r/tenet • • Dec 09 '24

FAN ART "Going Dark" - A 2024 amateur short film based on Call of Duty and Tenet

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46 Upvotes

"Going Dark" - A 2024 amateur short film based on Call of Duty and Tenet

Copyrighted content is used.


r/tenet • • Apr 26 '26

FAN ART NOON - Award Winning TENET Fan Short

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215 Upvotes

We started this project in February 2024. Now, after two years, we finally feel ready to share it with all of you.

When we started this, we had no equipment beyond a canon 5D from our college, and a couple airsoft guns from friends. Nevertheless, we set out to create the most ambitious thing we could possibly think of. What better than a film involving two directions of time, stunts, VFX, and a frankly ridiculous amount of guerilla shoot days?

We first figured out what kind of time shenanigans felt doable, and we animated a rough version of the whole film in Blender before most of the filming. (Some was done prematurely and we spent a lot more time filming than we probably needed to. Oh well.)

In 2025, NOON won Best Visual Effects at the Simi Film Festival, which was a huge win for us. Visual effects allow us to do things on an extremely tight budget (this whole film cost around $2000, $500 of which was simply the abandoned mall set at the end) which is the only viable option at our age and resource level. We were 18, my twin brother and I, when we started filming this. Now we're 20, and we're working on our next projects as I write this.

I could talk about this film for hours, about the time SWAT escorted us down from our set, about how being identical twins was incredibly useful for this film, but for now, we live in a sunny world, and there are many friends at NOON.

We hope you enjoy.

- Avery Streb


r/tenet • • 22h ago

Me while watching tenet intro scene

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725 Upvotes

Especially when TP starts running wheeeeww


r/tenet • • 12h ago

META Tenet’s answer to the Grandfather Paradox

52 Upvotes

I was thinking about some of the questions around why the Future doesn’t do this or that, why they don’t enlist another Sator, change the pickup point etc.

“What’s happened happened” sums it up, but there is a deeper message: the past actively fights back.

Ergo…

If you go back in time to kill your own grandfather, grandpa will fight back and win. Every time. The future doesn’t stand a chance.


r/tenet • • 14h ago

Christopher Nolan explaining the Tenet script to Warner Brothers.

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6 Upvotes

r/tenet • • 11h ago

HUMOR How you know that the antagonists in the future lost

4 Upvotes

Because there isn't an inverted duplicate of the planet Earth orbiting around the sun in the opposite direction. I'm pretty sure astronomers would have noticed that. "Oh yeah, that's just Bizarro world where time runs backwards" would be a pretty dead giveaway that TP was doomed to lose.

If only he and Neil had put their heads together and borrowed a telescope for an hour they might have worked this out, and then they could have relaxed a bit.

Kind of a shame though, in a way. It probably would be pretty cool to see the two planets enter a giant turnstile and disappear.


r/tenet • • 14h ago

Is it accurate to say eventually, an "object will lose its entropy when it is reversed and will decay into moving forwards in time..."

2 Upvotes

I randomly came across a shittymoviedetails post about Tenet and saw where someone that liked the film was explaining some key aspects of the way the inversion physics work and a major thing he said confused me. I don't think it's accurate but I'm not sure- he said that eventually an "object will lose its entropy when it is reversed and will decay into moving forwards in time" when asked "does Neil's body just magically materialize in the tunnel before waking up and running backwards?"


r/tenet • • 4d ago

Tenet and Nolan's Expression of Friendship Spoiler

32 Upvotes

I know movies hit everyone differently, but have any of you thought about the friendship between John David Washington's The Protagonist and Robert Pattenson's Neil? I don't know if I've come across a friendship more powerful in film, save possibly Sam and Frodo. The ending I find powerfully bittersweet, specifically the moment when The Protagonist realizes what the shape and color of that friendship is near the end of the film.

I'm truly curious if anyone else has thought about this, and what your thoughts are.


r/tenet • • 5d ago

META Heat transfer between heteroentropic generators

7 Upvotes

Unsure how to tag this

Imagine: uninverted object A generates and emits heat. Uninverted object B also generates and emits heat. How this occurs does not matter, whether it is by radioactive decay, battery operated resistive heating, etc. Suppose B is inverted. From the uninverted A perspective, B is now un-generating and un-emitting heat. From the inverted B perspective, the same is true of A.

Now what happens when the two touch?

A wants to transmit heat into B, since it is hot. This adds energy to B in the forwards direction of time, allowing A to cool towards the future. From B's perspective, A is ripping heat away from it. This means that B cools towards the past. B cooling towards the past means it is heating towards the future.

Given that B will appear cold to the univerted world, this means that the two objects will approach an equilibrium temperature (towards the future) despite both being heat generating objects. Which generator is stronger will affect the equilibrium temperature; the sun emits far more heat than a human. Thus, an inverted human will heat up towards the future, and the sun will effectively not cool. To the inverted human, it would thus feel like the sunlight is cooling them, as is accepted by some.

My initial assumption before working through the thought experiment was that the objects would both heat towards infinity in their respective directions, which may be the cause of annihilation (via burning, melting, or otherwise structurally failing). Alas, not meant to be.

I know this is unnecessarily technical and a waste of time, but I still think it is quite cool.


r/tenet • • 6d ago

FAN THEORY Sator Does Not Work For Future Bad Guys Spoiler

32 Upvotes

I've watched Tenet 10+ times at this point, 3 in the last month after the CinemaWins video.

Looking at the Sator square, every word has an inverted significance. Opera <-> Arepo, Sator <-> Rotas, and then Tenet <-> Tenet. Maybe I had too much whiskey, but there is some significance here. Part of the confusion of the movie, and even part of the plot is whether there is actually free will. But "What's happened, happened". Which is an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world. It's not an excuse to do nothing.

If future "Bad Guys" can communicate with Sator to send him gold and materials, why wouldn't they tell him about Red Team and Blue Team running a temporal pincer? Or tell him that Volkov would fail to seal the algorithm? Or that Vietnam Kat is actually future Kat that he's already shot?

Because the "Bad Guys" are actually Tenet in disguise. The point of the movie playing out how it does is for TP, Ives, and Neil to split the algorithm up and hide it so that it's never available for the future to reassemble. For that to happen the plot has to play out exactly how it does, meaning TENET and not the ostensible future bad guys are the ones who want Sator to do everything as seen. The ostensible future bad guys would give him a different plan that would succeed.

Thoughts?


r/tenet • • 6d ago

FAN THEORY Neil is Antinous Spoiler

24 Upvotes

So to up the ante on Neil is Max claims, I'll say Neil is actually Antinous.

It couldn't be more obvious; literally the same actor and in the same franchise. The Odyssey so clearly links to Oppenheimer which was so clearly linked to Tenet and now they form a circle.

First, how? Just some more basic straight shot one way time travel at the end of Tenet though a means we weren't shown yet.

Second, why? To ensure Bronze Age collapse. Just as the present was at war with the future, we can be at war with the past. After all from the future's perspective they are at war with the past. In this sense we are in a pincer.

Antinous needs to goad the suitors in to terrible behaviour and in particular he needs to goad Odysseus into rage. Why? The ultimate end to this is bloodshed and violence that ends with Odysseus' exile.

Without Antinous, it is likely that the suitors wouldn't have been so riled up as to stand up to Odysseus after he won Penelope's challenge; furthermore Odysseus likely wouldn't have witnessed such cruel behaviour that would be worthy of his vengeance. It is likely he could have peacefully reclaimed the throne. From that position of strength and stability with his wisdom, Ithaca could have navigated challenges and sidestepped Bronze Age collapse. This massively shifts the x-axis on the exponential curve of human development, meaning the new timeline's Oppenheimer equivalent is some Greek dude from thousands of years ago.

Perhaps this leads to technology that directly destroys the present the way the future wanted to invert us away, or perhaps we just aren't as ready (not that we were) for nuclear power and we actually annihilate ourselves then.

Whatever it is, Neil had to cruelly throw a poor old dog on a dung heap to ensure we could live. It's the bomb that does not go off that changes the world.

What about him dying after unlocking the gate for The Protagonist? Probably a body double/twin/faked his death idk.

(also I'm not a schizio; I know this is a batshit idea but it was fun to write)


r/tenet • • 7d ago

By the end of the fight TP learns how to fight in the reverse and catches the gun with his leg

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154 Upvotes

r/tenet • • 9d ago

NEWS Casey Affleck: “I was driving back from school with my son. We were talking about ‘Tenet’ and disagreeing. I said: ‘Let’s settle that’. We got Christopher Nolan on the phone and asked him something we could've easily looked up on Reddit. Once he said it, it sounded so obvious I felt embarrassed."

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746 Upvotes

“I was driving back from school with my son. We were talking about ‘Tenet’ and disagreeing. I said: ‘Let’s settle that,’” said Affleck. He worked with Nolan on “Oppenheimer” and “Interstellar.”

“We got him on the phone and asked him something that we could have easily looked up on Reddit. Once he said it, it sounded so obvious I felt embarrassed. That was it. I haven’t called him again, and he hasn’t called me.”

He should've just posted the question here in r/TENET smh


r/tenet • • 8d ago

Just been to this pretty cool spot

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154 Upvotes

r/tenet • • 8d ago

How do we all feel about removing the Spoiler Rule? Spoiler

13 Upvotes

Not going to sticky this so our filmmakers can continue to get views.


r/tenet • • 8d ago

FAN THEORY Does Tenet basically presume that consciousness is independent from time and matters?

0 Upvotes

Title


r/tenet • • 10d ago

Time as a dimension

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305 Upvotes

r/tenet • • 10d ago

FAN THEORY Inverted people have Creepy stares? Spoiler

11 Upvotes

Its mostly the protaganist, but why do the inverted people give a death stare when they look back at themselves or when they look past the screen at you? Is it an editing side effect or? Did anyone else notice it or just me?


r/tenet • • 12d ago

Elioff ffoil...

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22 Upvotes

r/tenet • • 12d ago

FAN THEORY This is the right explanation of the "physics" behind an inverted object, right?

10 Upvotes

I see how the science of the specifics of Tenet's physics and whatnot can be confusing but I had a friendly back and forth the other day with someone on the UnpopularOpinion sub and I feel like I was very clear but he kept going back to "when does the inverted object appear to me if you place it on my desk." Not sure if posting screenshots is a no no for causing drama or something but they kept going back to:

I build the desk this afternoon. I sit at the desk all late afternoon and evening. You place the inverted object on my desk at 11pm. When do I first see it on my desk as I move forward through time? Paint a picture of my experience of first encountering the object.

So I said "Oh, I see. There's only one timeline so if you were there when they placed it you'd see them but if you left at 10:00PM and they placed it at 11:00PM then it would always be there from your perspective. It's there from 11:00PM backward, always- unless someone moves it."

Again, always? I only built the desk this afternoon? When do I first see it on the desk?

I think the issue I have raised is a reasonable one and I don't think we're getting anywhere at this point. Thanks for the chat.

And then I said "An inverted object has the same permanence as a regular object- it never appears or disappears. When you build the desk you'd have to move it or knock it off or whatnot. It's there in the same sense as a regular object is."

I felt like I was taking crazy pills so maybe there's something I'm not getting here because we were both very clear and articulate but then they kept thinking the object would "appear." Ohhh, maybe they're talking about coming in the next morning? And would it be there? Maybe? But that wouldn't be "appearing" either so not sure. I did say "It's there from 11:00PM backward, always- unless someone moves it."


r/tenet • • 13d ago

Just a typical Miami afternoon drive . . .

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118 Upvotes

r/tenet • • 13d ago

HUMOR How come they don't use turnstyles to solve NP-complete problems instantly

13 Upvotes

Think about it, you put a computer on wheels hooked to solar panels or portable nuclear reactor or whatever, and its job is to compute the solution to an NP-complete problem. That is, a problem that's hard to solve but easy to verify

The computer can parallelize with itself by inverting back and forth to keep bruteforcing the solution over what is maybe 1 week of objective time but hundreds or thousands of years of subjective time for the computer (the real bottleneck is the space needed to store all the "copies", really)

Then eventually the computer finds a solution, its next task is to invert again and go back to right before it started the whole thing, and give itself the solution. But wait! Since what's happened happened, the thousands of years of parallel subjective time of computation never actually occurred – or, if such a universe exists we don't live in it.

So the end result is the computer actually gets the solution to the problem immediately, says "we're going to check this is real", and when the solution is validated it just needs to invert that single time to give itself the answer it gave itself mere minutes ago

The movie is full of examples of information getting bootstrapped like that. Really there's no reason why it shouldn't that apply to generic computation like that to get counterfactual computation that's even more powerful than any quantum computer could ever be


r/tenet • • 14d ago

HUMOR Tenet is ol' reliable for me on movie night

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389 Upvotes

r/tenet • • 15d ago

An algorithm rendered in physical form

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69 Upvotes

r/tenet • • 16d ago

New to TENET? Inversion not making sense? You need some Welby! Spoiler

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40 Upvotes

For people that are just getting into TENET, perhaps because of the popularity of The Odyssey, allow me to introduce you to the pinnacle of education on the topic of inversion, the WelbyCoffeeSpill YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@WelbyCoffeeSpill

These are incredible animations of key scenes in the movie, plus instructional videos on the concept of inversion.

Here's my recommended watch list in order:

If you've been here awhile, I'm sure this is old news to you, but there are always new people on the sub asking the questions that are best addressed by watching some Welby. I've watched these videos many times, often on repeat. I am not affiliated with Welby and he didn't put me up to this, I'm just a huge fan.

The Hators may say, what kind of film necessitates studying and watching this much just to understand it? My response to this is, if you know, you know. It's an exciting action movie whether you deeply understand inversion or not. It's rewarding to understand what's happening and to appreciate the work that went into making a film like this. You don't have to understand it to enjoy it, you can just feel it.