TENET

Right now, the death rate in the United States from COVID-19 is a bit under 1,000 people per day. Some people in power decided that was not good enough. The United States deserves a death rate above 1,000 people per day. In order to facilitate this, theaters were opened near where I live.

I thought about boycotting on principle, but I understand that the theater owners need money, and I miss seeing films on screens measured in feet instead of inches. I decided that a Wednesday matinee would be a reasonable risk and saw Tenet.

If we are talking about Academy Awards, this film makes me wish that there were an award for practical effects. For example, the filmmakers used a real 747 for the crash scene. On the other hand, an award for worst sound mixing may be in order. Apparently, there are two sound mixes out there. I understand that one is OK. The other had the "Nolan-typical bass machine" so loud in many parts that it was hard to understand the dialogue. This is not good in a convoluted film that requires a lot of exposition to understand. I saw the version with the $#!+ sound mix.

Regarding the time travel inversion: I understand that this is speculative fiction with the emphasis on the "speculative." The filmmakers may make up the rules. I do ask a few things. First, there must be rules. It is OK if the audience does not know all the rules. It is even OK if the characters do not know all the rules. However, the writer and director must know the rules in great detail. Second, the rules must be logical and consistent. If something is established, it is established and controls all storytelling from that point forward. Finally, the rules generally should not be written in such a way to make things easier for the protagonists. For example, time travel backwards in time can give a character unlimited do overs. This makes things too easy unless there is a limit.

In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Fitz gave us the rules concerning spacetime in "Spacetime." Among the rules was that a timeline is fixed. If something happened/will happen, then it happened/will happen regardless of the actions that anyone takes. If something different happens, then the characters had to be in a different timeline. Those were the rules.

Tenet appears to be reasonably consistent with its rules. It helps that many of the characters explicitly did not know all the rules. It probably also helped that I could not hear some of the dialogue explaining the rules, so I have to assume that the rules being described were being followed.

I should note that my concern that there are rules is directly related to how seriously the film or television show takes itself. For a film like Tenet that takes itself very seriously, I expect a set of rules that is clear at least to the writer and director (Christopher Nolan in both cases). For a television show like Doctor Who that does not take itself seriously, I am OK with an attitude of anything goes.