#76. The Tenet Episode
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Billed as the longest show they've ever done, and the last of this run, this is 90-plus minutes of three men arguing about Tenet — JVL announces his intentions by renaming his video handle "Nolan is overrated." Sonny, the self-described chairman of the Christopher Nolan fan club, grins through the opening Kyiv set piece and admits the whole enterprise is so ridiculous and so drunk on its director's own capabilities that he can't help admiring it, even while conceding the final temporal-pincer battle is flatly incoherent on a first viewing; he compares it to Primer, a movie he hates, and diagnoses Nolan's recurring sin as trying to literalize time on screen, the same failure as Interstellar's infinite library. Vic gives it a C, grading plot F and duration F while awarding violence an A-plus, confesses he lost the thread when Kenneth Branagh appears on both sides of the interrogation glass and briefly hoped for a Prestige-style twin, and offers a bravura riff of professed comprehension that JVL methodically dismantles with quiz questions about entropy reversal, freeports and who exactly the third-act army is. JVL is viscerally angry: he sat in denial through the entire runtime, drove to a Taco Bell for the first time in twenty years and spent $17 on "one of everything," and argues the film fails not just at storytelling but at basic filmmaking, with a dialogue mix so bad that Sonny pre-ordered the screenplay to find out what people said. His central case is the Ghostbusters standard — you never need to know why the streams can't cross, only how the rules work — and where Inception patiently layers rule on rule through Cobb and Ariadne, Tenet offers one three-minute bullet-catching scene "wildly unequal to the task." Sonny closes with a fan theory borrowed from a DM: the protagonist is Debicki's son, engineering the whole thing to save his mother. Box office gets its own segment — $20.2 million, a $7,200 per-screen average against Dunkirk's $13,300, the third-best Labor Day opening ever against a $200 million-plus budget — with JVL insisting the pandemic saved Nolan's career by giving a movie that would have earned a C CinemaScore a permanent pass. Around it: Djokovic's ejection from a spectator-less U.S. Open, Vic's six-day drinking audit and his ceramic-bottle Clase Azul, a college classmate arrested for hedge fund fraud, a moth casting an eight-foot shadow on JVL's screen, and mask compliance at the multiplex, where buying popcorn functions as a get-out-of-jail-free card.
From the show notes
#cdata-section -------------- In our latest—and longest—episode sponsored by Keeps, we discuss Christopher Nolan's much-anticipated time-trave...
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00Sub- All I have for you is a word. Tenet. It'll open the right doors. Some of the wrong ones, too.
Sonny00:00:14Don't try to understand it. Feel it.
Vic00:00:30To another edition of The Sub-Beacon, sponsored by Keeps. I'm Victor Matus, along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V. Last. Just a reminder, The Sub-Beacon is available on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. Look on our podcast and search for Sub-Beacon. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and leave a review. Gentlemen, how are we? JVL, what is going on? Oh, look at your handle there. Mine just says Passionate Guest because I didn't assign myself anything. Sonny's, this is his email. And yours, what is yours? What does it say there? It looks like it says Nolan is overrated. Oh, my goodness. It's going to be one of those episodes. Sonny looks so excited to get into this right now. Look at his face. He can't wait to talk about this.
JVL00:01:14Will this be longer than our Rogue One episode, which I think is our longest ever show?
Vic00:01:22We did, oh, don't forget, we did a two-parter, I think, on The Avengers, didn't we?
JVL00:01:29No. It was a pretend two-parter. A pretend two-parter? We pretended, we broke in the middle of it, and we were like, that's the show.
Vic00:01:36Oh, okay. I thought we did one where we devoted two episodes to one movie.
Sonny00:01:41No, we definitely did two episodes to something. Maybe it was the last guy. I think it was Rogue One. I think we did Rogue One and Rogue One Redux. Maybe that was it. That was very early on in the show.
JVL00:01:51The point is, we're not doing two episodes on Tenet. We're going to do a single three-hour episode on Tenet.
Vic00:01:57This is great. If you're going from Waco. Waco to, what did I say? People love talking about it. El Paso. El Paso. Galveston?
Sonny00:02:05No, I don't think there are three hours worth of ways we can say what happened in this scene. I don't know what happened in that scene. I don't know, but I... We should say spoilers.
Vic00:02:14Yeah, okay. Spoilers. No.
JVL00:02:17Before we get into it...
Vic00:02:17No, this movie is unspoilable. That's true. This movie is unspoilable. Okay. Before we get into the main event, JVL, what else is going on? Anything you want to talk about?
JVL00:02:28Here's what... This is Synecdoche for the entire thing. As I was in the theater for the first time since I went to see Christopher Nolan's 10th anniversary, Inception, I had something which has never happened to me before, which is that a large moth was flying around and casting shadows on the screen and then making its way to the light, to the light, and it kept going towards it closer and closer and closer to the projector. And it eventually... It must have flown into the projection booth because it finally disappeared after like 90 seconds. But if it hadn't gone away, I was close to go find a manager and say, I'm sorry, you've got a four-inch wide insect that's casting an eight-foot shadow on the fucking screen.
Vic00:03:17Right, because I was going to say, clearly, clearly the moth is heading towards the projector because as it gets larger and larger until it reaches its bliss.
JVL00:03:28I thought you only got that at drive-thrus. Yeah, drive-thrus, drive-ins.
Vic00:03:31That's the great Norm Macdonald joke, isn't it? The moth goes to the shrink.
JVL00:03:38You mean Sonny's friend?
Vic00:03:40Yeah, Sonny Bunch's buddy. Sonny's buddy.
Sonny00:03:42I wouldn't say that was really the Norm Macdonald joke about a movie theater. I mean, there's a joke that Norm Macdonald tells that involves a moth. That's what I mean, yeah. That's all I've got. Boys, how are you?
Vic00:03:54Sonny, what's going on?
Sonny00:03:55Not much. JVL, you had mentioned wanting to talk about Novak Djokovic a little bit. A little bit before the show. And I am curious to get your take on this. Because I saw what happened to Djokovic. He gets kicked out of the U.S. Open, which is going on, apparently.
JVL00:04:12Raise your hand if you knew the U.S. Open was happening. Who knew? Only from your text.
Sonny00:04:17So I want to come back to this in a second. I want to circle back to this. So, again, I see like a 30-second clip of this happen on Twitter over and over again. Because that's where I see everything now. Because I live... I live in the panopticon of social media. And it is driving me slowly insane. Driving me very quickly insane, actually. But the... What I see happen is Djokovic hitting a ball back to the rear of the court. As they often do. We like hitting balls to ball boys or whatever. Except he hit this one a little sharper than he normally might have. And it hit a lineswoman right in the throat. And she... Collapsed to the ground. And she's like holding her throat. And you can see Djokovic...
JVL00:05:05As if Liam Neeson had hit her and taken right.
Sonny00:05:08Yeah, I mean like... Like Leo DiCaprio running, doing head shots.
Vic00:05:13Oh no, I'll tell you what it's like in Saving Private Ryan. The guy next to Mellish, he gets it in the throat just like that.
Sonny00:05:19Yeah. So the... So anyway... And you see on Djokovic's face him go through the stages of grief in about 15 seconds as he... He realizes what he has done accidentally and what it will cost him, which is an exit from the tournament.
Vic00:05:37Implications.
JVL00:05:38Because... Well, not just an exit from the tournament. It will cost him a major because he was going to win this tournament.
Sonny00:05:43Well, he was going to win this tournament because a lot of people were boycotting the tournament, right? So what... Explain to me, A, your thoughts on this and also... Players? You mean a lot of players were boycotting? And also, B, what is...
JVL00:05:54A lot of players didn't show up.
Sonny00:05:55What is going on with the actual tournament?
JVL00:05:57So a lot of players did not show up. And neither Nadal nor Federer were in the field. And the players who have shown up, if you've watched it, mostly not at their sharpest. A lot of people... You know, the COVID-19... Actually, this is a thing which really has... As somebody who has put on a lot of weight over the course of this pandemic, seeing that even professional tennis players have gotten doughy during the pandemic... You're going to have to stand up. I can't tell. That's what made me very happy.
Vic00:06:27Stand up and turn around. Let's get a look here.
JVL00:06:29I'm not going to dance for you. Dance! Clap your hands! Do a little twirl. I just want to see you turn around. I would say, on both the men's and women's tour, it is clear that a lot of people have stress-eaten their way through the pandemic, just like us. And I found that wonderful.
Sonny00:06:45Have there been other tournaments up until now? Have they been playing... Wimbledon?
JVL00:06:49Was Wimbledon played? No, they played the Australian, no Wimbledon, no French.
Sonny00:06:53There was that story about how Wimbledon actually had a policy, had an insurance policy covering pandemics, it was like the only major sporting event.
JVL00:07:02Of course they did. With like Lloyds of London?
Sonny00:07:04Right, right, no, they paid like a million dollars a year for the last ten years, and like it didn't pay out, didn't pay out, and then this year it pays out like 60 million dollars or something.
JVL00:07:13It's like betting don't pass, isn't it?
Vic00:07:15It is. One day, one day you'll do it.
JVL00:07:18So like, this is happening at the... The only thing he's playing for anymore is I want to be mentioned as the possible goat. I want there to be some idiots on Bleacher Report or whatever the fancy tennis website is ten years from now who, in order to... Barstool Tennis, who in order to pick a fight online start going, actually, Novak Djokovic is better than Federer or Nadal. He needs to add a couple more major... in order to do that, and this was a freebie.
Vic00:08:02You know what? There would have been an asterisk next to his name, though, because it was, like, played during pandemic, you know? But when you talk about players being doughy...
Sonny00:08:08Nobody remembers the asterisks. Nobody remembers the asterisks.
Vic00:08:11That's right. Was Djokovic in that same category, or was he fit as ever? I mean, with him, it's hard to tell. He looked fit. He was not playing as sharply, but he just, you know...
JVL00:08:21So there must have been... Head and shoulders above the field.
Vic00:08:23Even though... So is this happening at the Arthur Ashe Stadium? Yes. But there's no gasps, because there's no gasps. Is there nobody there, or is it, like, a minimum capacity thing? No, nobody there. You know who's there? When you watch
JVL00:08:35now, it's full of, like, USTA big wigs. So anybody in the USTA who's a VIP has got themselves a seat somewhere. And evidently, it's so bad that the seeds were given the luxury suites. There's nobody there, and so they just told the seeds, hey, while you're here all day, if you just want to give me your own luxury suites to hang out in all day long.
Vic00:08:55If you went there, JVL, if you went, they'd let you in the tent. There's always the VIP tent. No. Yeah. Anyway, so
JVL00:09:01they, so Jocko gets tossed. And what are your feelings about this, gentlemen? I
Sonny00:09:09remembered, when I saw it happen, I thought back to something that happened during one of Brett Favre's last seasons with the Packers. There was a moment in a game, I think it may have been a playoff game, but I can't remember for sure. Somebody will correct me on this after the fact. But he was, he, you know, the play was blown dead. He still had the ball in his hand and he kind of tossed it just forward. And it hit one of the referees right in the head. Hit, just clocked the referee in the head, who like turned around, he's throwing his flags all over the place. And Brett Favre's, the look on Brett Favre's face is like when you see a child who has been caught, like, putting his hand in the cookie jar. It was like, but like, not like that exactly, because he had clearly done it accidentally. He wasn't like, it wasn't a Brett Favre, like, rifle throw at the guy's
JVL00:10:01head. It wasn't a passive, it wasn't even a passive, like, attempt to
Sonny00:10:05like, he was just like lobbying it, you know, down the field. And it, he, the face was literally something like, like, I can't, I can't describe it perfectly. But that's what I thought of when I, when I saw Djokovic do this. And unintentional. It struck me as obviously accidental. It did not seem malicious. I don't know what had been happening in the match up to that point. I don't know if he had been arguing with the line judge or whatever. It just, like, it was a thing that happened. I was like, oh, that sucks for him because he clearly didn't intend to do this. At the same time, you gotta be careful. You gotta be careful when you're just throwing balls back there. Like, I mean, I, you know, I, I, if it had happened to a ball boy, I would have felt bad too, you know? But it happened to a line judge, that's even worse. Line judges, line judges are people, unlike ball boys. So anyway, I felt bad, but he got, he, he, he, he had to be tossed out. I mean, that's the rule. The rules are the rules.
Vic00:11:05So, so is Wimbledon over? Is there a winner? And is it Chris Lewis? He finally won. Chris Lewis finally
Sonny00:11:11won. Is this a, is this a reference to the movie Wimbledon? No, no,
Vic00:11:15no, that's, remember that JVL? Remember Chris Lewis? I don't. I have no idea. It was like a freak Wimbledon. Somebody's gonna defend Chris Lewis on this, but it was a freak Wimbledon one year where Chris Lewis, who was like an unseated guy, managed to make his way all the way to the finals. And I think he faced Macaron that just got crushed. Oh, it was like one of these things where the other side of the bracket had all sorts of weird things happening. And when that happens and all these people face each other and then there's a number of upsets every now and then there's an opportunity for some weirdness like that. Like
Sonny00:11:4816 to get through. Yeah. I remember
JVL00:11:51Victorino, a US Open from our youth. So we would have been middle school or high school when I want to say his name was Jay Berger. I'm sure Jay Berger lucked his way into the semis and he a was a guy who served with his racket already behind his back. He doesn't do
Vic00:12:09the butterfly as I call it. He just can't do the butterfly. It was already back there defied, defied in my
JVL00:12:15opinion. The last player to make a major semifinal, at least men's player, with an aluminum racket.
Mike00:12:25Well, it goes to show you. There. It goes
Vic00:12:27to show you, you know. I believe he played with a Prince Classic, which is the green throat. I used a thunder stick and I didn't get as far with my thunder, with my
Sonny00:12:36thunder stick. Aluminum as opposed to graphite? Yeah.
Vic00:12:41I know. I could picture it too. But also how he, what was crazy about Jay Berger's serve is that people are fast forwarding. They had no idea they were getting 10 minutes of tennis here.
Mike00:12:51Tennis talk. Not tennis but tennis.
Vic00:12:55I don't understand how he could get a serve that speed when he doesn't go through the momentum, the wind up and then hitting the serve. You know what I mean? Because it's back there. It's just like
JVL00:13:07you know, I don't... Do you understand how kinesiology works? No.
Vic00:13:11The act of moving about
JVL00:13:13doesn't actually generate any force. Only moving forward generates force. Why do you move it back then? I think probably to I don't know why. One thing
Sonny00:13:22you do... Sonny, you're the one here who's
JVL00:13:25the best of us at tennis.
Sonny00:13:27I mean I feel like it is very much like underhand free throw throwing that one reason nobody does it is because it looks really dumb.
JVL00:13:41There's always some guy who says, oh yeah, but actually because of the way the arcs and the hoop
Sonny00:13:46you can shoot better. If Shaq did underhand lobs from his groin to the basket, it would be better than... Whatever. He's not going to do that because he doesn't want to look like an idiot. That is one good reason not to serve that way. But there is a function of momentum, right? Where if you rock back, you come forward, you hit it
JVL00:14:04and that has you going toward the net.
Sonny00:14:07Which is, if you're a serve and volleyer...
JVL00:14:10It's a sort of motion thing.
Vic00:14:11Okay. So wait, wait, wait.
Sonny00:14:16What is your overall takeaway on Djokovic? You feel bad for him. I feel bad for him.
JVL00:14:23But also, I hate him. So I'm happy to see... I should be happy to see Victorino, what do I always say to you? In fact, what did I say to you over text just recently when you sent me, shared me the news story about your classmate who has been sent to Federal Pound Me in the ass?
Vic00:14:39No, no, no, no, no, no. He's been arrested. There's no arrest trial. I'm sure he'll get like, you know, another friend of mine. I was on Facebook with my buddy Shane and another guy, and we were talking about what's going to happen, and he figures it's going to be, what do you call it? Club Fed. As the
JVL00:14:59lawyer says. Okay, everyone's confused here.
Vic00:15:00Yeah, yeah, that's right. The lawyer says it's off the stick. Oh, no. Before we get to that, before we get to my part, go to your part first, which is you're finishing your thought on John. You felt bad for him. You don't like him, but at the end of it, you always say time.
JVL00:15:16If you wait long enough, eventually you will get to sample life's greatest delicacy, which is watching bad things happen to bad people.
Vic00:15:28Put it in a fortune cookie. No, that's like the same mindset as Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets. Remember what he says? He says, you know, what pisses us off is that isn't that we've had it so bad, but that they've had it so good. Okay, so yes, so as Jonathan was alluding to, a classmate of mine who I never really liked. I guess I could say his name. It's all on the record. No, don't do that. Was recently arrested for petty theft because he stole somebody's bicycle.
JVL00:16:07Yeah, that's what it is. Oh no, he works in finance. Wait, it's a hedge
Vic00:16:10fund and got arrested for fraud. By God! By God!
Sonny00:16:16That's Bernie! Bernie Last has just walked into the room.
Vic00:16:20And extortion is one of the charges, according to Bloomberg, when I was just reading. And so it had to do with putting pressure, you know, and he's well, you know, I mean he broke his fiduciary fiduciary trust responsibility but this is somebody I never really liked. And it wasn't because he was mean that, you know, people have reasons, whatever. But you know me, I like everybody. I walk down the hall at New South. I love everybody, you know, but these are people these are certain people. They would look through you. You know what I'm saying? They look like you're not there. You don't exist. Like you're a ball boy. Yeah, you're non-existent Sonny. That's right. Non-existent. You're there to serve them. So that was that was a good start. You know what
JVL00:17:08Victorino, I'm sorry. I gotta just for the people the people listening to this in order for this guy to have you not like him. He must have been the biggest jag off in the tri-state area.
Vic00:17:22Yeah, because you know me, I like everybody. You like everybody. So don't
JVL00:17:26be like, well, I don't really know why I like it. You must have had a reason and he must be
Vic00:17:30because he did not acknowledge your existence. If you're walking down the hall, you could say, hey, how are you? He would pretend that he didn't hear you.
Sonny00:17:36You know what I mean? I'm sorry. This is a guy from high school
Vic00:17:38college. Oh, that's a guy from college. The void. Yeah, he's called the void. It was this because I was on one part of the hall and my other friend Peter and Brian Potts were on the other and there's a stretch of all these basically rugby type guys and this is like they're in their own world, you know, Phillips Academy, whatever. Exeter. Exeter. Pingree. Hotchkiss. I'm just throwing it all in there.
JVL00:18:02Okay. Anyway, no offense.
Vic00:18:04Rosemary Hall. No offense to our prep school listeners. Anyway, that was my experience. And then the other thing I was going to say is I just I'm trying to cut back on booze because that might be a weight factor in my I gained some weight in the last four or five days and Kate thinks it's because I was drinking for four or five days and I said that can't possibly be true. So I started charting and it was Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. It was actually six days. And so I had to stop and I said, well, let's go back and see if this is her crazy conspiracy theory is true. And I had a little bit of red wine on Wednesday. Not a big deal. Just with dinner on Thursday I had a couple martinis. I had to pick up some hot dogs from a friend of ours because we go to the same butcher, but we have to order X amount to get the free shipping. And so I went over to our friend Andy's house and then, of course, picked up the hot dogs and then had two martinis. So then after that... Then you drove home. Then I, yeah, you know, it's not far. And then the next day had gin and tonic, white sangria and white wine. But that was, it's all very light stuff. It's all very light stuff for a dinner. And then I had beer and bourbon at Captain Bill Dwyer's and then went to the neighbors at their fire pit in the backyard. Everyone was very good about this stint. And I had grappa, mezcal and tequila. And then I had, and then I, you know, saw the nights on the following Monday and had a little bit of Woodford Reserve. So I think, okay, I stopped. And I didn't drink until today. Three days later. No, four days. Three days. Oh, today's Thursday.
JVL00:19:47Sorry. Well, since you touched three days off, that means you can drink for the next 18 days straight. I just had beer. It was
Vic00:19:54not a big deal. But I did want to give a shout out. And I forget our listener friend who was it, Robert Little? I can't remember who it was who gave us the tequila because that's what I had on Sunday night. That was the Class A Azul in that beautiful ceramic container. That was the one that makes the bell noise. And I have to tell you, it was delicious. And it's not like tequila that you're, you know, I don't like tequila. I don't drink tequila. It's gross to smell. This was actually quite pleasant, enjoyable, sippable. And I had more of it. Sonny, were you a tequila guy in college? Did you ever get drunk on tequila?
Sonny00:20:28Tequila? I have been drunk on everything. Yes. Including tequila. But I've never, I've never, I've never liked tequila. It tastes like dirt. Yeah. This was, it tastes literally like the earth. I just, I don't care for it.
Vic00:20:42This was, this was completely eye-opening. My problem, you know what my problem is with tequila is there's a delayed reaction to the, you're feeling the buzz from it. And so it's like, for me at least, it's like 15 minutes. I'm like, oh, I don't feel anything I'll have another one. Oh, gee, everything's fine. Unlike certain other drinks. And then like 30 minutes later, it hits you like a freight train. And the problem is by then you already had four or five drinks and you cannot go back in time to stop it from happening. That is a
JVL00:21:14plus. Boy, that whole, it's exhausting. It's exhausting. 21 minutes.
Vic00:21:18You know what else? You know when you have a lot of tequila, it feels like everyone's moving forward, but you're moving backwards. Okay. Speaking of which, over the weekend, Tenet took in a whopping $20.2 million followed by The New Mutants with $3 million and in third place, Unhinged with $1.8 million. Good for Unhinged. What a dark, crazy movie that was. And it still haunts me. The part where he throws the girl against the knife. Great scene.
Sonny00:21:50Great scene. Great kill. Box
Vic00:21:52office thoughts.
JVL00:21:55I have a box office thought. Go for it. AVL. The pandemic has saved Christopher Nolan's career because this environment has given Tenet a total pass and had it opened in normal times it would have had a solid opening weekend and it would have dropped by 70% from week one to two. It's entirely possible.
Sonny00:22:22It's entirely possible. Do you disagree, Sonny?
JVL00:22:24Its cinema score would have been a C.
Sonny00:22:26Well, it was a B. Which is not good.
JVL00:22:28It was a B with a self-selected group of Nolan fanboys like us going out to the theaters. If this had been a $65 million opening with the type of people that that entails, the cinema score would have been a C.
Sonny00:22:46So, I have a lot of box office thoughts and I go into this at length in my newsletter that will be coming out Friday afternoon. At 3 p.m.
JVL00:22:59Your newsletter for what website?
Sonny00:23:01My newsletter for The Bulwark. It's called Screen Time. There's a link in my Twitter bio that you can click on and sign up for it there. I have three main thoughts. The first is that if Warner Brothers really wanted to, they could talk themselves into this being a win. You could look at the per screen average and say, look, it made $7,200 per screen opening in, mostly in markets where the ticket prices are lower than in New York and L.A. And that $7,200 per screen average is a little more than half of what Interstellar and Dunkirk made on their opening weekend per screen averages. Interstellar and Dunkirk opened at like $13,300. This opened at $7,200. So, if you consider that the theaters are operating at 30-50% capacity, really, it's like a $14,400 opening, right? So, in theory, if you do a lot of convoluted cinema math, you could talk yourself into this not being a disaster. The second thing that is interesting about this is that it is, again, this is the second thing that Warners could kind of, like, hang their hat on and say, look, it's not terrible. In the middle of the pandemic, in the worst environment for going to see movies, literally in 100 years, the movie had the third best Labor Day weekend opening of all time. Third best Labor Day weekend opening of all time. Labor Day. Great weekend for movies, historically, as everyone knows. I'm joking. It's a terrible, terrible weekend for movies. And the, and the last thing kind of related to that is that it had the best, it had the best opening on IMAX screens for any Labor Day movie ever. Okay, so, like, you could you could, like, pick and choose little things and you could say, okay, well, you know, in theory, this isn't a disaster, but it all comes back to this movie grossing $20.2 million domestically on a $200-some million budget before Princeton advertising and publicity. And, you know, that's not good. It's not good. It's not good and if it does, and the thing that Warners has to be terrified of is that this was a super front-loaded audience. That this is that people were so desperate to get out to the theaters that, you know, the drop-off, even with, you know, potentially bad word of mouth, the drop-off will be in the, like, 80% range. Yeah. Which could happen. I could. I don't know. I honestly don't know. This is the thing is we are in totally unprecedented uncharted waters and I have no idea what's going to happen in terms of box office.
JVL00:26:12Here's a question, Sonny. Yeah. Knowing what we know now, do you think that they could have made as much or more money going premium VOD? You get to keep a bigger part of the pie.
Sonny00:26:31They certainly could have made more than 20 million dollars. That is like
JVL00:26:35I'm saying whatever our final theatrical
Sonny00:26:37run is here in the States. I don't know. I mean, there are other things to consider beyond pure dollars and cents, which is that Warner Brothers has tried to position itself as like the house that auteurism built and maintained. Right. This is why they this is why they gave Denis Villeneuve you know, 200 million dollars to go make a Dune movie after Blade Runner 2049 lost everyone their shirts. It is it is why they give Christopher Nolan enormous amounts of money to essentially do whatever he wants to do. So when Christopher Nolan says, I do not want this movie to be on VOD that that that that plays a big big. I mean, again, it like could they could they have made more money releasing this on premium VOD than they will domestically in the United States? Probably
JVL00:27:36I think that's trapping it to HBO Max. I think that's I think that's
Sonny00:27:40I mean, I don't know. I don't like again. I yeah, possibly possibly
JVL00:27:46I don't know. Concentration Camp
Sonny00:27:48Mulan is done very well, right? I don't I haven't seen number one. I haven't seen a single figure on downloads or anything. It's not very good. Well, I won't see it. I won't see it because I'm not going to pay $30 for it. I already paid $12 a month or whatever. We paid $30 for it
JVL00:28:06and my kids were basically done after 40 minutes. Did you stick to see
Vic00:28:10the credits that we think the Xinjiang province security? No, that's I did not. I didn't act up there either.
Sonny00:28:16So anyway, my box office thoughts are that this is not a great box
Vic00:28:20office. JVL, do you have other box office thoughts? No, just that it was
JVL00:28:25well, you know, again, if you wait long enough, you get to see bad things happen to bad movies.
Vic00:28:32But not bad people. I don't think he's a bad person. I think that, well, okay.
JVL00:28:36Victorino, tell me. What are your
Vic00:28:38thoughts? Well, I know a lot of people, the biggest complaint everybody has is that they didn't understand it, right? And that was in J-Pod, his
JVL00:28:46review. It was all about that.
Vic00:28:48But the good news is here on the Sub-Beacon, we actually have someone here who has seen this movie and has all the answers. Oh, who is it? Guess who's back? Gene! Tenet is a timeless thriller. A man goes back in time to stop a Russian villain from blowing up the world, and in the process, realizes he has a twin brother. And so does the Russian villain. And so does Elizabeth Debicki in a towering performance This is the best time travel movie since Freaky Friday I give it three stars, even though there were technical glitches at my screening, and some of the images were going backwards Someone wake the projectionist Tenet stars Michael Caine
Sonny00:29:40Bye Gene
JVL00:29:46Thank you Gene, I hope you had a fine N95 respirator to protect you in the theater
Vic00:29:52Not with that mustache, things are getting through
JVL00:29:54I mean really Would you like to do a big boy review of this Sonny?
Sonny00:30:02Sure, sure Tenet Starring John David Washington and Robert Pattinson as secret agents who are trying
JVL00:30:13to stop a guy who has been tasked with people from
Sonny00:30:17the future to end time and make it go backwards They stop him and we don't all die No, so Tenet is a big budget, very fun movie to go see on the big screen assuming you don't care about little things like understanding what is happening in the movie I I really, really enjoyed the opening set piece, I just like sat there kind of smiling, this like goonish smile under my face underneath my mask as I watched the the big kind of Nolan-y swooping motion, sweeping action set piece take place
JVL00:31:02and then the plot starts and it's, look, this is
Sonny00:31:06a good comparison for this movie is the movie Primer, I don't know if you guys have ever seen Primer, which is a like hard sci-fi time travel movie that is all about like, well, if you go back in time but then if you keep going back in time then if it changes this then it does the blah blah this has a lot of kind of primary elements to it and the thing is I hate Primer I hate Primer because it is it thinks it's smarter than it is and by all rights I should really really hate Tenet 2 because it is a movie that is very aggressively tinkering with itself in ways that are designed merely to confuse the audience but I didn't hate it and I didn't hate it because it is so it is such a like it is such a ridiculous enterprise it is so ridiculous and over the top and taken and the province of a director who is so like taken with himself and his abilities to manifest his vision on screen that I couldn't help but being impressed by it the big concern here is time of course and time is something that Christopher Nolan has long been fascinated by in his films and his problem I think is that he tries to literalize time on the big screen so this is why you get in Interstellar you get an actual infinite library where he can kind of travel from part of the library to part of the library and it is an attempt to kind of literalize the passage through time in a four dimensional space in this movie you have people going backwards and forwards on the screen at the same time themselves going backwards and forwards on the screen at the same time you have what is called in the film a temporal pincer movement which involves people coming backward through time and forward through time at the same time to attack the same point and it looks kind of cool it's also totally incomprehensible I mean this is the whole final action set piece is completely incomprehensible just from the dialogue to the masks everyone is wearing to kind of obscure who they are to to the actual movement on the screen it just is like it's impossible to follow so I you know I it's a big swing probably kind of a miss but I'm gonna go see it like 10 more times in the theater because there's nothing else
JVL00:33:51to go see
Sonny00:33:53and I really want to understand it and I have a theory about the end of the film that we can discuss in a moment that may that may or may or may not be total fan fiction on my part but I'm curious to bounce it off you guys and see what you think anyway JVL how much did you hate this movie
Vic00:34:15were you hopeful JVL were you hopeful did you want to like this movie we all talked about this movie was it like Phantom Menace I really want to love this movie and then you left it like yeah it was good you know
JVL00:34:29I will say to answer your question Victorino I was very very hopeful and then I read Sonny's review in Screen Time his newsletter and Sonny who is the president and chairman of the Christopher Nolan fan club his review was so kid love that I told myself wow this movie must be terrible and so I winched all of my expectations way way way way down and even so Victorino can you tell me about the quadrants
Vic00:35:06oh yeah sure hold on one second
JVL00:35:08and tell me about your quadrants and then we're going to have a little Socratic dialogue first of all plot
Vic00:35:14F I'll put it to you this way it's no green book okay it's no green book duration F two and a half hours is a lot violence action I gave it an A plus I thought that was exciting I like the shooting was a lot of good stuff there the fight scenes were great sex and nudity gets the N A right it's not applicable and there is none but I do like Elizabeth Debicki and this is what's really interesting she must be so beautiful because I am drawn to her and I am not drawn to giant women like you know I mean she is how tall is she what did they say somebody said 6'4 she's 6'2 or 6'3 yes enormous and that's usually not my type if you had to choose between being a giant woman or a like either freakishly tall or freakishly short I would say freakishly short wow okay versus if you were a man getting some insights
Sonny00:36:10getting some insights into Vic here a lot of
Vic00:36:14anyway no one can see what I'm doing with my hand right here you can see the motion I'm doing with my hand okay versus if you were a man if you had a choice to be freakishly tall or freakishly short I think we would all say freakishly tall at least you could play basketball you know it's very hard to be a very very small man anyway I find it quite remarkable but she has that sort of presence she's wonderful and nevertheless so the overall thing is a C it gets a C so that to answer your question about the quadrants it did not do well in most of the quadrants
JVL00:36:42Victorino? Yes What is the name of the main character
Mike00:36:47in this movie?
Vic00:36:49I had problems are you ready for this? I had problems coming up with the actor's name and it was John David Washington I was thinking Isaac is in there somewhere
Sonny00:37:03They say his name at the end it's Protagonist He's literally just Protagonist
JVL00:37:09The Protagonist right okay Victorino how does entropy reversal work?
Mike00:37:16I don't know as soon as I heard entropy I said oh that's it I'm done
JVL00:37:20I don't remember entropy
Vic00:37:23What is a freeport? Oh yes They're floating where you can put all your art into these floating warehouses that don't pay tax Those are real
Sonny00:37:34Those are things that are real Those exist in the real world, our world
Vic00:37:38I can't tell if he's being serious
Sonny00:37:42100% real
Vic00:37:44Okay I've been to Freeport in the Bahamas You do not want to go there Who built the entropy machines? Ah yes, a female scientist who is like the future female Robert Oppenheimer and rather than kill herself I promised our listeners we did not rehearse any of this, this is all on the spot and I'm impressing myself and rather than kill herself she decides that she wants to send back what she created in pieces like horcruxes
JVL00:38:14In the final climactic battle scene in the third act, who are they fighting against? Kenneth There's an army There's an army of people running around
Vic00:38:28Who are those people? Kenneth Bronnock's gangster army
JVL00:38:32So my belief is that every single one of your answers has been incorrect but on the other hand I'm not sure, myself because I have no fucking idea what happened in this movie Can I ask my questions? Please Okay
Vic00:38:48Actually Well, okay This is the big one, okay First of all, am I the only one Let me just say this I thought I had the movie until that happened I can't believe I'm understanding it I think I get it
JVL00:39:06You're like Will Ferrell in old school at the very end when the debate club He beats James Carville and they snap the wood
Vic00:39:18What happened, where am I So, I'm following along Okay, I get it I appreciated that they did not do any cheats Obviously to a fault There were no technological devices the way I know, let me explain what I mean I know you're looking Not like the, not easy technological cheats like, remember what Rob Lowe What does Rob Lowe say in Thank You for Smoking Oh, you know, for the smoking in space We just need the, who's a watcher of a gig What does he call it, is that what he calls it Right, and that's That takes care of that problem, so there's no weird device That'll say, oh, and we can do this That said, I'm following along I'm not getting all the dialogue And I'm like, it's loud It's very, very loud in the IMAX laser theater And then I lose it I'll tell you when I lost it The convoy Heist scene, the car chase Truck chase, great truck chase A lot of trucks, very exciting I said, this is really impressive Um As was the 747 Because as we all know, it's all real And The protagonist Chucks the orange briefcase Out the window And I have no idea where it goes For a brief moment, I thought His other self caught it And then I thought Kenneth Branagh caught it And so that had me wondering For the rest of the scene, what happened to the briefcase That's the first thing And then they get to the room For the interrogation And Kenneth Branagh shoots Elizabeth Debicki But then, on the other side of the glass Is Kenneth Branagh Am I the only one who thought maybe he had a twin Like this is the Prestige, which is also a Nolan movie I said, you know what I was kind of hoping that was the answer Because then, problem solved It was, oh thank god he has a twin, problem solved Now I can understand this movie, right But of course I swear, I only thought that for about two seconds Thank you, thank you JVL And then I realized Oh, he's seeing his former self Oh no, and then that's when the whole thing unraveled For me But he's seeing his future self
Sonny00:41:24Going backwards in time
Vic00:41:26He's looking at his former self
Sonny00:41:28He's, it's We're in the present And he's watching his Future self who was going Backwards through time And there's the walkie Talkies where they're talking backwards How does that work?
JVL00:41:42This is
Sonny00:41:43The movie Is Coherence failed for me at two Specific and discreet points And the first of Them was the That not the first part Of the highway chase but the second part of the highway Chase where John David Washington is Going backwards through entropy Right And then again during that That huge last set piece Where Robert Pattinson's character is going in And out of the turnstile so he's Going forward then he's going backwards Then he's going forwards again It just On top of just not really Being able to track What the people are doing Who's going forwards and who's going Backwards It is On first watch It is not coherent It is not It is not a It is not a cinematic Thing that you can watch And piece together On first viewing
Vic00:42:48I want you to hold your thought JVL, I just want to say Trying to understand this movie had me pulling my hair out Speaking of which, did you know two out of three guys will experience Some form of male pattern baldness By the time they're 35 The best way to prevent hair loss Is to do something about it while you still have Hair left You used to have to go to the doctor's office For your hair loss prescription Now thanks to Keeps you can visit A doctor online and get your hair loss medication Delivered right to your home They make it Easy and deliver Your medication every three months So you can say goodbye to pharmacy checkout lines And awkward doctor visits Keeps offers generic versions Of the only two FDA approved hair loss Products out there, you may have tried them before But probably not for this price Find out why Keeps has more Five star reviews than any of its competitors And more than 100,000 men Trust Keeps for their hair loss prevention Medication Keeps treatments start at just $10 a month Plus for a limited time you can get your First month for free So If you're ready to take action and prevent hair loss Go to Keeps.com slash Sub-Beacon To receive your first month of treatment For free, that's K-E-E-P-S dot com Slash Sub-Beacon Sonny And JVL, I will have one more question And then I'm going to sit back and you guys Have at it, okay, so I'm just going to throw this out there The other problem, the big problem I had with the movie, I was like okay, I'm willing to say I didn't get it, story of my life with Most movies, but at which point I said wait a minute, I really am Now bothered by it And it's when Elizabeth Elizabeth Debicki goes back in time To Vietnam, why isn't She wearing an oxygen mask And the Indian guy on the boat Oh Don't you have to? Oh That bothered me, and Yeah, that's my question
JVL00:44:42I have a serious question for you though, Victorino
Mike00:44:44That was a very serious Question, but go ahead
JVL00:44:47If Elizabeth Debicki had been topless in this movie Would it have been an A- for you?
Vic00:44:53Oh, you mean it would have shot The whole thing up to like
JVL00:44:55Would Elizabeth Debicki shoot the entire Enterprise with its other three apps It wouldn't be an A-
Sonny00:45:02The entire movie? It wouldn't have, because remember Widows?
JVL00:45:07What about Widows? Oh, that's right, she is naked in Widows, isn't she? I forgot she was naked
Sonny00:45:13And that movie was That movie was best to see for Vic It may have been a D
Vic00:45:19I did not like that movie Okay, go ahead
JVL00:45:22So, here is I mean, I was viscerally angry With the movie Actually, at first I was shocked You know, before that even I was just in denial I sat in the theater Just the entire Literally the entire run time Even before the first Ukraine concert Hall sequence was finished Because within that there were problems That I did not understand And so I was just, I can't believe this is happening How is this happening? And the movie finished And I walked out of the theater And I drove to a Taco Bell Drive-in on my way home I have not been to a Taco Bell in 20 years And I Drive-thru, I thought you went to see a movie Drive-thru, no, and I Ordered Like one of everything I spent $17 at Taco Bell Just for you? For me, just $17 Because I was just like Give me I'll take a chalupa Because I didn't know what I wanted And I just came home and I just sat and ate And then I got angry That I'm going to see this fucking movie And put myself at risk Of the Rona When we could have just done The Man with the Iron Fists Or the Alexandria Daddario As a Lonely Hooker in Japan movie We could have done any other good movie Instead of this MTV documentary coming up But so What really drove me crazy Is that it fails Tenet fails both As an exercise in storytelling Which is More forgivable, right? If you're just super ambitious, you can fail at the storytelling But it even fails Just as basic movie making I don't mean to sound like an old person But the audience Audio mix for Dialogue Is insane You can Barely make out what people are saying For good chunks of the movie And especially during key moments Of exposition
Sonny00:47:30I have a theory on this Because this is a running problem with Christopher Nolan This is something people complain about a lot To the point where
JVL00:47:38I've never agreed with those complaints before now
Sonny00:47:41Oh, no I mean, I agreed with them In both Interstellar And Dunkirk I mean, there are things that are You know, that are mixed together So Difficultly that it is It makes important parts hard to hear But I have always been like It's not that bad This movie, it's bad It's really hard to hear certain things To the point that I literally The day after the movie, I ordered the screenplay From Amazon Which is not out yet I pre-ordered it So I will be able to actually read the dialogue
Vic00:48:17I thought reading that Would be very invaluable
Sonny00:48:20But my theory on this Is that Nolan has some I'm convinced he has some sort of weird Like either super hearing Or some sort of like Mutant ears Where he can hear He can understand what people are saying perfectly No matter what So he turns in these muddy mixes And people are like, Chris, we can't hear what they're saying And he's like, no, it's perfect I can hear it just fine What's your problem? Either that or he's doing it deliberately to fuck with people at this point That's like my other That's possible
JVL00:48:52I mean, in a movie which is Wildly missing An important exposition in some points It's also a waste role In other points Like the Michael Caine scene serves no purpose That entire There's no reason for that to be in the movie You could say four minutes
Vic00:49:10It's just nice to see him
JVL00:49:12The action Sequences are So I very much liked the freeway chase Although it was not as good As the freeway chase in Matrix 2 We should just say that And the final Set piece with the mystery Army is incomprehensible To watch You have no idea what is happening And those sorts Of movie making mistakes I think are pretty much Unforgivable And that's even before you get to the storytelling And this thing is a train wreck As a matter of story And we can go to that next
Sonny00:49:51I would Disagree in the I think It is As I've said, it's incoherent To watch on the screen the final action Set piece It's incomprehensible I am very curious to see how it plays Second, third, fourth time Around Just because I do think that he is doing something Very specific And again, maybe it just doesn't work Maybe what he is trying to do His attempt, his like final ultimate attempt To literalize the concept of time And like portray it Cinematically by showing time Running backward and forward at the same time Maybe that Simply can't be done And I'm very open to that idea That like the thing he wants to do is just impossible That being said I was not expecting it So I don't know that I was Watchinging it correctly I think you have to be like I don't know I mean maybe it's Again, it's entirely possible That I'm just giving him too much credit here But So
JVL00:51:02Let me walk you guys through this a little bit So the idea of entropy And decreasing entropy, moving backwards in time Is something that I first encountered Back in, I think it was the early 90s When I read Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time And it was one of the things that fascinated me most About the book And as a mild physics nerd, I've always sort of been interested in that idea And so The Proposition that by toying With entropy, you could be moving backwards In time is interesting and not all That exotic, and I did not find It difficult to grasp at all But the execution Of how it was being told And what was really happening was Essentially incomprehensible, but here's The point I want to make about this In Ghostbusters How does capturing the ghosts Work? You have your jump pack And you have your thing, and if you And somebody else both throw Your super laser Lasso around the ghost And then somebody else sticks a trap Underneath it, and then opens the trap The trap brings the ghost Into the thing, and the ghost Disappears, and the only thing we need to know Is that you don't cross the streams The science behind this is totally immaterial We don't need to know why it works We don't need to know why the streams Can't be crossed, we don't need to know why anything We just need to know how it works And this is True of Inception as well In Inception, the question Of, well wait a minute, I'm sorry, hold on You put all these people, you just give them An IV, and then they're in each other And then they jump from your mind to their mind This is, how does this Why does this work? But we don't Care, because we know how It works, right? The rules are very
Sonny00:52:49Very well established, and
JVL00:52:51We get all that from the scene where Cobb and Ariadne, who is the Stand-in for the audience, do that walk Through the dream, and he, there's, what he's Doing is he's layering rule upon rule Upon rule, right? I mean there's like
Sonny00:53:0250 minutes of exposition in that movie that Basically just explains how it works
JVL00:53:06Right, but they do so In such a Skillful way, that by the Time they're done, you have a Very firm understanding Of how this entire World functions Right, so you're never really in doubt about it You understand why it's important that They're all falling at different rates, you understand What the kick is, and the Why of it, like, you know, hold on, why does this Work? Totally immaterial We don't care at all Tenet fails At the most basic level Of establishing the hows of The universe, and The Ariadne Cobb scene in Tenet Takes place like 20 minutes in When John David Washington is With the lady scientist, and She hands him the gun and says, here, catch The bullet, and And the how of this universe That is given in that Three-minute scene, or whatever it is Is so wildly Yeah Unequal to the task
Sonny00:54:09Question, yes Here is a thought I have had several Times after watching this movie If they were to Eliminate Essentially just eliminate that whole Scene, with the bullets Going backwards, and Him catching the bullets That he's like drawing to himself like Magneto, right And all you had were people going Backwards through time, people Like people traveling backwards Against the flow of time Right Would that have solved the problem
JVL00:54:46Well, I don't know Because she doesn't, it isn't just The catching of the bullets It's the entire world view which she Sets up, where she says there are people Who are putting, they're planting These objects from the future back And she shows him the boxes of all The future objects, but then We never see that happening again Nobody ever then talks about the future objects That's what I mean Nobody catches the gun
Sonny00:55:11But That's what all the Algorithm pieces are Those are things that are being sent backwards through time
JVL00:55:19Well, but are they being sent backwards Or are they just things that somebody Here's the other question, which again, you just don't know Is it the case that people Are sending things backwards through time Or is it that people are Coming from the future Back here And then just leaving things, right Are those bullets being sent backwards Or is it that somebody has come back And while they're running around backwards They shoot at somebody and that bullet is then Lying around, right None of, it just, god None of it makes sense What the fuck is the algorithm What are they going to plug the algorithm into Right, so the algorithm is somehow
Sonny00:55:57Like this giant They turn it on and it stops, they turn it on and it Has all of the time going backwards then Starting from here, because of climate change Because they want to stop the climate change In the future
JVL00:56:08But this is in a weird way, a callback to like Doctor Who, if any, Victorino You watch a little bit of Doctor Who, right A little bit, but yeah So in the Doctor Who mythology, the entire universe Is being held up By a bunch of above guys Monks basically sitting around doing math On abacuses, and that they are holding The entire time continuum together And the master is trying to blow them up and blah blah blah Blah blah blah And I guess there is something like that happening With the algorithm, but the algorithm Is like a series of heavy Lead boxes Yes He couldn't just call it
Sonny00:56:45The MacGuffin I have another question
JVL00:56:49Who is the real Bad guy, is the real bad guy Sergi or Andre or whatever his name is Or is he just working for somebody else From the future, who we don't know
Sonny00:57:01He's working for somebody else from the future That's why they're sending the gold bars back to him
JVL00:57:06The whole
Sonny00:57:07The whole Who, by the way
JVL00:57:11In the First scene where we're in the Ukrainian Concert hall, who puts The bombs on the chairs With the people that then John David Washington has to go back, because it looks to me like John David Washington's team puts the bombs there And then all of a sudden he's running back in To take them and throw
Sonny00:57:28His team had been infiltrated by Kenneth Bronag's guys Which is why they kidnap him Because Kenneth Bronag has Seen this event happen He has, you know, people Who come back and tell him What is going on, so he Kidnaps John David Washington
JVL00:57:46You cannot You cannot At the very instance Of the beginning of your movie
Sonny00:57:55You're looking at this Very linearly
JVL00:57:57Well I am You should watch the movie At the beginning Here's the thing, I am positive That Tenet is going to find An insanely vocal Minority Of people who think It's the greatest thing ever And they will say something like Well once you watch it 17,000 times Then you understand that it all Actually makes sense I don't see the problem here As somebody who watches Layer Cake Like you know Four or five times a year I am all into the idea of having Pieces of art Where your appreciation for it Deepens upon multiple Viewings and where in multiple Viewings you actually see things you never Saw before
Sonny00:58:43There is a
JVL00:58:46Problem with saying That the only way To understand this piece of art Is to have Experienced it 17,000 times That just doesn't fly You have to be able To give People a basic Understanding of what The story is even if it is Incomplete and will be augmented With multiple viewings Yes If Elizabeth Debicki
Vic00:59:15Kills, shoots Kenneth Branagh's character Doesn't that solve everything and yet They don't have to worry about going to war And stopping the device from being Blown up, whatever that device is
JVL00:59:27I don't think so He has a dead man switch where somehow If he dies, the computer program Which executes itself on an iPhone or something
Vic00:59:37She sees herself in this whole Thing about, oh, and then she thinks
Sonny00:59:41She sees herself jumping off
JVL00:59:42Everything about
Vic00:59:44You're not supposed to see
Sonny00:59:47She's not, she doesn't She doesn't need the The mask because she goes through a turn Style She goes further back in the past She goes through the turn style, so now she's going forward Again She's not going backwards through entropy On that scene on the boat
JVL01:00:05And here's another question Why does John David Washington
Sonny01:00:10Like her
Vic01:00:10Well, why
JVL01:00:12No, like they create this emotional bond Between these characters, but it's a totally It's totally unearned
Sonny01:00:19Here's a Totally unearned, this is a matter of storytelling, right I mean Vic, what were you going to say, you were going to say something
Vic01:00:27I thought you're not supposed to look at yourself Otherwise you die
Sonny01:00:30You can't touch yourself
Vic01:00:31Or there's antimatter
Sonny01:00:34Well that's why he's in that suit That covers him totally I assume there was Something earlier in the script where somebody Touches somebody and it blows up, that would have been a cool scene
Vic01:00:44That would have been a cool scene Okay, well that answers That answers that question How is it worse than Nuclear Holocaust He says it's Nuclear Holocaust And then the scientist says No, it's worse, I don't know He means the movie
JVL01:00:59He means the movie is worse than Nuclear Holocaust Sonny, we're at the hour mark Can you tell me a little bit About what your fan Theory about the end is
Sonny01:01:10So here is So one thing That you pick up on after having kids And watching Christopher Nolan Movies is that they are all Essentially about Or at least Starting with The kind of counter trilogy that he's doing With the Batman movies, right So it's the Prestige And Inception and Interstellar Are all about parents Trying to get back to their kids, right That is like the most basic Driving Force of those movies, it's about parents Trying to get back to their children What is the thing that this movie Ends with, right, it ends with Elizabeth Debicki taking the little kid's hand Right, it's And there's that whole speech about the bomb that doesn't Go off, right, and blah blah And this comes shortly after Robert Pattinson's Character has sacrificed himself To save John David Washington's character Here is my Big fan theory, and I'm gonna be on Somebody suggested this in DMs So I'm stealing, I'm totally Stealing this from somebody else He is the kid It makes that he is the kid That's why he has the floppy hair The whole thing is him Essentially Setting all this up, so Robert David Washington So the protagonist, John David Washington, so that the protagonist Will save his mother from being executed Boom I would love I would love it
JVL01:02:51If that were
Sonny01:02:52Here's the other thing though, is that this is the Only standalone Nolan film that is Crying out for a sequel That is literally In the text of the film says This you've only heard half the story Um, there's This is, you know, there's a whole There's a whole universe of stuff That happens off the screen Um, that Needs a story Of its own, and what I'm saying is If we don't get Tenet 2
JVL01:03:19Tenet Reloaded?
Sonny01:03:22Tenet 2, Electric Boogaloo Time Travel Boogaloo I'll be very disappointed
JVL01:03:28Uh
Sonny01:03:29The whole $400 million Budget, so you could spend more money Just to get it right $500 million budget if he needs It, Warners, we're counting on you
Vic01:03:40You know what, maybe in the next movie, maybe in the sequel They can put locations on screen Because I wanted to know where we were And they never told you where you were Are we in Trieste?
Sonny01:03:49Apparently that whole first scene Is in the Ukraine and not Russia Like I thought it was
Vic01:03:54And they're in Ravello, Italy I thought, I don't know where I knew they were in the Med But then sometimes I'm like, is it Talon or Trieste? They mention both and I want to know It's just, where am I?
JVL01:04:06The whole movie felt like Being Sato in Inception Trapped in the lowest dream level Where time is infinite And you don't really understand anything That's going on around you And this, you know, honestly This was like a film length version Of the final ten minutes of Interstellar Which I think, you know, again, Interstellar movie Which I like many, many things about it Which I really admire its ambition Even though I think it ultimately is a failure I think it's an incredibly noble and ambitious failure But the last Ten minutes Once they enter the black hole Is, I think, incomprehensible I don't think anybody actually knows I don't think Christopher Nolan What is happening And what has happened
Sonny01:04:51I think that's actually totally wrong I think it's too comprehensible I think the problem with that scene Again, is that Nolan is trying to The fulfillment is love No, no, no, not the love traveling through The universe like gravity I'm saying the The Actual literalization of a Fourth, four-dimensional space As this kind of infinite library That's what's wrong with that scene I think, is that it Again, it tries to like It tries to just make literal The idea of time To make it physical and finite And concrete and that you can hold it in your hands And that is If anything, it's a failure of ambition Or it's a failure of imagination Or it's a failure of some sort But it's a recurring thing in these movies In these kind of Nolan Experiments with time I think he's just He's like a weirdly literal I don't know Conceptualizer of time And I'm not 100% sure that it works How he wants it to work Certainly Or how it would best work In filmmaking
Vic01:06:00I thought you meant the end of Interstellar Where you see the baseball game And it's played in that weird thing And you're like What? Wait a minute This is no longer Earth
JVL01:06:08No, but everything How does he get out? How does he get out of the library? Where is he? Who picks him up? How do they know to pick him up? He goes through the wormhole
Sonny01:06:16He goes back through the wormhole He's back out by Saturn again
Vic01:06:20Okay
Sonny01:06:20He's just going the other way through the wormhole It's not rocket science It's just physics
JVL01:06:26Alright I've finally exhausted mine Do you have anything else, boys?
Vic01:06:31I'm looking through my questions here
Sonny01:06:32Five stars Five stars
Vic01:06:36The name You know who His henchman Kenneth Brogg's henchman I call him Mr. Stamper That's what I call him I don't know who he is
JVL01:06:43Oh, he looks that way Yeah Can we say something about John David Washington? I really liked him I thought he was a real movie star Yeah, I like him I love the way he moves on screen He sort of moves like a boxer You mean when he was going forward or backwards?
Sonny01:06:54My big complaint, JVL, with your take on all this Is your complaints about the Michael Caine scene Which I think are great I actually think that that is It is It's A, a very funny sequence The whole comedy of manners The whole very wry British dry humor of it Is very funny
Vic01:07:14Subtext of racism at the club
Sonny01:07:16The very slight subtext of racism And also Also I Watching that movie As he says goodbye, Sir Michael It felt like Christopher Nolan saying goodbye to Michael Caine Maybe I just had death on the mind Because somebody had died recently But like I'm so glad we didn't
JVL01:07:35It's not an accident that he died He was sitting the whole time
Sonny01:07:37I'm so glad we didn't mention him by name on this episode Michael Caine is I mean he's old He's old
JVL01:07:44I'm all for having a cherry on top of comedy If everything else in the story is working
Sonny01:07:51Okay
JVL01:07:52Otherwise it's a luxury That your movie just can't afford Alright then, thank you Corrections, shoutouts
Sonny01:08:00John David Washington is very good in this He is also very funny He's got great comic timing He does, he does In this movie, what was the joke? Where'd you go to Mars? Like literal laugh out loud moment In the notoriously unfunny Christopher Nolan I hate that critique of his movies His movies are all very funny And this one is too
Vic01:08:22Not as funny as Midnight Madness Which starred David Naughton Corrections and shoutouts Just Carl and our friend John Podhoretz Among others, pointed out immediately That the actor and singer from the Dr. Pepper commercial Somebody even sent a link To the YouTube of that great commercial Is David Naughton And he also recorded a hit single Called Making It Which John reminds us is also the name of One of Norman Podhoretz's books As I told John Making It still resonates with me today The song, not the book And also a special shoutout To listener Tom Morrison Who sent me his latest novel Torts Are Us I wrote up this quick little bit here A legal farce involving Twin brothers Pap and Pup Peters Who are class action lawyers It's down and dirty and you should buy it right now On Amazon, thank you Tom And that's all the time we're giving to this episode Really, that's it Questions, comments, complaints, compliments Tweet us at SonnyBunch At Victorino Matus Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes Google Play or Stitcher Just type in SubBeacon under Podcasts We're there, leave a review, tell your friends Until next time
Sonny01:09:35I got, hold on, let me do that backwards Thank you Sonny
Vic01:09:45Then he disappears again You people are really missing out The visuals of this episode are really great I have something but I'll wait If you guys have something or I can go first No, Victorino, please go I just want your reactions to this First of all, I'm not going to ask JVL because I already know the answer Sonny, you're not one of these people Who back in the day Would go to a bar And then you'd use the bathroom But you would bring your beer with you to the bathroom And then put the beer on top of the urinal You ever see guys who used to do that, who did that? Go to a bar? Who would go to a bar? Oh, I'm sorry
Sonny01:10:15Not that part, JVL I mean, it would depend on How drunk I was And where Like if I'm at a place No, but there's a difference There's a difference between being at a bar Where you're like sitting at a table And everybody's just, you know Or even sitting At the bar, you can like put the napkin But if you're like in a If you're at like a mixer or something Where you're just walking around and talking to people You're just hanging out What are you supposed to do with your drink? You take it into the bathroom with you
Vic01:10:46You hold it in one hand
Sonny01:10:48First of all, that's what you're supposed to do
JVL01:10:51You throw it away, you go to the bathroom You wash your hands and then you buy another
Sonny01:10:54Oh, I'm sorry, Uncle Penny I'm sorry, Richie Rich You can just throw money away
Vic01:11:00If you're in that situation, you chug Okay, you chug and then you go to You go to the bathroom I'm not even an expert in this, but I will say Those molecules, fluid dynamics, it's going in the beer Okay, that's the first thing So, I was at the Tyson's I was at the Tyson's in the IMAX, right? And before that, I said, better use the bathroom Because, you know, this is two and a half hours So I go in the bathroom And right there at the sink Teetering on the sink Is a gigantic bucket of popcorn You know, overflowing At a large drink On the edge of the sink An old An old man An old man was peeing And he put all this stuff on the sink While he did that
Sonny01:11:40He survived all this He can survive that too
Vic01:11:43I said, buddy, why even wear the mask at this point JVL
Sonny01:11:48Inquiring minds want to know Did you have any thoughts about the watches In Tenet
JVL01:11:54So, this is the second time That Nolan has done A partnership with the American brand But Swiss made Hamilton Watches And it is the second time That it has left me totally cold So, there was a Watch in the Murph That was used in Interstellar This is the Arctic sub The real Arctic sub that Hamilton makes Does not have the digital component across the side of it I mean, this is A sweet spot for me, obviously Watches and Christopher Nolan You would think, and so again Like the movie, I wanted to love it
Sonny01:12:31It's a temporal pincer movement on JVL On JVL's interests
JVL01:12:33And it left me absolutely cold Maybe you did not notice They are not wearing the Hamilton watches Until the end, though And prior to that I can't tell what they're wearing But it looks like they are wearing The Rolex Submariner No Date Prior to that, but I could be wrong I was sitting like a normal human being In the very last row Of the IMAX, that there could be nobody Behind me, breathing on me
Sonny01:13:02In the corner or in the middle?
JVL01:13:05Middle, because the way Our AMC was going is they blocked out The seats depending on where you sat The seats were not pre-blocked out And so I chose my seat I was the first person to choose a seat in this theater That's so funny That's the same seat I sat in
Vic01:13:20For Fifty Shades Freed It was very sticky
Sonny01:13:24Did you, do you want to talk A little bit, just, I know we We're at an hour and thirty minutes
Vic01:13:29What are you doing?
Sonny01:13:30I have one more, I know I've been given three, I'm sure It's fine, outs already, but I just have One more question, how was the actual Theater experience? We didn't talk about that At all, JVL
JVL01:13:40For me, I was A little freaked out by the idea That there were nine people and only three Of us had a mask on at any point During the movie The other six Each had a popcorn, and so Evidently, purchasing a popcorn Is a get-out-of-jail-free card For having to wear your mask at all Yeah So it seems like it's kind of a loophole No, these people were not eating the entire time It's a two-and-a-half-hour movie It's not a 32-gallon bag of popcorn But once you've bought your popcorn You no longer need to wear your mask at all
Sonny01:14:16Vic, did you wear your mask?
JVL01:14:17I did, because I had no
Vic01:14:19I'm not going to eat, you know, at the theater Or drink, because then I'd have to leave You know, so I didn't Although, I had some popcorn in the bathroom
Sonny01:14:27Oh, I'm sure it's fine Oh
?01:14:31you
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