DNE

NOSNITTAP TREBOR

?thgiliwT xif dna kcab gnoig peek nac I ebyaM

(skniht)

.pleh t'ndid taht tihs lleW

FADE IN:

INT. RICH FANCY OPERA HOUSE FOR FANCY RICH PEOPLE - EASTERN EUROPE

A FANCY-PANTS CONCERT (not everything that happens in an OPERA HOUSE is automatically an OPERA, CHRIS NOLAN) is suddenly disrupted by a TERRORIST ATTACK!

TERRORIST

RARRGH, SMASH ALL THE EXPENSIVE INSTRUMENTS! WE JUST REALLY HATE EXPENSIVE THINGS RAARRRGH

Outside in a van, JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON and a bunch of other HEAVILY-ARMED MILITARY TYPES are woken up by their DRIVER.

DRIVER

Secret mission time! Local SWAT is here, you gotta join them wearing the exact same head-to-toe uniforms, making it almost impossible for the audience to keep track of what the hell is happening!

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Got it! I sure hope I don't have to be rescued by a time traveller, that would make four distinct missions all happening at once in the very first goddamn scene.

DRIVER

And that's not counting if this whole thing is an elaborate distraction to some other totally different evil plan! Ha ha ha.

JOHN and his team RACE INSIDE to rescue SOME NAMELESS DUDE who listens to LIVE CONCERTS through SOLID GLASS for some fucking reason, and they retrieve SOME UNIDENTIFIABLE THING. But then JOHN and ANOTHER OPERATIVE are CAPTURED and brought to a bustling TRAIN YARD.

TORTURER

This might seem like a weird venue for torture and interrogation, but we like to have SOME kind of loud background noise in every scene to drown out important exposition. So, tell me-

(inaudible)

-in the-

(inaudible)

-scuba divers who-

(inaudible)

-Kelsey Grammer’s tailor!

NOSNITTAP TREBOR

(meht sdrawot gninnur)

!tihsllub latot fo sruoh owt lla su evas dna daetsni niart a fo tnorf ni paeL !krow t'now ti ,nhoJ llip eht od t'nod ,tiaW

JOHN dives for the OTHER AGENT’S SUICIDE PILL and KILLS HIMSELF.

EXT. A SHIP SOMEWHERE

JOHN wakes up on a SHIP with his boss MARTIN DONOVAN, not actually DEAD.

MARTIN DONOVAN

Psych, the whole train yard bit was a test, and you passed it by committing suicide! You've been recruited by a super-secret organization called Tenet.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

“Tenet”? As in, tenet - /ˈtɛnɪt/ - noun - a principle or belief, especially one of the main principles of a religion or philosophy? What has that got to do with what the organization does?

MARTIN DONOVAN

Absolutely fuck-all, we just needed it to be a palindrome so we could feel oh so clever. Anyway, I’m going to drop you off at a windmill in the ocean, then you’ll put on a disguise and take another boat to a place where Clemence Poesy can explain some stuff to you.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

That seems convoluted. Couldn’t I have just woken up there in the first place and saved us all some time?

MARTIN DONOVAN

Yeah well, most of this movie is endless exposition. Constantly shuffling you between different random locations and different expositors was the only way we could think to try and keep it from getting mind-numbingly tedious.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Something tells me it isn’t going to work.

INT. A FANCY LABORATORY FULL OF EXPENSIVE SHIT

JOHN finds CLEMENCE POESY and does the secret HERE'S-THE-CHURCH-HERE'S-THE-STEEPLE hand gesture to indicate his TENETITUDE. She brings him into a FIRING RANGE where he points an EMPTY GUN at a BULLET-RIDDLED CHUNK OF CONCRETE, and a BULLET leaps out of the CONCRETE into the GUN.

CLEMENCE POESY

You see, these bullets have had their entropy inverted. They’re running backwards through time.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

(nods)

Got it.

CLEMENCE POESY

...Sorry, I think you misheard me. I said “holy shit these bullets are running backwards through motherfucking time”, not “garbage pickup in this neighborhood is on Thursday”.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Oh I’m sorry, did I forget to react to my very concept of reality being shattered? I’ll try again, this time I’ll put in every bit of emotional intensity my character can muster.

(concentrates)

(strains)

(blank stare)

Hmm.

CLEMENCE POESY

Ugh, whatever. Anyway the deal is that somewhere in the future people know how to invert things, these things have traveled back through time to now and do everything in reverse. Like how these bullets un-shoot themselves.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

But what about the mechanics of the gun itself? If those bullets are experiencing time backwards, then as far as they’re concerned when I pull the trigger the firing pin jerks suddenly away, then gets eased gently back into place. How does that set the gunpowder off?

CLEMENCE POESY

(actual line)

Don’t try to understand it.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Oh, this is going to be one of those switch-your-brain-off movies. That’s all right then.

CLEMENCE POESY

Oh no, this is a movie that demands intense scrutiny and constant strict attention in order for you to understand it at all! Honestly it’s kind of exhausting!

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

And the stuff that doesn’t actually stand up to any amount of scrutiny?

CLEMENCE POESY

For that, we’re hoping everybody will assume there’s a really clever and sophisticated explanation that they’re just too dumb to figure out.

(checks watch)

Anyway, looks like it’s time to switch to a new infodump person. You go meet Robert Pattinson while I join Martin Donovan in forever limbo.

(vanishes)

INT. A SUFFICIENTLY FANCY EXOTIC LOCALE

JOHN meets up with his new partner ROBERT PATTINSON.

ROBERT PATTINSON

So what bizarre character am I playing this time, and what kind of insane acting decisions will it allow me to do? Ooh, can I be a scar-faced witch doctor who’s aroused by pastry? That sounds like confusing fun!

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Yyyeah, sorry but “characters” aren’t so much a thing in this movie. We’ve got a lot of human narrative devices who move pieces of plot around, you can be one of those if you want.

ROBERT PATTINSON

(wilting)

So... I don’t get to develop an eccentric backstory, or an arc of psychological deterioration, or anything?

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Hey, not even I get any kind of development. My character name is “The Protagonist”. My entire arc consists of going from somebody who doesn’t know certain facts, to somebody who knows certain facts but the audience doesn’t understand them.

ROBERT PATTINSON

Crap arc.

(pouts)

So, what, I’ve got to be boring? I don’t do boring! At least let me have a stupid haircut, I’m pretty sure that’s in my contract.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

(sighs)

Fine, you can have a dumb haircut, but only SOMETIMES, okay?

ROBERT PATTINSON

I’ll take what I can get!

(sticks head into wind tunnel)

EXT. EXPENSIVE SKYSCRAPER

JOHN and ROBERT prepare to break into a PENTHOUSE at the top of a SKYSCRAPER.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Ooh, can we use inverted bungee cords that snap backwards through time, allowing us to fall up rather than down? That'd be a clever use of this movie’s premise!

ROBERT PATTINSON

That sure would be, wouldn’t it? But no, the fact that I even know about inversion is being kept as an underwhelming twist for utterly no reason, so we just have to completely waste that opportunity.

Instead they use some kind of dumb SELF-TAUTENING BUNGEE CORDS and get yanked up to the PENTHOUSE, where they confront arms dealer DENZIL SMITH.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Analysis of those bullets showed that they were originally sold by you! Lucky for us the villains didn't simply invert regular Wal-Mart bullets but insisted on traceable artisanal ones. Anyway, who was the buyer?

DIMPLE KAPADIA

(entering room)

Stop! My husband won't talk, his TENETS are too strong. He has many firmly held TENETS, like, um, David TENET is his favourite Doctor? This is a fucking hard word to casually work into a sentence.

(sighs)

But anyway, I’ve got another pointless and underwhelming twist for you: turns out I’M the arms dealer, surprise! And here’s another twist: I also work for Tenet!

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Wait, Tenet has a prominent international arms dealer on staff? Who just HAPPENED to sell bullets to our future enemies? Why did we need to do this whole silly bungee-penthouse mission to meet one of our own operatives?

DIMPLE KAPADIA

Look, we have to keep everything about Tenet super-duper-secret so the Future can't find our records and murder us! If we happen to murder each other in the meantime well that's just an unavoidable price we must pay.

ROBERT PATTINSON

Right. So YOU can tell us who the buyer was?

DIMPLE KAPADIA

What, you think I can identify the bad guy solely from the fact that he bought bullets from me, a description which fits probably every single customer I’ve ever served? Well yes in fact I can, he’s a Russian guy called Kenneth Branagh. I’d tell you all about him myself, but you know the drill.

(checks watch)

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Yeah yeah, next random location.

(leaves)

INT. FANCY RICH PANTS RESTAURANT

JOHN meets MICHAEL CAINE at the RESTAURANT and stays incognito by being a TOTAL DICK to the STAFF.

MICHAEL CAINE

(unintelligible, heavily accented mumbling)

NOSNITTAP TREBOR

(yb gninnur)

YDAERLA PU EMULOV MNADDOG EHT NRUT EKAS S'KCUF ROF

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Hi there Michael, I see that at a million years of age you’re still up to appearing in Christopher Nolan movies.

MICHAEL CAINE

Just barely. Please don’t ask me to stand up. Now, the best way to get in touch with Kenneth Branagh is through his estranged wife. He utterly despises her and is suspicious of everything she says and does.

(pause)

Actually now that I say it out loud that sounds like a TERRIBLE way to get close to him. But what the hell, give it a shot anyway.

(vanishes)

INT. FANCY RICH GALLERY

JOHN poses as an ART GUY to meet with KENNETH’S WIFE, ELIZABETH DEBICKI.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

First of all, congratulations on being a wife character in a Christopher Nolan movie who isn't dead before the movie even begins. Now, I understand there's some bullshit about two identical fake drawings, and Kenneth is blackmailing you about one of them?

ELIZABETH DEBICKI

Yes, it's a whole over-complicated thing. Why is there a second drawing? Who the fuck knows. But gosh, this reminds me of a borderline-irrelevant anecdote about being on his yacht in Vietnam, where I saw a brief, random glimpse of an unidentified woman jumping off the boat into the sea.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Ah. So that was future-you, who will be traveling back in time to that moment, probably around the climax of this movie?

ELIZABETH DEBICKI

Yeah we didn’t incorporate that very smoothly, did we? At any rate, I also can't leave because then Kenneth would have sole custody of our son, Little Boy! Which seems like sufficient motivation for me without any of this nonsense forgery subplot, doesn't it.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Little Boy? Is that another character with no name?

ELIZABETH DEBICKI

No, he has a name... I think... it’s just that he has no lines, and maybe three or four shots where you can see his face, and in general is even more of an anonymous plot device than the kids from Inception.

(receives note from Little Boy)

“Hey Ma, since I’m going to be your emotional linchpin for the entire movie, and you’re going to be John’s, won't my non-entity status undermine the emotional weight of pretty much anything that happens in the movie? - LB.” That it will kid, but I cannot emphasize enough how little that matters to Christopher Nolan.

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

BOO, EMOTIONAL LINCHPINS NOT EXPENSIVE! AUDIENCE ONLY WANT EXPENSIVE RICH THINGS TO CARE ABOUT OKAY GUYS DO MOAR RICH STUFF NOW

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Here's the deal, we’ll destroy that incriminating drawing if you then introduce me to Kenneth! Of course it's inside a hyper-secure art storage facility, so we’ll have to come up with a complex plan to aaaand it’s suddenly embarrassingly clear that Nolan just really really wanted to shove a heist movie inside this movie, and has cobbled together the flimsiest excuse possible to force that to happen. Fine, let’s just do this.

INT. INCREDIBLY EXPENSIVE AND EXCLUSIVE ART STORAGE FACILITY INSIDE AN AIRPORT

JOHN and ROBERT, having planned out their ELABORATE HIGH-STAKES HEIST in OPEN CONVERSATION while riding SUBWAYS and BUSES and STROLLING THROUGH PUBLIC PARKS and TESTING OUT MEGAPHONES, arrive to steal the DRAWING.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

First we'll enact an elaborate ruse to get us through the front door, even though later it turns out this place has a back door that I’m able to fall inside by accident. Now, how are we gonna distract people from what we're up to?

ROBERT PATTINSON

We’re blowing up a plane full of gold about ten feet away from this building. A REAL plane no less, Nolan insisted on it. Said it was expensiver.

HIMESH PATEL

(entering)

And you'll do that with help from ME... The Man from Yesterday!

(dramatic pose)

As in, the Beatles movie. I just wanted to give myself a name that sounds like a cool time-travel gimmick but actually means nothing, it seemed appropriate.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Uh, wow, okay, exploding a plane seems a bit much but whatever. As for navigating the interior when it’s in emergency shutdown and flooded with halon gas, I’m guessing we’ve got some kind of cool ultra-compact metal-detector-fooling spy-tech rebreather apparatus?

ROBERT PATTINSON

Oh, that. I figured we could just do the whole thing while holding our breaths.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Jesus, this plan seems to the result of overthinking some things and underthinking everything else.

ROBERT PATTINSON

...this PLAN, yes. Just this plan.

They blow up the PLANE and break into the STORAGE FACILITY. But then they come to a strangely HOBBES & SHAW -ESQUE divided room where a FIGHT has taken place, with two huge REVOLVING CHAMBERS inside. Suddenly two MASKED MEN emerge from the CHAMBERS and start fighting JOHN and ROBERT!

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Holy fuck, the guy I’m fighting is inverted! That’s right, I’m in a fight with a man whose identity we’re concealing, who clearly has been traveling back in time, I can’t imagine where THIS is going!!

NAM DEKSAM

.thgif a naht ekahsdnah terces ydob-lluf a ekil erom skool llits ,epoN

They wrangle each other awkwardly all through the facility, magically tidying up as they go, while never really HURTING EACH OTHER.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Yeah, as cool of an idea as two people fighting while moving in opposite directions through time is, it doesn’t really look like anything. The main impression I get is of two guys aggressively trying to rub their wrists on one another.

NAM DEKSAM

.taht ekil sub eht rednu enecs eritne na gniworht naloN enigami yllatot nac I ?lla ta doog yna skool yllautca ti dnuora yaw siht ti hctaw uoy nehw os demlif saw ti ebyaM .niaga thgif siht ,hA

Eventually after they rub each other on various walls and floors for a while, the NAM DEKSAM is sucked out a door and can now be disregarded.

ROBERT PATTINSON

And the second masked man was, er, disposed of by me! Even though the audience clearly saw me not do that! Honestly, I’m pretty sure we don’t even care if you figure this one out.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Too bad we couldn't get the drawing, but I think we can safely assume the plane explosion destroyed it! Which means the plane could been the distraction AND the whole plan. Oops. Well either way, we can just tell Elizabeth it's destroyed so she goes through with her side of the bargain.

(pause)

...It’s only just now occurring to me that that’s literally all we had to do in the first place.

INT. BIG PANTS FANCY MANSION RICH BIG

At loooong last, JOHN finally gets to meet KENNETH BRANAGH.

NOSNITTAP TREBOR

(ecnatsid a morf)

!won it barg uoy fi emit gnikcuf HCUM OS evas nac eW !nhoJ tiBtiF sih barg ,kciuQ

KENNETH BRANAGH

Hello, John. You may notice that I’m doing the exact same dead-eyed nihilistic Russian gangster role that I did in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. I wanted to check whether it still sucked. Turns out it still sucks!

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Kenneth, I am a big mean crime person much like yourself. I want to steal some plutonium for you. Some plutonium you were already planning to steal, with the help of unlimited funds and magical technology from the future. I can’t think what the hell you would need me for.

KENNETH BRANAGH

I am intrigued, but this is far too quiet a location for exposition. Let us discuss this further while actively participating in a high-speed catamaran race on the open sea.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Makes perfect sense.

They go out with ELIZABETH and do some more exposition while blasting across the ocean in the FASTEST, LOUDEST SAILBOATS ever constructed.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

efhnmeghothfrenebrmalagzibrffrerk?

KENNETH BRANAGH

zgniyiiffifiivvgomgsquerpvlipjjjorb

ELIZABETH DEBICKI

Heh, you know it’s kind of ironic that this is the main scene where our words get DROWNED out, considering that whatever the hell line I actually say right now probably consists of some kind of badass-

(undoes Kenneth’s harness)

-DROWN WORD!!

KENNETH plummets into the OCEAN, but then JOHN turns the CATAMARAN around and RESCUES HIM.

ELIZABETH DEBICKI

Oh FUCK YOU for saving him! Clearly my ploy to dump an experienced sailor in full safety gear into the water while he was surrounded by trained sailors who work for him would have easily killed him if not for your intervention, HARRUMPH!!

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Sorry, but I need Kenneth alive! ...Which makes it very weird that in an earlier scene I gave you a gun specifically so you could murder Kenneth with it in an emergency. What is wrong with me?

KENNETH BRANAGH

Well John, congratulations, now that I owe you my life I guess I’ll go along with your sketchy-as-fuck plutonium plan.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Score! Thanks for being a total psycho, Elizabeth!

EXT. FREEWAY - SPECIAL FANCY RICH EXPRESS LANES

A TRUCK is driving along when it is approached on all sides by vehicles manned by JOHN and KENNETH’S GOONS.

TRUCK DRIVER

Ugh, I wish the guy behind me wouldn’t ride my bumper like that. Especially since the guy in front of me has slowed down so now I’m practically up his tailpipe. Oh great, and now the guy to my right has veered halfway out of his lane and is about six inches away from me. And the guy on my left has done the exact same thing at the exact same time! Geez what a bunch of road hogs. Oh well, at least nothing suspicious is-

The four VEHICLES all move over the additional MICROMETER to pin the TRUCK between them! JOHN gets onto the ROOF of the TRUCK and blows a hole in it, but when he gets in he finds no plutonium but a DOOHICKEY.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Ooh, it looks very similar to that doohickey that was in the opening scene! The audience remembers that random metal thing that was in like one three-second shot an hour and a half ago, right?

He and ROBERT attempt to AMSCRAY with the DOOHICKEY, but then KENNETH pulls up alongside them in a REVERSE CAR, holding ELIZABETH at gunpoint!

KENNETH BRANAGH

I’ll kill her if you don’t give me the thing!

ROBERT PATTINSON

No, John, you mustn’t let him get the unexplained thing! If she dies she dies, it’s not worth the risk of Kenneth getting his hands on the THING!!

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Gee, this dilemma might seem pretty intense if either I or the audience had the foggiest idea what that thing is or what any of the stakes are or what indeed either the good guys or the bad guys are trying to even accomplish in this movie.

Up ahead, an INVERTED CAR UN-CRASHES and inserts itself between JOHN’S CAR and KENNETH’S CAR!

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Oho, this gives me an opportunity to trick Kenneth! I’ll open up this case and take the MacGuffin out, throw the empty case to Kenneth, and toss the MacGuffin into the inverted car! As long as I manage to do all that while Kenneth is watching without him noticing, and he also doesn’t notice that the case is about thirty pounds lighter than it's supposed to be, and he doesn’t stop to wonder why somebody has clearly traveled back in time to interfere with this moment, everything should work out just fine!

This successfully fools KENNETH for about TEN SECONDS. He captures JOHN and takes him to-

INT. ANOTHER SPLIT DOUBLE-CHAMBER INVERSION ROOM

JOHN is watched by GOONS while in the adjoining room, HGANARB HTENNEK points a gun at ELIZABETH.

HGANARB HTENNEK

Tell me where the MacGuffin is or I shoot her!

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Wait, wait a minute. I’m running forwards, you backwards, and we’re having a conversation?

HGANARB HTENNEK

It’s simple! What you say now is being recorded in your now, so that later, which for me is now, I can play it back and talk to the recording of you, while the PA system plays to you a reversed version of what I’m saying/have said/will say-

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Dude. Why doesn’t regular non-inverted you question me? You know, just in normal time? That seems like it’d be WAY less complicated and confusing.

HGANARB HTENNEK

But then I’d have to threaten Elizabeth with a lame old regular bullet. This way I’m threatening her with an INVERTED bullet! They’re the worst, if you shoot somebody in the gut with an inverted bullet they need like a week of medical attention to recover, and even then it’s touch-and-go.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Doesn’t getting shot in the gut with a regular bullet do that exact same thing?

HGANARB HTENNEK

OH SHUT UP, THIS WAY IT’S MIND-BENDING ALL RIGHT.

(shoots Elizabeth)

Now talk or I’ll shoot her again, even though there’s no second bullet-hole so clearly I won’t!

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Fine, I stashed the MacGuffin in, let’s say the BMW I was driving, the same car I earlier described as "fast without looking fast" because when people see BMW they think "slow-ass piece of shit junkheap". This is such an obvious lie, please just go along with it.

KENNETH comes in, gets inverted into HTENNEK and then leaves by having already left when he was arriving in the past you know what it’s complicated, let’s just say KENNETH leaves. Moments later, a bunch of TENET SOLDIERS pour in, led by AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON, and rescue JOHN!

AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON

Elizabeth is dying from some kind of reverse-chrono-radiation! The only way to stabilize her is to invert her, which you’d think would also un-invert the radioactive isotopes and leave her in exactly the same predicament, but for the sake of convenience let’s say not.

They all go through the CHAMBERS and become INVERTED.

NOSNHOJ-ROLYAT NORAA

There are important rules you need to know about being inverted. One, you can’t come into contact with your doppelganger because it’s TimeCop rules, although unlike TimeCop we immediately forget about that and not pay it off in any way whatsoever. Two, fire is ice now, which pays off just SLIGHTLY more than never at all. Third and MOST CRUCIALLY, you need to breathe inverted oxygen, so use this oxygen mask at all times. Got it? For health and safety reasons, you must stay masked!

NOTGNIHSAW DIVAD NHOJ

Huh, how timely. Although this is the last movie I thought I’d find that sentiment in, AHEM.

(glares at Christopher Nolan)

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

What? All I said was everybody should watch this movie all crowded together in a lovely nice cinema rather than safely in front of their crappy TVs in their dumb lame homes. Besides, what’s going to become of those nice cinemas if they have no income for a year or more, hm? Think of the nice cinemas!!

NOTGNIHSAW DIVAD NHOJ

Yuh huh. And say a reckless mid-pandemic release sees this movie make less at the domestic box office than the Baywatch movie, and suddenly studios freak out and announce that from here on out all their movies are gonna hit streaming services the same day they hit theatres, who do you suppose gets hurt then?

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

(ponders, frowns)

...same nice cinemas...?

NOTGNIHSAW DIVAD NHOJ

Yep. Nice going, jackass. Anyway, I’m head out in that inverted car, knowing full well that means driving straight into a car crash!

NOSNITTAP TREBOR

Oh right, the car you threw the MacGuffin into during the car chase! So the MacGuffin should be there right now, ready for you to retrieve it, right?

NOTGNIHSAW DIVAD NHOJ

Yes indeed! But instead I’ll ignore that and just let it go flying straight back into past-me’s car, making the entire act of putting it in there in the first place pointless.

He goes and successfully drives the INVERTED CAR on the regular NON-INVERTED STREETS even though it appears to be like playing FORZA HORIZON with the X-AXIS AND Y-AXIS REVERSED. Eventually he does the CRASH, then HTENNEK shows up.

HGANARB HTENNEK

And now I have the MacGuffin, somehow! Is anybody following this???

INT. SHIPPING CONTAINER FILLED WITH INVERTED AIR SO PEOPLE CAN UN-MASK, WHICH, DID THEY CRAM THE ENTIRE CONTAINER THROUGH THAT PERSON-SIZED CHAMBER? OR PUMP AIR THROUGH THE INVERSION MACHINE INTO HERE, BUT HOW WOULD SUCH A PUMP EVEN WORK GOING FORWARDS AND BACKWARDS UNLESS OKAY MAYBE THERE'S A MULTI-STAGE PROCESS AND OH SHIT THE MOVIE'S STILL GOING SORRY

NHOJ and TREBOR are taking HTEBAZILE back in time to the ART STORAGE FACILITY.

NOTGNIHSAW DIVAD NHOJ

Once htebazilE is healed enough, we can use the inversion chambers they had there to un-invert ourselves. Wait, why the hell does an art storage facility have a temporal inversion machine from the future?!

NOSNITTAP TREBOR

So we have a plot reason to go back there, obviously.

They get there while the PLANE EXPLOSION is already underway, and various EMERGENCY CREWS are hard at work ruthlessly NOT NOTICING people walking and running IN REVERSE RIGHT PAST THEIR FUCKING FACE. But then one of the ENGINES blows, throwing NHOJ through a door into the facility, where he is accosted by JOHN!

NOTGNIHSAW DIVAD NHOJ

Ah, this fight again. Maybe it was filmed so that when you watch it this way around, it looks any good at all? I can totally imagine Nolan throwing an entire scene under the bus like that.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

.rethona eno tsniaga stsirw rieht bur ot gniyrt ylevisserga syug owt fo si teg I noisserpmi niam ehT .gnihtyna ekil kool yllaer t’nseod ti ,si emit hguorht snoitcerid etisoppo ni gnivom elihw gnitghif elpoep owt sa aedi na fo looc sa ,haeY

The entire feeble arm-knotting fight plays out again only in reverse, allowing the entire cast and crew to take a DAY OFF while their job is done by the REWIND BUTTON.

NOTGNIHSAW DIVAD NHOJ

Nope, still looks more like a full-body secret handshake than a fight.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

!!gniog si SIHT erehw enigami t’nac I , emit ni kcab gnilevart neeb sah ylraelc ohw ,gnilaecnoc er’ew ytitnedi esohw nam a htiw thgif a ni m’I ,thgir s’tahT !detrevni si gnithgif m’I yug eht ,kcuf yloH

Eventually he escapes into the CHAMBER, where he UN-INVERTS and becomes the guy that ROBERT had to fight but let ESCAPE.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

And my arm's all better! Yes, first iteration me shot my arm, which bled into my past (his future) but then became a bruise and then totally vanished within hours. Yay for my Wolverine healing powers!

EXT. CORNER OF EXPENSIVE STREET AND EXOTIC BOULEVARD

Having run out of fresh EXPOSITION PEOPLE, JOHN returns to DIMPLE for more intel.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

We’re nearly all the way through this goddamn thing and we still haven’t revealed what Kenneth’s evil plan even is. Could you tell me finally, so the audience at least grasps what the stakes are during the climax?

DIMPLE KAPADIA

Oh all right. That MacGuffin is part of The Algorithm, which should be a mathematical process but instead is a machine. It looks like the world’s shittiest car muffler, it gets invented hundreds of years in the future, and its purpose is to invert all existence so all time runs backwards and everything gets wiped out. The Future thinks if they set it off in THIS time, they'll sever us from their timeline, detaching us like a flaming caboose before we wreck the environment and thus, the future.

(pause)

(nervously re-checks notes)

Or um, maybe they want to set it off in their time so they can all travel back to a time with clean air and clean water and plentiful food? But wait, if the whole world got inverted their bad air and water and food would be inverted too and be brought with them... or at least they'd better hope so, because they wouldn't be able to breathe, drink, or eat the un-inverted stuff...

(flips frantically through shooting script)

(throws it away in disgust)

Whatever, it's some badly-explained nonsensical thing, whatever we have to do to get generic end-of-the-world stakes from this.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

But how can the people of the future even exist if the events between now and then suddenly never happened?

DIMPLE KAPADIA

Yeah well... maybe... multiple timelines?

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

(steam starting to shoot out ears)

Oh GOD, don’t bring THAT into it as well or we’ll be here all day. Fuck it, I’m not going to even try to understand this, just tell me how to stop this Algorithm thing.

DIMPLE KAPADIA

All right, so the inventor of The Algorithm was afraid it would destroy all life forever, so she-

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Destroyed it and all her research?

DIMPLE KAPADIA

No, she broke it into nine pieces, inverted them, and hid each piece in a separate nuclear warhead, centuries in the past. I mean, way to go for the OBVIOUS solution, sheesh.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Okay. Wow. So assuming she didn't live backwards for 300 years, how'd she get the parts into the bombs? Did she stick notes on them all saying “PLEASE HIDE IN ATOMIC BOMB KTHXBYE”?

DIMPLE KAPADIA

Who knows. The point is, the Evil Future People want The Algorithm, so they’ve been sending Kenneth inverted money and supplies to retrieve the nine different pieces out of their various warheads and reassemble it. Please note these supplies are being sent back through years that the Future is actively trying to wipe out.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Why not time-travel to right before the inventor disassembled it in the first place and just grab it out of her hands?

DIMPLE KAPADIA

(shrugs)

So that’s what we’re up against, we have to stop Kenneth from pressing the History Eraser Button and cancelling all culture, forever.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Please tell me we’ve cooked up any kind of justification as to why somebody would agree to do that.

ELIZABETH DEBICKI

We have! It’s because he’s already dying of cancer, so now he’s decided to kill everybody else too in the most epic case ever of somebody taking their ball and going home. I bet I know when he’s going to do it too, he’s going to do it... in a garden.

(pause)

Whoops sorry wrong galactic catastrophe! I mean, on his yacht. There was one day of our Vietnam vacation where he was off monitoring the concert attack--yes, CONCERT, shut up Nolan--I bet Kevin II will choose that one happy day to show up and end Creation. Mostly because it's the biggest dick move I can think of.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Right then, you and Himesh go and stop Kenneth, and absolutely everybody else will go after the Algorithm. That's a nice sensible allocation of our resources.

INT. STAGING AREA

JOHN DAVID and ROBERT meet up with AARON and DOZENS UPON DOZENS OF OTHER TENET OPERATIVES hey remember when nobody was supposed to know who anyone else was?

AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON

Luckily, we now somehow have tons of our own inversion machines and equipment and everything!! So we'll be doing a temporal pincer movement, where we send in half our forces moving forwards in time, then the other half moving backwards from the future, and they meet in the middle.

ROBERT PATTINSON

This is assuming of course that the plan works, so that the Backwards Force who have to wait until it's over before they start, aren't annihilated while still waiting in their box.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Why don't you have the ENTIRE force move forward, then turn around and move backwards as well? It would literally double our numbers. Or since there's machines at both ends we could just keep going back and forth and back and forth until there's millions of us!

AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON

Oh God no, this scene is going to be enough of a clusterfuck as it is. We're going to have backwards soldiers and forwards soldiers, and backwards guns and cars and explosions and forwards guns and cars and explosions, and the bad guys are all going to have those exact same things, it's gonna be incomprehensible.

EXT. DESERTED TOWN THE EXISTENCE OF WHICH WAS SET UP EARLIER IN THE MOST CONVOLUTED WAY POSSIBLE, BECAUSE OF COURSE

JOHN, ROBERT, AARON, and a fuckton of NAMELESS FACELESS GOOBERS all enter into a chaotic, visually incoherent BATTLE against COMPLETELY UNSEEN BAD GUYS, or maybe they're fighting SENTIENT EXPLOSIONS?

AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON

Now remember, me and John getting into the mine to find The Algorithm is the only important part of this scene. Everything else is just a distraction so we can get in and out undetected.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Wait, so the huge sprawling confrontation that's happening right now doesn't actually matter at all? It's all just a bunch of sparkly lights to keep eyeballs occupied?

AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON

Both in-universe AND out! Hey look that building both exploded and un-exploded at the same time, oooohhhhh!!

As all the EXPENDABLE EXTRAS run around blowing each other up, JOHN and AARON make it into the MINE. They nearly reach THE ALGORITHM, but then are thwarted by a CHAIN-LINK FENCE. JOHN gets a phone call from KENNETH.

KENNETH BRANAGH

Sorry about the lame obstacle that makes you look laughably ineffectual, I just needed to buy us some time for an out-of-place chat. Also, you'll never defeat my impossibly devoted henchman!

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Yeah, what's up with that? Why are all these people helping you wipe out all existence anyway? Do you exclusively hire megalomaniac narcissists with terminal cancer?

AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON

We can't worry about that now! We gotta stop that henchman from putting a thing into a hole or looping a cable through a thing or I DON'T EVEN FUCKING KNOW ANYMORE FUUUUCKK

But just as a HENCHMAN is about to kill JOHN, a CORPSE rises up from the ground and intercepts the BULLET and then runs away! JOHN takes out the HENCHMAN and gets THE ALGORITHM.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

So from that guy's perspective, he ran into this room, threw himself in between me and the henchman, then he was killed when a bullet leapt out of his head into the henchman's gun? I'm not sure that makes any sense at all, but eh, I think we're way beyond that now.

ROBERT PATTINSON

(from above)

Hey it's me! I un-inverted myself so I can pull y'all out of that hole before the bomb goes off, which I think is bad? Or is part of our plan? Anyway grab on!

EXT. KENNETH'S BRAH-YACHT

Meanwhile on the YACHT, ELIZABETH pulls a gun on KENNETH!

ELIZABETH DEBICKI

All right scumbag, you're for it now! Since you made your evil FitBit the trigger for Armageddon, my job was to make certain you didn't commit suicide until the others had finished their mission. But fuck it, that way you'd die thinking you'd won, and I can't allow that!

KENNETH BRANAGH

Holy shit, you're risking killing EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD because you don't want me to feel SMUG?! You're even more childishly spiteful than I am, and up until this moment I was probably the most childishly spiteful fictional character of all time!

HIMESH PATEL

Plus we have me waiting nearby to send up the "all clear" flare, which I was gonna do any moment now! God DAMMIT Elizabeth.

Anyway ELIZABETH kills KENNETH, dives off the YACHT as we all knew she would, and our heroes WIN!

EXT. BACK AT THE MINE

JOHN, ROBERT, and AARON meet for POST-GAME ANALYSIS.

AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON

So. We have The Algorithm, the potentially history-destroying superweapon. I think we all know what the correct course of action is.

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

Smash it into a million-

AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON

Let's split it three ways and keep it, of course!

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

(palmfaces)

ROBERT PATTINSON

And now I can finally reveal the tiny red string on my knapsack that ONLY I HAVE and is unique to ME ALONE! Yes John, the dead guy in the mine was me, AND the guy who saved you back at the concert hall. Heck, I probably introduced Denzel to your Mom. And one final underwhelming twist, you're the guy who starts Tenet years from now! You, John! It was you! You did that! The guy who did that? Is you!

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON

...Wait, WHAT?! That means that during all this bullshit, the head of Tenet already knew everything about Branagh, The Algorithm, and how to stop it! So instead of all the rigmorale we've put up with to learn the truth and thwart Branagh's scheme, he could have just told us how to fix it all in like one afternoon? And so this whole story was basically POINTLESS?!

ROBERT PATTINSON

Well yeah. Shit. Y'know, since I have to re-invert and go save your life twice anyway, maybe I can try fixing this craptastic movie as well.

(inverts)

!kcul em hsiW

EXT. EPILOGUE -- OUTSIDE PROFESSOR FANCYPANTS'S RICH SCHOOL FOR EXPENSIVE UNNAMED YOUNGSTERS

JOHN arrives from the future and kills DIMPLE to stop her from killing ELIZABETH.

ELIZABETH DEBICKI

Phew, I am not dead!

(checks Box Office Mojo)

...Our box office returns kind of are, though. So whose fault is this? Is it the studio, for not pushing the release date back another year to when cinemas could be properly re-opened? Is it the federal government, for botching the pandemic response and allowing the problem to get to this large a scale in the first place? ...Or is it just that Christopher Nolan made a long, weird, sterile, confusing, smug, audience-alienating movie that nobody liked?

(receives note from Little Boy)

"Blame Nolan alone, Ma - LB."

(nods)

Sounds right to me.

DNEND