levarT emiT fo tpecnoC iF-icS cipE s’naloN gnirolpxE - teneT

Young Sator discovers a container with a contract and gold bars, sent by the antagonists from the future, at the hypocenter (a dead drop) in Stalsk-12. This is where the story begins…

What is this blog about

Nolan’s sci-fi concepts are quite complex and require significant effort to fully grasp. He is regarded as one of the greatest film directors of our time, widely recognized for his mind-bending sci-fi narratives. Although Tenet was released in 2020, I watched it for the first time this year based on a recommendation from a friend. Both Inception and Tenet require multiple viewings to truly understand their intricate plots. I previously wrote a deep dive into Inception here, but its psychological themes are more familiar to me. This sets it apart from Tenet, which explores an unconventional time travel concept based on the idea of entropy inversion.

Tenet shares similarities with Inception, including complex plots, meticulously crafted sci-fi concepts, and intriguing filming locations. Perhaps due to its convoluted plot, which features numerous difficult to understand time travel tricks, Tenet does not focus heavily on specific dates, names, or an extensive cast of characters. Instead, it prioritizes its core concept. This is another way it differs from Inception. Unlike many other time travel films, Tenet presents a unique approach. There is no universal futuristic time machine that can teleport a person to any location at a specific time. In such traditional concepts, the logiс for entering precise coordinates often remains unclear, making the process feel overly simplified and less engaging. Tenet, in turn, introduces clear rules and limitations, adding depth and intrigue to its take on time travel.

In Tenet a person cannot teleport to any location at any time. Instead, they “invert” themselves and move backward in time after passing through a turnstile. However, this is not traditional “time-travel” - after exiting the turnstile, the person remains in the same place and moment, but now experiences time in reverse. To reach a specific point in the past, an inverted traveler must physically move through time at the same rate as they would in the forward direction. The biggest challenge for an inverted traveler is spatial navigation, as they now experience effects before causes, rather than the other way around. In essence, everything in their environment moves in reverse relative to them - objects, people, and even natural forces seem to «run away» rather than approach. This is a direct consequence of experiencing time in reverse.

In Tenet, inverted things, i e things that have come from the future, move in the opposite direction (backwards), experiencing time in reverse.

The core concept in Tenet is entropy inversion, which essentially means that everything in this state moves backward in time. Throughout the movie, we see various objects and people experiencing this phenomenon. Once inverted, they move “backward” after appearing in the past. The ultimate consequence of entropy inversion is the complete collapse of the world - where everything adopts inverted entropy, leading to total annihilation. Entropy inversion follows the same principle as the classic time travel concept – “Whatever happened, happened”. This means that when someone travels to the past from the future, they cannot change anything, because their actions have already influenced the future and created those very circumstances that led them to travel back in the first place. This is known as temporal paradox or time paradox.

Terms

Entropy inversion - the core concept of Tenet; the process by which an object or person’s entropy is reversed, causing them to move backward through time relative to the forward-moving world.

Inverted thing - an object or person that has undergone entropy inversion and moves backward in time after coming from the future.

The Algorithm - a futuristic device, invented by a talented scientist in the future, capable of inverting the entropy of the entire world.

Artifacts - the nine separate parts of the Algorithm, which were hidden in secret locations in the past by its creator (the scientist) to prevent its assembly and use.

Tenet - a secret organization founded in the future to prevent the Algorithm from being assembled and deployed.

Antagonists - a group of people from the future seeking to locate the artifacts, assemble the Algorithm, and use it to destroy the world.

The Protagonist - the main character of the film, recruited by Tenet in the past to counter the antagonists’ attempts to obtain the Algorithm.

Turnstile - a specialized chamber containing an advanced device that inverts the entropy of anything that passes through it. The chamber is divided into two sections by a glass wall, allowing a person to see themselves returning from the past to re-invert themselves.

Temporal pincer movement - a tactical operation in which two teams move in opposite directions through time. One team moves forward, gathering intelligence and creating a chain of causality, while the other moves backward, using foreknowledge of events to influence the past.

“Whatever happened, happened” (causal loop) - a fundamental principle of Tenet’s time travel mechanics, implying that any changes made in the past have already shaped the present and future. When someone travels to the past to alter an event, they are actually fulfilling a course of events that has already occured.

The twin paradox - a thought experiment in special relativity demonstrating that a twin traveling at near-light speed will age more slowly than their sibling who remains on Earth, due to time dilation.

Hypocenter – The underground site in Stalsk-12 where Sator discovers his contract with the antagonists and where he plans to bury the Algorithm, ensuring its activation in the future. This location was the epicenter of a past nuclear blast.

Locations

Kyiv - where one of the artifacts is supposed to be intercepted.

Mumbai - Priya’s home; in Mumbai the Protagonist meets Neil.

London - The city where the Protagonist meets Kat; Kat and Sator’s home is there.

Oslo – the location of Sator’s highly secured Freeport facility, where one of the turnstiles is located.

Tallinn - where the race for the artifact takes place; also where is another Sator’s basement with a turnstile.

Vietnam - where Sator and Kat vacation on his yacht; there Sator plans to commit suicide as part of his dead man’s switch.

Stalsk-12 (Russia) - the location of the hypocenter, where a young Sator finds his contract with the antagonists, and where he intends to bury the assembled Algorithm.

The Tenet vessel - a ship equipped with a turnstile, operated by Tenet, allowing the Protagonist and his team to invert themselves.

Italy - the location of Sator’s yacht, where he competes with the Protagonist.

Background

In the future, a talented scientist invents the Algorithm, a device capable of inverting the entropy of the entire world, leading to its collapse. Realizing its devastating potential, the scientist splits the Algorithm into nine pieces (artifacts) and hides them in different locations across the past. A group of antagonists from the future seeks to recover all nine artifacts, assemble the Algorithm, and use it to destroy the world. To accomplish this, they enlist Andrei Sator, a Russian oligarch who has built his empire around working with plutonium. Driven by greed and an obsessive need for control, Sator makes a deal with them. Since the antagonists operate from the future, they have knowledge of where the artifacts were burried. They provide Sator with the coordinates of each artifact, and in return for securing one, he is rewarded with a dead drop containing inverted gold. In turn, there is also the protagonist in the future who strive to hinder Sator to obtain all artifacts and assemble them. Meanwhile, in the same future, the secret organization Tenet is working against the antagonists. Just as Sator is guided by instructions from the future, Tenet recruits the Protagonist to thwart Sator’s efforts and prevent the Algorithm from being assembled.

Sator recieves inverted gold bars as payment from the antagonists, who leave them in dead drops

Since Sator has powerful backers from the future who already know past events, they provide him with valuable intel, allowing him to stay one step ahead. They also instruct him on how to use turnstiles - installations that induce reverse entropy, enabling individuals to move backward in time, i e to invert one or re-invert. Though turnstiles will be created in the future, the antagonists help Sator acquire them in the past, placing them in secret locations. When the Protagonist enters the game, Sator has already collected almost all the artifacts and hidden them in secret locations. His plan is to obtain the final artifact, assemble the Algorithm, and bury it in an inaccessible place. After that, he sends the coordinates to the antagonists, allowing them to activate it at any time.

So what is a turnstile. It’s a kinda secure room in secret location with one entrance and one exit. The room is divided into two sections by a glass wall, allowing a traveler to see events both before and after inversion. The inversion installation resembles an elevator with large, blast-resistant steel doors. At least four turnstiles are shown in the film: three belong to the antagonists and are located in Oslo, Tallinn, and Stalsk-12, while the fourth, operated by Tenet, is aboard their ship. The turnstile is the only means by which people from the future can communicate with their counterparts in the past. It is implied that antagonists from the future used turnstiles to send containers of inverted gold bars in time to Sator.

The first turnstile discovered in the film is located in Sator’s highly secured warehouse at Oslo Freeport, an art storage facility within the airport

There are various people who help the Protagonist secure the future, and Neil is the closest one. The Protagonist hires Neil in Mumbai to assist him in his missions. Neil has a scientific background and helps the Protagonist understand the mechanics of their situation. Priya is a high-ranking Tenet operative who operates under the cover of an arms dealer in Mumbai. Unlike other his allies, Priya knows everything about their mission from the beginning because, at the time of their meeting, she has already been recruited by the Protagonist from the future. She orchestrates the mission and provides the Protagonist with instructions at each stage. Kat, Sator’s wife, becomes the Protagonist’s ally due to her strained relationship with Sator, who constantly threatens her. With her knowledge of Sator’s habits and hidden aspects of his life, she makes an invaluable contribution to the mission’s success. Ives is also a Tenet operative with advanced knowledge of operations involving entropy inversion. He understands Sator’s tactic of temporal pincer movement and employs the same strategy in the invasion of Stalsk-12.

Neil, Kat, Priya, Ives

The Plan

After Sator obtains the final artifact, the Protagonist and Neil begin to understand his plan and where he intends to bury the Algorithm. From Kat, they also learn that Sator is dying from terminal cancer and plans to commit suicide. Sator wears a dead man’s switch, which is linked to an explosive placed above the hatch containing the Algorithm in the hypocenter. Once Sator’s heart stops, the switch activates the explosive’s timer, triggering a detonation that buries the Algorithm. After the Algorithm is buried, its coordinates are automatically transmitted to the Antagonists, who will then activate it. Sator uses the dead man’s switch to ensure that his death does not prevent his plan from succeeding or disrupt his deal with the Antagonists from the future. Is it also a perfect synchronization trick, because Sator doesn’t want to close the deal while still alive. In his view, the inversion of the world is meant to occur only after his death.

The knowledge the Protagonist gains about Sator’s plan and related events gives him a clear understanding of how to act. Sator plans to travel to the past on the 10th and commit suicide during his vacation in Vietnam. After receiving a hint from Sir Michael about a massive explosion in Stalsk-12, the Protagonist realizes where and when Sator intends to bury the Algorithm. The plan becomes clear: the Protagonist and Priya’s team invert themselves and travel back to Stalsk-12 on the 10th, while Kat heads to the boat in Vietnam to prevent Sator from committing suicide before the Protagonist can steal the Algorithm from the hatch in the hypocenter.

The plan for the Stalsk-12 invasion requires significant military resources and employs the tactic of a temporal pincer movement, the same strategy Sator previously used to attack his enemies from both time directions. The red team moves forward, guided by intelligence gathered by the blue team of inverted soldiers who have already experienced the battle and returned to the base before the red team begins their advance. Since the explosion is set to occur at a precise time, both teams must act in perfect synchronization, aiming to meet at 10:40 while moving toward each other from opposite directions. Their mission is to provide cover for the Protagonist and Ives as they infiltrate the basement to retrieve the Algorithm.

The hypocenter in Stalsk-12

Reconstructing the full picture

The film begins with a siege of the Kyiv Opera House by the Protagonist’s team and the Ukrainian national police after receiving intelligence about a planned terrorist attack. While the police aim to neutralize the threat and free hostages, the Protagonist is tasked with retrieving an unknown device before terrorists affiliated with Sator can obtain it. However, the Protagonist fails his mission, he is captured, and the device falls into the hands of a Ukrainian gang.

After this failure, the Protagonist is assigned a mysterious new mission: to trace the origins of “inverted bullets” that move backward in time. This leads him to arms dealer Priya, who reveals that the bullets originate from Andrei Sator, a powerful Russian oligarch with deep connections to gov agencies in multiple countries. However, Sator was forced to leave Russia, making direct contact with him almost impossible. To get closer, Sir Michael advises the Protagonist to contact Sator’s wife, Kat.

Kat tells the Protagonist that Sator is holding her hostage, refusing to let her divorce him. The Protagonist convinces her to introduce him to Sator. During their meeting, Sator threatens to kill him and refuses any negotiations. However, the situation shifts when the Protagonist subtly hints that he knows about the Kyiv Opera House incident and Sator’s involvement in acquiring plutonium stolen from a nuclear warhead.

The Protagonist and Sator

After saving Sator’s life, the Protagonist is tasked with obtaining the plutonium in Tallinn. On Sator’s yacht, we see his subordinates delivering a container filled with inverted gold bars - payment he received for securing another part of the Algorithm. One of those bars he gives to the Protagonist.

The Protagonist and Neil keep the details of their mission secret, but during the extraction operation, an inverted Sator suddenly appears on the road. He reveals that he has taken Kat hostage and threatens to kill her unless the Protagonist hands over the briefcase containing the artifact. The Protagonist throws the briefcase to Sator’s car but covertly extracts the artifact beforehand, leaving Sator with an empty case.

Sator is always one step ahead because he employs a tactic known as a temporal pincer movement. While his team moves forward in time, they gather intelligence about the unfolding events and pass this information to Sator, who then attacks from the future, making his enemies powerless to counter him. The same strategy is used against the Protagonist; after rescuing Kat, he is captured and taken to Sator’s secret warehouse, where another turnstile is located. There, Sator inverts himself and travels back in time to ambush the Protagonist on the highway.

Tallinn highway chase scene; being instructed from the future and using the tactic of temporal pincer movement, Sator always keeps situation under control. He attacks from the future while his team moves forward in time and informs him about everything.

We see Sator interrogating the Protagonist from the past, standing on the opposite side of the glass wall. After obtaining the information he needs, Sator inverts himself and travels to the past to retrieve the artifact, which the Protagonist had left in another car. Anticipating that the Protagonist would also invert himself to save Kat, Sator carefully plans his next move. When the inverted Protagonist catches up with inverted Sator and Neil with himself, he relives the moment when his past self throws the artifact into the car of his inverted counterpart. However, since Sator witnesses this maneuver, he crashes into the car and seizes the artifact.

Inverted Neil then picks up the inverted Protagonist, and together they travel to Oslo to pass through another turnstile, allowing them to revert to a normal state after healing Kat. At the airport, we see the scene from earlier in the movie, but now from an inverted perspective. After leaving the airport, the Protagonist meets Priya in the past, and together they develop a plan to prevent Sator from burying the Algorithm. After learning from Kat that Sator plans to commit suicide at a certain time on his yacht in Vietnam, they finalize their strategy. While the Protagonist and Tenet operatives prepare for the invasion of Stalsk-12, Kat is assigned to delay Sator’s suicide until the Algorithm is extracted.

The most important locations

After the briefings, both teams move toward each other from opposite directions and meet at the hypocenter. Under the cover of their teams, the Protagonist and Ives rush into the basement, where Volkov is already in the process of burying the Algorithm. Meanwhile, Neil inverts himself again to assist them in completing their mission. When they run into the basement, Neil is seen driving a Humvee, attempting to warn them about a tripwire near the entrance. Before re-inverting, Neil had witnessed Volkov setting up the tripwire and tried to warn them, but his attempts were unsuccessful. Neil then drives to the surface above the chamber where the explosion is meant to bury the Algorithm.

After reaching the chamber, the Protagonist and Ives find the entrance blocked by a solid metal grid, impossible to break. Volkov connects the Protagonist to Sator via phone, where Sator reveals the true motives behind the antagonists’ plan to destroy the world in the past. Suddenly, Sator orders Volkov to kill the Protagonist by shooting him in the head. Suddenly, Sator orders Volkov to execute the Protagonist. However, before Volkov can pull the trigger, an inverted Neil from the future, who had been waiting for this moment, sacrifices himself by stepping between the Protagonist and Volkov, taking the fatal shot. When the Protagonist defeats Volkov, the timer starts because Kat killed Sator earlier than planned. Meanwhile, above the surface, Neil starts his Humvee, pulls a cable, and rescues the Protagonist and Ives, who are holding the Algorithm.

The assembled Algorithm

After the rescue, Ives disassembles the Algorithm and gives its parts to the Protagonist and Neil, keeping one part for himself. At this moment, both Neil and the Protagonist realize that the Neil who was killed by Volkov was actually the future version of Neil, who had been (or will be) recruited by the Protagonist in the future. Neil hands his part of the Algorithm to the Protagonist and flies away with Ives. The only thing left for the Protagonist to do after this is to kill Priya in the car, because she wanted to kill Kat, given that she has too much knowledge about the Algorithm.

The Epic scene of the invasion

What is the deal

Just before being shot by Kat, Sator reveals the true motives behind the antagonists’ plans to invert the world. Their goal is to prevent the catastrophic consequences humanity will face in the future due to its past actions - a future where Earth has become uninhabitable. They believe that by inverting the world, they can save it for future generations, even if it means sacrificing the population of the past, whose actions led to this irreversible disaster.

It’s unclear what would have ultimately happened if Sator had succeeded in his mission. Given the concept of “whatever happened, happened” and the fact that the world still exists in the future, his failure seemed inevitable. However, this remains just a theory, raising a significant point of concern - neither the Protagonist nor the antagonists truly knew what would happen if Sator succeeded and the Algorithm was activated. The Algorithm was the most powerful weapon ever created, capable of challenging the very nature of time itself. In the movie, we see a battlefield prepared with infrastructure and armies, all ready to fight for control over it. The turnstiles, invented by the antagonists in the future and provided to Sator in the past, were designed to give him an overwhelming advantage, allowing him to counter any possible resistance.

By the moment of the beginning of the film, Sator had already gotten all artifacts except one captured later in Tallinn. According to the deal, Sator should find all artifacts, assemble the Algorithm and bury it in the place where it would be impossible to extract it. As the place, Sator chooses Russia’s secret city Stalsk-12 that was used in the Soviet Union to store plutonium and where the nuke incident took place, hypocenter. This place perfectly matched all the requirements and after taking the Algorithm to the hypocenter, Sator planned to blow up the space above the hole to burry the Algorithm in a way that no one could extract it. Once it’s done, Sator should send the coordinates of this place to the future so that antagonists be able to activate it through time.

Neil

Throughout the movie, there are actually two Neils - one from the present and one from the future. The future Neil already knows everything that will happen to both himself and the Protagonist during their mission. We learn that Tenet was founded in the future by the Protagonist himself, who would later recruit Neil to protect him in the past. Future Neil is fully aware of his ultimate fate — his sacrifice at Stalsk-12.

The first time future Neil saves the Protagonist’s life is during the Kyiv opera siege when the Protagonist is exposed as not being a Ukrainian officer and is at risk of being shot. After being assigned his mission, the Protagonist contacts Neil before going to India and they make a deal. This is how their journey begins. Being a scientist, Neil explains things related to entropy inversion to the Protagonist and provides assistance in his missions.

The main mission of the future Neil is to protect the Protagonist in Stalsk-12 and ensure the success of his mission. When the Protagonist and Ives break into the basement where the Algorithm is being buried, Neil ultimately sacrifices himself to save them.

Tenet approximate timeline (Click “Open image in new tab” to see its original resolution)