MovieChat Forums > Tenet (2020) Discussion > The Biggest Logic Fail in movie history!...

The Biggest Logic Fail in movie history! Spoilers

posted 4 years ago by DeadMac1 (204)
49 replies | jump to latest

The future humans have decided to kill the present humans & reverse what present humans did to the planet.

They believe that by doing so, it won't affect their existence (Grandfather Paradox) or even if they're not sure, they still want to take chance as their life is already fked up as Earth in the future is not so habitable. Fine!

They can have either of these Two Outcomes :-

1. Once they activate the Algorithm, the past humans will be destroyed and the Future humans too will cease to exist instantly because they killed their ancestors and henceforth cannot have been born.

2. Once they activate the Algorithm, the past humans will be destroyed and the Future humans will continue to exist as the 'Grandfather paradox' doesn't apply.

They are prepared for Option 1 (To die)
And if they are lucky i.e. Option 2, they survive.

My point is: If nothing will change, then even the climate/habitat won't change. If they have negated the effect on their own existence, the effect on the climate will also stay negated.

The movie suggests that by Option 2, Future humans' existence won't change but the climate/habitat will. How ??? WTF!!! Seriously?

Did this simple logic not occur to Nolan when he was busy scribbling this gimmickry tale?

[–] actionkamen (23176) 4 years ago

Nolan is basically just a name nowadays. He can fart in a can and his fans will buy them all.

[–] RoloTony (1286) 4 years ago

Sounds like the same fall-from-grace that poor M. Knight suffered.

[–] JoWilli2 (855) 3 years ago

at least his farts are better than 99% of trash movies these days. most movies are either a reboot or a comic book movie.

[–] actionkamen (23176) 3 years ago

That's true. Sometimes he produces gold. But whatever he made fans will gobble them all cause he's Nolan.

[–] exithereplease (3553) 4 years ago

Well.

First actually nobody saw it.

..the few that did

They didn't give a damn.

[–] actionkamen (23176) 4 years ago

It has pretty pictures.

[–] legnadibrom (6216) 4 years ago

i pooped my pants

[–] ultravioletx (10237) 4 years ago

It sounds to me like the future people are banking on the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

According to quantum mechanics, there is no Grandfather Paradox. The collapsing of wavefunctions create alternate branches of reality.

It gets complicated getting into the details of when or why a wavefunction collapses, but in simple terms it happens whenever a measurement is taken that our minds can translate into knowledge. Essentially, whenever something becomes "knowable," a wavefunction has been collapsed, and a "new" branch of reality has been created.

That is how Schrodinger's Cat is simultaneously dead and alive until we open the box to look at it to find out.

[–] DeadMac1 (204) 4 years ago

True. But the future humans living in that same timeline will not experience the change in climatic conditions and essentially fail. They just happens to create a branch and the humans living in that branch of timeline will be benefited.

[–] ultravioletx (10237) 4 years ago

Right. It would require them all to invert. Do I think they all believe or understand that? No. That kinda gets into the "tenets" of those future people, what they believe, etc.

Nolan seems to be hoping for a sequel here which could explain it further, but right now I can only guess what those future people were up to.

[–] DeadMac1 (204) 4 years ago

Why would it require them to invert? The climate won't change even if they invert and traverse backward in time.

[–] ultravioletx (10237) 4 years ago

The problem is there's just too much we don't know about the future people. The movie clues us in on Sator's motives, but only gives us bits and pieces of theirs for us to speculate on.

[–] DeadMac1 (204) 4 years ago

[deleted]

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

If you believe in the many worlds interpretation then why give a fuck about your world when you believe your other self is living the good life in another world.

[–] ultravioletx (10237) 3 years ago

Is that a real question? Why care about the only world that you can experience? Lol. Come on, man. It's not that hard.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

The multi world model has every outcome happening at the same time. So if you could go back in time and change something then all you've done is fucked up one of the possibilities. Why would you want to do that? You're now eliminating one of the worlds by doing it when you could simply do nothing an know that in one of the other worlds life went on as it could in your own.

[–] ultravioletx (10237) 3 years ago

You can't go back in time.

I'm not about to stop believing in something just because it devalues science fiction.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

The problem is the idiot humans in the future tried to destroy human at a time when they were polluting less, it would have made more sense if they had gone back to destroy human in say 1970 when pollution was starting to really get bad. But I guess they didn't want to spend the money to build 1970's movie sets... or maybe realized that having a black lead wouldn't have worked out very well if he was sent back to 1970.

[–] actionkamen (23176) 4 years ago

Nah, he just want to show off his niche expertise on the weird sailing boat / catamaran SailGP or whatever that was called (even Elizabeth Debicki's character is called Kat, short for "catamaran") which doesn't exist in 1970s. Nolan probably likes boats.

[–] CheekyMonkey (584) 4 years ago

definitely a boat fan... his previous movie was about sailing as well, Dunkirk...

[–] TearofLys (2642) 3 years ago

But if the future humans wouldn't be affected by the destruction of the past world, why would the future world? Either the event affects the future, or it doesn't. It sounds like the future humans were banking on some in-between.

[–] Loveman (17) 4 years ago

The antagonists were planning on living inverted. We saw how inverted people experience bombs unexploding and collapsed buildings re-assembling. They would also experience pollution un-polluting - so although there would initially be the same level of pollution, it would gradually improve.....for about 10,000 years, then they would go into a glacial period as they head backward through the current ice-age. But perhaps they would reverse again at that point.
Unlike Interstellar, Tenet does not have a sound basis in science, but the plot is self-consistent.

[–] actionkamen (23176) 4 years ago

They are going to wear non-inverted oxygen breathing apparatus all the time for 10,000 years? And non-inverted food too.

[–] Loveman (17) 4 years ago

Once the entire planet (universe?) has been inverted, it is not made clear whether the people then need to be non-inverted (‘verted’!?) or can themselves remain inverted and therefore not need masks. Of course, they might be a bit annoyed when they all get younger and turn into foetuses but don’t grow mothers to absorb them. The bit about the ice-age was just to point out the irony that their society would eventually be destroyed by climate change no matter what they do. They wouldn’t really need to be reversed for more than 200 years - that is how long (short a time) it has taken us to mess up the Earth.

[–] actionkamen (23176) 4 years ago

But as per the movie, the world is not inverted, just whoever that goes into the rotating chamber is.

So they (future people) were all going to go into the rotating chamber and live inverted until the Earth become un-polluted, right? Thus they'll at least need non-inverted air to breath on, and eat non-inverted food. Also, procreation would be problematic too.

What do you mean by once the whole universe is inverted? I'm not trying to argue here. I honestly am confused.

[–] Loveman (17) 4 years ago

I’ve only watched it once so I might need to re-watch but I felt it was implied or stated that the future people were able to and intended to invert the entire planet and a side effect of doing that was that it would kill everyone at the same time. I only mentioned the universe since, if the process can be made to invert the planet, perhaps it could work like a ‘chain reaction’ and affect all of spacetime. Really though, if you try to apply too much logical or scientific thinking to it, it can’t make sense - science says a particle moving backward through time is the anti-particle of the forward moving one. Remembering to put your mask on would not be much use to a person composed of anti-matter.

[–] actionkamen (23176) 4 years ago

Ah ok ok. I understand a little bit more now. So the "algorythm" thingy is to be used to invert the whole world. Now I still don't understand why would that kill all the present day people?

[–] footlegger (1462) 4 years ago

Because they will choke and die from not being able to breathe.

[–] actionkamen (23176) 3 years ago

But if the everything is inverted then all the people in the world are inverted too, right?

[–] footlegger (1462) 3 years ago

Maybe the method of inverting the whole planet at once is different that the turnstile thing and is destructive for living things?

[–] actionkamen (23176) 3 years ago

If that's the case then it was poorly explained in the movie.

But I think I agree with you. Reversing the whole world indeed will kill everyone from present timeline. It's just what it is. I guess Nolan can't explain why either so he just went with "it's a fact" in the movie's universe. A part of the premise. Similar to the fact that the turnstile can somehow inverse people to the other timeflow. It just can.

[–] cyguration (3951) 3 years ago

Actually... they don't know for sure.

That's what the conversation was about when Washington was asking Pattinson about it while he was dozing off.

They don't know what will happen, precisely, but it definitely seems likely enough that the inversion effect would destroy the time-space balance and -- like all the problems that exist in inversion -- would be a global effect.

So yeah, they assumed that the problems they face in inversion would be on a global scale, but possibly more messed up because time itself would still attempt to be moving along its proper axis (which is ultimately affected by the Earth's rotational gravity around the sun). The likelihood would be that there would be a time-space implosion.

[–] CheekyMonkey (584) 4 years ago

Not that far from reality... We've been wearing masks for a year... The Mira Safety ones they had in the movie are much more breathable...

[–] actionkamen (23176) 3 years ago

We don't wear mask 24/7. We don't wear it at home, while showering, while eating and drinking, while doing sports, etc.

[–] thiago (7) 4 years ago

Look, I just watched the movie, and I'm still unsure whether I liked it or not, because I don't even know how much I understood it. However, I'm sorry to inform you but your criticism is of someone who simply understood the film even less than I did. The people of the future are not willing to destroy the past so that the future changes. No: they are trying to INVERT the direction of time and entropy, as in a kind of pendulum that reaches its limit and then goes back the same way, in reverse. So, with reversed time and entropy, the inverted people of the future could live normally - and, instead of getting worse, things would gradually improve.

The film has many problems, but the future people's plan certainly isn't one of them. In this sense, the film is cohesive.

[–] thingmakersback (1372) 4 years ago

This is what I figured. I am not sure, though, how inverting entropy totally, would do anything but reverse the entropy of all the people as well. Therefore nobody would be destroyed but the world would be turned back upon itself. Bizarre and disturbing, but, frankly, I suspect that memory and thinking would be inverted too, chemical reactions and electrical interplay of neurons... So, presumably, it would not be apparent, what with being inverted in an inverted time stream.
I really don't like that they referred to the inversion of particles (electron/positron) which essentially means - antimatter. And then mentioned that you need to wear the suit (which is also antimatter) to avoid contact, perhaps with your uninverted self... This stinks of Lost in Space (or the worst episode of Star Trek, "The Alternative Factor") where antimatter people walk around in a matter universe, safe unless they come in contact with their "double". This is obvious nonsense; the air is matter, the ground is matter - contact with ANYTHING will begin a rather vigorous energy release as the particles of your stuff and the particles around them begin to mutually annihilate. And they did not need to describe the difference in this way. This is something that needed to be hand-waved to avoid the greater stupidity.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

[deleted]

[–] DeadMac1 (204) 4 years ago

> 1) The plants apparently can't be grown on earth, but these same plants CAN be grown on a spaceship. WTF? How is it that the plants will grow in a self-contained artificial environment on a spaceship, but these same plants can't be grown in some sort of self-contained artificial environment on earth?

Actually, they couldn't grow in open because the air is not clean and the blight (is it airborne?) spreads. BUT....they could have definitely made giant dome shaped greenhouses on Earth itself in which, they could use clean processed air. They could set such many greenhouses across the planet. There was no need for setting up all the way in space. A logic fail indeed.

[–] GuyOnTheLeft (236) 4 years ago

Agree 100%. So the beginning of INTERSTELLAR was really stupid, and the ending was BTW very stupid in a completely different way. There was some cool stuff in between though.

[–] actionkamen (23176) 3 years ago

Also what's wrong with corn? It really underestimated human's ability to adapt and survive. If there is only corn available, we SURELY CAN thrive on corn and corn only. There are many many species on Earth that only consume one kind of food and they survived alright for millenia.

[–] BourbonKing (5777) 4 years ago

Is this the premise? Sounds lame and uninspiring.

[–] AckbarsRevenge (3800) 4 years ago

lol I haven't watched this further Nolan crapfest, but realizing that it's about climate change all along is hilarious

[–] CheekyMonkey (584) 4 years ago

realising that climate terrorists in the future, reaching back in time to punish earlier generations, are the villains is pretty cool and underreported...

The Biggest Logic Fail in movie history! ***Spoilers***

The Biggest Logic Fail in movie history! Spoilers