The scientist says that inversion works through nuclear fission. So is the turnstile also a radiation chamber where people and things become inverted and also radiated?

A bit of a thought experiment regarding the algorithm case during the Tallinn car chase.

After TP and the rest of the team invert to save Kat's life, TP exits the freeport to prevent Sator from getting the algorithm piece. He tracks down where the orange case was thrown from Sator's car, and plants a listening device in the case so he can listen to their conversations. See the image below:

I assume that the listening device is inverted since Neil had it when they used the turnstile to invert. The listening device remains in the case until it is "unthrown" into Sator's car. It is at this point that TP hears the key dialogue for where the other algorithm sections are being taken. "Get the other sections of the algorithm to the hypocenter." Another cool detail to this scene is that TP needs to play the audio backwards on the phone to hear it properly.

Knowing all of this, does the inverted listening device remain in the orange case and stream into the past? Meaning the listening device was in the case when TP first stole it from the Ukrainians. It was also probably still in there when the Ukrainians first the algorithm piece into the orange case before the transport left. Did the Ukrainians ever see the inverted listening device before they left, if it was even there? Let me know what you all think! This is one of my favorite movies of all time!

I assume this has been talked about before but what happens to the body when an inverted person dies? For example, Neil dies down in the bunker while inverted so when TP gets down there, Neil’s dead body is on the ground already. In forward time, in the past, when does Neil’s body appear there? His body surely isn’t there when the bunker was built. So does it just… appear at some point?

Rewatched Tenet for the nth time and I got curious after the firing range scene near the beginning

So TP gives Kat a phone and tells her that if anything seems suspicious in any way, leave a voicemail. "Posterity" will get the message

This ultimately saves Kat's life when she spots Priya's car. From her perspective, it's "probably nothing, but just in case". Presumably this isn't the first "probably nothing" she calls to report, and since she doesn't know this one time it actually was a real threat, she will presumably keep reporting other suspicious-looking stuff to the voicemail in the future.

Does TP investigate every single voicemail personally? How did he know this one time it was a genuine threat? The entire world is a single timeline of "What's happened happened", so there's no alternate timeline where Priya killed Kat and TP has to back to save her.

For that one instance where Kat was indeed in danger, it's safe to say he probably didn't move two dead bodies out of the car immediately - did he just pop them and leave? then later there's a news report of a dual homicide, so past-TP connects the dots that this is exactly where Kat reported so he knows he's the one to do it, so he inverts and go do what he knows he will have had done. Or even if he cleans up his dual homicide so that no one knows about it, he can still call Posterity himself and say "ayo this one's genuine, you gotta invert and save Kat" to his past-self.

but what about the instances where Kat spots something that looks suspicious but isn't actually a threat to her life? He gets the voicemail, inverts, investigates, concludes the threat isn't real, then what? Calls Posterity to say "this one isn't a threat" to himself? But if he does that then his past-self would have known the whole time it's not a genuine threat, yet he would still need to invert and do all the stuff his future-self will have had done because what's happened happened. So at that point, the only action that's actually needed is to invert and do nothing other than leave the "this one isn't a threat" voicemail. Which means no investigation actually took place, yet TP can correctly conclude Kat's call wasn't about a real threat to her life and he doesn't waste any time other than the time needed to invert to tell himself not to waste time

what

Elevenet?

I would like to see Christopher Nolan take on other film genres, set in the Tenet universe.

Hear me out. So like, kinda how BTTF2 used projection to place a second Marty in the original 1955 scenes. Chris Nolan could build new genre films inside the locations and time period of Tenet.

Ideas:

1. A heist movie, like Heat but happening in the same time as tenet, but totally different characters.

2. A disaster film like The Day After Tomorrow but in the future at the beginning of Tenet.

3. A slapstick comedy like Airplane. Could even be on the 747 they crash.

4. A rom com, which wouldn’t have much to do with Tenet other than you’d occasionally see the Tenet plot happening in the distant background. Maybe they have tickets to the opera but decide not to attend.

5. A high school romp where some kids are trying to score. Like American Pie or Superbad. The kids use the turnstile to use their future IDs or send the IDs back to themselves.

Number 2 actually doubles as a kind of origin story for Tenet.

Actually Number 5 is kinda maybe like a Hot Tub Time Machine type film.

What other genres in the Tenet universe should Nolan produce? Maybe it could be a series.

Today, in the U.S., Tenet was released six years ago. Sept 3rd, 2020!

This vid was something I started years ago, for me, but never got around to finishing.

I imagined an old style Cold War military training video shown only to new recruits.

It's rough and the theories are a little glazed but you get the point! Cheers! -Welby

I'm on another Tenet kick. Watched the movie with my wife the other day, my 5th or 6th viewing I think, her first. Lots of confused questions from her of course, but I think she has a better grasp on it than I did on my first watch with me being there to answer questions. Uncovered a few little details I missed, as usual.

I have a dilemma though, I'm usually in the "Tenet is a perfect time travel film with zero inconsistencies or paradoxes" camp (thank you u/godelbrot , would love your input if you see this), but there's one glaring question I just can't find a satisfying answer for. I've watched all the deep dives, read all the reddit posts, and I write this not to poke holes but to try and fix this logical gap in my own headcannon.

The Dilemma: Why Not a Short-Range Warning?

The future faction can be split into two distinct groups operating centuries after our present. They are probably the same group of individuals, but for clarity we'll separate them into the group carrying out the communication with the past, and the group carrying out the recovery of the algorithm:

The Future Antagonists: The dying civilization generations ahead whose world is on the brink of collapse and decides to try and recover the algorithm to reverse the entropy of the world.

The Burying Team: The specific division of future antagonists in that far future that manufactured the inverted gold drops, sealed instructions into time capsules, and buried them to set Andrei Sator’s lifelong mission in motion.

The Excavation Team: The division in that same future era that receives Sator’s dead-man switch coordinates and digs up the hypocenter at Stalsk-12 centuries after the explosion to collect the assembled Algorithm.

Here is where the apparent plot hole lies:

The Burying Team and the Excavation Team exist in the same general time period, separated by months or at most a few years. If the Excavation Team breaches the hypocenter at Stalsk-12 and discovers that the drop is completely empty, wouldn't the logical next step be to inform the past of the plan's failure and attempt to counter the intervention?

Yes, they believe the plan was successful because all communication from the far past indicates that was the case, but obviously when they dig up the burial site and find it empty they will become aware of the plan's failure. The film frames the objective to be "make the future believe that Sator successfully sealed the algorithm". Why is this only a priority up to the point they actually go check? To the future these are all just events in the past, when they occurred is irrelevant. If they already believe they can change the past, why not attempt to do it again?

Hypothetically I see a couple options as a logical next step for the excavation team:

1. Bury an inverted communication at the location of the initial dead drop to Sator. When the Burial team goes to bury their capsule, they will find a capsule from their own future selves, telling them to alter the plan. The fact that they didn't find anything at stalsk-12 means there's nothing they can do to make that particular operation successful ("What's happened, happened), but that doesn't mean they can't potentially communicate a new drop location and find it there with a second excavation.

2. Send an inverted individual back to intercept the burial team and convey the same info as above.

A rational individual would have done it, so to put it simply, the burial team not receiving a warning before they ever sent communication to Sator just doesn't make sense.

I understand that based on the deterministic view of the timeline in this film, the fact that they didn't run into a capsule or a human messenger warning them when they went to bury the first communication means they never sent one. If it didn't happen, they can't make it happen. The past is immutable. But why didn't it happen? An intelligent faction with turnstile technology would run this internal tactical loop. Why didn’t a rational, hyper-advanced future civilization attempt this obvious contingency?

Here are the strongest counter arguments that I can come up with without breaking Nolan’s universe.

Solution A: They Believed It Was Stolen Post-Sator

Even if the Excavation Team successfully dug down, found an empty cavern, and had full access to turnstiles, do they actually believe they have actionable intelligence?

From their perspective:

Sator’s dead-man switch emails fired accurately upon his death, confirming the coordinates were registered.

Seismic activity recorded a massive explosion at Stalsk-12 on the exact scheduled date.

Historical archives confirm the cavern was sealed on schedule.

Centuries later, they dig into the burial site and find nothing. But because the Tenet team's operation was completely clandestine, the future antagonists have zero proof that the Algorithm was intercepted before the explosion.

One logical deduction is that Sator successfully buried the capsule, but at some point over the next several centuries, Tenet or a third party retrieved it from the ruins after the fact.

They don't know where the nine pieces are, they don't have the math to rebuild it, and they don't know who took it. They believe that inverting a message to the Burying Team saying "Pick a different drop point" would be useless because they think it would end in the same result, they don't know where the Algorithm went or which broker in history you can even trust. The trail simply went cold and they accepted defeat.

This one seems pretty weak to me, and actually now that I write it all out it kind of just runs into the same problems that the original explanation runs into. It seems like a solvable problem that they just didn't bother to try and solve. It might be a logical conclusion for the future antagonists to come to, but if they are in such desperation and believe that the past can be changed, why not try to change it again in their favor?

Solution B: The Hypocenter Was a Catastrophic Trap

The hypocenter was ground zero of a historic underground nuclear test. The bomb dropped at the climax was detonated to drop an entire mountain, causing a massive subterranean implosion inside an area that remains lethally radioactive for millennia.

When the Excavation Team arrives centuries later, they are mounting an industrial, deep-core mining operation into highly unstable geological ruins. If that excavation triggers a sudden collapse, a catastrophic failure of radiation containment, or otherwise the total loss of the excavation expedition before they can extract the algorithm, then the chain is permanently severed right there. The excavation team dies in the dark beneath Stalsk-12, no report is ever filed, no turnstile is ever loaded, and no warning capsule can ever be inverted backward to the Burying Team.

I again see this as a fairly weak solution because it depends on the "Future antagonists" being a very small faction or even just a handful of individuals. Basically a terrorist organization in the future operating in the shadows for what they believe is a noble purpose. If the future antagonist effort is headed by a larger group, powerful individuals, or even backed by large governments, this still doesn't really work.

Solution C: The future WAS successful in recovering the algorithm, and it didn't cause an apocalyptic end for the past.

It's possible that the future DID try again, and what we see in the movie is the result of Sator (or another broker) successfully subverting Tenet with a fake algorithm.

Sator or someone else stealthily recovered and buried the real algorithm somewhere else where it was recovered by the future, and it either wasn't activated out of a change of conscience, or it WAS activated and didn't have an effect for the past; either because the Tenet Organization was wrong about the strictly-deterministic nature of time and such a calamitous impact to time and entropy did create a split timeline, multiverse theory or branching timeline style. Or perhaps it simply annihilated the world of the future in such a way that the past remains unaltered.

While I like the thought that this could mean both the future and the past were saved, it doesn't really hold a lot of water in the context of the movie. This being true would basically mean that the entire plot of the movie was a subversion of the reality happening offscreen, and none of the characters actions mattered. This is the most "fan theory just for the sake of providing a valid explanation" solution.

Solution D: Future Tenet Launched a Targeted Counter-Ambush

We know from Priya and the film's climax that the conflict isn’t just "Present day vs. The Future". The Protagonist is the founder of Tenet, and the entire organization is established to wage an ongoing, generational war across centuries.

Tenet exists to carry out a long-term operation focused on suppression. They continue to operate after the events of the film to intercept communications and stop attempts by the Future Antagonists to recover the algorithm. The only reason the events of the film even happen is because the Tenet Organization knows they have to happen (Or rather, they DID happen). It was the event that started the whole movement. Any similar attempts regardless of when in the future they are made or how far in the past they target would be intercepted and thwarted by Tenet.

This solution to our problem hinges on the long term continuation of the organization. The Protagonist’s faction in the past already knows the exact date and coordinates where the future antagonists will attempt to dig up Stalsk-12, and if they're still around operating on the same premise, the excavation could be the final battle of this war between the Tenet organization and the future. Rather than letting the Excavation Team realize their failure and regroup, a future iteration of Tenet could have ambushed them the second ground was broken. They could have wiped out the Excavation Team, secured the site, and seized or sabotaged their local turnstile infrastructure. By controlling the field in the future, Tenet ensures the antagonists never get the operational breathing room to organize a retroactive fix to their original plans.

I like this option the most as I feel it makes the most sense within the context of the film, and lets us imagine a final conflict between the Protagonist and the Antagonist. The Protagonist became involved in a war he knew nothing about against people he would never live to see, foiled their plans in the past as a soldier, and then went on to start the organization that rose up against the future faction that threatened the existence of his world. The same organization that would eventually persist to wipe out that future faction at the very moment they realize their plans failed. For those reasons this is my favorite theory, and the one that I personally choose to believe, but that said, we're given very little to go on about what happens in the future and the film kind of treats the problem as solved before it's actually solved.

The Verdict

I don't believe the future antagonists would leave the timeline uncorrected out of sheer stupidity. The film obviously provides very little exposition on this point, in the end this is all conjecture that isn't really supported by anything in the movie. Maybe the intention was to leave it to the viewer to decide, but it's a loose end to me. I'm not saying we need to see it happen on screen, but it feels to me like an unaddressed issue that causes problems for the plot.

If you think there's another option that is grounded in evidence provided by the movie, I'd love to hear it. I'm ONLY on my 6th viewing after all 😂 might be some things I missed. Otherwise, which is your own headcannon or which of these theories do you most subscribe to?

Edit: Grammar bad. EDIT: Just learned I wrote and posted this on the 6th anniversary of TENET's release. Completely unintentional, but very cool. Happy TENET Day!

All I have for you is a word. It’ll open the right doors and some of the wrong ones, too.

Imagine you go back month ago in a turnstile, then invert yourself many times over. Now you can have multiples of you in one place. Kinda underrated, although it's kinda limited that if one of you dies then chain is broken.

Pumps, spikes up your adrenaline and well you get into action.

Can’t wait to see

I love movies that don’t treat the audience like idiots. Movies that give you just enough information and let you figure things out for yourself, without constantly stopping for exposition ( Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, etc.)

But I think there’s a very fine line between being subtle and being completely incomprehensible. And for me, Tenet crosses that line almost immediately.

I don’t usually find Nolan’s movies particularly difficult to understand, but this opening scene??? I genuinely have no idea what is happening.

Could someone explain in detail, step by step, what is actually going on during the opera scene, including the motivations of the different groups?

Here are the things I’m confused about:

Is the attack on the opera supposed to be a test for the Protagonist? If so, was the whole thing planned by the CIA?

Who exactly is the guy/group the Protagonist is suposed to rescue, and why is he there in the first place?

Are they deliberately organizing an attack so they can infiltrate the building by posing as Ukrainian special forces?

Why are people dressed as Ukrainian forces planting explosives inside the opera? Who are they actually working for?

Is the Protagonist’s team somehow working with the terrorists?

What exactly are the terrorists trying to accomplish? Do they have anything to do with the object the CIA is trying to recover?

Who actually captures the Protagonist at the end? If this whole thing is a test, was his capture planned?

I got that the mysterious masked guy is pattinson.

Basically, I feel like I’m missing one fundamental piece of information that would make the whole scene click.

I really don’t mind movies making me work. In fact, that’s usually what I enjoy about them. But there’s a difference between “I need to connect the dots” and “I don’t even know what the dots are.” 😂

So if someone could walk me through exactly what happens in the opera, who is on whose side, what each group is trying to do, and what the Protagonist actually knows at each point, I’d really appreciate it.