So you watched principleChristopher Nolan's science fiction spy film with impressive action and a plot that slips back and forth through time.
It's all mind blowing bold and smart, and boy, does it have a cool cloakroom and ... wait, how exactly did John David Washington and Robert Pattinson prevent WW3?
We are all together in this principle puzzle. Here are some answers that we hope will help you further.
Warning: spoilers ahead
What is inversion?
In the future, a technology has been developed that can reverse the entropy of people and objects to move backwards through time. Entropy is a complicated physical concept that explains why some processes happen spontaneously while their time reversals don't. "Melting ice, dissolving salt or sugar, making popcorn and boiling water for tea are processes of increasing entropy in your kitchen," he said. In Tenet's universe, the protagonist (John David Washington) is shown a ball with reverse entropy that returns to his weapon. You can tell if a person has been inverted because they have to breathe special oxygen through a mask - normal air does not flow through inverted lungs. When you contact your "forward" self, it causes "self-annihilation," which means you are killing yourself. Complicated stuff.
What is the algorithm?
Nine objects hidden in nuclear capabilities form an algorithm that reverses the earth's entropy. Triggering the algorithm ends the world.
What was Sator's plan?
The Russian oligarch Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh) is in contact with an unknown agency in the future. Sator plans to launch a doomsday device, also known as an algorithm, that will reverse the entropy of the entire planet. He dies of unresectable pancreatic cancer and believes that if he can't live, no one can. Sator travels back on vacation with Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) in Vietnam when they were both happiest. They planned to die peacefully there and to trigger the doomsday device with a dead man's switch connected to his heartbeat.
Why is the future working with Sator?
Everything will be destroyed in the future. An unknown agency works with Sator to kill everyone in the past for being responsible. People in the future believe that reversing the entropy of the earth will prevent climate change. Having no choice but to survive, they are ready to destroy their ancestors and threaten their very existence - grandfather's paradox.
Why Sator?
Sator grew up in a small community in the Soviet Union that acted as a "closed" or "secret" city with sensitive facilities such as nuclear research sites with a plutonium production facility. Sator was in the right place at the right time as a teenager when he dug up a piece of the algorithm in the rubble of his home in Siberia. The scientist in the future who developed the algorithm hid the pieces in time and realized that no one should have the technology. The unknown agency accuses Sator of recovering the parts and throwing the finished algorithm into the "dead drop" of his destroyed hometown, where they will find him in centuries. The agency buries reverse gold bars that Sator digs up for payment.
Who saved the protagonist in the opera house?
While the CIA is foiling the terrorist siege of the Kiev Opera House, it secures an unknown object (which later turns out to be part of the algorithm). After retrieving the object, the protagonist, a CIA agent, is rescued by a masked rifleman. We see the archer wearing a red cord on his back - the same red cord that Neil (Robert Pattinson) wears on his backpack at the end of the film. So it was Neil who saved the protagonist in the first shootout.
How does the "temporal pincer movement" work?
Let's look at this through the scene in which the protagonist steals the "plutonium" from an armored car for Sator. Half of Sator's men enter through a "temporal style" that allows them to move backwards through time while the other half move forward. Sator sets off with the part of the algorithm where the knowledge is shared between the two teams. That is the "temporal pincer movement".
How did Kat survive after she was shot?
The bullet that Sator shoots at Kat is inverted, which in this universe means that it can be affected by radiation poisoning and regular bullet damage. The protagonist and Neil lead her through the "temporal style" so that she moves back in time like the ball and prevents the radiation. He and Neil then take her to the "Freeport" art warehouse in Oslo, where they enter another "temporal style" so that they can all move forward again in time.
Why is Kat under Sator's control?
In short, Kat knowingly sold Sator a counterfeit painting. To gain their trust, the protagonist and Neil try to steal the painting from the "free port" at Oslo Airport.
How did you start? 2 Explosions in this building?
In the closed city where the algorithm is stored, two teams take part in the operation to stop the detonation of the Doomsday device. The red team is moving forward in time, while the blue team is reversing in time. They use the "temporal pincer movement" over a period of 10 minutes, keeping the blue team separate from the red in helicopters. By setting a timer, the red team (moving forward in time) detonates a bomb in the lower half of the building after 5 minutes, while the blue team in the upper part of the building does the same, counting backwards from 10 minutes at the same moment.
What happened to Neil in the end?
In the algorithm room, the protagonist and Ives (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) encounter a locked gate. On the other side you see the corpse of a masked soldier who is wearing a red cord on his backpack. One of Sator's men tries to shoot the protagonist, but the masked man comes back to life, takes the bullet and opens the gate so that the protagonist can prevent the end of the world. Then he drives back out of the tunnel. We later see the red string on Neil's backpack when he reveals that he has been recruited by the protagonist in the future. The masked soldier who dies is Neil.
Everyone works for the protagonist?
The protagonist travels to London to save Kat from the arms dealer Priya (Dimple Kapadia), who thinks she has to tie loose ends. The protagonist shoots Priya and realizes that he will travel back in time and found the secret organization Tenet.
Tenet premiered in the UK and Australia on August 26, and will be released in select US cities on September 3.
New film calendar for 2020 and 2021 after coronavirus delays
Correction, August 30th: Kat was Not reversed when she was shot. The bullet was and risked radiation poisoning.
