Friendship in reverse and a protagonist named "The Protagonist"?
We won't blame you if you left Tenet with more questions than answers!
The Algorithm is the Macguffin of Tenet — which in filmic terms, means - the thing everyone
is after.
Many people die trying to locate it, and we're told it holds the key to earth's destruction.
But what exactly is the Algorithm?
One, it's a formula created by a scientist in the future that allows time inversion,
and two, it is a physical doomsday device, currently disassembled into multiple parts,
which when assembled has enough power to destroy the planet.
As explained by a scientist named Priya, who believed the Algorithm was so dangerous that
she created a physical copy that was then dismantled and hidden all over the world — in
the past.
"There are nine nuclear bombs.
Nine bombs.
Nine sets of the most closely guarded materials in the history of the world."
In Tenet, we see the race to locate these dismantled pieces.
The clear villain is Sator who wants to reassemble the device in order to destroy the world per
instructions by a future source.
The main hero of the film, typically known as the protagonist in any story, is actually
referred to, within this film, by that very title: the protagonist.
"You've done your part."
"My part?
I'm the protagonist of this operation."
He wants to retrieve the Algorithm to prevent the use of the device for the destruction
of the world because he trusts that other and better outcomes still remain possible.
The Protagonist meets the character Priya at four points in the story during which she
relays important information to him one piece at a time.
Ultimately, Priya's plan to stop Sator involves allowing the madman to locate and assemble
all the pieces to the Algorithm, but then to stop him from using it, which is a bold
move, to say the least.
Luckily, the gamble pays off, Sator is defeated, and everyone moves on with their lives.
However, in the film's closing moments, during a final meeting between the Protagonist and
Priya, he kills her.
But why?
Well, it turns out that Priya had made plans to try and kill Kat evidently believing such
action would preserve and protect the highly confidential actions which had been taken
by Tenet.
However, before she could pull off the stunt, the Protagonist kills her to save Kat and
her son, who may actually be Neil.
As it turns out, the Protagonist hired Priya in the past and is actually the one responsible
for Tenet.
Meaning that all along he wasn't working for her, she was working for him.
On a first viewing of Tenet, it's possible to miss the part when Neil dies.
To be fair, the final battle is difficult to follow.
Repeated viewings make it clearer — or so it seems.
So, how does he die?
Well, during that giant action finale at Stalsk-12, the Protagonist makes his way to the hypocenter
where Sator's man is busy lowering the Algorithm into a massive hole next to a corpse with
a familiar red tag lying on the other side of a locked gate.
Sator's man spots the Protagonist and is about to shoot him when the corpse rises, takes
the bullet and opens the gate — in reverse.
Turns out, this was Neil.
Only, we didn't know that at the time because the person was wearing a mask and the scene
is intercut with seemingly simultaneous scenes of Neil driving a jeep outside.
What we come to realize is that there are multiple Neils performing multiple actions
in multiple directions — some Neils are inverted while others are moving forward.
It turns out, Neil was also the man who saved the Protagonist at the Kiev Opera.
If that weren't enough, Neil reveals something more.
"You have a future in the past.
Years ago for me.
Years from now for you".
"You've known me for years."
They embarked on a number of grand adventures before Neil finally met his end.
So sad.
So, what happened during the Kiev Opera siege?
After watching Tenet multiple times, we may have the answer.
Our hero, the Protagonist, arrives at a staged terrorist attack.
Sator's crew are present in the form of disguised SWAT team members and are there to retrieve
a piece of the Algorithm after which they plan to destroy any evidence of its existence,
hence the bombs.
Real cops arrive to save the hostages, unaware that Sator's men have infiltrated their SWAT unit.
The Protagonist, who infiltrated Sator's fake SWAT unit, thinks he's there to steal parts
of a nuclear bomb.
After meeting with a mysterious man in a box seat, he learns the location of a package,
rushes downstairs and acquires what will ultimately be revealed as a piece of the Algorithm.
But for now, he doesn't really know what it is.
Feeling heroic, the Protagonist returns inside to help the hostages, runs into trouble, and
then gets saved by another masked individual, only to ends up getting captured and tortured
by Tenet for his troubles.
Turns out, it was all part of a test.
"That test you passed?
Not everybody does."
At one point during Tenet, Kat reveals a moment in the past where she witnessed a young woman
jumping from her husband's yacht in Vietnam.
Since the film deals with time travel, most audience members correctly guess the mysterious
woman's identity as some sort of alternate Kat.
But how did she get there?
Heavily referenced throughout the film, we're told that Sator's happiest memory occurred
some time ago in Vietnam during which he and Kat enjoyed a relaxing evening together on
his yacht.
Future Sator ventures back to this time period while past Sator is at the Kiev Opera to relive
the memory before killing himself and setting off events that will cause the end of the world.
Luckily, the Protagonist, Neil, and Kat deduce the time and place Sator will make his last
stand and send Kat backwards through time to arrive at that same point, while also simultaneously
healing her inverted bullet wound.
Now it happens that future Sator is unknowingly speaking with future Kat unaware that past
Kat has already taken their son to shore.
Past Kat then witnesses future Kat dive off the yacht following Sator's execution at the
hands of future Kat.
Presumably, past Sator comes back from Kiev and continues on with his life, unaware that
his future self just died in the past.
Here's a novel question for you: how did Sator not know his plan had failed?
He travels back to the past in order to execute his plan, but since he still exists in the
future, shouldn't he know?
"If you went back in time and killed your own grandfather, how could you have been born
to commit the act?"
"What's the answer?"
"There's no answer.
It's a paradox."
Tenet works around this concept by applying a whole new set of time travel rules.
As explained by Esquire, Christopher Nolan utilizes the bootstrap paradox, or a causal
loop in which an event causes another to occur.
In Tenet, the Protagonist experiences the events of the film, then relays the acquired
information to Neil, who travels back in time to affect those events with this acquired knowledge.
Hence, the second event is causal to the first event due to a loop continuum.
Simple, right?
According to The Sign Post's Nic Muranaka and Daryn Steed, the characters are stuck
in a time loop, and having already gone back to stop Sator they are forced to repeat stopping Sator.
During the 747 heist and crash sequence at Oslo Freeport, the Protagonist and Neil come
across two doors with a red and blue marker differentiating them.
Inside, they find what appears to be the scene of a crime.
There are bullet holes in the glass, gun parts scattered on the floor and smoke hanging in
the air.
Neil asks his partner what happened, prompting the Protagonist to reply that it hasn't happened yet.
Suddenly, a masked man leaps from both turnstiles.
With all of the mysterious individual's actions being inverted, the Protagonist is attacked
while Neil is involved in a chase.
Later, we discover that the inverted masked man is actually a future version of the Protagonist.
He and Neil went back to this moment to use the turnstile in order to un-invert themselves
and return to the normal time flow.
Our heroes inverted themselves in order to save Kat from Sator's gunshot wound following
the Tallinn freeway chase.
They also needed to go back to stop Sator at Stalsk-12.
However, in order to keep from disrupting the past, and in service to the aforementioned
bootstrap paradox, the Protagonist has to use the turnstile without being seen by his
past self.
So, although he desperately tries to flee his counterpart, he must engage in combat
to escape.
Neil and the Protagonist have a long and complicated history.
When they first meet up, Neil seems to know a great deal about his new partner right down
to the type of soda he prefers — Diet Coke.
He's also quick to trust the Protagonist despite a relatively brief introductory period.
Turns out, the pair have actually worked together for some time, just not in normal terms.
At the end of the film, Neil explains that this moment marks the beginning of their relationship.
Except, we know, in order to save his friend, Neil is about to head off to certain death
following this exchange.
What gives?
If one were looking at their relationship from a chronological perspective, the Protagonist
we see at the end of the film presumably travels back in time to begin Tenet and recruit Neil.
Future-Protagonist and past-Neil then enjoy a series of adventures before the former passes
Neil off to his younger self.
This is why Neil was able to save the Protagonist at the Kiev Opera siege and during the Stalsk-12
battle, because he already knew it was going to happen based on information relayed to
him by his partner from the future.
As explained by Insider, Neil is stuck in a closed loop doomed to repeat the events
of Tenet over and over, always leading to his death.
As Neil states:
"What's happened happened."
In the climactic battle at Stalsk-12, much is happening — explosions, gunfire, helicopters,
collapsing buildings — most of which is inverted.
Visually, Christopher Nolan doesn't do enough to differentiate the good guys from the bad
which sometimes leaves us more confused than elated.
After repeated viewings, here's what we know is happening during the grand finale: two
private armies in league with Tenet run through separate time periods in an attempt to create
a diversion so that the Protagonist, Neil, and Ives can secure the Algorithm.
The red team moves normally through time while the blue team waits for the battle to result
in the big explosion which is designed to bury the Algorithm.
The blue team then participates in the madness in reverse.
Both teams unleash some serious firepower and incur plenty of artillery themselves.
We see people die, but we don't ever get a good look at the enemy.
The CIA handler at the beginning of the film does admit he's not exactly sure who Sator
is hiring to do his bidding.
However, he does allude to the possibility of them being Russian mercenaries, which makes
sense considering Stalsk-12 is part of a collection of closed Russian cities.
In the end, all that matters is that Neil and the Protagonist succeed.
Which they do after supposedly slaughtering hundreds of unseen bad guys.
So you can let your imagination fill in all the bloody details.
Tenet comes packed with a bunch of scientific jargon that may be too hard to understand
on the initial viewing.
But, here's a hint that may help you: turn on the subtitles.
One such bit of mumbo jumbo involves something called a temporal pincer, which is just a
fancy way of describing a mission that utilizes inversion.
We get a good look at a temporal pincer in the action-packed finale during which two
teams tackle the same battle from different directions in time.
The red team executes their mission by moving forward, while the blue team waits for the
mission to end before inverting and fighting the same battle backwards.
We see smaller temporal pincers occur throughout the film, such as during the freeway chase
and the 747 heist.
But did you know the entirety of Tenet is actually one large temporal pincer operation?
We learn as much during the closing scenes where it's revealed the Protagonist is the
one behind everything — and we mean everything, Tenet, the operation, Neil, all of it.
After experiencing the events of the film, he goes back in time and sets up much of the
film's actions in order to fulfill the time loop.
The Protagonist instructs people to execute specific events.
For example, Neil saving him at the Kiev Opera, and later, allowing himself to be kidnapped,
tortured, and recruited by the Tenet organization.
He's not altering the past, per se, but executing it the way it's supposed to be executed, as
previously established.
As in the film, perhaps the best way to understand is to go back and watch it again with the
benefit of having been there before.