The Plot of Tenet explained(SPOILERS!)

 

Hello, Everybody! Today I'm going to be talking about Tenet! The movie that I have finally watched! After so much anticipation, I wanted to see it in theaters but I eventually didn't go see it and I have watched it on Apple TV with my parents 2 days ago. Seeing it in theaters would have been a better experience but I still enjoyed it, regardless. I have to admit tho, I didn't even know what was going on half the time

Anyway, as some of you may know, Tenet is Christopher Nolan's latest directorial film following up the critically acclaimed war movie, Dunkirk. It stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Michael Caine, Dimple Kapadia, Himesh Patel, Fiona Dourif, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Kenneth Branagh. 

In this article, I will explain the film plot in greater detail as I possibly can, so if you feel lost and confused, I understand. Movies are made to confuse people and make you ask yourself what it was really about. I mean, I love 2001: A Space Odyssey and I still don't even know what it was about. The plot of "Tenet" has been 2020's biggest mystery and one that will be deciphered for years to come.

Let's start with the setting. The whole movie takes place in a world where the future has declared war on the present because of climate change. To do so, there's a specific technology called "inversion", by which objects and people travel backwards in time by reversing their entropy. Just think about the second-half of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Now, it opens with Washington as "the Protagonist" who looks for a certain MacGuffin during an attack on the Kiev Opera. His life is saved by a mysterious figure in black who kills a henchman with a bullet that travels backward. But his cover is blown and is captured by the mercenaries. He takes a cyanide pill to avoid giving up his secrets, but the pill was actually a test. 

He wakes up on a boat, where his boss assigns him a new mission to join an organization called Tenet, but he doesn't know that until later. Then, he goes inside a windmill to prep for his mission. In that moment, the CIA doesn't explain why. You probably think that they just want him to do push-ups in there, but the actual reason is to put his present self out of the way so that his future self can operate freely in this part of the timeline. Are you confused, yet? Don't worry, this is only the beginning.

He now leaves the Windmill after getting a good workout in and sees a scientist, played by French Actress, Clémence Poésy. The bullet that he encountered at the opera is one of many "inverted" objects that scientists have discovered. People going forward in time can interact with them. To pick up an inverted object, you have to imagine yourself dropping it. 

Washington then traces the bullets to an arms dealer in Mumbai. In order to have an audience with him, he needs a sidekick. This is where Robert Pattinson comes in as Neil. They bungee jump into the arms dealer's apartment where they learn 3 things: the dealer is a woman, she knows about Tenet and she sold the bullets to the film's main antagonist, Andrei Sator, played by Kenneth Branagh and is the future's representative in its war on the present. She explains that Sator communicates with the future by leaving "posterity".

This wouldn't be a Christopher Nolan movie without Michael Caine. He explains that the way to get to Sator is through his wife, Katherine Barton, played by Elizabeth Debicki, who is being blackmailed by her husband over a fake painting that she sold him. He gives the Protagonist another fake painting so that he can talk to her and it works. Barton tells him her entire life story including her and Sator's yacht trip in Vietnam that ended when Sator she could leave him as long as she doesn't see their son again. After she refused, she saw a mysterious woman jump off the boat and envied his mistress' freedom. 

Then the Protagonist beats up Sator's men with a cheese grater.

As part of a quid pro quo with Katherine, he and Neil plan to steal the forged painting. It's located in a free port at the Oslo airport. They pose as very fancy men while Himesh Patel's character crashes a cargo plane  into the airport. Before he and Neil can get the painting, they're attacked by two masked men, but I'll get to their identities in a bit. After they fight these men, they find a vault with no painting in it. Sator somehow knew that they were coming for it.

As Priya(the arms dealer) explains to the Protagonist, the device in the vault is an invention from the future called a turnstile which allows people to invert themselves and travel backward in time. Thus, the two people that he and Neil fought were one person. Sounds heavy, right? Don't worry, we're on a bit of a 15-min. interlude. After Katherine attempts to drown Sator, the Protagonist offers help him find the MacGuffin that is basically plutonium to get close to him and Sator shares his backstory: He grew up at an abandoned Soviet nuclear facility, where he discovered a cache of gold and a message from the future. 

Now, this is when things start to get really hard to follow. So please bear with me on this. The Protagonist and Neil successfully pull off a heist on a highway, no less only to discover that the MacGuffin isn't plutonium, it's a time device. Sator and his men show up with oxygen masks and the cars drive backwards and then a car chase ensues! Inverted Sator threatens to kill Katherine unless the Protagonist gives up the MacGuffin, which he does. At the same time, an inverted car uncrashes and it joins the chase. Sator tries to kill Katherine in a car crash but "he"(the Protagonist) inevitably saves her and they both get captured by Sator's men while Neil calls in the "cavalry".

The Protagonist wakes up in a warehouse next to a turnstile, where Inverted Sator uses a walkie-talkie to translate his backward speech into regular English. He refuses to tell Sator where the MacGuffin actually is, since that it wasn't in the case. Sator reverse-shoots Katharine in the stomach with an inverted bullet. Keep in mind, inverted bullets are dangerous to forward-time people. He lies and tells him that it's in the glove compartment. Just then, "Sator" enters, but before he can do some Evil Russian things, a squadron of troops comes in led by Aaron Taylor-Johnson's character, Ives and goes after Sator while Inverted Sator goes backwards into the Turnstile. Now, when you enter the turnstile going forward, it looks like two people are getting sucked into it but when you enter one backward, it looks like that two people are coming out of it.

Ives reveals that he and his troops are "posterity" soldiers from the future working for the Tenet organization. The Protagonist wonders how Sator knew every move that they've made, even accusing Neil of being the mole. Ives then explains that, nope, the bad guys are sending half their henchmen forward in time and half backward, executing something called a "temporal pincer movement." Weird, right? Anyway, the Protagonist has an idea to follow Sator through the Turnstile; that way, he can get the MacGuffin and Katharine won't die, because her body will be inverted, thus making it just a normal bullet wound to the stomach. Inversion 101: You've got to wear an oxygen mask because your reversed lungs can't breathe as normal lungs and you should know this, never encounter your past self. Also, every heat transfer works the opposite of the way it normally would. It's physics, which I never took in high school.

So the Protagonist steps through the Turnstile and starts going backward in time and steps into the same car from earlier! Now, he gets the MacGuffin and then crashes the car, right? Then Sator walks up to the crashed vehicle and lights it on fire, while he tries to escape, now since that he's inverted, the heat transfer works in reverse, instead of being burned, he gets hypothermia. He wakes up in an air-locked container ship where Neil, a wounded Katharine and some of the troops are all traveling a week in reverse to Oslo airport so that they'll be able to use the Turnstile to get themselves forward again. Now, they talk about the grandfather paradox and other time travel stuff.

Sidebar: Sator's team has the MacGuffin without showing how they got it. In a forward-moving timeline, the last place that it was in was the silver car by the warehouse while the troops were inverted; it's possible that the baddies picked it up from there while moving forward, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, we are now back at Oslo and we see the fight that we saw before between the masked man(Inverted Protagonist) and the Protagonist. He later gets into the Turnstile and now they're all moving forward again. 

And now, we're on to the climax, although there's an exposition dump before the climax, so I'll get into that first. Priya(the arms dealer) explains that nine, yes. Nine MacGuffins that stack up to form something called the Algorithm, which has the power to invert half the planet, thus ending all life as we know it. In better terms, half of earth and its people will go backwards until the Stone Age. The scientist that created the Algorithm regretted her creation so much so that she committed suicide, but before she did off herself she sent each part of the Algorithm back in time, hiding them around the globe. Sator assembled all of those pieces and is going to set them off. Question is where and when...? 

Now that Katharine Barton is perfectly healed she wants in. She also reveals that Sator has cancer and is trying and is using this device to go back in time to the happiest day of his life where he can die peacefully and he's got the switch to set it off in his pocket or his wrist. What was the happiest day of his life? The yacht trip which took place during the opera attack and the explosion at the Soviet Nuclear Facility. 

Now... onto the climax! 

The Protagonist gives Katharine a cellphone and tells her if she feels unsafe, leave a message "for prosperity". With the help of Mahir(Himesh Patel), Katharine sneaks on the yacht and pretends to be her past self and stalls Sator who arrives from the future to kill himself. Meanwhile, the Protagonist, Neil and the Tenet army will attack the Soviet nuclear facility and try to disassemble the Algorithm. They form two groups: The Protagonist is in the red team, which goes forward and Neil's in the blue team, which goes backward and their both briefed in pincer movement. All of the tactic stuff is not important, what's important is that he and Neil are supposed to split off and go underground where the Algorithm is and get it before it triggers the bomb. Neil goes rogue and uninverts, and reinvents himself many times during the battle. 

Meanwhile, in Vietnam, Future Katharine arrives on the yacht just as when Past Katharine leaves with her son and that Past Sator has flown off in a chopper. She encounters Future Sator and successfully convinces him that she's her past self. 

In Russia, the teams have successfully created their diversion. Inverted Neil travels backward and sees the baddies set off a trap at the entrance at the tunnel leading to the Algorithm. Neil uninverts himself trying trying to warn the Protagonist and Ives. They keep going anyway and set off the trip wire and they've blocked their way out. On the other side of the gate is the Algorithm and the bomb. In Vietnam, Sator hits up the Protagonist on a walkie-talkie and gives your typical villain monologue. They eventually get the Algorithm before the clock hits zero. Neil pulls both him and Ives out of the tunnel. Bit of a deus ex machina that Neil was there to save them, but who cares? The world is saved!

In Vietnam, Katharine reveals to Sator that she's not her past self and has the scar to prove it and shoots and kills him too early. Katharine jumps off the yacht as past Katharine sees her, thinking that she was the mistress. 

Back in Russia, Neil and Ives separate the Algorithm in 3 parts and go their separate ways. Ives suggests that they each bury the parts, then kill themselves to avoid giving up their locations. Neil gives his part to the Protagonist and then reveals that he and Neil have known each other for years: Future Protagonist recruited Neil into the Tenet organization. Yes, the Protagonist is the leader of the Tenet organization. It's unclear whether this happened before or after the current events in the film. Earlier, the Protagonist sees a corpse that is part of the blue team and it had a backpack, that same backpack is later seen when Neil heads back to the Turnstile. Neil's inverted self will run back to the tunnel, close the gate and then dies. The same backpack was seen much earlier during the opera attack sequence, which means that there's another Neil somewhere in the timeline.

Some time later, Katharine is waiting to pick up her son from school and feels a sense of danger and calls THE cellphone and she was right. Priya was about to send a man to kill her to tie up loose ends, but then the Protagonist eventually stops her at the exact same time and place and reveals that he's been the mastermind the entire time. 

And that my friends, was Tenet! You may have to watch it a bunch of times to watch it and understand it better, but your time will be well spent. 

If you have any questions, please ask down below and you can also ask on Twitter, @brion_iago and Facebook, Santiago Brion. 

Thanks for reading and have a Merry Christmas!