Tenet Review

If you didn't get the news, theaters are now open in many places around the world and new movies have started to sneak their way into theaters. And while the first couple movies I've reviews since the reopening, "Unhinged" and "The New Mutants," have felt more like sacrificial lambs thrown into the fire, "Tenet" feels like the first real movie in theaters. Or, rather, the first big movie that's taking a risk by being released. I can guarantee you that every studio is closely monitoring the progress of "Tenet" right now to see if it can actually earn money at a time when not all theaters are open yet and those that are open are working at a limited capacity with lots of restrictions in place. And even if theaters didn't have these restrictions, are people ready to come back to theaters? So many questions surrounding this release that will set a precedent going forward. With Warner Bros. themselves also being next up to bat with "Wonder Woman 1984" in early October, are they going to stay put there? What about the likes of "Black Widow," "Soul" and "No Time to Die" in November? All of that will depend on how "Tenet" performs this month. And if you feel safe enough to go out and support it, "Tenet" definitely has my stamp of approval as a movie that deserves to be seen.

You might think that of course this movie has my stamp of approval. It's a Christopher Nolan movie! Unless you've been around the block for a bit. While I genuinely love Nolan as a filmmaker, as shown by me naming "Inception" as my top film of the 2010s, he's been on a tad bit of a losing streak since "Inception." While "The Dark Knight" is also my favorite superhero movie, "The Dark Knight Rises" gets a bit worse every time I watch it. "Interstellar" and "Dunkirk" weren't that great, either. "Interstellar" had a solid first two acts, but falls apart in the final act. And "Dunkirk" was a nice idea for about 30 minutes, but then I got really bored. But if you're a filmmaker and those three movies are the worst that you've done, I'd say you're still doing a pretty good job. Even the best slip up every once in a while. With "Tenet," I was really hoping that it would be the movie to bring him back to top-notch filmmaking. And while I would initially say that it accomplished that, there's also a whole lot to process with this movie. Like many of Nolan's movies, it's something that requires repeat viewings to fully understand. And I've only seen it once. So I have to give the disclosure that I don't yet feel qualified to give it a perfect analysis, nor am I sure when I'm going to be at that point.

What is the movie about? Well, that's the other difficult thing. First off, this is the type of movie where it's best to know as little as possible going in. So even writing a review is a tricky. It's the type of movie where I tell you that it's good, so go and see and we'll discuss afterwards. And I totally recommend that. I'm going to keep things as vague and spoiler-free as I can. But it might be best to just close this and come back and read after you've seen the movie. The other reason why it's a difficult thing to describe is because the plot itself so layered and complex. The most simple way to put is that one timeline is going backwards and another timeline is going forwards. And certain people are trying to stop a certain thing from happening before the world goes kaboom. If you've seen the trailers, you've seen examples of this. They are shooting a gun, but the bullet unshoots and goes back into the gun or they're driving down the road and the car in front of them car rolls around and uncrashes. Why is all of this happening? Well, they spend the whole first half of the movie dumping scene after scene of exposition on you. Most of it bounced right off my brain and into oblivion. I want to go back and watch it, but with subtitles so I can do better at remembering. 

The reason why I had a hard time remembering everything that they were saying was partly due to a thing that a lot of people have brought up in their reviews. The sound mixing is a bit off on this one. They'll be talking in a room and suddenly the score starts coming on, signifying that something important is being said or something is about to happen, but the score goes a bit too loud so that you literally don't know what is being said. You want to rewind it and listen closer, but you're in a theater, so you can't. But since the sound design has caused you to miss that part of the conversation, when things get back to normal, your brain just wanders off because you feel like you just walked in during the middle of a conversation where the first part that you missed was vital to what is being said. And yeah, that's a problem. But the other issue here is that I think my brain just wasn't prepared. I tried to pay attention, but it's also like when you're in a lecture and your professor gets so carried away with some tangent or concept that is just really beyond your ability to be able to understand. So your mind wanders for two seconds and that immediate disconnect derails the whole thing. You no longer have the ability to catch up, so you give up and stop trying, which leads to a really rough lecture.

I've delved through some YouTube comments of reviews or other internet discussions where a lot of people said that this ruined the experience for them. I don't want to conclude that off of just one showing. Just because I didn't understand the professor's lecture, doesn't make it a bad lecture. Or maybe my neighbor was talking too loud and I didn't hear part of it. That's also not the professor's fault. But with this analogy, the professor has the lecture recorded and posted online. I can go do my homework and maybe take a practice test, then go back and listen to the lecture again and perhaps it'll make a lot more sense. And that's my thoughts with "Tenet." I feel like there's some excellent stuff in here that could make this one of the most mindblowing movies I've ever seen. "Could" being the key word here. I just don't know. But I got enough out of it the first time around that I feel like a second viewing... or a third... or a fourth... or a fifth... or a sixth... is really going to cause something to connect and that will be the ultimate viewing experience. This is not a new thing for Nolan. He likes to challenge his audience and not babysit them or hold their hands to guide them to where he wants them to go. I really appreciate that. The result is a movie that keeps on giving. 

But for a first viewing experience, it's really challenging. They'll be talking and talking and talking and talking. Then we'll jump to the next scene where they start talking and talking and talking and talking. And then they'll start talking and walking and talking and talking. Then a thing happens, and I was like, oh that's cool. But then they'll start talking and talking and talking and talking. By this point, my brain has been on brain overload and starts shutting down. Suddenly I panic because I feel like I missed part of the movie. And then a lot of things start happening and I'm like, crap. I failed because I have no idea why they are doing these things that they are doing. And then I got really nervous because the thoughts arose in my brain that I might walk away from this movie being disappointed. And I can't handle the online pressure of having to write another less than stellar review of a Christopher Nolan film. But then we finally arrive to "the moment." Characters are making decisions and these decisions start impacting things from the past. Suddenly my mouth is gaping wide open and I'm being thoroughly entertained by these things and really having my mind blown by these fascinating concepts that Nolan has decided to throw together into one film.

And if you're reading this review without having actually seen this movie, this might be the strangest review you've read from me because I just spent paragraphs talking about a whole lot of nothing and it probably hasn't helped you much. But it is what it is. When I saw the movie Monday, my initial post on Facebook was that this is the most Nolany film I've ever seen. The man has spent two decades now perfecting his craft and this is where he decided to take everything he's ever done and create this big, epic piece of art that combines everything he's learned and experimented with. And if you think "Inception" or "The Prestige" were complex and difficult to understand, "Tenet" makes those movies look like an episode of "Sesame Street." There are so many moving pieces and intricate parts with layers and layers detailed concepts and a look at time that I've not seen before. Now this doesn't necessarily make the movie better than his previous work. But it definitely is his most complex film. It's his most detailed and intricate work of art that feels like he's been building to for his whole career. As you can tell, it's a giant puzzle that I feel I've only scratched the surface on. I'm excited at the idea of being to continue to learn new things from it for years to come.

Again, I don't want to get too caught up in any negatives here until I've had a chance to digest it a bit more and explore it's world again, but I think that one thing that might hold it back a touch is its slight disconnect with the characters and their motivations behind everything. This feels like a movie that gets so caught up with its high concepts and technical marvels that it kinda forgets about some of the filmmaking basics such as characters. I mean there's a lot of them, but John David Washington is the lead role and they didn't even bother to give him a name. He's just "the protagonist" on the cast list. You don't really get to know who he is or some of the struggles he's going through. He's just a vehicle to move these concepts forward. And he meets Robert Pattinson at some point. He's actually given a name. But we don't know much about him, either. They begin a strong friendship and their characters go interesting places. But I don't feel there's much emotional depth to them in comparison to Leo's character in "Inception" or all the deep, rich themes between Batman, Joker, and Harvey Dent in "The Dark Knight." And because of this, neither of them is given the opportunity to really shine like they have in recent films, even though both of them do a solid job. 

The main conflict comes more with the main girl they meet along the way, played by Elizabeth Debicki. It's her husband, played by Kenneth Branagh, that is the antagonist of the film and there's some emotion there. But when the supporting characters have more emotional depth than either of the main characters, that might be a slight problem. But I don't want to get too caught up on that. The real star of this movie are these high concepts that he builds. Messing around with the timeline is Nolan's specialty with movies like "The Prestige," "Inception," "Memento" and even his last two movies, "Interstellar" and "Dunkirk." And the idea here in "Tenet" with one timeline going forwards and the other going backwards is genuinely fascinating. And I want to get into it more, but that part I don't want to touch too much because it's the last act of the film that really shines here and even suggesting that makes me feel like I've said too much. Maybe this is a movie that I will revisit at some point on this blog. I don't know yet. But I definitely am excited to revisit this movie itself. A grade seems a bit foolish to give because that's definitely going to change, but a tentative 9/10 seems right, with the potential of it being in the top half of my Nolan rankings.  

The New Mutants Review

It's hard for me to believe that "The New Mutants" is actually a real movie that came out in theaters. I even purchased a ticket and watched it with my own eyes. For a long time I was convinced that the movie was a myth and that I'd never get to see it. In fact, in a strange way I'm almost disappointed that it finally came out because being in a constant of waiting for it was kinda fun. Every time it got closer to coming out, it got pushed back again. Continuing to follow it was almost like a game of a donkey chasing a carrot that's tied to a string above. But the donkey finally caught the carrot. So now what are we supposed to do?It's like when Leo finally won his Oscar. What's the internet supposed to talk about now? For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, the first trailer for "The New Mutants" was published on YouTube on October 13, 2017. It's actual U.S. release date ended up being August 28, 2020. Josh Boone and Knate Lee, the screenwriters for the movie, with Boone also being the director, started working on this back in 2015, shortly after the release of Boone's "The Fault in Our Stars." The initial release date was April 2018. So yeah, this movie has been on quite the journey and Disney finally releasing it feels like something done out of obligation.

The idea behind this movie is one that I was actually intrigued by. It was advertised as a horror film within the X-Men universe. That's a brilliant idea. We've had so many superhero movies come out as of late that if studios are going to keep releasing them, which they are most definitely planning on doing, they need to come up with ideas as to how to make the genre fresh instead making the same three movies over and over a thousand times. Out of all the genres that have been played around with in regards to superhero movies, the horror genre is one that hasn't really been explored much. But when you think about it, it's an idea that can be done quite easily, especially when it comes to mutants with strange powers that they're not used to. So I was excited for this when I saw the trailer back in October 2017, nearly three years ago. But yeah, then it started to keep getting postponed, which always has me nervous. Fox pushed it back twice, the first time from April 2018 to February 2019, then again to August 2019. Reportedly it was because they wanted to reshoot the movie and make it scarier. Lean more on the horror element. The last two times it got postponed wasn't the movie's fault. Disney bought Fox, then shuffled their whole schedule. Then the pandemic happened.

Now in watching this movie today, this feels like an odd piece of cinematic history and really is a sign that Fox had no idea what they were doing with the X-Men. They never really had much of a direction to begin with. The first two X-Men movies were a huge success, but then they crashed it into a brick with with X3. Then they tried to reboot things by telling the origin stories of all the characters. But after everyone hated "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," they did a full on reboot with "X-Men: First Class." That was going good as well, until they again crashed it into a brick wall with "X-Men: Apocalypse." In the meantime, they started throwing all sorts of things at the wall to see what stuck. They scored huge with the likes of "Logan" and "Deadpool," but failed mightily with "Dark Phoenix." But when seen as a whole, Fox's X-Men universe can only been seen as a giant mess, even though some of the entries are pretty solid. And "The New Mutants" really just feels like one of Fox's backup plans that could've worked had they actually committed to it. But Fox never committed to anything, which is why Disney now owns them. And Disney definitely didn't want this, which is why I believe they're using this as experimental bait to see if people will show up to theaters again during COVID.

Through all of this, I feel the most bad for director Josh Boone, who seems like he was personally committed to this idea of his, but was never given much of an opportunity by Fox or Disney to do anything with it. He is a competent director. I liked "The Fault in Our Stars" back in 2014. And I also believe that "The New Mutants" is a competently made film with some great ideas. I think the biggest flaw is that Fox has been so clueless with the X-Men that we've seen the premise of a mutants origin story done in just about every movie they made. I'm ready to take the next step and see where a team of mutants can actually go, but Fox could never get that plane off the ground too far before it crashed back down and they had to keep starting over. So here we are. Another mutants origin story. But given the challenge of having to do this restart yet again, Josh Boone did a pretty good job. The horror element gives it a unique perspective of it being a darker, more eerie take on it with a lot of mystery and unanswered questions involved. In fact, this is a very small and isolated film. Outside the occasional flashback or vision, the movie only has six characters. Our five mutants locked in an abandoned lab with their doctor that's supposedly there to help them with their powers.

With this small, isolated setup in mind, I think the movie effectively built towards an interesting climax. Our lead mutant is a young girl named Danielle Moonstar, played by Native American actress Blu Hunt. In the beginning of the movie, she awakes to her little town or village being attacked by a bear demon thing. Her father rescues her and tries to save the day, but everything gets destroyed and everyone dies but her. Next thing she knows, she wakes up in this facility where someone has found her and discovered she is a mutant, but they haven't figured out the extent of her powers. So after this traumatic experience, Danielle, or Dani, has to figure out how to live with these four other mutants, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, Maise Williams, Charlie Heaton and Henry Zaga, with Alice Braga playing their doctor. I think this is a solid group of mutants and the movie takes its time to introduce us to these characters, none of whom seem to want to be there, but all of whom are fairly interesting. We slowly get to learn about the backgrounds of all of them and why they are there and it adds more of a connective link to our cast. And I think all five actors in this do a great job of trying to bring their characters to life. This is the beginning of something pretty solid.

Which is why the whole thing is disappointing because you know it's not going to go anywhere. Josh Boone wanted this to be a trilogy when he initially started working on it. I would've loved to see that come about. Anya Taylor-Joy, Maise Williams, and Charlie Heaton are three up-and-coming actors who deserved to be part of something bigger and use this as another stepping stone for their careers. I didn't know Blue Hunt or Henry Zaga before seeing this movie, but I was impressed with both. But yet when the studio doesn't care about the property and the studio itself gets sold in the middle of production to another studio that doesn't care, it's hard to get to excited about anything here. It's like watching the pilot episode to a TV series that you know already got canceled. The emotional weight of a pilot episode or an origin story is not there when you know going in that you're never going to see these characters again. The movie actually does tie into the X-Men. In fact, part of the plot has to do with these mutants thinking they're being trained to be X-Men. I don't know if this is a spoiler, but there's also ties to the Essex Corporation, which was teased at the end of Apocalypse and in other places, but has now been completely abandoned because Disney is going to completely start over with mutants.

As is, the movie is fine on its own. Like I said, there's a lot of good setup here. A grew to care about the characters and enjoyed learning about their backstories. Blue Hunt and Maise Williams develop a relationship that's a solid core to the film. And I do think the horror setup works decently enough. I wish they would've leaned into that a bit more as it never evolves beyond simply being a bit creepy and strange at times. This is not a scary film and it's more of a superhero action flick than a true horror film. Part of the premise does involve the main characters having to relive their worst nightmares, which starts chasing them down. If that sounds like "IT," that's because it kind of is, but the sequences, which I did enjoy, reminded me more of a "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark," which was a solid PG-13 horror film from last year. So if you combine "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" with an X-Men origin story, you have "The New Mutants." It's perfectly acceptable. And the ending battle with the demon bear is a really entertaining. It's just disappointing because this is never going to go anywhere, so it was hard for me to really care. But hey, if Disney wants to prove me wrong and bring these characters back, I won't complain. My grade for "The New Mutants" is a 7/10.