the present, but friends in the future"?

You can’t understand the whole movie with the conventional concept of time. Neil is a future person, and the villain is also a future person, and both destruction and salvation happen in the past. Like Mobius ring, you need to try to think outside the linear thinking.

[Neil is actually the son of a grown-up woman? ]

Some netizens at home and abroad mentioned this brain hole. The author thinks that although Nolan didn’t express it, it makes sense.

First of all, the film seems to deliberately avoid shooting the front face of the little boy. From the side face, he is a blond child, much like Pattinson.

Secondly, some netizens think that Neil’s feelings for the hostess are very gentle and deep, especially when taking care of her in the critical period. This is not obvious;

The last age may be roughly right — — The man recruited Neil in the future, so Neil is likely to be a teenager and a boy now. Since the future man trusts Neil so much, it may be because he has known him since he was a child.

As for why Max changed his name to Neil, it’s not surprising. Shouldn’t the time-travel agent change his name?

[What does the last egg mean? ]

As mentioned earlier, the whole movie is actually a symmetrical loop structure, so the last scene where the man secretly protects the woman and her son and kills the Indian female arms dealer can actually be regarded as an egg.

In this scene, all the other characters are in a normal timeline (after the success of saving the world), while the man came back from a little later time. He gave the woman a phone call and told her to send a signal when she was in danger, but in fact, the man received the news through surveillance video in the future and then crossed back to stop the danger. When he shot an Indian woman, she didn’t give a signal.

The man knew that Priya was not a trustworthy person, and he knew that she would kill her, so he had long been eyeing her. At the beginning, she was educated to learn to look at the timeline in a different way. In the end, the man really ended her sinful life in this way.

[finally]

In fact, there are many interesting details in Tenet — —

For example, the logo of the opening title Warner and Nolan syncopy was dyed into one red and one blue, echoing the positive and negative directions in the film;

For example, Whitman’s poem "We live in a twilight world, and there are no friends at dusk" appears many times in the film, which not only implies the chaos of time and precious friendship, but also plays a twilight actor’s stalk;

For example, Nolan cooperated with a brand-new soundtrack, and the electronic music of visiting Freeport, Tallinn gun and drug depot and fire truck carjacking scenes was amazing. Someone has studied the soundtrack of this film and found that even the soundtrack has a clever loop structure design … …

More fun, waiting for fans to discover one by one.

Having explained so much, do you have a clearer understanding of Tenet? In fact, unless it’s structural/logical/detail control, it’s good to keep a state of incomprehension just like the male master.

Exactly the sentence: "Don’t try to understand it, feel it. Don’t try to understand it, just feel it. )