Ok so due to the timey wimey wibbly wobbly nature of Tenet the opening is arguably one
of the most confuddling things ever put to film. Who is The Protagonist working for,
why do the SWAT team members turn on him? What happens to the algorithm and what the
hell is everyone saying? Well we're gonna be breaking it all down and
answering some of the big questions to clear up any confusion.
If this is your first time here then welcome back to the Heavy Spoilers I'm your host Paul
(reversed) now let's get into the breakdown. Ok so whilst I normally tend to do Ending
Explaineds, because of Tenet's plot structure and time manipulation, I think it's actually
fitting that this is the first film that I break down the opening of.
Throughout the movie we're told that ignorance is a weapon and at almost every major plot
point in the movie, The Protagonist has absolutely no idea what's going on.
This is very much the case with the audience too and Nolan purposely drops us in at the
deep end so that like the lead, we have little to no idea what's going on. Now up top this
is happening at the exact same moment that the mission at Stalsk-12 is and across the
timeline a version of both Neil and The Protagonist are storming Sator's forces in order to get
an already completed algorithm. However here the characters have not lived
through that moment and are thus having to help it be collected so that Sator can assemble
it in order for them to steal and then seperate it at Stalsk-12.
If we look at the Neil we meet at this point he saves the Protagonists life, meets him
in India and the two then go through the airport scene, highway chase and invert in order to
go back to this point in time so that they can stop the Algorithm from being dumped.
The movie itself is a Palindrome and the moment that it opens at is also the place that it's
final action scene takes place. Now Neil is aware of his mission from the
off whereas The Protagonist that we follow is not. He is currently working for the CIA
and was tipped off that there would be an attack at the Opera house which would allow
him and his team to slip in and make contact with Ukrainian high official known as The
Well Dressed Man. Before the real SWAT Team even arrive, both
The Protagonist's forces and one half of Sator's wait in a van for them to show up so that
the former team can slip in and meet this contact in order to get the package. The CIA
are actually being duplicitous here and they plan to work with Sators men but double cross
them in order to get the well dressed man so that they can gain intel from him.
They want to swap him out with their decoy so that they have a mole and can also learn
exactly what's going on. They are sitting waiting for the events to
kick off in order to infiltrate the location under the guise of their ranks. This is why
we see them wait until a specific SWAT team shows up so that they can choose the exact
badges to use in order to infiltrate undetected. But how did he know this would happen, especially
as the event hadn't even taken place yet from The Protagonist's point of view.
Well this is because the CIA was tipped off by The Future Protagonist who knew that his
past self would have to go through this in order to become him. He of course was key
in supplying the fake cyanide pills so that not only would his past self take one, but
also so that SATOR would get the other in order to use it at the end.
Now the reason I said that there were half of SATOR's men with The Protagonist is because
the other half is carrying out the attack. This is a temporal pincer in many ways as
one team will set off the events in order to get the SWAT team to come in which will
allow the other part of the team to use The Protagonist to get the algorithm piece and
they will then take it. One team is also tasked with planting explosives
in order to cover their tracks so no one knows about what they really got away with.
Now The Protagonist waits until the SWAT team launches and they start to pump sleeping gas
into the sealed room. This scene in general is actually based on The Moscow Theatre Hostage
crisis in which gas similar to this was used. However unlike TENET, in real life the gas
was poisonous and it's estimated that deaths were in the 200s due to complications that
were caused by it. As this is happening and the Ukranian Swat
Team are storming the hypocentre of it, The Protagonist and his CIA team sneak off and
go to his private booth. We see The Protagonist dismantle one of the security guards guns
by grabbing the top of it and yanking it off, this is something that he would later do when
fighting himself at the airport. Another bit of foreshadowing comes with the
password We Live In A Twilight World and this is later used by Sator, cementing that he
had something to do with this plot. Now it is possible that Sator was the one who tipped
off the CIA and that is why they are working with his men but either way that information
comes from The Protagonist who may have let Sator know in order to allow his past self
to go on the path he does. I don't wanna go down the rabbit hole of why
Sator was actually working for The Protagonist again but I've made a video on that which
you should definitely check out if you're interested.
Now the Protagonist informs The Well Dressed Man that this seige is actually a blind to
vanish him and he gives him the choice to either go with him or die. The Well Dressed
Man could easily have remained a spy and stayed with the Ukrainians but The Protagonist telling
him this makes him realise that he has to go with the CIA in order to stay alive.
Thus they leave the booth and The Protagonist tells him to remain in a seat so that he can
go and get the algorithm. Now it's at this point that he discovers the explosives laid
out by Sator's men and is also caught by a real swat team member. He flips the fake badge
off him and asks who he is, his CIA team member shows up and shoots him and then goes to take
the Well Dressed man to the rally point aka a room in the Opera where they can do a little
switcheroo that we'll talk about in a bit. Now The Protagonist arrives at the baggage
and coat racks and goes to number 248. Later in the film an Algorithm piece is named
241 and as we know it's split into 9 parts so 241 and 248 do denote seperate pieces of
it...I think anyway...that might be a reach. The Protagonist gets the bag and is confused
over the piece as he doesn't really know what it is. He goes to the rally point which is
when his CIA contact from the van switches clothes with The Well Dressed Man. You will
remember him from before as someone that The Protagonist spoke to.
The well dressed man mentions that he has a way out through a service tunnel and with
one half of the SWAT team he takes the Algorithm off and escapes through the sewers.
Now I'm not sure exactly how Sator's men manage to get a hold of this but there are two possibilities.
Now the first one is that when we see them talking about rewinding the clock later that
they are actually carrying out a temporal pincer to attack this team in the sewers.
Thus the well dressed man was killed and the Algorithm was taken.
However there is another possibility that I go with and I think that this team did make
it out and the piece that we later see being stolen is one in the same. They do look very
similar so I believe that is what happened. The Protagonist and his team member are informed
that there's no way to stop the explosives from detonating and thus they run back through
the Opera house in order to collect them. Now a SWAT team member catches The Protagonist
with one and this moment is slightly confusing. It is possible that he catches The Protagonist
planting it and believes that he is the one behind it.
However it could also be one of SATOR's men in disguise and this is why he says you don't
have to kill them. Either way it all comes to the same head but yeah, couple of possibilities
here including the Russians potentially even trying to cover up they've just gassed lots
of people. I might even be wrong about Sator's men planting the explosives and this would
be more inline with the Moscow Theatre Crisis in which there was a coverup by the Russians
that they basically killed the hostages they were trying to save.
Whoever he is he has a gun to the characters head but an inverted bullet flies backwards
through him and goes into Neil's gun. Neil is actually moving forward at this point but
the gun and bullet have been inverted so this is able to happen. We see this in full motion
later in the movie when The Protagonist is firing a gun at the wall.
Off topic but this Wall actually comes from Stalsk which is why the bullets and so on
go backwards from it. Big shoutouts to HD Gaming for sending me that through.
Now Neil runs off and with his buddy, The Protagonist throws the explosives and returns
to Sator's teams van. However they know that they have been double
crossed and thus they double cross the CIA and take them to the train yard to find out
where the real Well Dressed Man and algorithm are.
We can see trains moving in two different directions and this actually subtly foreshadows
the direction that time will be going in the movie.
They start to torture The Protagonist for information and even pull his teeth out. His
cyanide pill is removed but he manages to get one from his ally who kept theirs.
Believing that he is dead, Sator's men leave him at the train yard and he's picked up by
TENET. They give him time to rest and though never
explicitly stated, I think that TENET distributed numerous cyanide pills throughout the CIA
which actually put people into a coma. Over the years several were supposed to take
them as part of TENET testing who was worthy of joining their ranks but only The Protagonist
himself did. He's given the keyword and then dropped off
at a Windmill out the way. We later see a future version of The Protagonist on this
same boat moving past the location so it's clear that he was purposely placed here out
the way in order to stop himself from interacting with his future version.
Anyway that's pretty much the opening of the movie. I know it's difficult to understand
especially with the dialogue -
But hopefully you don't need an explaination video to explain this video and if there's
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If you want something else to watch then make sure you check out our breakdown of the What
If Trailer which will be linked on screen now. We break down the entire thing so it's
definitely worth checking out if you wanna know more.
With that out the way thank you for sitting through the video, I’ve been Paul and I’ll
see you next time. Take care, Peace