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This week, on What the Hell Was That:
Stuffed with whatever you call the opposite of explanation, Tenet is one of the biggest and best movies of our time by one of our biggest and best filmmakers alive. Is it kind of heartless? Does Sir Michael Caine forget his usual Nolan exposition duties? Is it great and bad? Now is the time for this conversation.
Joe’s Back of the Box
The fate of all humanity rests in the hands of the protagonist (John David Washington) as the world sits on the brink. When a Russian oligarch (Kenneth Branagh) finds the means to erase all of humanity it becomes not just a race against time but through time itself. The twists and turns will keep you guessing right up to the last second. Can the protagonist save the day or will he be inverted and disappear forever…?
The REAL Back of the Box
Um. Look. This movie tells you in the first 10 minutes, “don’t try to understand it”. If you watch this movie as an act of mindfulness and accept what they are saying and doing in the moment, it is a fun ride. If you put any thought, any thought into it, the movie breaks down. Thankfully they do not try to overexplain or even really explain anything going with the tact of assuming you should know. It mostly works. There are some fun fight scenes and chase scenes as people move backwards and forwards in time. It is a movie that suffers from thinking it is smarter than it is. If you can get past all of that, Tenet is worth the ride. If you cannot, well, you are in for a long and boring movie.
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated, so… You know… It’s not our fault.
Greg: Joe in the movie we watched this week. A character says, all I can offer you is a gesture followed by a word. If you were to offer somebody a gesture followed by a word, what would those be?
Joe: Well, this is the gesture.
Greg: I don’t even. What does that even mean?
Joe: Well, it means {BLEEEEEEP}
Greg: All right, let’s get to the show.
Joe: Let’s do it.
Joe: All I have for you is a word challenge.
Clip: It’ll open the right doors. Some of the wrong ones to use it carefully.
Joe: I need some.
Clip: Idea of the threat we face. As I understand it, we’re trying to prevent World War three. I’m not saying Armageddon. You know, something was. It can communicate with the future. Time travel. No inversion. I meant to pull the trigger. You’re not shooting the bullet. You’re catching it. Well, I’ve seen too much. Well, we’ll try and keep up. This is reversing the flow of time.
Clip: It wasn’t just being here now, and it never happened.
Greg: The year is 2020, and Christopher Nolan wrote and directed a movie called tenet. We are talking about John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Sir Michael Caine and of course, don’t forget about the big bad in the movie Kenneth Branagh. This is an interesting movie for us to pick. We are maybe going after a sacred cow here. Joe, going straight for Christopher Nolan to talk about him on the show here.
Greg: I’m so curious to hear what you’re about to say. What makes.
Joe: Tenet.
Greg: A great bad movie?
Joe: That’s a really good question. This movie is I’ve seen it a couple times within the last month, and I don’t know what to think of this movie. It’s a movie that wants to be smarter than it is. It’s trying to be a thinking man’s time travel movie.
Greg: Right.
Joe: It also says within ten minutes of the movie opening. Don’t think about it. Literally a character says to the main our main character, the protagonist. Yeah. Yeah. Don’t worry about it. I don’t think about it. I can’t remember exactly what they say I have. Oh, no.
Greg: Let’s just play it. I have it right here.
Clip: How can I move before I touch it? From your point of view. You caught it. But from the bullets point of view. You dropped it. The cost comes before effect. No, that’s just the way we see time. Well, what about free will? That bullet wouldn’t have moved even beyond the. Either way, we run the tape. You made it happen.
Clip: Don’t try to understand it feels.
Greg: That’s Christopher Nolan talking directly to just Guy Tucker, right?
Joe: Yeah. Yeah.
Greg: Don’t try to understand it. Just feel it.
Joe: And when I did that. And I just turned my brain off. Sure. And just watched each scene. Yeah, that was fine.
Greg: Oh.
Joe: It’s fine. Okay. I was like, okay, this is where we are, okay? This is what’s happening. Okay? This is what’s happening.
Greg: It’s a great, fine movie.
Joe: It’s a great, fine movie. The second I would try to put together the logic or try to reconstruct what was going backwards in time versus forwards in time or any of those, it falls apart instantaneously into just a mess. It’s a pretty movie, except for the lighting. It feels weird, especially in the first half of it. I feel like they didn’t have a good cinematographer or didn’t, like, hire a lighting person.
Greg: Shots fired.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So White Van Hoytema is on notice.
Joe: Yeah, he should be, because I felt like it could have been lit better. I didn’t care about any of the characters in this movie. Yeah.
Greg: That’s a big that’s a big problem. Yeah.
Joe: And what I’m going to say now is what I missed. And we just did two Mission Impossible movies in a row. Yeah.
Greg: Yeah. Which I’m glad we watched those before this one.
Joe: But yeah. Yeah. So mission impossible like takes it to the nth degree of the moment where they’re sitting around and they’re going to restate the plot. Yeah.
Greg: Yeah. The Basil exposition scene.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah. We needed a couple of those at key points in this. And maybe a unlikable main character. Now, it wasn’t unlikable.
Greg: But no.
Joe: I didn’t care really.
Greg: At all about the protagonist.
Joe: About the protagonist.
Greg: His name is the protagonist.
Joe: It’s a struggle for me. What did you think of this movie? I’m dying to know that. Like the great swineherd. What is it, a great movie? Is it a bad movie? What did I what am I missing or am I not? I don’t know. What’s your thoughts?
Greg: It is so obviously both in my mind. Like this movie is a miracle of cinema. It’s a $205 million movie spent in nearly all of the ways I would want them to spend 205 million.
Joe: Dollars.
Greg: And I resented it the first time I saw it, because I was like, okay, so I’m not going to understand this the first time I see it. Christopher Nolan I have to watch this one again to get it. That was a bummer to me. That’s like, okay, like this is kind of following the shoes, a bit of memento where you kind of don’t know what’s happening is that movie goes in reverse.
Joe:
Greg: But by the end you do pretty much put all that stuff together.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And then there’s inception, which is like the thinking man’s heist movie. Sir Michael Caine was the Basil exposition of that movie where he just kind of would I love him and all of the Christopher Nolan movies, because when you need someone to explain the plot, Michael Caine shows up, right? And Sir Michael Caine shows up in this movie and doesn’t explain anything.
Greg: Just. You need a different suit.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And I was like, oh, we are in trouble. If Michael Caine isn’t going to explain to us what’s happening here. Like, he did that in interstellar and he did that in the Batman films. He did that in inception, for sure. Wasn’t he, like, a professor in inception?
Joe: I don’t know. I’ve never seen inception, so.
Greg: Oh, we will get to inception for sure. So I had seen most everything he made. Looks like he made three shorts before he made following, which was like a famous noir movie that was like his, his entry into it that he does memento immediately gets the Batman series that he does Batman Begins. He does Batman Begins and then The Prestige.
Joe: Which was great.
Greg: The Dark Knight, which was great, inception, which I thought was great, Dark Knight Rises, which I’ve never stayed awake the entire way through.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: And that’s when he discovered that you don’t need to be able to understand what people say in your movie. You can put a mask over their face and mix it in a way that you just don’t even understand what people are saying. Which made me laugh really hard. Interstellar is like one of the most popular movies these days.
Greg: I have never seen Dunkirk, which was the film before this one.
Joe: I haven’t either.
Greg: That one is very well-regarded. Maybe I should come over and watch it some time.
Joe:
Greg: And then of course, he followed this movie up with Oppenheimer which won Best Picture. Have you seen Oppenheimer.
Joe: I have not seen that.
Greg: It’s really good.
Joe: But I do I want to see it.
Greg: It was one of the best movies I saw that year for sure. I didn’t I was not angry at that Oscar at all. But I get there’s a chance I get less angry at the Oscars than you do. That’s what we learned from top Gun Maverick.
Joe: Yes.
Greg: So my answer is it is incredible because the production is just unbelievable. They’re doing things in-camera and making an incredible special effects movie with almost entirely practical effects.
Joe:
Greg: But then you just don’t know what’s happening. And then when I watched it again, I didn’t get some of it. I’ve not seen this movie four times and I can pretty much understand everything that’s happened in every part of the movie except the end sequence. I cannot quite follow what’s happening in that last sequence, but it is so crazy that just buildings are like blowing up in reverse and blowing up in forwards.
Greg: And just the opposite, opposite scenes going on all over the place. Unbelievable. There’s only like 240 special effects shots in this movie.
Joe: Yeah, I believe it. There is, from an action perspective and a stunt perspective, it’s. Yeah, everything I ever wanted. Exactly. Yeah.
Greg: And so it’s great for that.
Joe: Yeah. So the first time I watched it, you know, you kind of have the first scene when they’re in the airport breaking in. Right. In Oslo the first time through.
Greg: Sure, sure.
Joe: And there’s a great fight scene. And I and I suspected because it was kind of you know, they they introduced the, the theory, which is based on a real scientific principle that I’ve watched Neil deGrasse Tyson talk about with like, astrophysicist this theory about electrons that we’ve never actually seen an electron. They’re so small and fast that we’ve only kind of seen the impacts of them.
Joe: And so they all are the same. And so there’s this theory that every electron is actually just one electron that is moving forwards and backwards in time instantaneously. And so they mention it in this. I caught it this time the second time I watched. Yeah. That they’re basing it on. So that’s a real like theory.
Greg: Am I hearing you right that there’s only one electron and we’re seeing that one electron everywhere?
Joe: When you’re looking at it, let’s say, you know, whatever you’re seeing in front of you is that electron moving forwards in time and it moves backwards in time. It’s moving so fast that it is. There is only one electron or. But yeah, it’s not been proven except for that. It’s like the mathematics of it. Kind of. Yeah. Are supported.
Joe: Okay. Being able to describe it in any more detail, it was way over my head in terms of understanding. But I was like, okay, the theory is like, okay, it’s it can move so fast that it can go forwards and backwards in time and it’s not affected. Yeah. And that’s the premise that they use. I do appreciate in this movie I’ve talked about this before, but like time travel movies.
Joe: Yeah. The more you explain it, the worse things get. You know, because it just becomes too much of a stepping into the quantum accelerator to do blah blah blah. And then we’re going to, you know, if you go back in time you’re going to change the future. And they kind of touch on some of those the grandfather paradoxes and those sorts of things.
Joe: But they don’t spend a lot of time on them, which I think is actually to this movie’s benefit because, yeah, yeah, as soon as you open that up, then you’re kind of lost in in theory. Oh, no, I’ve gone cross-eyed. I think what I wanted more from this movie was a little more heart in the characters and their connection.
Joe: I must have been a purposeful thing within it. But the protagonist, we’re supposed we follow through. Every is in every scene, basically. Yeah. Yeah. And he is awesome.
Greg: John. David. Washington. Yeah.
Joe: Denzel. Son. He doesn’t look like him too much. But if you listen, you can hear his voice in there is spectacular in this movie is.
Greg: He is really good and.
Joe: Everyone is actually really good in this movie.
Greg: Agreed. Agreed.
Joe: But. And Kenneth Branagh steals every scene he’s in.
Greg: He is just pure evil.
Joe: In this movie.
Greg: He is just the worst person you would ever share a room with. Yeah, Christopher Nolan said it. He was doing this performance in a way that reminded him of what Heath ledger did in The Dark Knight. Just what’s going to happen when this guy is in the room? We have no idea where this is going to go.
Joe: Yeah. There was like tangible danger around him. Yeah. And I don’t know how much of that was on the page and how much of that is Kenneth Branagh and bringing it to life. But he is the best character in this movie, and really the only one that has, to me, an arc to them. Sure. So that I guess that’s where I’m struggle.
Joe: I have struggled with this movie now the two times I’ve watch it, like I just didn’t care. Like there are there are people that die within this movie that their death could have symbolized. Some of their been a little bit more heartbreaking or, you know, pulled at the heartstrings a little bit more. Yeah. That they didn’t go for.
Joe: And so it just at the end of the movie was like, okay. Yeah, yeah.
Greg: There wasn’t a lot for you to connect with.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Yeah. I think that’s pretty accurate in an assessment of this movie. I do think that, like, there’s some great connection between John David Washington and Robert Pattinson’s character that when they’re talking, they seem to enjoy each other quite a bit. Robert Pattinson is someone I have not really tracked with in Hollywood. I haven’t seen his Indian movies that everyone says are really interesting and that his performances are really interesting.
Greg: I haven’t seen the Twilight movies.
Joe: Yeah. Oh, he.
Greg: Was good in The Batman.
Joe: That was a good movie.
Greg: You know, in this movie, he’s. It seems like he’s just playing Christopher Nolan, to be honest. And, I loved him in this movie. And so when they’re talking, pretty great. Elizabeth Debicki, who plays Kat, her character is almost entirely motivated by the fact that she has a son. This pretty common female protagonist material for a Christopher Nolan movie.
Greg: Women are defined by their children. Just seems like a little bit of a trap. You can’t get out of. I guess it gets a little bit out of that. In Oppenheimer, he writes more interesting female protagonists in that movie. Oh, and yeah, you’re right. Kenneth Branagh’s story is a little I guess it’s a little bit touching.
Greg: You know, he grew up in, in a Russian kind of secret place that did a lot of, nuclear testing and things. And he’s just kind of sick because of that.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And so we are kind of experiencing his life just coming from nowhere and trying to make something of it, I guess.
Joe:
Greg: See, the thing is people who have seen this movie, they’re like I don’t really remember what happened. It was five years ago now. And I don’t know that this is a Nolan movie that people are really chasing after and going to watch again. So I feel like the best thing we could possibly do is pretend like we’re walking down the aisles of Blockbuster Video, picking out the different DVD boxes, picking him up, reading the back, trying to figure out which movie sounds the best to us.
Greg: That’s right. It’s time for the back of the box.
Joe: It’s the back of the box. The fate of all humanity rests in the hands of the protagonist. John David Washington as the world sits on the brink when a Russian oligarch, Kenneth Branagh, finds the means to erase all of humanity. It becomes not just a race against time, but through time itself. The twists and turns will keep you guessing right up until the last second.
Joe: Can the protagonists save the day? Or will he be inverted and disappear forever? Yeah, yeah, that’s pretty much it. Yeah.
Greg: The only thing you didn’t really spoil is that we are being attacked by the future.
Joe:
Greg: By objects that are moving backward through time.
Joe: Which they never really explain. And we don’t really see how that happens.
Greg: Well let’s put a pin in that. Yeah. That was a great back of the box for marketing materials. But let’s get honest here. What is Joe’s guy. Tucker’s real back in the box.
Joe: Look, this movie tells you in the first ten minutes. Don’t try to understand it. If you watch this movie as an act of mindfulness and accept what they are saying and doing in the moment, it’s a fun ride. Yeah. If you put any thought, any thought into it at all, this movie breaks down. Thankfully, they do not try to overexplain or even really explain anything going on with the tact of assuming you should know.
Joe: It mostly works. There are some fun fight scenes and chase scenes as people move backwards and forwards in time. It is a movie that suffers from thinking it is smarter than it is. If you can get past all of that, tenet is worth the ride. If you cannot, well, you’re in for a long, boring movie.
Greg: Wow. Yeah. So here is my take on this movie. I completely agree with you there. Every time I start this movie, I think Christopher Nolan thinking man’s movie. People in college dorm rooms everywhere are going to debate what really happened in the theories behind blah blah, blah. Like, this movie would seem like it was created for Reddit to, you know, debated afterwards.
Greg: And so I’m watching it with like, okay, thinking man’s movie, thinking man’s spy movie. Oh, it’s a little bit James Bond ish. Oh, interesting. You know, the colors, the cinematography. You were talking about it. It looks like kind of the first seven, you know, Sean Connery movies. From the bond series with the colors and things are very throwback in that way.
Greg: It’s like oh that’s interesting that they did that. Oh the locations are crazy. The clothes are crazy. The scope of this thing is crazy. And then there’s like a scene where there’s four big trucks that, like, trap a truck in the middle and they steal a thing from it, and then you realize.
Joe: Oh, right.
Greg: I forgot about how Christopher Nolan just like stuff. That’s rad. He’s just doing stuff that is rad in this movie. Big trucks that are doing big stuff. And it’s just kind of like, oh, wow, I haven’t seen that before. And I think that is what this movie is. It’s just like, yeah, it’s just cool. He’s just making a almost uncrackable plot that just looks rad.
Joe:
Greg: I could probably explain a lot of the plot to you now. I spent a little time with this one, but I think that’s pretty much just it like this is just pretty rad. These trucks doing this guy getting in a fight with someone who’s navigating time backwards. And then we find out that it’s actually him going through time backwards.
Greg: So a man is fighting himself, but one of them is going backwards. That’s pretty rad. You know, 747 crashes into an airport so that they can steal something out of a Freeport, which is like a place where, you know, people can keep their art without paying the taxes to have it go into the country. A huge 747 crashing into a thing for real?
Greg: Yeah, that’s pretty rad.
Joe:
Greg: There’s just lots of rad. In my mind it’s like oh okay. It’s the big big dumb movie.
Joe:
Greg: So you kind of have to accept it on those terms. So I think it’s a great bad movie because there is that moment where you have to choose.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Am I going to try to figure this out or is this just a big dumb movie.
Joe: Yeah. And each time I’ve watched it, I’ve gone, nope, I’m not going to try to think about it. Yeah, yeah. And I’m better for it, I think because it just the more I’ve tried to think about it after watching it as I was kind of getting ready for the podcast. Sure. It doesn’t make sense in terms of there’s a lot of I’ve got to go back in or I’m going to go, you know, I switched mid mission and inverted myself and now and and they’re like awesome.
Joe: Okay. But yeah within the context of the movie I think it is it’s a rad movie. It’s you know, it was like how can we have explosions and implosions at the same time? Totally. Yeah. And let’s have some cool action scenes.
Greg: There’s like 600 extras. There’s like four massive helicopters. There’s explosions everywhere.
Joe: There are two things that happen in this. There’s like things that are going backwards in time where we’re being attacked from the future. Yeah. Yeah. But I also can’t tell if the things that are going backwards and forwards, like the bullets. Yeah, if they’re coming from the future or if they’re a person who is inverted shooting them because they don’t.
Joe: Right. Explain that.
Greg: That is a little confusing.
Joe: And again, don’t think about it like that was that was the thing that I was just like, nope. I’m not going to worry about this. Right? Okay. We’re being attacked from the future. Fine. Whatever. Right. But right now, I’m just enjoying this car chase where one car is going backwards and one car’s going forwards and what I appreciated about the ambition of this movie when they have that fight scene in the airport.
Joe: Yeah, I instantly knew that he was probably fighting himself or.
Greg: Oh yeah, they do kind of tip that a little bit somehow.
Joe: Yeah. And there’s like Robert Pattinson. Yeah. Kind of gets to one of the people and the helmet comes off and he doesn’t do anything. And you’re. And I was like why. Yeah. You know so I was like I was like okay. But I figured that that was happening. And so and I appreciated it. And they get back to it and you see it from both sides of it, you see.
Greg: Which is incredible.
Joe: Yeah, it was awesome. And then there’s a car chase that happens. Yeah. The same thing where you’re like in the early part of it. You’re kind of going forwards in time. And then the the second part, you’re coming backwards in time. And it was again, it was great.
Greg: Incredible. And never been done before. I think it’s a little it’s a little inception.
Joe:
Greg: I don’t want to say any more, but I think inception is a more successful movie than this one. Yeah. Inception is a divisive film.
Joe: I mean, all right, maybe you know the answer to this, Greg. But why were they attacking us from the future?
Greg: Kenneth Branagh says this seemingly like on the phone with John David Washington at the end, and it’s because the future is upset that we ruined the planet with global warming. Kind of like squandered natural resources. And so they created a way to invert matter.
Joe:
Greg: So that they could get it back to a certain point and basically just like invert everything and ruin the world. I think essentially to start over to like catch it before it’s ruined.
Joe: This is the strangely the same plot as the Tomorrow War with
Greg: Oh, interesting.
Joe: Chris. Chris Pratt. Chris Pratt leans heavily on CGI, and then it’s an alien movie. Sure, but that’s exactly what happens as they come back, as they’re, they figure out time travel. So they come back to the present because they’re running out of people, because everyone is dying. So they have to recruit people from the past to fight in the tomorrow war.
Joe: Do you think we’ll get.
Greg: To the tomorrow.
Joe: War? For sure. It is.
Greg: Oh, we will get to the tomorrow. Where were you worried about that?
Joe: Yeah I wasn’t. No. As far as, like, a great bad movie. I would watch the Tomorrow War over and over again because it’s so bad. But it’s perfect in every way. Yeah. It does not suffer from trying to be too smart.
Greg: Okay. Okay, great. I feel like there’s a chance this movie wasn’t trying to be too smart either. I think that might be something that I brought into it.
Joe: That I thought I thought too, I. And maybe it’s just Christopher Nolan being attached to it and like his.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: Ethos and how he looks at it. But to me it felt like the both times I’ve watched it, it’s like trying to be the smartest person in the room. To me, that’s where it falls apart a little bit. But this movie, even the way it begins, is very confusing. You’re just like, right in the middle of the action with no idea who anybody is or what’s happening or what’s, you know, what’s going on.
Greg: It was very much like Bane’s Stooges kind of causing a ruckus in the third Batman movie, or like the Joker’s Stooges causing a ruckus in the second Batman movie. It definitely had like a Batman trilogy kind of goons just causing mayhem. Yeah. Feeling to it. And then I had to be reminded that this wasn’t that right.
Joe: Now that I think about it, I don’t know that I’ve seen any of his Batman movies. So I’ve seen bits and pieces of them. Yeah. But not start to finish. And so that’s interesting.
Greg: Well, his whole thing was like, what if Gotham was a real city?
Joe:
Greg: And so he uses Chicago to be Gotham and it’s just like a real place. But it was kind of like a mind bending thing at the time.
Joe: Right.
Greg: What if Batman was a real person and it took place in a real city. And he definitely, definitely, definitely leaned on Michael Mann for that realism. So he’s so influenced by Michael Mann. You see it a little bit in this movie when suddenly there I think it was like they were on the street and there’s no like a gunfight.
Joe:
Greg: Definitely shades of heat in that gunfight where there’s kind of like gunfire coming from all over, all around. Yeah. You can see a lot of Michael Mann in Christopher Nolan, which is very cool.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Except I heard one time Michael Mann’s cinematographer tried to talk. Christopher Nolan into not using film anymore to using digital cameras. And Christopher Nolan was like, hard pass. I’m out. And in fact, this movie was filmed in 65 millimeter, which is huge for like every frame and then filmed in Imax for all of the exciting parts. And so they just had these massive cameras on their shoulders that they were carrying around with huge Imax film.
Greg: And they had two different kinds. One that loaded film one way and one that loaded film backwards.
Joe: Interesting. Okay, yeah.
Greg: Technical sidebar that derails the conversation.
Joe: No, I’m trying to. It’s interesting because this movie breaks with a lot of the tropes that were used to. Yeah, even in, like, an opening scene, they breach the opera house. Yeah. There’s just, like, gunfire. You don’t know who the good guys are. The bad guys? Yeah. Or what’s happening at all. And usually in movies, even if that’s how they’re going to open, you kind of have establishing shots and a little bit of character being built.
Joe: Oh, who’s this person? Oh, this is the leader. This is the good guy. This is the bad guy. And you just don’t know anything of really what’s happening, and I yeah, I do like that. I always like it when I’m in the middle of a movie and I don’t quite know what’s happening. Sure. And feeling kind of at the mercy of the filmmakers.
Joe: And you know, the first probably 15 minutes of this movie I think are the best part of this movie to me.
Greg: Oh interesting.
Joe: Then you have him being captured. Right. You have him killing himself.
Greg: He thinks taking like the CIA poison pill. That turns out it was a test.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Was he willing to take the poison pill? And if so, that means he can join the secret world.
Joe: Yeah. Up to that point where you kind of find out and you get a little bit of exposition about what’s going on. I was like, what is happening? This is great. Yeah. And then even the scene where they’re like, don’t think about, don’t try to understand it. And not just me to the audience. Don’t think it’s.
Greg: 100%.
Joe: Just go with it. I think what I would have loved is then a little more character development. Yeah.
Greg: Who is the protagonist?
Joe: Yeah. Why should we like him? Because we’re going to follow him the rest of the movie. Right. And his relationship, like I agree, his relationship with Robert Pattinson and Kat.
Greg: Yeah. It turns out they were best friends.
Joe:
Greg: From the future?
Joe: Yeah. Again, they could have played these up a little bit more. I feel like that’s a missed opportunity to raise the stakes a little bit. Because by the end I again I just didn’t care enough about these people. I was like I was watching the movie and I wanted to see how it was going to go. But yeah, you know, when people are being threatened or they’re going to be killed.
Joe: I was like, I don’t really care about these people. Like, is he in love with Kat or not? I think he is.
Greg: Yeah. They seemingly go out of their way to save Kat.
Joe:
Greg: When we’ve been told something worse than nuclear holocaust is going to happen. Yeah. It’s like, why are we changing the plot of this movie for her.
Joe:
Greg: I obviously love that they’re doing that as people. But if we’re trying to save the planet from like the whole thing being ruined, why is she guiding the plot now.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. And that didn’t seem like they had really any chemistry or connection. They have some scenes together which are good, but, you know, they didn’t feel like in other movies where there’s sexual chemistry and they’re trying to, you know, even if it’s going to be unrequited and they’re not going to like consummated or anything like that, there’s at least, oh, he loves her and she loves him.
Joe: I didn’t get any sense of that throughout this movie, that they had anything other than a passing relationship. And then he does change the entire trajectory of everything for her, you know, saves her life. And they go and hurt her because she’s been shot with an inverted round and because.
Greg: Maybe they needed her alive to get to Kenneth Prada in the end, maybe they knew that without her, they had no way of having leverage with him. Yeah. A single line.
Joe: We needed that. That exposition scene of them on the shipping container as she’s half asleep in the corner. Right. And Robert Pattinson’s been like, what the hell, dude?
Greg: But they use that time to explain the grandfather paradox. Like that? Yeah.
Joe: Which then they just becomes. Don’t think about it. And again. Okay.
Greg: So true.
Joe: Okay. I did.
Greg: Like that. We never saw the outside of that container that they were traveling on for days and days, though. That was pretty cool.
Joe: Yeah. So there’s a little bit of Hobbs and Shaw travel logic, and then all of a sudden, they have to spend all this time on a shipping container.
Greg: No, I think this is how Shaw gets around as well.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: It’s a all shipping container for days lined with plastic for the inverted Arizona problem. Yeah. All right, so he gets captured. He takes the cyanide pill. He wakes up on a boat and a guy named Martin Donovan, who’s kind of a classic. That guy is on on the boat. He, like, gives us a little tidbit of exposition about what we’re dealing with here.
Greg: Let’s listen to it. Okay.
Clip: There’s a cold war. Cold as ice. We even know its true nature is to lose. This is knowledge divided. All I have for you is a gesture in combination with a word tenet. Use it carefully.
Greg: That’s what a scene in this movie is like. We have no idea what’s going on. We have no idea why we’re on these boats. The reason they were on that boat going through the windmill farm is because they filmed Dunkirk by there, and they had digitally take out all of the windmills because they wouldn’t have been there yet.
Greg: And Christopher Nolan was like this is such a bummer because they look so cool. I should use those in the movie sometime. There’s no explanation of what’s going on. He just stays in a windmill tower for a while. And then he’s picked up by a boat and he goes to visit a scientist who explains stuff to him.
Greg: Yeah, and we don’t know anything about how he gets there. It’s a little Roger Moore James Bond in a way. Like he just kind of stumbles around and does some detective work the way James Bond does, but there’s really no explanation at all.
Joe: Yeah. Up to this point, I’m in. Yeah. In this movie.
Greg: So then he goes to the expert who explains inverted matter to him, and here’s what she says.
Clip: As I understand it, were trying to prevent World War three nuclear holocaust. No.
Clip: Something was.
Greg: And then she kind of, you know, he catches bullets with his gun.
Joe:
Greg: She lays the idea that if a bullet goes through you inverted, that could really harm you. And that happens later to Kat.
Joe:
Greg: And she kind of explains that matter can be traveling through time forwards and backwards. And there seems to be a matter that we’re finding. Yeah. So he needs to find the person who is somehow inverting this matter. That’s happening through Kenneth Branagh. And so he finds Kenneth Branagh’s wife to try and use her to get to him.
Joe: Yes. And they just they figured out something with a Goya painting that is in this. What is the what do they call the Freeport?
Greg: Obviously you probably have stuff in a Freeport somewhere.
Joe: I got I must, you know.
Greg: Did you understand what was going on in that scene when he was like, here’s what I can do for you.
Joe: I didn’t know, okay.
Greg: Here’s what happened. Okay. There was a guy named a repo who she got close to, and he had two copies. Two fake copies of a Goya print.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: She got one of them and he got the other from Sir Michael Caine, whose name was Sir Michael in the movie as well, by the way. So she gets this print. She is someone who she verifies art somehow. She says it’s real. Her husband buys it for $9 million. They find out that it’s fake. She didn’t know that.
Greg: And she trusted a repo. She got a little bit too close to him. Kenneth brought out his horrible things to a repo. He no longer can speak on the phone or walk around. That’s what we find out about him, right?
Joe: Okay. Yeah.
Greg: And Kenneth Branagh puts that fake Goya in a Freeport. A place at an airport. That he doesn’t have to pay taxes on. It’s like a safety deposit box basically without. He doesn’t need to import or export anything. And he keeps it there so that he can ruin his wife’s reputation and business if she ever, like, turns on him.
Greg: So he holds this thing over her and he can like probably put her in jail for like conning him out of $9 million or whatever. Okay. Because she was close to a repo. So he holds this as leverage against her. And that’s why they’re now estranged. But they have a son. And so he’s like, you have to kind of stay in line or I will ruin you and you’ll never see your son again.
Greg: So that’s like the tension between them. Okay. And so then the protagonist, John David Washington, says, I’ll go steal it from the Freeport so that you can get your life back. If that isn’t in that Freeport anymore, he doesn’t have that leverage over you anymore. And I did not catch that, like the first three times I saw this movie.
Greg: And I mean, they’re literally just saying it with words and having a conversation, but I just did not understand what we were talking about. So that’s why this movie’s trying to be too smart. It’s just like, well, they’re saying words, right? I know I should understand what this is, but what are we doing? There’s the whole concept of a Freeport.
Greg: The whole concept of, like, a fake piece of art, I don’t know.
Joe:
Greg: It’s very like Thomas Crown affair. Kind of.
Joe: Yeah. Okay. I missed all of that. Yeah. I got like that. It was a, that she had a fake and that it had been, that she had authenticated it. And then, but I didn’t put together why they needed to get to the Freeport. Yeah. And why he was trying to break in there at all other than I thought they were, they were looking for a reason or someone that had, a Freeport that they could get into because, you know, what they do at the Freeport.
Joe: Besides, they steal that painting, right? That’s the only thing that they do.
Greg: That’s their goal. Yep.
Joe: Okay. Wow. That is a long way to go for an airplane heist. Well, they got to drop gold bars on the runway and crash. Yeah, multibillion dollar jet into,
Greg: Right.
Joe: But I’m here for it. I’m in. I’m liking this movie more.
Greg: They meet Himesh Patel.
Joe:
Greg: I can’t believe I forgot to say Himesh Patel at the beginning of this episode. He’s the guy from yesterday. He was also in Don’t Look Up in 2021. He was on that show station 11, which is about a pandemic. So I have not watched it. It was not ready for it. But I do really love him. I will go back, but he is the greatest.
Greg: There’s no other way to describe him. I loved the movie yesterday. That is a classic great bad movie. Overly sentimental when it should zig zags into a rom com territory was like, I’m on board with this, give me some rom com, I love it. And he’s super funny in this movie and he’s the one who’s setting up the jet stuff.
Greg: You know he’s just kind of around. He’s like there’s the protagonist there’s Neil. And then occasionally his name is here. He’s like the third wheel. Yeah. It’s kind of helping them get some logistics done.
Joe: He’s the one that can get in and out of any place, and somehow it’s like, don’t worry. What if it goes wrong? It won’t. It was.
Greg: Yeah, right.
Joe: Like I have, I believe, you know.
Greg: But then they do sort of entertain like, well, what if it does go wrong? He’s like, I don’t know. You get lost in the system and eventually no one cares about you anymore. And you, you escape, you know, it’s fine. It’ll be fine.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: But then they have to break into this Freeport.
Joe:
Greg: Which is basically mission impossible.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: There’s like a new security system. We’ve never heard of.
Joe:
Greg: And they have to pretend that they’re like these wealthy art people who need to put something in the Freeport. So mission impossible.
Joe: Yeah. What there’s, you know locks that happened because there’s a fire and there’s this gas that comes in. You have 10s to get out. Yeah, it was definitely a mission impossible moments. And it was.
Greg: Fun. Spy movie. Yeah. Yeah, totally.
Joe: I definitely enjoyed every action scene in this movie. Was done perfectly. Yeah.
Greg: It’s like, oh, good. An action scene. Yeah.
Joe: Like, I don’t have to think anymore. I can just enjoy. Right? What’s happening?
Greg: That is where as they’re trying to find the Goya to steal, which I don’t think they ever find. Seemingly two people come in and attack them, but really, it’s just one person. It’s the protagonists going forwards and backwards.
Joe:
Greg: This is the first thing they filmed for this movie is that fist fight. And they said it just about broke everyone’s brain for a week. Yeah. Trying to figure out how this movie how they were going to do this movie.
Joe:
Greg: You know everyone working on this movie is like the top of the top tier of talent in Hollywood.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And they’re like it almost broke us. Yeah. We almost didn’t make it. Here’s what they did. You know we talk about how the people that save great bad movies are like the stunt coordinators or the second unit directors. Let’s talk about George Cottle. George Cottle is the one who came up with how these stunts were all going to work.
Greg: He was sitting at a table with all the department heads in the movie, and they came to this scene and Christopher Nolan said, here’s how how I would approach preparing for this scene if I were you, George. Think it through. Like the protagonist is moving through this fight forwards.
Joe:
Greg: And then think it through from the other side where the person is moving backwards. Now go to that first view again where we’re going through forwards. The person who’s supposedly moving backwards will now need to be going forwards when we’re filming that. And they’ll need to look like they’re going backwards. And then the second time we’re going through it, the protagonist going through that, we think they’re going through forwards.
Greg: They need to be going through backwards. So both of those fighters needed to learn that fight choreography. It was actually John David Washington in both cases. He needed to learn both sides of that fight going forwards and backwards. It’s pretty crazy when you watch this movie. I didn’t catch it. The first three times I watched it, but there are all kinds of shots where people are, like, pretending like they’re running forward, but actually they’re running backwards and the film is reversed.
Greg: There are so many shots in this movie where it’s actually someone speaking backwards on purpose, like they’re lines that are said by the bad guy. Backwards Russian. But he says it backwards. And then they reverse the film so that it looks weird.
Joe: Yeah I got that. And I think the other thing that I noticed that they did and maybe the first time through, so like the first scene when they’re, they’re having it, it’s not as pronounced that he’s fighting someone who is inverted.
Greg: Right. There’s just something off about it.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah, sure. So it feels weird and yeah, I just was like, oh, this person is going backwards. It’s probably him. Which it turns out to be, but it looks a little weird. But not as pronounced as the second time when he is the person who’s inverted fighting himself and it definitely feels reversed. But then you know if that’s happening so they can show it.
Joe: They don’t want you to know quite yet what’s happening with all of what can happen with an inverted fight scene if that makes sense. Yeah. And it’s probably for the best because I kind of was like, it felt a little weird and off, but it’s so red like a normal fight scene. Whereas the second time you watch it or when you watch it, the in the latter half of the movie, you’re like, oh, okay, I can totally see how they’re doing that.
Joe: Like it is. Yeah. Backwards. Like one person is going backwards and one person is going forwards.
Greg: That’s real movie making right there.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: This could have been done in the 20s.
Joe:
Greg: I’m sure there were films that were done backwards in the 20s.
Joe: Yeah that was fun. And I appreciate like again every single action scene. I love it. Yeah. Even though that scene where they’re with the trucks and they’re all kind of a crowd, it like it felt like a long time to set up everything right. And if you’re the people in the truck, you wouldn’t try to escape in any way.
Greg: Yeah. How did they not catch what was going on there?
Joe: Yeah. I feel like they needed a little bit of, you know, more Fast and Furious world where there’s more slamming back and forth and people are thrown off and.
Greg: Sure, it.
Joe: Went a little too easily according to plan, but that’s all right. I’ll forgive them. Okay. Okay.
Greg: So the way that they get into the free, the way that they’re able to break into the Freeport is they actually crash as 747 into the Freeport. They throw the plane pilots off the plane, kind of down like the RAF. Things on the side of the plane that would go into water.
Joe: Into inexplicably wet runway.
Greg: So inexplicably wet. Yeah. Amazing. But there’s just a single shot where the the pilot is, like what? There. Just like you have to jump down here into the sky is, like, just thrown out, and they show a stunt guy, just go down and get all the way down to the ground in one shot, like a real person just did that, you know?
Greg: Pretty amazing.
Joe:
Greg: But we rarely get to things where the score, the music in the movie is the thing that sells the bad guy.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Or that sells something. You are hit over the head much like when we get to inception. I’m sure you’ve heard the music where it’s just Bach. Yeah, that’s my impression of inception. That is basically the whole story Hans Zimmer did for that movie Bach. This is a different guy doing this music. But listen to what when they sell the plane.
Greg: It sounds like this.
Greg: Basically the same thing.
Joe: Yeah. Do you want another one? Not the radio.
Greg: Unbelievable. Selling of the plane. With just the biggest, fattest notes you’ve ever heard in your life.
Joe: I love that. I was making this in bed with, And I was on my computer and it’s like, what the hell is going on with the music? And this movie? Because even look like the chase scene on the freeway. Yeah. Yeah. The score in this movie. I mean, they should be not like I would be okay with them being nominated for an Oscar for this.
Joe: Okay. It’s worth it. I feel like in a lot of ways, the score is doing more for the movie than a lot of the writing is in terms of like the plot of like, you kind of know, yeah, what’s happening and like the stakes based on the score and it’s awesome. Like it is kind of discordant. It feels odd and maybe uncomfortable.
Joe: And I loved it. I love the music in this movie.
Greg: So incredible.
Joe: I was assuming it was Hans Zimmer, because I think he’s worked with him on lots of other stuff.
Greg: No, it’s Ludwig Goransson.
Joe: Okay, classic Ludwig Goransson.
Greg: Yeah. You know, from Trolls World Tour, which was a very big deal in my house, obviously. But he did like Black Panther. He’s done The Mandalorian. He just did centers, which is in theaters now. All kinds of like, Star Wars stuff.
Joe: Marvel stuff is bona fide.
Greg: Yeah. Coogler stuff. He did. Creed. He’s all over the place. Yeah, the music and the sound mix, which is nuts in this movie. And that’s Christopher Nolan basically trying something new. He kind of got rid of a lot of people that he had worked with in the past for this movie. He decided to have a different editor. Her name is Jennifer Lame, and she got on his radar from that movie Manchester by the sea.
Greg: Did you ever see that movie?
Joe: No, but I know of it.
Greg: Casey Affleck, Matt Damon produced it, and a lot of that movie takes place kind of out of order. You don’t quite know what timeline you’re in when a scene starts, but you kind of figure it out. But there’s a very emotional tone to it throughout. And she was like, what on earth are you calling me for? Christopher Nolan.
Greg: He said no, that tone you got and the way that you skip through time, that’s what I want this movie to feel like. I’ll show you how to do all the action stuff, but I want it to feel like that. This movie really does feel like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Joe:
Greg: And the sound mix occasionally is very bizarre.
Joe: Yeah, it.
Greg: Really is taking some leaps that I appreciate. So they go to Oslo. They aren’t able to get the painting. He goes back to her like the most beautiful location on the edge of the sea. Somewhere and says you know you don’t have to worry about that anymore. That’s where we meet Kenneth Branagh on his yacht. It turns out he had already taken the Goya out of there because the future had told him about this incident.
Greg: He says, you know, I’d already taken out. I had a feeling that something bad was going to happen. My relationship with the future is why we’ve made all of our money, that kind of thing, right? And then we kind of just, you know, recognize our big bad guy.
Joe: I can’t remember if the scene with Priya is before the airport heist or not.
Greg: Yeah, that’s a really good point.
Joe: Yeah. She plays a pretty big role in this, right?
Greg: We think she’s kind of running the show. She’s the one who sold Kenneth Branagh the bullets.
Joe: Right.
Greg: That he had experienced as his first inverted matter. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah. And we have kind of that’s where we first meet Neal. And there’s like a cool scene where they break into her or his right penthouse. And in Mumbai or something like that.
Greg: First aerial shots allowed in Mumbai, by the way. That was not something that they had ever let a filmmaker do before. But yeah. Protagonist and Neil, they talk for a little while about how they need to meet, Sanjay, Priya’s husband. It’s a classic Lady Hamlet kind of scenario where we think the dude is the one in charge and really, he’s just the husband.
Greg: He really looked like and talked like Sean Connery to me. I feel like he was really trying to get Indian Sean Connery. And the way he was lit really looked like Doctor No to me.
Joe: I can totally see the lighting of early James Bond in this. Yeah, it bothered me in the first half of this movie where I felt like every scene was poorly lit. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So that’s choice. Yeah. I mean, I figured that had to have been on purpose. You don’t spend that much money on a movie to.
Greg: Write.
Joe: Accidentally, not light the first half of it, right? So, yeah, it didn’t work for me as, like, I was like, yeah, I know. I was like, what the hell is going on with the lighting? Sure.
Greg: How did you watch this movie?
Joe: I think the first time I watched it on our television, and the second time was mostly on my laptop. Okay. Okay.
Greg: Like streaming through.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Amazon Prime or something.
Joe: I always forgive when I’m watching it on my laptop. You’re not going to get the same quality as off a TV or obviously in the theater. So. Right. And then this movie I didn’t have any. The lighting was the only thing that I had. But like you said, there are hardly any real special effects shots. It’s all done.
Joe: I didn’t even really notice any. I don’t even have that as a drinking game that I marked that I noticed the CGI even on my laptop.
Greg: We really praised the last two Mission Impossible movies for doing practical stunts, but there’s also still a gazillion dollars worth of special effects put in to those shots to accentuate those shots. I do think we have a number for Mission Impossible eight yet, but for Mission Impossible seven, there’s over 2000 special effects shots.
Joe: Crazy.
Greg: Somewhere between 2000 and 3000. Has been reported. Tenet had 244. So that’s just nuts. It’s just a real movie.
Joe: Yeah. That’s basically I’m just like like CGI out the things that are holding. Sure. Yeah. The zip lines or whatever on the stunt actors and that’s it. Right at.
Greg: But in this case, they were like, we’re going to bungee jump you up a building and so we can see the bungee cord. That’s fine. You know, let’s hear a little bit of that conversation between Neil and the protagonist when they’re talking about going to Priya’s house.
Clip: It’s bungee jump. I don’t think bungee jump was a word. It may not be a word, but maybe you’re anyway out of that place.
Clip: Or into it, for that matter.
Greg: We’re going to bungee jump up a building, which is a pretty incredible. That’s another rad thing. Like, that’s kind of rad to watch somebody, like, run up a building.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: You know, a reverse bungee jump.
Joe: I wanted more of their relationship because they’re supposed to be friends. Yeah. Yeah.
Greg: Which I guess we don’t really know until the last second. The last scene in the movie.
Joe:
Greg: That they’ve been best friends for a long time and.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: It’s we’re only halfway through their arc.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: At the end of this movie the end of this movie was just the beginning. Joe. Exactly like annoying part one endings.
Joe: Yeah. To me this movie would have gone from where I haven’t rated and how I feel about it. Yeah, it could have been a near perfect movie with a little bit more attention paid to the characters and making them kind of more likable, and I don’t know. I would love to know if that was a why. That was a choice.
Joe: It feels like it had to have been a choice because there’s so flat. There’s only a couple moments of even kind of levity. The scene with Michael Caine, there’s a great joke at the end when they’re talking about basically how stuffy the British are and their suits and stuff like that. Can I recommend a tailor?
Clip: I’ll manage.
Joe: You British don’t have a monopoly on snobbery.
Clip: Well, not a monopoly. More of a controlling interest. Can you box that up for me? Certainly not. Goodbye, sir. Michael.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Yeah, just the snobbery right there. Amazing. Yeah.
Joe: So I wanted more of those moments. Sure. I want that’s fair. It’s like I wanted to like the main character. Like that. You’re used to that. Or. And the and the team that they assemble, that’s. You know, usually these are people that you want to hang out with. And it was it just felt like we were going from one scene to the next and they kind of knew what was happening.
Joe: But there were moments of chemistry. But it just there was no character development, I guess.
Greg: I think that’s a very fair assessment. And I think you’re right. They got halfway there because there were moments where they let John David Washington say something kind of funny, you know, like he gets back to the kitchen after his first met. Katz and kind of offered to steal the Goya for her. And when he gets back there, they’re a bunch of Kenneth Branagh’s goons there that are clearly going to attack him.
Greg: And he says, I.
Joe: Ordered my.
Clip: Hot sauce.
Joe: An hour ago.
Greg: And then they attack him like he just says, like a joke in the kitchen. Or like when Kenneth Branagh’s guy, like, frisks him to see if he has a gun on him.
Joe: An easy film. Where I’m from, you buy me dinner first.
Greg: There’s moments like that they, like, get halfway there, I agree.
Joe: And I, I’m known on this and I think we both are like, are those ad libbed? You know, was that just John David Washington in the moment, having fun with the character? AD libbing the funny parts versus where that in the script or not? Yeah, I’m on the fence about it.
Greg: But angry about Hot Sauce is hilarious.
Joe: Yeah, there are a couple moments where, you know, it’s like I wanted more of that.
Greg: Agreed. Agreed.
Joe: Then I would be more forgiving around the time travel inverted ness, which I already give a grain of salt to just because it’s a no win situation in these movies. You know, I’ve watched movies like Timecop where they overexplain everything. Then there there’s this movie where it doesn’t really explain much at all.
Greg: Did you notice the Timecop reference in this movie?
Joe: I missed it. Where is it?
Greg: Dammit! So, in the movie Timecop, the main rule is you can’t come in contact with the matter of yourself from a different time. And, John David Washington is about to go backwards in time there kind of explaining what it’s like to go backwards to change invert yourself. After going through like a turnstile which inverts the trajectory of your time.
Greg: And she says just don’t come in contact with yourself. That’s why we have these masks and these outfits which also hides you. So you can’t tell that John David Washington is fighting himself. And apparently if his matter comes in contact with somebody else’s total annihilation.
Joe: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah I do remember that. Yeah. That was and then they kind of break that rule. But that’s all right. They don’t touch. So there’s no skin to skin contact. So I guess they’re okay.
Greg: You know it’s hard to watch a movie like this and just think, you know, it would be better with Youngblood Van Damme.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Now I’m just wishing he was here.
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: I mean, where are the time. Police. I guess it’s the CIA. I guess it’s the tenant organization. Yeah. A gesture in a word. It’ll open the right doors and some of the wrong ones.
Joe:
Greg: But what we get instead is just explanations I guess, that are like laying the groundwork for future action scenes. But the temporal pincer.
Joe: Movement.
Greg: Was maybe the most egregious. Like let me just explain the future action scene you’re about to see in Aaron Taylor-Johnson. I can’t believe I didn’t mention Aaron Taylor-Johnson. That’s right. At the beginning of this. Yeah, he’s also in this with a beard, and I liked him quite a bit in this movie. Let’s hear him explain the temporal pincer movement.
Clip: Of running a temporal pincer movement. What? The pincer movement in space and time off. His team moves forward through the event. He monitors them, attacks he, moving backwards, knowing everything.
Greg: It could have been Statham. We might need to have, like a Aaron Taylor-Johnson versus Jason Statham debate at some point.
Joe: Oh, I like that. I feel like he is definitely the new Jason Statham. Yeah. If he’s not careful could fall into that land now. Nothing wrong with being the next Jason Statham.
Greg: But it’s a compliment.
Joe: Yeah, it’s definitely a compliment.
Greg: Get ready for some mundane jobs like beekeeping.
Joe: Bricklaying?
Greg: Yeah, accounting.
Joe: You name it. Being a mechanic, you know? Yeah.
Greg: 100%.
Joe: Transporters.
Greg: Don’t get me wrong. You’ll be super smart as you do these mundane jobs.
Joe: Yeah, and they’re, like, the greatest kung fu expert ever.
Greg: Under siege reboot with Statham and or Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
Joe: I would be in for that. Jason Statham as the bad guy. I’m in.
Greg: And they’re brothers? Yeah. Statham’s the older brother.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Oh, this is a perfect movie. What is this movie called? Is it under siege two? Are we in dark territory?
Joe: We might be in dark territory. Okay. I’m trying to set the vibe as I love Under Siege. The premise. And it just has the worst person in the world as the star. So it’s the one that.
Greg: The real star of that movie is Tommy Lee Jones.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely.
Greg: And Gary Busey, it’s classic Busey.
Joe: Yeah, I don’t know I love the idea of Under Siege but it’s he doesn’t know his brother is the chef.
Greg: Oh interesting. Is the younger brother Casey Ryback the chef.
Joe: I think the older brother’s got to be the chef. I think it’s got to be older brother.
Greg: Because he can still have the Panama backstory where things went wrong in Panama. Yeah, I think we remember this so well.
Joe: Don’t worry about it. It’s amazing. Yeah. You know, it goes one of two ways. Either they team up at the end and they like rebuild their relationship or the older brother’s got to kill his younger brother.
Greg: Okay, okay.
Joe: But I like the redemption story.
Greg: You said it could go one way or the other. I want to throw a wrench in those gears and say, this is also a crossover with tenet, and it’s going one way and the other.
Joe: Okay. Yeah. When it’s the same person, they’re the same brother. They’re going.
Greg: I can offer you a word and a gesture right back and some sort of deflected country move. Judo move. What is it? What is it that he does?
Joe: Aikido. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Perfect. All right. It’s like a crossover, a Benjamin Button and.
Greg: Oh, interesting.
Joe: And it. And under siege.
Greg: The only thing about Benjamin Button that we need is I think Fincher’s come in to direct this. I think we need him to direct this for sure.
Joe: Perfect.
Greg: Okay, okay. Well, I think.
Joe: We we’ve created the perfect movie.
Greg: Certainly more interesting than that.
Joe: Than this movie. Yeah.
Greg: Sorry. Christopher Nolan. So they eventually do a temporal pincer movement. And the thing that they’re trying to do, the MacGuffin of this movie is the ninth piece of what they’re calling the algorithm. They’re like these nine pieces that when they are put together and somehow something happens with them, they’re detonated in some sort of way. It will actually invert all of nature itself.
Greg: The Earth will start going backwards, rather than forwards. Should we hear them sell the algorithm of what happens once this thing comes together?
Joe: Yes. And somehow it’s tied to Kenneth Branagh being alive. And as soon as he dies, right. He’s connected to the algorithm, which I wasn’t quite sure how that. But anyway, it’s again.
Greg: Does he tie it to his heart rate monitor?
Joe: Yes.
Greg: Okay. So it’s like if he dies.
Joe: The algorithm is triggered and.
Greg: Oh my gosh, it’s a little convoluted.
Joe: Yeah. Again, don’t think about it.
Greg: He’s constantly checking his heart rate in this movie. Well for like a little while he’s doing it.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: They sell the heart rate thing for like 20 minutes in the 2.5 hour runtime, and that’s.
Joe: Really enough to that at the end. It doesn’t sound surprising that when his heart goes to zero, when they’re going to kill him and right away, I.
Greg: Cannot wait to revisit the heart monitor being a thing that is used to track the end of something in a movie, in a film that we will be getting to that I don’t want to spoil it for you, but I’m very excited about a movie that we’re going to watch where this a very similar thing happens. Okay, let’s hear them sell the algorithm in this movie.
Clip: What’s the algorithm you. 241 is one section, okay. One out of nine. It’s a formula random to physical form, so it can’t be copied or communicated. It’s a black box, one function which is inversion, not objects of people’s. The world around us understand, as they invert the entropy of more and more objects to the two directions of time, becoming more intertwined because the environment entropy flows in our direction, we dominate.
Clip: They’re always swimming upstream, so save your life. Inverted explosion was pushed against the line, pissing in the wind. And the algorithm can change the direction of that wind can invert the entropy of the world. And for heavens, oh, and to play and end of plot. Can you be a little more precise? Everyone and everything it’s ever end destroyed.
Clip: It’s like there’s not a kid in my son.
Greg: They sell the algorithm. Everything everywhere. And all she can say.
Joe: Is.
Greg: My son. Including my son. Sure. Everything and everyone.
Joe: Except your son. He’ll be fine. But my identity.
Greg: That’s there. My son.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Pretty solid selling off of the bad guy device. Yeah, it’s a definitely a spy movie. Yeah, they do a little bit of selling, a little bit of stakes building.
Joe: Yeah, but.
Greg: You were also shaking your head as they were at the beginning of that. Like, what on earth are they doing?
Joe: Yeah. In the context of the movie, it made perfect sense. Sure. And then you started thinking about it like what? How did these nine pieces and all of that. And then I don’t remember exactly how it’s tied to Kenneth Branagh’s heart. There’s a lot of setting up of a final battle that probably doesn’t if you really start to think about it.
Joe: And again, you shouldn’t.
Greg: Maybe we should watch the final sequence of this movie sometime.
Joe: Yeah, I think so. And the set up to it a little bit.
Greg: Yeah, but not all. 2.5 hours.
Joe: No.
Greg: Let’s watch it like it’s an episode of a TV show. There’s a chance there’s just so much fatigue that’s happened to us at this point in the movie.
Joe: This is again, where the time travel components of the movie. Yeah. Feel cumbersome. Yeah, yeah.
Greg: And just feel it.
Joe: When I got to this point in the movie, I remember the first time I was a little bit trying to follow the, okay, these people are going forward. Then they have the blue and that the people that are going backwards or red or whatever it is.
Greg: Blue team and red team.
Joe: I just got to the point. It was a I call it like my, fast five moment where I was like, why am I trying to assign logic to this? I just know they need to get down this tunnel, and they need to get through this door to get to the the algorithm and get it out before they explode.
Joe: Yeah. And if they do that before it explodes, then they save the world, because that countdown is tied to Kenneth Brown as heart monitor. And that’s all we need to know.
Greg: Yeah, just feel it.
Joe: Just feel it. Just let it take the monitor off and let the force take over. Use the force.
Greg: Absolutely. Wow. Amazing. Very episode four vibes.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: All right. I feel like we have thoroughly said this movie is confusing, but it’s also amazing. It is a great bad movie. And for all these reasons, the cinematography I loved it. Hoyte van Hoytema could film everything as far as I’m concerned, and he kind of does film everything. That’s interesting. Do you like invented a new camera for?
Greg: Nope. He’s invented new technology. I also make things work. Yeah, the music’s awesome. The editing is great, the shots are unbelievable. I feel like the performances could have been more connected relationally, even if we’re not getting plot. At least they could feel like they’re better friends. Or that could be more.
Joe: More heart. More heart. My heart gets more heart. Yeah.
Greg: Anyways, Joe, should we move on to box office and the critical reception?
Joe: Absolutely. Let’s do it.
Greg: The budget of this movie, $205 million put together in 2018. Filmed in 2019, released in 2020. Oh, do you remember this was the movie that was going to like Bring Back Cinema?
Joe: I remember the previews for it and it was supposed to be like nothing anybody had ever seen. And yeah. So yeah, I remember, I remember when it was coming out and it was supposed to be great. And then of course we’re in the middle of the global horrible pandemic.
Greg: And it was delayed a few times, supposed to come out in July and then August. I think it eventually came out in September.
Joe:
Greg: And Imax globally, it made $365 million. 306 of that is a nationally. When it came out here there was also like numbers were going up or something. So people were pretty hesitant about going, the spread of the virus was better in other countries than it was. There was there was some sort of flare up that was happening, like kind of coincidentally.
Greg: So it only made $58.5 million in America. Kind of amazing that it made that much money. If you look at movies that came out in that time that they did not make a lot of money. So that’s kind of amazing. What do you think? On Rotten Tomatoes, the critics score of this movie is.
Joe: Feels like a 70. It feels like our kind of movie. But yeah.
Greg: You know, if I think about it, it does feel like a 70. It’s a good point.
Joe: But I’m going to go with an 83.
Greg: This is one of his worst movies at 70%.
Joe: Oh dang it, I should have stayed with my gut. That’s a great bad movie. It’s a horror movie.
Greg: All right, audience score the popcorn meter. What do you think? This only has 5000 ratings, but lower or higher.
Joe: I think it’s a little higher. Like a 74.
Greg: 76.
Joe: Okay. Yeah.
Greg: Pretty solid. You’re right in there. Let’s get through what some of these critics said, in no particular order. Tim Robey of Monocle said, as a delivery system for the thrills, I think the film gets a long way and you can kind of sit back and enjoy it as a delivery system for the ideas. I think it trips itself up an awful lot.
Joe: I would agree with that.
Greg: Gee. Alan Johnson of the San Francisco Chronicle says tenet is indeed impressive, although I gave up trying to follow the plot three out of four stars.
Joe: Exactly.
Greg: Mike LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle says tenet is difficult to understand, but even worse, it inspires little desire to understand it. One out of four.
Joe: Stars hated it. Yeah.
Greg: Apparently Mike LaSalle hates things that are rad. Yeah, USA today says both utterly dazzling and increasingly bewildering.
Joe:
Greg: My favorite review of this movie, the New York Post. What the hell was that?
Joe: Oh my God, that’s awesome.
Greg: Jonathan Romney of the Los Angeles Times says Nolan’s latest may well be full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Joe: Or it.
Greg: May signify something imponderable, resonant, and signify it forward, backward, inside out. Does your head hurt yet?
Joe: Yeah, perfect.
Greg: I really love what Alyssa Wilkinson said in Vox. She said it’s the first Nolan movie in a long while that I’ve left feeling disappointed. Like, I like I said, I kind of resented this movie at some point where I was like, okay, so I’m just not going to understand it. And yet there is enough good stuff buried beneath its antiseptic, perhaps overly showy technique.
Greg: Once you get past the clunkier bits that is worth exploring.
Joe:
Greg: That’s a great mixed review of this. I feel like that’s kind of covering. It took us an hour and a half to say what Alissa Wilkinson just said.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: All right. The A.V. club says it’s a shiny clockwork contraption with a hollow center, a convoluted Rubik’s Cube blockbuster that once solves reveals little more than the complexity of its own design. C plus.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Ryan Gilbey of the New Statesman said, the more everyone explains the plot, the more needlessly complicated it becomes. The grand father paradox is mentioned, but back to the future. And The Terminator handled the same idea with less heavy lifting. I guess we kind of feel like they did more heavy lifting, so we understood it.
Joe: Yeah, I guess, yeah, I agree, I agree with all these reviews. It is. It’s a mixed bag. It’s like there’s enough really great stuff in it. Where are you gonna like wow, I haven’t seen an action scene. There’s all going forwards and backwards at the same time and at the same time. I can’t disagree with any of the negative parts of those reviews either.
Greg: Yeah, it’s a mixed bag. Yeah, it’s great and bad. Yeah, it’s kind of crazy.
Joe: That’s our movie.
Greg: But you know what everybody, if you want to watch this movie and truly enjoy it, we might have some ideas for you. Joe, are you ready to get to drinking games?
Joe: Oh my God, am I? You need a drink if you’re watching this movie.
Greg: All right, so we have some standard drinking games that we go through for every movie. Let’s go through those.
Joe: All right. So silent or low flying helicopter. Oh, yeah. We got those coming in. And the last final battle scene.
Greg: Not silent though, right?
Joe: Silent, but they are low flying. Ryan. Helicopters flying in.
Greg: They’re massive. They’re like the biggest helicopters you’ve ever seen.
Joe: Yeah I do have a push in and enhanced although I’m blanking on one that is.
Greg: Hold on. I should ask a very important question. Can you not remember it? Because you in fact play our drinking games as you’re watching this movie, as possible?
Joe: Okay, I may have been an edible and evolved as well. Okay. Watching so sure didn’t help with the clarity. Yep. Yeah. I do not have, when two people share a slow motion look in the middle of chaos or an explosion with silent suffering in the ears. Missed opportunity on both. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Opening credits scene where it locks in a place with a sound.
Joe: Absolutely. It locks into place with the death of the main character. You think? Yeah. Yeah. So it’s it’s very odd where he takes the suicide pill, and then it’s like, that’s your opening to the movie. And I go, that’s right. Does it flashback to dialog? Absolutely.
Greg: Oh, totally. Does take a drink.
Joe: No crazy CGI, no bad CGI in this movie at all. So yeah.
Greg: Unnoticeable. Yeah.
Joe: CGI basically. Yeah. Great bad shots, especially in the last action scene.
Greg: Oh yeah. How are people missing these shots?
Joe: I mean, they’re people are going forwards and backwards in time. You have figured someone’s going to get shot. Nobody dies.
Greg: Hardly. There was an amazing great bad shot moment in the beginning when they’re in the opera house, there’s like a bunch of people down a hallway and they’re shooting at a guy and he goes to like, one side, like two feet, and then to the left side and then to the right side, and then they get a yeah.
Greg: Like it was like the most amazing up close understanding of great bad shots in history.
Joe: It was so awesome. Yeah, I remember that in the ass that, the streets inexplicably wet. Oh yes.
Greg: Come on.
Joe: There’s the scene with the plane crash, and I think there’s a scene where he has the fight and the kitchen, and he comes out and she’s waiting in the car 100%. And then. No, give us the room. And no Interpol.
Greg: Again. Really thinking.
Joe: All right, I will toss it to you. Greg’s fine art. What is one of your your drinking game that you came up with?
Greg: Any time they show or, say, turnstile, take a drink.
Joe: That’s awesome. I have every time you see the string on the backpack.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: That is Neil’s.
Greg: Take it. Right. Like the red string.
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: Somebody throughout this movie seems to be saving our protagonist. We find out it’s his best friend.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Operating in the opposite direction. Yeah. Although if he’s going in the opposite direction after, he doesn’t talk backwards. Joe.
Joe: It’s a question that you should ask Christopher Nolan, because that’s. It’s above my pay grade.
Greg: How is he breathing without a mask?
Joe: Yeah, I anyway, that’s not ask that question because it breaks the fabric of this movie in half.
Greg: Yeah, yeah. Okay. I regret saying anything. Okay. Some of these are a little bit ridiculous. And I apologize to everybody. There’s got to be a way we can parse these out, because I might. Perfect drinking game is like six in a movie. 4 to 6. You know enough that you remember it, but not too many, right? Yeah, but my next drinking game is anytime something is backwards.
Greg: So. I’m sorry. Yeah.
Joe: Along those lines, I have, every time they say inverted, take a drink.
Greg: So that’s incredible. Okay, if you’ve watched this movie enough, you can totally tell when someone is actually running backwards and they reverse the film to make it look like they’re running forwards. So if you were able to kind of pick that up, my next drinking game is any time you can tell someone is running backwards and it’s reverse to make them look like they’re running forwards.
Joe: Awesome. I love that, that last scene, your gets rough. Yeah. Let’s have a full glass of water ready for you.
Greg: I think we just call that finishing strong.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
Greg: Okay, great.
Joe: I have anytime someone is using an oxygen mask, take a drink.
Greg: That’s good. Okay. Across the board, I have a brand new global, great bad movie drinking game. When there is a scene with Sir Michael Caine, you take two drinks.
Joe: I mean, I like it.
Greg: Be a gentleman.
Joe: That’s right. And don’t wear Brooks Brothers suit. Find something better, right? Yeah. I have every time the score makes the movie better. Take a drink.
Greg: Oh, wow. Who gets to decide that? We should declare who in the room gets to decide that? The person to your left.
Joe: Yeah, I think the person to your left. Okay. And if they don’t have good taste in music, then the person to your right. Call an audible. Yeah, that’s right.
Greg: Brad always like 311. That doesn’t get to the side.
Joe: No, you don’t get to the.
Greg: We should say, by the way, that these drinking games are designed for a room full of people. You assign a single drinking game to different people in the room. Yeah. So, like, one person has turnstile, one person has when something’s backwards and then they have to take a drink. And it’s your job to make sure that when something happens in the movie, it’s time for them to take a drink.
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: It’s super fun. You should try. It doesn’t have to be alcohol.
Joe: Yeah, could be coffee. Water. Sure.
Greg: It’s just fun to market. I do this all the time in meetings at work. I have key words that any time somebody says a certain word, I take a drink in a zoom meeting.
Joe: That’s awesome.
Greg: And it’s coffee or water or smoothie. Any time they show or say Goya, if they show the Goya painting or if they say Goya, take a drink.
Joe: That’s awesome. I had that one as well. That’s okay. Okay. I have every time they say temporal pincer, take a drink.
Greg: Temporal pincer movement. Is that we talking about? Yes.
Joe: Yeah, that’s the one.
Greg: Amazing. I have any time you see the word Freeport or they say the word Freeport.
Joe: Oh, I love that. I have. Every time they say protagonist. Take it. Yeah.
Greg: That’s really good. Priya was like, you are a protagonist in this movie. And then at the end he just declares, turns out I am the protagonist. Loved it. Any time Kenneth Branagh checks his blood pressure.
Joe: Dammit, that’s not a good one. That’s awesome. I love that I’m every time they say posterity, take a drink.
Greg: Oh, that’s really good. I like that any any sort of digital record of us. Is our posterity. That is probably something everybody should be thinking about.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: In this world. Okay I’m out, I’m out. Do you have more?
Joe: I have two other ones. Anytime they say 241.
Greg: Yeah. Which is like the MacGuffin. The thing, they’re going for it.
Joe: Yeah. And then this is my one that’s, you know, you’re drinking a lot, but every time you see an an inverted bullet or explosion. So like something happening in reverse, they like to make a big deal, especially in that last battle where there’s and this is where it broke my brain a little bit, where there’s like an explosion that happens.
Joe: And then there are people that come in and then reverse the explosion, and then it explodes again. And it was pretty awesome. But when you kind of have that reversal in an action scene, take a drink pretty great. Yeah.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: Are we ready for the trope lightning round?
Greg: Oh my gosh. AKA signs. You might be watching a great bad movie.
Joe: I only have four tropes, and I think it’s a testament to them trying to make a trope for a movie.
Greg: A successful spy movie.
Joe: Yeah, so you have finding keys under the flap or just driving a car. So there’s a couple moments where they end up both Neil at the end is driving something you’re just not even sure how he gets the car, where he gets the keys, and then the protagonist, when he first comes through, he finds a car. I’m not even sure where that car came from or where he got the keys for it, right?
Joe: But it just kind of magically happens. Sure, I kind of have revenge as the driver of the protagonist and this. But it’s not the typical. Maybe he’s the best at something, but it’s interesting. We don’t really get into his motivations. Right.
Greg: It’s kind of her motivation.
Joe:
Greg: He’s giving her a second chance at second chance at betrayal.
Joe: Oh yeah. There we.
Greg: Go. She’s trying to betray him.
Joe: We have checking if a gun is loaded. So like unlike loading and unloading it. And then I have the protagonist being captured but not killed right away. And then he’s kind of saved by his wiles. That happens in the opening of the movie, even though he does kill himself. But I gave that as a trope because I was desperate, because we didn’t have a lot of tropes.
Joe: So don’t.
Greg: Ruin this.
Joe: For me. Yeah, exactly.
Greg: All right, Joe, we have talked a lot about this movie, but mostly we have been asking questions. I think it’s time for us to answer something we like to call important questions. Are you ready?
Joe: I’m ready.
Greg: Joe, did tenet hold up in 2020?
Joe: I feel like it did ish ish. Based on the reviews. I feel like I don’t know if a lot has changed, but yeah, ish.
Greg: I agree with you there. Does it hold up now?
Joe: I kind of feel like it holds up a little bit better because yeah, it’s a movie that you need to watch multiple times. I feel like it’s probably Christopher Nolan’s most divisive or least popular movie.
Greg: And yeah, we should have said this earlier. That’s why we’re doing it on this show.
Joe: Yeah, this.
Greg: Is the one that people are kind of like,
Joe: I mean, yeah.
Greg: Which means, you know.
Joe: It’s a perfect for us.
Greg: We’re starting the science. The tenets aren’t.
Joe: I mean.
Greg: All right, Joe, next important question. How hard do they sell the good guy in this movie?
Joe: Hardly at all for one of our movies, right?
Greg: How hard do they sell the.
Joe: Bad guy a little bit more?
Greg: Yeah, they talk about horrible things that he’s done.
Joe: And they kind of show with some of the stuff he talks about in there. But again, not as much compared to what we’re used to. Yeah.
Greg: But still there still counts.
Joe: Yeah still counts okay.
Greg: It’s all right Joe. Why is there romance in this movie.
Joe: Beautiful. There’s no romance in this movie.
Greg: There’s failed romance in this movie. It’s hard to stay in love with your Russian oligarch. Evil.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Nuclear.
Joe: Sociopathic.
Greg: Sociopathic? Yeah. Husband.
Joe: Yeah. Makes sense.
Greg: I would say that. That’s just how it would be for all of us.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Joe, are we bad people for loving this movie? Probably I’m going to say no on this one. But I do think that good people would look a bit confused when they learn that we love this movie.
Joe: They might look down on us a little bit. Yeah. This is a shame. Yeah. So we’re not bad.
Greg: People, but we’re also not good people.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Let’s see Joe, very important question does tenet deserve a sequel?
Joe: I would totally watch a sequel to tenet. Really? Yeah.
Greg: I can’t believe you’re saying that. Are they? Is it like an accountant and accountant two scenario where we like the characters a little bit more in the second one?
Joe: I think. So I think they might do a little bit more. There’s a whole second act of Neil and the protagonists friendship that we didn’t get to explore.
Greg: Totally, totally. So they go on a road trip? Probably.
Joe: Yeah. Tenet part two I’m in. I would totally watch.
Greg: That is it called Tune It?
Joe: If it’s not missed opportunity okay.
Greg: You’re out. You’re out. Canceled red light no longer greenlit. My answer to this question is I don’t know if I could bear it to be okay.
Joe: That’s fair as well.
Greg: But I’m with you. I feel like if we did kind of, like, fix it a little bit with the relationships, we’d be all right. Yeah. Follow up question. Does this movie deserve a prequel?
Joe: I would say no, but this is one of those movies I’ve done, right? A prequel and a sequel would basically could be the same movie with time travel.
Greg: So that’s true. That’s true.
Joe: It’s a technicality, but I’ll allow it. Yes. Okay.
Greg: Here’s the only way I’m cool with it.
Joe: Okay?
Greg: The only way that I think this works is if there is simultaneously a sequel and a prequel that is released at the same.
Joe: Time and they’re like, it’s secretly the same movie.
Greg: It’s a temporal pincer movement. Yes.
Joe: But I mean.
Greg: Okay, Joe, should tenet have been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars in 2021? No, no, I agree.
Joe: Yeah, no.
Greg: But listen to the nominees, okay? It’s such a bizarre year. Well, there wasn’t a lot going on in theaters in 2020. So the father, do you remember the father.
Joe:
Greg: I think that was, Anthony Hopkins.
Joe: Maybe.
Greg: Getting dementia Judas and the Black Messiah.
Joe: I have no recollection of these movies at all, but we should.
Greg: Probably watch that. I watched the trailer for Judas and the Black Messiah. It looks like a great movie. We should tell you. Watch it. Make by Fincher on Netflix.
Joe: Nope.
Greg: No. Minari?
Joe: No. I know you could be making these up right now.
Greg: Nomadland won Best Picture.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: Promising Young Woman, but you might like. Actually. Yeah, I like that. Maybe the sound of metal. Oh, about a metal drummer with hearing Loss and The Trial of the Chicago seven by Aaron Sorkin, which did not deserve Best Picture nominees. Okay, so with that list, I kind of feel like tenet.
Joe: Yeah, maybe.
Greg: Should have been nominated.
Joe: I wouldn’t have been mad if it was nominated.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, okay. You would have been mad if it won.
Joe: Yeah, I would be mad if it won.
Greg: But for you, it’s just an honor for tenant to be nominated.
Joe: Yeah. Okay.
Greg: Great. All right Joe next important question. How can this movie be fixed.
Joe: Aka who.
Greg: Should be in the remake.
Joe: It’s a combination of two movies. I want it to be 12 monkeys meets Timecop. Here’s how we fix this movie. Go on.
Greg: I’ve never been more interested from the first half of a sentence.
Joe: So we have Terry Gilliam directing. Okay, John Claude Van Damme starring. Oh my gosh.
Greg: Green lights everywhere. Yeah.
Joe: Give me the plot of Timecop. Okay. The cinematic view and like direction of Terry Gilliam. That’s what I want to see.
Greg: And you know, he’s on board with future hair from Time Comes.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. All the bad.
Greg: Guys from the future have future hair. Do you remember that?
Joe: Okay. It’s fixed.
Greg: Okay. There’s no other answer to this question.
Joe: How do you fix this movie. What’s your what’s your answer.
Greg: Okay. Well first of all I think a problem with this movie is that all the forward scenes should have been backwards. Let me.
Joe: Finish. I mean.
Greg: And I guess I should probably also say the second half is all the backwards scenes should be forward.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: So I think they were wrong on both.
Joe: Counts, right? Yeah.
Greg: It should be noted that you just did the hand gesture. Yeah. From the beginning of the movie. I think if you actually were to remake this movie, though, I think it should take place 40 years in the future and it stars Denzel Washington.
Joe: Oh, I love that.
Greg: That’s all I got.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: But I think yours is way better than mine. Joe. Very important question. What album is the movie? Tenet.
Joe: Oh, I spent so much time trying to figure this out. So it’s got to be an album that on the face of it, it’s pretty good and but doesn’t have the heart that I need in my. Or the angst. Yeah. And so I went with the band. Pretty alternative out there. My life with Threlkeld called oh.
Greg: Interesting hit and.
Joe: Run holiday. Okay. They like to like, infuse like pop culture and like stuff from like the news into it. It’s a fun album, but there’s just no depth to it. So it’s like, yeah, if it’s on in the background at a party, it’s perfect. If you try to like get into it and like try to find some depth into it.
Joe: It’s it’s trying hard to be something that it isn’t.
Greg: Don’t pay attention to it. Yeah. Just feel it in the background. Yeah.
Joe: That’s just kind of.
Greg: Perfect to.
Joe: Let it go. What about you? What album is this for you?
Greg: I didn’t spend much time thinking about this because there was only one song that I felt like would actually be perfect for this, and it’s the song I palindrome. I, They Might Be Giants. Do you know that album Apollo 18?
Joe: I do know I’m not a They Might Be Giants fan at all, but I know the song I palindrome, I and I live with two people that love They Might Be Giants.
Greg: Okay?
Joe: And, I don’t get it. I do not get it.
Greg: But that song is awesome.
Joe: That song is awesome.
Greg: Did you ever listen to John? John Henry? Wasn’t that the kind of, like, more band version of them? He, like, recorded that with more kind of instruments.
Joe:
Greg: Anyways, I’m not going to sell you on. They might be Giants if the people you live with are not selling you enough, but I palindrome II is my favorite song by them. Apollo 18 is the album and so we will be putting those songs on are great bad Movies music playlist on Spotify. Joe Skywalker is going to go through and put in the perfect order.
Joe: One of these days.
Greg: One of these days, it’s going to be amazing. All right, Joe, we have come down to the end of the show where we rate the movie tenet. Great bad movie, good bad movie. Okay, bad movie, bad, bad movie, worst case scenario, awful bad movie. How do you rate the movie tenet.
Joe: To I usually like the movie better by the end when we’ve talked about it. This is not the case. This is just an okay bad movie to me.
Greg: Oh yeah.
Joe: Yeah, there’s some great parts to it, some great action scenes. I love the ambition of it. And I still yeah, I wanted more characters from it, so it’s just. Okay. What about you? How do you have this rated?
Greg: This is the most generous rating I’ve ever given a movie because I’m absolutely right there with you. But I think when I think about the people that worked on this going to work every day and making this thing, it is a near perfect cinematic experience that doesn’t really hold any water. So it is great and all the ways the movie can be great and it is bad in all the ways the movie can be bad in that way.
Greg: And for those two reasons, I’m saying it’s a great bad movie. All right.
Joe: I’ll allow it.
Greg: There’s just too much talent on display here for me too, but I’ve been looking at it through a different lens than you are. I think your lens is absolutely correct.
Joe: Yeah, I agree, and that’s the beauty of this show is, you know, we both agree and yet can disagree. Absolutely.
Greg: Oh, by the way, we forgot to play six degrees of great bad movies. How many degrees do we need to get the stars or crew or whatever of this movie to our podcast. Great bad movies.
Joe: Feel like three three. Wow. But I don’t know how we’re getting there. Yeah, basically, how do we get to our how many degrees of separation do we have between us and Rouge?
Greg: Oh, that’s an interesting way to get from this movie to our show. Let’s see. Let’s see how it maps out here.
Joe: Okay, okay.
Greg: It takes five steps okay. So bring your three down a notch or two.
Joe: Okay. All right. Just cool your jets. All right? Yeah.
Greg: Ten. It stars John David Washington. We all know that John David Washington starred in Black Klansman the year before this came out, I think, with Topher Grace. Topher Grace starred in interstellar. Also, Christopher Nolan movie with an actor named Matt McCulloch. Matt McCall a guest starred on a Canadian TV show called Private Eyes. And the theme of Private Eyes was recorded by the band that did our theme, Deer Rouge from Canada.
Joe: Oh wait.
Greg: There we go. One of the greatest bands currently working on the planet, and we are so lucky that they did our theme song as well. So five steps to get from Tennant to great bad movies. Not so bad and very bizarre that it seems to consistently go through that Canadian TV show. Yeah, Private Eyes with Jason Priestley.
Joe: Maybe it’s just how many, how many steps are we away from? Private eyes basically is what this is.
Greg: We’ll see how it plays out. I don’t yeah I don’t know how this thing’s going to go.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: All right. Well Joe, we did it.
Joe: Nailed it. We had the conversation that needed to be had about Tennant. I don’t know if anyone needs to talk about this movie or honestly if they could. If I’m being honest, it’s pretty confusing.
Greg: If they talk about it. It’s just a couple of hours of being confused, basically, right? If this episode is anything. Yeah, but we should also say, as always, spoilers for Tennant.
Joe: Yeah, spoilers for Tennant. Yeah, if there is such a thing in a movie like this. Because honestly, you know.
Greg: How do you spoil a feeling.
Joe: That’s got to be the title, a Simpsons episode somewhere?
Greg: How do you spoil a feeling?
Joe: Yeah.
Joe: Do you remember that something that followed when, Milhouse, his parents are getting a divorce, and Milhouse, his father, sing this song that Homer, and it’s. Can I borrow a feeling? And it’s like Homer’s, like, this is the worst song I’ve ever heard of my life. That’s where I went with that stuff.
Greg: That’s incredible. Yeah. How do you spoil a feeling?
Joe: Yeah, I don’t know. Yeah, it can’t be done.
Greg: That’s the new.
Joe: Album. Yeah. That’s how long for this?
Greg: You know, and if you’ve enjoyed listening to this episode, one way you can help our show is to tell a friend about it. There’s somebody in your life that you know that loves great bad movies, and you joke about them and you want to watch them together. Maybe you need some drinking game suggestions together before you watch a movie.
Greg: We’ve got you covered. So share with a friend that you know loves great bad movies about a podcast called Great Bad Movies. If you haven’t subscribed to this podcast, if you’re just hearing this online somewhere, find us on your favorite podcast app and and, follow the show there. You can find us on our website at, Great Bad movies.com or on Instagram.
Greg: Great Bad movies show. We’re on YouTube. Great bad movies show. We are all over the place.
Joe: So everywhere. Yeah.
Greg: We’re everywhere. Get Ahold of us through any of those means. We would love to hear from you and, get some feedback. Maybe you have a movie that you think we should cover on this show. Let us know.
Joe: Follow us. Find us, like us. Subscribe.
Greg: Smash that like.
Joe: Button. Yeah! Smash it.
Greg: Just unbelievable. Oh my gosh, Joe, I’m so sorry. Listen, this has been great, but I’ve gotta get back to the kitchen. I ordered my hot sauce like an hour ago, and it hasn’t showed up yet, so I think I should go and see what’s going on.
Joe: Yeah, you better go check that out. Anyway, my, gold bars are being flown into an airport in Oslo, so I sure hope that they’re safe and don’t get blown up and thrown across the runway for no reason at all.
Greg: Just throw it out on the runway. Yeah, my bar of gold, was inverted, and then a guy beat me up with it. So I need to go fix these.
Joe: Wounds.
Greg: And I gotta go.
Joe: That’s a common, common injury. Yeah. I’ve got to go get a new suit. Apparently, this Brooks Brothers suit is, It’s not posh enough. For where? On?
Greg: Yeah, I someone had to say it. I’m glad it was you, because I’ve been thinking of this whole time. Yeah, I just found out that bungee jump a bull might be a word now, so I think I’m going to go jump off some things or jump up some things. I don’t know.
Joe: Even better. I’m late for the opera, so I’ve got to run. We’ll see how that goes. Okay? Okay.
Greg: That makes sense. I’m going to go look at my things at the free port. Look.
Joe: Good idea. I’ve got to go. I’ve got a job interview with myself in the future, apparently. So, how does that work? I I’m not quite sure exactly how that works, but I love it.
Greg: I was confused by your joke.
Joe: And it was.
Greg: Based on this movie that checks out.
Joe: I should have mentioned earlier in this episode that one of the lines is that he goes, it turns out we were both working for me this whole time, right?
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: At the end, when he kills free. So spoiler alert, Freya dies. Wow. And was he what? They were both working for the protagonist. Which was the.
Greg: Protagonist, not a protagonist. Yeah, the protagonist.
Joe: Exactly.
Greg: I just heard that the most powerful bomb is the one that doesn’t go off. And I realized that I have made a massive mistake, so I need to go. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah, I sure hope I can get it to go box. I’m meeting with Michael Caine for lunch, and I’m just not that hungry right now, so yeah.
Greg: That makes sense. I don’t feel great about some of the stuff I said in the middle of this episode. So I’m just going to go hop in this turnstile real quick and go back to about an hour ago.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: So I’ll see you there.
Joe: Yeah. I’ll see you soon because I’m out of stuff to talk about too. Right.
Greg: Well, that works for me, Joe. This is a lot of fun. I’m so glad we watched that of this week. Yeah. And, I will see you soon.
Joe: Right? Soon.