Thread by @neontaster

Oh my god. I had an epiphany about TENET and something about how it works and how to look at the entire movie clicked in my brain and now I absolutely love it.

This isn’t something I can explain in a tweet but a good place to start is this video by @BenChinapen .

A couple of tips:
1. Anyone reversed already knows what’s happened.
2. During the plane crash scene, there are three Protagonists, not two.

I’m looking at this movie like Primer from now on. Multiple watching slowly holding more of the entire story in my head until everything just works. I’m almost there with this.

If I had to sum up my epiphany, it would be that TENET accurately describes how a paradoxical scenario would work. Inevitably a time machine would lead to a closed loop of equilibrium like a standing wave. Causality breaks down and events are doomed to always happen the same way.

It's a war to prevent something that never happens because the people fighting the war knows how it ends. That's a paradox because the information has to have an origin, but Nolan basically says "let's say say this *did* happen - what would it look like?"

I gotta say now that I figured out what he's doing, I have to give him respect for being as pretentious and gutsy as he was to take $200 million and make something this impenetrable that requires multiple watches. I actually drew a diagram tonight just to make sure I got it lol

OK here's another tip. For a normal time flow observer, if someone goes from forward to reverse in the turnstile, then two of them walk in and none appear to come out. If someone goes from reverse to forward, two of them come out when none appeared to have walked in.

I promise that one you get this switch flipped it will start to make sense. A person traveling in reverse who walks into a turnstile will then move forward in time alongside his own self that just travelled backwards, so there are now two of them at the same time.

ADDENDUM: The YouTuber Welby CoffeeSpill created 3D animations that show you the three main confusing sequences in the movie in both time flow directions.

Car chase:

Oslo airport sequence:

Stalsk-12 battle:

One last post where again I tried to kinda clarify the main obstacle to understanding this movie - the scenarios in it are impossible according to our understanding of time. Once you're able to step outside of that, you'll get it.

Unironically yes. In a world where a machine like this existed, there's always a chance that you will turn out to be your own grandfather.

https://twitter.com/iqmutant/status/1459882240893231113

In closing, I don't think the obstacle to this movie is intelligence. Trust me, you're not "too dumb" to get it. It's more about experience. You're more apt to get it if you've spent time watching or reading or thinking about time travel theories and paradoxes.

/END ꓷИƎ\

PS: I'm not proselytizing or saying that you're wrong or dumb if you think the movie is bad or boring or doesn't make sense. I'm relaying my own lightbulb moment and how I went from thinking this was fine but overly confusing to really appreciating it on many different levels. 🤷‍♂️