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[Weekly Updates] February 7, 2021
🕑 Added 2021-02-08 00:24:28 +0000 UTCNext week, it's Chinese New Year meets Valentine's Day. Are you celebrating? Let me know if you have plans!
ABOUT THE CHANNEL
- Our Valentine's Day video is already completed. But due to some communication error, it is still waiting approval from our sponsor. It'll go live as soon as it is approved, likely at Wednesday.
- The rest of the schedule will remain the same. Meaning there'll only be a one week gap between the next two videos. It'll be about The Eight Hundred.
- Afterward, I have a more general topic videos I want to make. I can't tell you concretely what it's about yet. But think of it as the thesis for this channel.
- And finally after that, Godzilla vs. Kong. Oh I'm so excited for that movie. I can't wait to be disappointed but still love it.
ABOUT MEDIA
- Finally, I sat down, rewatched Tenet, and gave it my best shot.
- No, I still hated it.
- Tenet is a spy film about a secret organization trying to stop the world from ending, by preventing the spread of a new technology: Reverse-entropy. Materials that are reversed flows backward through time.
- A look around YouTube and you'll find a tone of video essays criticizing this movie, all for different reasons.
- The sound mix is absolutely dreadful. We all know the dialogues are hard to listen to. But the dialogue itself are also hard to understand. The robotic construction of dialogues makes every character sound the same. It is undoubtedly the worst written of all Nolan films in terms of dialogue. I almost thought it was a style.
- The exposition problem comes back ten fold. Nolan did a fine job showing reverse-entropy in action, something that defies our day to day experience. Yet, somehow, the rest of the plots are told through expositions. The villain's motive, which was deduced last minute, is exposited by someone else, not even the villain himself.
- I love John David Washington. I thought he's performance in BlackKklansman was terrific. But him in Tenet is dry as the Sahara. Not that he has much to do, mind you. His character motivation is inconsistent, and barely shown. And neither is anyone else's personal goal, other than "stop World War III".
- In many ways, Tenet is what Dunkirk isn't. Tenet feels like Dunkirk, if every character starts spouting unimportant dialogues to justify a series of barely connected action scenes.
- Yet... A lot of people love the movie, for some reason?
- So I checked out some positive discussion on YouTube. And, rather interestingly, a lot of people find the puzzling story interesting, because they have to rewatch it multiple time to get it.
- Some says "remember when we obsessed over a movie, because it is art?" Which I find interesting. I also disagree, but whatever.
- Some finds the action scenes very thrilling. I was unimpressed, to be honest. But I like the general grounded aesthetic of the film (except the climatic action scene). I love how non-flashy all the techs are, and how almost realistic the action scenes are.
- Will Tenet go down as a underrated classic in the future? I doubt it. It's not a film that breaks new ground, and it lacks the emotion most films have. I know most of Nolan's character motivation revolves around a dead wife, but at least it's some emotion.
- But yes, I could be wrong. There simply may be something in Tenet that I'm not seeing. If you like the film, let me know what you think about it.
Anyway, which film do you think it's Nolan's best? I still think Inception is the best constructed, with the most consistent character emotion and motivations. The plot of Dark Knight is kinda lose, which is why I can only put it in second place.
In any case, I'll see you in a few days for our next video.
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Comments
David L
I enjoyed it for showing me something new. Playing around with causality in action scenes in such a sustained fashion was fun and novel to me. That the characters' motivation and dialogue was weak didn't matter too much to me, I was more interested in how their actions would match up with things elsewhere in the film. Favourite Nolan film would definitely be Dunkirk. It's the only movie to ever keep me riveted throughout, yet I wouldn't want to watch it again because it was just so stressful.
