History Film / Tenet

** The man torturing the Protagonist takes his CIA-issued suicide pill, but his colleague (who didn't have any information to reveal) is able to pass him his own so he won't be forced to give up the rest of his team. It turns out to be a SecretTestOfCharacter as the suicide pill is a fake.

''Tenet'' (stylized in all capital letters as ''TENET'', [[https://www.pinkbike.com/news/tenet-the-film-updates-logo-after-tenet-components-complaint.html formerly]] ''TENƎꓕ'') is a 2020 science fiction [[SpyFiction spy film]] written and directed by Creator/ChristopherNolan. It stars Creator/JohnDavidWashington, Creator/RobertPattinson, and Creator/ElizabethDebicki, with Dimple Kapadia, Creator/AaronTaylorJohnson, Creator/ClemencePoesy, Creator/MichaelCaine, Creator/KennethBranagh and Creator/MartinDonovan in supporting roles. It is also the first Nolan blockbuster, and his first film in 15 years, not to be scored by Music/HansZimmer, as he was already committed to ''Film/Dune2021''; Music/LudwigGoransson was chosen in his place.

* BavarianFireDrill: Notably, both the protagonist's insertion at the Kyiv opera [[spoiler:and his inverted insertion into the Freeport]] involve entering blended in amongst a wave of first responders.

** The man torturing the Protagonist his CIA-issued suicide pill, but his colleague (who didn't have any information to reveal) is able to pass him his own so he won't be forced to give up the rest of his team. It turns out to be a SecretTestOfCharacter as the suicide pill is a fake.

** The Protagonist doing pull-ups on the icebreaker while inverted. What is "pull-up"? A [[FunWithPalindromes palindrome]].
** During the climactic battle scene, the red team and blue team both have ten minutes to complete the final mission. TEN forward and TEN backward makes TENET.

--->'''Neil:''' The hell happened here...?\\
'''Protagonist:''' ...Hasn't happened yet.

--->'''Wheeler :''' ''You'' are inverted, the world is not.... Don't worry about things falling as much as rising.

''Tenet'' follows an unnamed CIA operative (Washington) as he and his team go undercover in an opera house siege in Kyiv, which ends with the team getting wiped out and the operative taking a cyanide pill before he can be forced by torture to talk... [[DeathFakedForYou only to wake up some time later, officially declared dead]]. An organization has recruited the "Protagonist" for the aim of [[SavingTheWorld securing everyone's survival]] from, as he will learn, antagonists from the future. Now armed with one word — [[TitleDrop Tenet]] — and a goal that transcends national interests, the Protagonist must navigate his way through a twilight world of international espionage, gaining allies for a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.

* HollywoodTactics: During the final assault, the Tenet forces' strategy consists of running straight in tight columns, with little use of cover or heavy suppressing fire.

** The Protagonist passes a SecretTestOfCharacter where he chooses to take a colleague's (fake) suicide pill rather than give up his team.
** [[spoiler:Sator has a similar CIA-issued pill in his possession which he plans to use to kill himself when the time comes.]]

* InfractionDistraction:
** The terrorist attack on the opera house was a cover for a plutonium-smuggling operation. [[spoiler:The "plutonium" is actually a piece of the Algorithm that the Protagonist and Neil have to retrieve in Tallinn.]]
** The Protagonist tells Neil to continue acting like he's hunting for stolen plutonium so he won't be killed because YouKnowTooMuch.
** The attempt to destroy the forged [[Creator/FranciscoDeGoya Goya]] in Freeport is covered by hijacking a cargo plane, dumping its cargo of bullion during taxi, and then crashing it into Freeport, making it look like either a gold heist gone wrong or an act of terrorism, rather than an attempt to break into Freeport.

* TheGreatestStoryNeverTold: Outside of Kat, the rest of the world will never know about Tenet and its black ops operations against Sator and his future bad guy backers to destroy the past. Neil summarizes it at the end of the movie:

-->--'''Fay'''

''Tenet'' was originally scheduled for a simultaneous worldwide release on July 17, 2020, until the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic caused Creator/WarnerBros to start a series of [[ReleaseDateChange incremental release delays]], as well as scheduling an (also-delayed) 10th-anniversary rerelease of Nolan's ''Film/{{Inception}}''. It opened in 70 international territories on August 26th, with the US release starting out in select cities on September 3rd and a Chinese release beginning September 4th.

* TerminallyIllCriminal: Andrei Sator, the main villain, is dying of cancer and intends to wipe out all life in existence with him by rewriting the world's algorithm.

* TheAirNotThere: {{Averted}}. An inverted person must carry their own inverted oxygen supply because their inverted lungs cannot absorb normal air. In long-term inverted missions, they also must stay in an airlocked environment conditioned to have breathable air as well.

* TimeIsDangerous: The Protagonist is warned not to attempt an inversion unless he can see his future, inverted self following suit, inverted individuals cannot breathe uninverted air and require [[GasMaskMooks gas masks]] and airlocks to survive in the past, inverted explosives crush victims within walls, inverted fire sucks thermal energy out of its environment to flash-freeze victims, inverted bullets inflict a type of radiation poisoning, characters risk becoming trapped in an inverted state if they invert without access to a Turnstile somewhere in the past, [[spoiler:the Protagonist almost murders a future version of himself]] and the movie goes as far as to suggest inverted matter to be analogous to ''antimatter'', resulting in the instantaneous annihilation of any particle that comes into contact with its inverted self. Throughout the film the characters are constantly fighting against strategic applications of inversion, such as "Dead Drops" (nigh-untraceable time capsules between present and future) or "Posterity" (scanning for electronic records in the future to anticipate actions in the present). "Bitemporal" warfare is also [[WarIsHell generally hell]], as any counterespionage is impossible and any action undertaken to defeat an inverted antagonist would have already happened from their point of view. {{Exaggerated|Trope}} in the finale with [[spoiler:[[{{Macguffin}} The Algorithm]], a schematic for a superweapon capable of inverting the entire planet to [[OmnicidalManiac completely erase the present from history]] and allowing the future to RestartTheWorld.]]

** The attempt to destroy the forged Goya in Freeport is covered by hijacking a cargo plane, dumping its cargo of bullion during taxi, and then crashing it into Freeport, making it look like either a gold heist gone wrong or an act of terrorism, rather than an attempt to break into Freeport.

* TimeIsDangerous: The Protagonist is warned not to attempt an inversion unless he can see his future, inverted self following suit, inverted individuals cannot breathe uninverted air and require [[GasMaskMooks gas masks]] and airlocks to survive in the past, inverted explosives crush victims within walls, inverted fire sucks thermal energy out of its environment to flash-freeze victims, inverted bullets inflict a type of radiation poisoning, characters risk becoming trapped in an inverted state if they invert without access to a Turnstile somewhere in the past, [[spoiler:the Protagonist almost murders a future version of himself]] and the movie goes as far as to suggest inverted matter to be analogous to ''antimatter'', resulting in the instantaneous annihilation of any particle that comes into contact with its inverted self. Throughout the film the characters are constantly fighting against strategic applications of inversion, such as "Dead Drops" (nigh-untraceable time capsules between present and future) or "Posterity" (scanning for electronic records in the future to anticipate actions in the present). "Bitemporal" warfare is also [[WarIsHell generally hell]], as any counterespionage is impossible and any action undertaken to defeat an inverted antagonist would have already happened from their point of view. Taken UpToEleven in the finale with [[spoiler:[[{{Macguffin}} The Algorithm]], a schematic for a superweapon capable of inverting the entire planet to [[OmnicidalManiac completely erase the present from history]] and allowing the future to RestartTheWorld.]]

** While infiltrating Freeport, Neil and the Protagonist walk into a room where there are bullet holes in the dividing wall's glass windows. When Neil asks what happened, the Protagonist realizes that the event has not happened ''yet.'' Cue the Turnstile opening with a man in body armor then going through it in reverse, and attacking the Protagonist, while the same man runs out of Neil's side of the room in normal time. While they are fighting, the man is trying to shoot the Protagonist. From the Protagonist's inverted perspective, the window's bullet holes disappear as the bullets reverse into the man's gun while the Protagonist wrestles it away.

-->-- '''Fay'''

'''Previews:''' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdOM0x0XDMo Trailer 1]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3pk_TBkihU Trailer 2]], [[https://youtu.be/pbHWyWossEo Esquire TV Spot]], [[https://youtu.be/AZGcmvrTX9M Final Trailer]]

* TheCavalry: {{Lampshaded}} by Neil [[spoiler:when he calls in commandos from his own organisation to rescue them, revealing himself as a Tenet agent like the Protagonist.]]

* ClipboardOfAuthority: {{Lampshaded}} by Barbara along with the Reflective Vest of Authority, both used as the Protagonist's disguise when he makes to visit her for information on the threat.

* GrandfatherParadox: {{Lampshaded}}. Whoever is backing Andrei Sator, they apparently believe that invoking this trope ''on a worldwide scale'' won't affect their future in any adverse way, or are simply desperate enough that they're willing to risk it.

* MindScrew: How inversion works, and how it affects some action scenes (such as the Freeport incident with the inverted GasMaskMook, the red-room/blue-room interrogation scene, and the battle of Stalsk-12 in the climax), can be pretty hard to grasp for many viewers. The important thing to keep in mind is that such scenes must make sense going backwards ''and'' forwards (i.e. "palindromic continuity").

* NeverTheSelvesShallMeet: {{Downplayed}}. The Tenet operative says that an inverted person coming into physical contact their normal-time self is "bad", but it is "skin on skin" contact only. [[spoiler:The Protagonist, entirely covered in body armor and combat gear, getting into a fight with his past self]] does not provoke anything nefarious because there's no direct contact.

* PoorCommunicationKills: One of the tenets of the Tenet organization is "knowledge divided", which leads to this trope being {{invoked}} deliberately. People only know what they need to know, when they need to know it, lest things go very wrong. If someone [[HeKnowsTooMuch knows something they should not]], that someone is assassinated, because it's the only way to be sure what they know doesn't make it to the future antagonists.

* WriteBackToTheFuture: This is {{Inverted}} because of [[TimeRewindMechanic inversion]] ([[IncrediblyLamePun yes]]). Someone in the future recruits Andrei for their scheme via an inverted TimeCapsule (played straight of course from his point-of-view). It is also weaponized in the last battle by having two combat teams, one inverted, with the past team learning from the other's experience. Tenet refers to this as a "temporal pincer movement" through a specific event. [[spoiler:Played straight when the Protagonist gives Kat a mobile phone at the end and tells her to give her location if she ever thinks she's in trouble. This saves her life as the Protagonist can receive the messages in the future and travel back to the present to always be there to stop any assassination attempt.]]

''Tenet'' follows an unnamed CIA operative (Washington) as he and his team go undercover in an opera house siege in Kyiv, which ends with the team getting wiped out and the operative taking a cyanide pill before he can be forced by torture to talk...[[DeathFakedForYou only to wake up some time later, officially declared dead]]. An organization has recruited the "Protagonist" for the aim of [[SavingTheWorld securing everyone's survival]] from, as he will learn, antagonists from the future. Now armed with one word — [[TitleDrop Tenet]] — and a goal that transcends national interests, the Protagonist must navigate his way through a twilight world of international espionage, gaining allies for a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.

** Next time, Andrei just [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim orders his mook Volkov to shoot the Protagonist]]. [[spoiler:An inverted Neil is lying dead before them; having [[TakingTheBullet Taken The Bullet]], he comes back to life when Volkov pulls the trigger.]]
* BavarianFireDrill: Notably, both the protagonist's insertion at the Kyiv opera [[spoiler: and his inverted insertion into the Freeport]] involve entering blended in amongst a wave of first responders.
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: The heroes managed to stop Sator from destroying the world but can never go back to live normal lives again. The Protagonist's knowledge of the Algorithm means he will always be a target, either from enemies in the future, and from Ives who must silence him because HeKnowsTooMuch and thus, he will not see Kat again except as her guardian angel from afar. However, it turns out that in the future, ''he'' will become the new head or even the founder of Tenet! Also, to complete the StableTimeLoop, Neil must go back in time and make a HeroicSacrifice to save the Protagonist so he can complete this mission in the first place. And [[EarnYourHappyEnding Kat, as mentioned, is free to live without Sator hanging over her, able to take care of Max in peace]]. But, of course, the threat of the climate apocalypse that drove the film's unseen villains still looms on the horizon.]]

* BookEnds:
** The Protagonist's first and last meetings with [[spoiler:Priya involve him holding an arms dealer at [[HollywoodSilencer silenced]] gunpoint. In their first meeting, he has Priya's husband (her front as an ArmsDealer) at gunpoint but does not fire since Priya is a member of Tenet. In their last meeting, he pulls the trigger on Priya and her mook for not keeping to her word to him, the person who will create Tenet]].

** The red-string backpack trinket belonging to the masked agent who saves the Protagonist at the beginning. [[spoiler: The inverted corpse that [[TakingTheBullet takes the bullet]] for the Protagonist is wearing it. The WhamShot at the end reveals that it is ''Neil's'' trinket--he was the same agent who saved the Protagonist in the opera house and the cavern.]]

* ColdBloodedTorture: The Protagonist gets this early in the film – his teeth pulled out with rusty pliers, among other things. Despite it all, he refuses to sell out his teammates, which leads to him getting recruited for Tenet's mission (which came with fixing the damage to said mouth while he was unconscious).

* CyanidePill: The Protagonist passes a SecretTestOfCharacter where he chooses to take a colleague's (fake) suicide pill rather than give up his team. [[spoiler:Sator has a similar CIA-issued pill in his possession which he plans to use to kill himself when the time comes.]]

* DoomedHometown: Example for the villain, Andrei Sator. He was born and raised in Stalsk-12, a Russian [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_city closed city]] that was the site of a nuclear explosion that wiped everyone there out... save for Sator, who climbed out of this "blank spot on the map" with information and gold bars addressed to him from the future, and a newfound ambition. In the Protagonist's meeting with Crosby regarding Sator, Crosby makes mention of an explosion that recently occurred at Stalsk-12, on the same day as the Kyiv opera siege. [[spoiler:Stalsk-12 – on the date of this explosion – becomes the site of the FinalBattle between Tenet and Sator's men, with both sides employing "temporal pincer movements" against each other. The explosion was meant to ensure the Algorithm's burial; Tenet's mission becomes extracting the Algorithm while letting the explosion also take place.]]

* DrivenToSuicide: The Protagonist learns from Priya that many generations into the future, the scientist who discovered inversion realized that her work could be abused and – among destroying her research and inverting the Algorithm into the present – killed herself to try and prevent it from getting out.

** When the Protagonist inverts [[spoiler: and fights his past self at Freeport, he flees their tussle by leaping into a Turnstile. However, this only looks like an escape from his perspective; From the past Protagonist's un-inverted POV the reverse happened and the future Protagonist seemingly appeared out of thin air and attacked him.]]

** When Sator's goons take the Protagonist into a restaurant kitchen to be roughed up, Kat has no intention of hanging around, but her driver refuses to leave until a battered body rolls down the steps. And it does, but it is the last of Sator's goons. As the driver floors the gas, Kat sees the ''Protagonist'' calmly walk out the door having disposed of all the mooks, so the 'lesson' was not what Sator wanted. As the Protagonist has left his phone number with Kat, she calls him the next day for help.

* FreezeFrameBonus: An easy one to miss during the car chase, but [[spoiler:The Protagonist had the Algorithm piece in one hand while he threw to Sator the (empty) orange case it was in.]]

** The word "tenet" itself is a palindrome – it stays the same word when reading backward. The original movie material has added fun with it by rotating the last two letters one-hundred-and-eighty degrees clockwise.
*** In fact, this is part of the larger palindrome of the Sator square, "Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas". The film uses all five words in one way or another.

* GaiasLament: [[spoiler: What Earth turns up in an unspecified date in the future, leading to the [[GreaterScopeVillain people in the future]] to set the events of the movie in motion]].

* GreenAesop: It's only brought up at the end, but it turns out that [[spoiler: Sator's future backers want to invert the planet so they can escape their climate change-ravaged world.]] Considering the film's themes, this can probably be prevented by eco-friendly actions in the present.

* IfICantHaveYou: Outright said by Andrei to his estranged wife. [[spoiler:Turns out that's why he's willing to go along with a plan to destroy the world--he's dying of radiation-induced cancer and wants to [[TakingYouWithMe take the world with him]].]]

* NeverTheSelvesShallMeet: {{Downplayed}}. The Tenet operative says that an inverted person coming into physical contact their normal-time self is “bad”, but it is "skin on skin" contact only. [[spoiler:The Protagonist, entirely covered in body armor and combat gear, getting into a fight with his past self]] does not provoke anything nefarious because there's no direct contact.

* NoEscapeButDown: The Protagonist and Neil use bungee cords to make a dramatic escape from the arms dealer's apartment to the street market below. The Protagonist did not like this plan. However, [[TheEndingChangesEverything if you'd seen the rest of the movie]], you would realize that this was not so dramatic [[spoiler: nor an escape, since this was actually a SecretTest meant for the Protagonist.]]

* NothingIsScarier: Implied when Neil rips the helmet off of the non-inverted "antagonist" in Oslo, complete with his stunned and panicked reaction causing him to drop the helmet and run back to the Protagonist. [[spoiler: Turns into a BaitAndSwitch when it turns out that the "antagonist" was really the inverted-then-uninverted Protagonist. Neil had realized who his partner was fighting and bolted off to stop him.]]

** Kat gets an understated one when Sator has a "dish" brought to her: [[spoiler:the forged Goya drawing. Despite the Protagonist's efforts, Sator still has his blackmail over Kat--he had the fake moved out of the Freeport before the 747 smashed into it.]]

** Second, during the original Freeport break-in, Neil seemed oddly focused on heading the Protagonist off the GasMaskMook that suddenly appeared from the Oslo Freeport Turnstile. [[spoiler:While inverted, the Protagonist, wearing full-body armor, winds up fighting his earlier self. Because earlier-Protagonist (like us) had no idea that it's himself, the "Mook's" actions here take on a whole new meaning: he was going on the defensive the entire time, all to get himself to the Turnstile. Even the gun that he "reassembled" was just the Protagonist's last-ditch effort to avoid hurting either version of himself. Furthermore, once he un-inverts himself and bolts away, earlier-Neil chases him and tears off his mask and helmet. Recognizing him and realizing what's going on, earlier-Neil wordlessly tosses the Protagonist his gear back and runs off to stop his partner from unknowingly killing himself. Neil later confirms this when they get Kat to an ambulance and drive away: "It's a lot to explain when you're trying to put a bullet in your own brain".]]

-->'''Kat''': [[spoiler:If you'd actually met Arepo as you'd claimed, you'd understand he no longer ''walks'' anywhere.]]\\
'''Protagonist''': We spoke on the phone -\\
'''Kat''': [[spoiler:He can't do that, either.]]

-->'''Sator:''' Look at me! And understand… you don't negotiate with a tiger. You admire a tiger until it turns on you, and then you feel its true ''fucking'' nature!

-->[[spoiler:"I’m not the woman who could find love for you even though you’d scarred her on the inside...I’m the [[MeaningfulEcho vengeful bitch]] you scarred on the outside."]]

--->'''Protagonist''': ''(in disbelief)'' You wanna ''crash a plane?''\\
'''Neil''': ...Well not from the ''air!'' Don't be so dramatic.
* ResignationsNotAccepted: After finding out his torture and 'death' was just a SecretTestOfCharacter, the Protagonist says he quits. Fay makes it clear that the stakes are so high that he ''can't''.

--->'''[[spoiler:Sator]]''': (In backwards speech) "[[spoiler:It's in the back of the Saab... Make sure he's dead.. Pick up the algorithm at the Freeport]]"\\
'''Neil''': "It's not Estonian. [[WhamLine It's backwards.]]"

* SecretTestOfCharacter: Russian mercenaries torture the Protagonist for hours by pulling his teeth out with pliers. He chooses to take a colleague's (fake) CyanidePill rather than give up his team. He wakes up from the induced coma in a hospital bed.
-->'''Fay:''' Welcome to the afterlife.
** Fay's last words imply that he failed the same test that the Protagonist just passed, leaving him in a position that is far removed from Tenet's operations--and a purposefully-minor character in the plot, like Barbara (the scientist) and Crosby (the informant).
* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: [[spoiler:Providing you have access to a time inversion machine; Tenet has the ability to use the reversal of entropy to launch outright military assaults into the past... provided that their presence was there to begin with in the StableTimeLoop, as it was in Starsk-12 in the film's climax.]]

** One of the last scenes references the ending of ''Film/{{Casablanca}}'', [[spoiler: in Neil and the Protagonist's final conversation.]]

* TheSlowPath: Works in both directions. In the world of ''Tenet'', TimeTravel to and from specific points ''a la Series/DoctorWho'' is impossible. Instead, one can invert themselves and experience time backwards, eventually ending up at the desired point. If there is an available Turnstile to set them forward again, the person can then turn around and eventually reach their original starting point. With adjustments such as airtight containers and portable oxygen, inverted people experience time just like regular people do... just with the large inverted elephant in the room.
-->'''[[spoiler:Kat]]''': ''(staring out the window of the icebreaker they are travelling on, with a mug in her hands)'' "I can't get over the birds [flying backwards]."
* SpiritualAntithesis: To James Bond movies in general.
** While Bond is an emotionally-distant, womanizing [=MI6=] agent, well-known in the intelligence community (and the audience); the Protagonist here is a [[TheNameless nameless]] CIA operative who instead possesses an emotional warmth that allows him to empathize with others.

** The Protagonist risks his cover as a wealthy man a few times early on and it becomes important that he learns to keep up his facade in order to get close to Sator. Acting rude to waiters, jokingly asking for the high-class food to be boxed, accidentally calling Sir Michael "mister" rather than "sir", wearing a suit from Brooks Brothers (an American retailer) rather than straight from a tailor.

* TimeRewindMechanic: The movie's whole plot hinges on it. It is not actually time travel--as the Protagonist learns, it is a phenomenon called "inversion", the reversal of cause and effect induced by reversing the entropy of a given object. There are instances of this phenomenon, both blatant and subtle, throughout the film. Tenet is concerned because they have discovered an increasing number of inverted objects.

--->"The hell happened here...?"\\
..."Hasn't happened yet."

''[{{Beat}}]''\\

--->''You'' are inverted, the world is not. ... Don't worry about things falling as much as rising.

* TurbineBlender: The jet engine on the crashed 747 explodes, sucking the GasMaskMook who attacks the Protagonist out of the building. [[spoiler:{{Subverted}} when it turns out to be a coincidence with the GasMaskMook--in truth [[OnceMoreWithClarity the Protagonist]]--just moving that way due to inversion. When the runaway turbine exploded, it blasted the inverted man through the roller shutter, but from the view of those watching in normal time, he appeared to have been sucked out of the room, followed by a big explosion.]]

** Cited word-for-word during the final battle when the splinter team has to enter the tunnel without being noticed. Fortunately an entire building both exploding and unexploding after being hit with inverted and normal-time AT-4 rockets makes a pretty good distraction.

--> '''Protagonist''': [[spoiler: I realized I wasn't working for you. We've both been working for ''me''.]]

* YouAlreadyChangedThePast: The 'summoning an inverted object to your hand' trick only works if you will have actually dropped it in the immediate future, which will be the object's immediate past. That requires the appropriate hand gesture, such as "scooping up a bullet" to pull it from the table or "pulling your fingers away from a bullet" to drag it toward you, as seen with Barbara's explanation.

* SpiritualSuccessor:
** John David Washington describes the movie as one to ''Film/{{Inception}}'', in the sense that they're "related by marriage". Both films see the ExperiencedProtagonist recruited for a mission with higher stakes than any they have undertaken before: Cobb is a freelance corporate spy working for the highest bidder, and only works for Saito for his own interests, whereas ''Tenet''[='=]s Protagonist is a CIA agent whose recruitment by Tenet hinged on him [[SecretTestOfCharacter protecting his colleagues]] and facing death as a result. Both are entangled with their respective story's plot device in different ways: Cobb is an experienced "extractor" who infiltrates his targets' dreams regularly via the PASIV system, while the Protagonist first sees an inverted object in motion before he's formally introduced to the phenomena, only becoming acclimated to it as the film goes on. [[spoiler:Finally, both films end differently: while Cobb may (not?) have returned to a normal life with his kids at the end of ''Inception'', ''Tenet'''s Protagonist certainly does ''not'' return to being a CIA agent, instead embracing his role as the founder of Tenet (and to an extent, Kat's guardian angel from afar).]]
** In ways it could also function as one to ''Film/{{Interstellar}}'', as both deal with the nature of time in similar ways. But whilst ''Interstellar'' saves most of the time-related consequences for the third act, ''Tenet'' is about it from the start. They also both involve a group being tasked with SavingTheWorld and contain a central FireForgedFriends relationship as well as a platonic relation between a man and a woman. Finally, both films feature a circumstance that results in a parent not being able to be around to raise their child as part of the narrative and a desire for this parent to protect and be there for their child despite this (Kat being the parent here, Cooper being the parent in ''Interstellar'').

* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: The Protagonist occasionally acts like he is aware that he's the hero of a movie. He outright refers to himself as "the Protagonist" and two masked men he fights in Oslo as "antagonists" ([[spoiler:though he was unaware that the "antagonists" were really his future selves trying to reach the Freeport Turnstile]]).

-->'''Neil:''' Time travel?
-->'''The Protagonist:''' No. Technology that can invert an object's entropy.
-->'''Neil:''' You mean reverse chronology. Like Feynman and Wheeler's notion that a positron is an electron moving backwards in time?
-->'''The Protagonist:''' Sure, [[BlatantLies that's exactly what I meant]].
-->'''Neil:''' I have a master's in physics.
-->'''The Protagonist:''' Well, try and keep up.

* NoNameGiven: The main protagonist's name is never revealed.

''Tenet'' follows an unnamed CIA operative (Washington) as he and his team go undercover in an opera house siege in Kiev, which ends with the team getting wiped out and the operative taking a cyanide pill before he can be forced by torture to talk...[[DeathFakedForYou only to wake up some time later, officially declared dead]]. An organization has recruited the "Protagonist" for the aim of [[SavingTheWorld securing everyone's survival]] from, as he will learn, antagonists from the future. Now armed with one word — [[TitleDrop Tenet]] — and a goal that transcends national interests, the Protagonist must navigate his way through a twilight world of international espionage, gaining allies for a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.

* ActionPrologue: The movie jumps right into the action with armed terrorists attacking an opera house in Kiev, with the Protagonist's team blending in with the local police to save their real target, a CIA agent whose cover was compromised. This also [[EstablishingCharacterMoment establishes the Protagonist]] as a skilled operative with [[ChronicHeroSyndrome an unwillingness to let people die needlessly]], convincing another team member to join him in gathering up the bombs in the opera house, saving the unconscious audience and musicians inside.

* AnachronicOrder: PlayedWith. [[spoiler:Due to the nature of inversion, the order of events turns in on itself in the final act, so that the characters revisit the timeframe of the previous two acts in reverse, with the final scenes taking place near the film's chronological beginning (the Kiev opera siege). In other words, the events of ''Tenet'' are structured around a [[FunWithPalindromes palindrome]] of events.]]

* BavarianFireDrill: Notably, both the protagonist's insertion at the Kiev opera [[spoiler: and his inverted insertion into the Freeport]] involve entering blended in amongst a wave of first responders.

* DoomedHometown: Example for the villain, Andrei Sator. He was born and raised in Stalsk-12, a Russian [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_city closed city]] that was the site of a nuclear explosion that wiped everyone there out... save for Sator, who climbed out of this "blank spot on the map" with information and gold bars addressed to him from the future, and a newfound ambition. In the Protagonist's meeting with Crosby regarding Sator, Crosby makes mention of an explosion that recently occurred at Stalsk-12, on the same day as the Kiev opera siege. [[spoiler:Stalsk-12 – on the date of this explosion – becomes the site of the FinalBattle between Tenet and Sator's men, with both sides employing "temporal pincer movements" against each other. The explosion was meant to ensure the Algorithm's burial; Tenet's mission becomes extracting the Algorithm while letting the explosion also take place.]]

** "Opera": the Kiev opera house in the ColdOpen, as well as one of the places where Neil and the Protagonist plan out the Freeport heist.

* SingleTear: Not called to attention, but following his recovery from Kiev, the Protagonist has the strength to only manage a few weak words, and a tear on being told his team didn't get out, [[AllForNothing despite him holding out for hours of torture.]]

** After the FinalBattle, [[spoiler:Neil leaves the Protagonist so he can save his life in the opening scene in the Kiev Opera house, and (fatally) by TakingTheBullet during the FinalBattle.]]

* TheUnreveal: The movie never reveals the mastermind of revealing the Protagonist's presence in Kiev to Sator's forces. Granted, news networks did cover the Kiev opera siege, leaving behind a record for the future to pass onto Sator in the past.

* WesternTerrorists: To the extent Ukraine counts as Western, the masked terrorists involved in raiding the Kiev National Opera House are this. The KORD anti-terror responders wipe them out during the raid.

** In the ActionPrologue the CIA team use "We live in a twilight world" and its response phrase "And there are no friends at dusk" in the ActionPrologue. Sator knows the "twilight world" line, implying that he works for the CIA as well, though the Protagonist pretends not to recognize it.

->''"[[BondOneLiner Mission accomplished.]]"''\\
\\
''It's the bomb that didn't go off. The danger no one knew was real. That's the bomb with the real power to change the world.''

-->'''[[spoiler:Neil]]:''' For me, I think this is the end of a beautiful friendship.\\

** Zigzagged when Sator threatens to shoot Kat unless the Protagonist reveals where he hid the MacGuffin, the Protagonist lies because he knows Sator will kill her anyway. But he then insists on going to rescue her while inverted, despite having no experience in that area.

* ArcWords: A [[TitleDrop tenet]] that Neil believes in is that "What's happened happens."

** Kat gets an understated one when Sator has a "dish" brought to her: [[spoiler:the forged Goya drawing. Despite the Protagonist's efforts, Sator still has his blackmail over Kat--he had the fake moved out of the freeport before the 747 smashed into it.]]

** In the ActionPrologue the CIA team use "We live in a twilight world" and its response phrase "And there are no friends at dusk" in the ActionPrologue. Sator knows the "twilight world" line, implying that he works for the CIA as well, though the Protagonist pretends not to recognise it.

--> '''Protagonist''': [[spoiler: I realised I wasn't working for you. We've both been working for ''me''.]]

** Sator quotes Creator/TSElliot when contemplating his suicide pill, telling Kat it's "...the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper."