i know it's been three years and no one really talked about tenet in the first place but I'm still so insane about protagoneil. like you meet the love of your life for the second time but he's never met you before and you spend years getting to know each other before he has to leave and you know you'll never see him again because that's the way it has to be, because the timeline demands it. except you meet the love of your life for the first time but he's known you for years and you're just starting to fall for him when he chooses to die for you because that's the way it is, because the continuity demands it, because hes been marked for death since the beginning. and so you grieve but you move forward because time somehow marches ever on but then you meet the love of your life for the second time and he shakes your hand with a grin and only you know that you've already killed him.
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can NOT get protagoneil out of my mind. on the day you die you save his life and you know you're going to die. you're watching him meet you and you're watching him fall in love with you and you know you're going to have to watch him see you die too. you have to watch him mistrust you and put others before you and you're going to die. you're going to die, and despite knowing him for years you're going to die without him knowing you. you have to tell him to let you go knowing he's just going to go find you. but for now you have to die. that bullet wouldn't have moved if he hadn't put his hand there.
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the loki writers saw tenet and said hey what if we made OUR time-travelling protagonist fall in love with the man who recruited him into the organization that strives to protect reality from temporal interference but actually HE’s the one who originally recruited the other all along! and now he has to go back in time and talk with the man who knew him inside and out as though he doesn’t already have a relationship with him that was forged through the life and death struggles that made him into the man who he is today! and they’re so real for that.
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Wake up, wake up, wake up! The Protagonist and Neil got up to some stuff.
I hope Pattinson told John David how excellent THE CREATOR is, because it is despite what critics say.
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ok so years after it came out I finally watched Tenet. and i’m confused…but it was good.
i had no idea what to expect from this movie except “ooh movie go forward and in reverse oooooo” i also knew people shitted on it a lot because the plot wasn’t super clear. through all of this I never heard the meaning of this movie. or what it was about.
Tenet (i’m assuming everyone who’s seeing this post has seen the movie but just in case) is a science fiction story about reverse entropy and a dying man who can’t let go of his control to the point he is willing to take the world out if he can’t be there. A story about destiny and fate and choice and meaning. All of that is what Tenet is about. But at its center
Tenet is a love story
Not between The Protagonist and Kat.
Between The Protagonist and Neil
Now THREE THINGS WE NEED TO ACKNOWLEDGE FIRST:
1. I am still not entirely certain of the plot but I will be rewatching this movie because I think it was fun and the people were hot.
2. Neil is not Max. I know this is a popular theory and at first I thought it made sense since Rob dyed his hair for the role specifically and we don’t learn his past, only The Protagonist’s, but Nolan said they dropped that plotline because the timeline didn’t make sense.
3. You can view The Protagonist and Neil’s relationship as a platonic one or a romantic one my point still stands.
The surface level viewing of this movie gives you the impression that nothing matters and choice is a fallacy, what’s happened happened and there’s nothing you can do about it. But looking even a fraction deeper you realize the choices of the characters directly cause the events of the movie.
Sator is forced to live around radioactive materials in Kiev because of a neglectful government, that causes his cancer. His cancer leads him to begin communicating with the future and allows the past to invert which leads him to choosing omnicide but also directly leads to Tenet being able to stop him. His abuse leads to his death. Most importantly Neil’s death leads to The Protagonist’s life being saved which leads to The Protagonist finding Neil which cultivates the greatest relationship of either of their lives.
The most tragic part about all of this is that only in the final moments of their time together do they truly have all the pieces of their relationship laid out in front of them. The majority of the time spent with one another is with one of them not knowing their history and they’re stuck in this loop.
Our Neil dies at the end of the movie but we’re following The Protagonist. He will end up in the past, Neil’s past and at the end of their story Neil will be sent back to meet The Protagonist and so on and so on forever. And you can see the exact moment The Protagonist realizes this. That he’ll know Neil but Neil won’t know him, not really. Not for years.
We can see how immediately drawn to Neil The Protagonist is. He’s an undercover agent who very likely doesn’t trust anyone he hasn’t known for a long time but this is his face during his first meeting with Neil.
WE know why Neil is being friendly and why he stares at The Protagonist the way he does but he doesn’t. Why is he so immediately comfortable with Neil?
From the moment they meet to the final battle The Protagonist is so emotionally affected by Neil’s impending death that he considers putting the world in danger to try and save his life. He doesn’t see the point in Neil dying, and when Neil tells him that it’s just “what happened” The Protagonist doesn’t see why he should care about anything at all if every decision has already been made.
Until Neil explains to him that just because their future self has already made the decision for them, just because the path is laid out, doesn’t mean what they do doesn’t matter. Neil’s life saved everything, that matters (this one lesson goes on to affect how The Protagonist forms and runs Tenet). The Protagonist understands that yet he still wants to save Neil.
But at the end, all he can do is let Neil go. Continue moving forward.
Because there is a past for Neil. And a future for them.
*just a cute gif i wanted to include of The Protagonist staring at Neil like a day after they met.(idk how long a timeframe the movie takes place over)*
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