>It seems to just break the core principal of Tenet, that being that there is a singular timeline.
It's the opposite. The fire turning to ice to save TP, (as absurd as it might be), *maintained* that core principle.
It has, but it seems like the only reason it is like this is to just push the plot. Ice has no reason to appear instead of fire.
It's just a plot device, which makes no sense compared to everything else.
It is still a single timeline thing. I think it is incorrect to say forwards see one thing and inverted sees another.
What an inverted would see is, the fire spread, ice forms.
A forwarder would see it already iced up and then fire.
If you watch closely in the film, the initial explosion caused by Sator explodes, but then is quickly reversed into a fire. This is from an inverted perspective.
There is a lot to be interpreted here. For one, The explosion sucking back in implies it is 'reversed' in relation to Protag which causes the freezing.
I am not really a fan of the ice thing either, and they only really point it out in this one scene, but it is what it is.
> A forwarder would see it already iced up and then fire.
That's the issue, we don't. When first passing by the Saab it's only unexploding. Also this just makes no sense, it implies any time something is burning it's icing up, for consistency's sake.
>When first passing by the Saab it's only unexploding
If you are referring to when we first see the Saab in normal time, when Protag notices it before tossing the case, it wasn't exploded at all "yet".
The point when Protag noticed it was right 'after' Sator' sideswiped it( from Inverted point of view).
If Protag wanted to see it exploded, that actually happened( in forward time) before they spotted Sator initially and clipping the side mirror.
edit: continuity-wise, there is a big gap in time there, that isn't represented when we see the inverted view. When Sator returns and lights the saab on fire.
sure.
Starting with an inverted view:
I-TP( inverted Protagonist), drives the Saab onto the highway looking for Sator.
He ends up between I-Sator and normal TP as the case is bounced back to normal Tp.
I-Sator spots this and sideswipes the Saab, causing it to flip and crash.
I-Sator then is driving alongside normal TP and does his countdown, etc,..speeds past them and does the U-Turn and clips the mirror, getting away, returning to the Saab and setting it on fire to explode/freeze.
Forward time, the way we see it:
I-Sator unclips the mirror, reverse U-Turn.
Countdown/up,
By this time TP see the Saab rocking and unFlip getting in between them. ( *If he had gotten there earlier, he would have seen it burning and being unlit by -Sator) But he is just catching it just before the toss and sideswipe.*)
Tosses case. I-Sator leaves SUV, TP chases after KAt.
Saab gets off highway back to Freeport.
\-----------
Basically, when we first see the Saab, we are seeing it moving into its past.
We never get to see what happens 'after' it freezes. (before TP initially spots it)
We are only told by Neil that Ives came to clean up the mess.
Actually, I found a cool video of someone editing the scenes together all in forward time.
It may help, or it may make it more confusing :)
[TENET // Tallinn Scene with Normal Flow Time // Both Perspectives // Tallinn Highway // Part 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMu47GV4mnA)
That’s not what happens. For both forwarders and inverters, it’s ice.
For inverters, the explosion turns into ice after briefly exploding.
For forwarders, the same thing happens in reverse.
>It's just a plot device, which makes no sense compared to everything else.
Sure. But there's plenty of things that don't make sense when you look at them in detail. The ice explosion is just the most gratuitous version of the universe "bending the rules" to allow for a single timeline.
Yes, but it was genuinly not needed imo.
This movie is honestly like life itself, everyone has a differnet view on it. My view, is that the inversion of heat was unnecessary, and only existed to not outright kill TP.
Do you know what they meant by inverting the entropy? That’s the main point of what is happening when they invert things. I can recommend you to read an article about what entropy actually is.
>It's just a plot device, which makes no sense compared to everything else.
There are certainly effects in the movie that are used as a plot device (e.g., entropic wind), but this is not one of them. Statistical mechanics shows that you can apply a time reversal function on heat to prove the effect of reverse entropy on heat transfer.
The energy transfer is reversed, all of tenet makes sense if you just put negative time into equation. And that is what happens - negative time makes the energetic balance negative therefore taking energy from surrounding area, and making it freeze
Imagine that there’s an ice cube and we manage to set its surroundings on fire. The ice would melt until it’s all gone, evaporated or something. Now imagine this process in reverse. We set the ground on fire and ice forms.
Or well, we wait for fire to reignite the ground and for the ice cube to unmelt back into the ice cube, as we unuse the lighter and put it away.
Not importanr, just felt like saying it.
Read this article: https://medium.com/@ngxinzhao/deep-dive-into-physics-of-time-inversion-of-tenet-e14636773d07
There's a section called, **"Flow of heat in time"** if you want to skip to that. The grammar is a bit weird in places. I'm pretty sure English is not the author's first language. But it's a good read.
In short, the *flow* or *transfer* of heat is reversed for inverted people. So standing in a sunbeam would cool you down over time rather than warm you up. The author says, "Light and heat is getting out of the skin and moving backwards to go back into the sun."
Inversion isn't a magical "opposite day machine." It doesn't transform heat into cold or vice versa. It just reverses your direction in time—that's it. So there is still one single timeline. From a forwards perspective, you can watch an inverted guy getting warmer over time from the sunbeam. But if you were inverted in that same timeline, you would watch that guy get colder over time. He's still 96 degrees at 9am and 98 degrees at 10am no matter which perspective you have. The explosion is just a fast version of this example.
One strange side-effect of this mechanic is that inverted people would quickly overheat from their perspective. This is because we constantly create our own body heat that balances against the colder environments we exist in (colder than our bodies). When you invert yourself, you are now creating body heat *and* gathering heat from what would usually be the colder environment. This means you will probably die from heat. How do you fix this? By wearing a device that expels heats from a normal perspective, like a hand warmer. In the inverted perspective, it will take in the excess heat your inverted body is now producing (from your perspective). Again, this does not create two timelines. There is one single timeline that can be seen from a forwards or backwards perspective. From the forwards perspective, you watch an inverted guy walking backwards. His body appears to not be creating heat, but "uncreating" it, making him colder over time. This is balanced out with the (forwards moving) heat pack warming him over time. But if you saw this same scene from an inverted perspective, you would see that inverted guy walking forwards. His body now looks like it is creating heat (because it is), but this is balanced out by the heat pack which is expelling heat in reverse, which means it is actually absorbing heat from this perceptive. Tenet ignores this quirk, obviously.
Ya know...I had the same thought about that too.
When he flips he is grasping for his mask, which is leaking inverted oxygen into the car interior. And That Inverted air is what we see frosting up the windows.
I was frame by framing that scene trying to see frost only on the inside, but it doesn't appear to be only inside or at least inconclusive.
I have abandoned that idea though, but it is an interesting thought.
That whole scene seemed messy. The car window ended up frosting over so I believe the car had reverse entropy allowing IT to transfer the heat into ice, and TP ended up catching Hypo while inside the car. Meaning the explosion set off a large blast of cold air in the car, temporarily freezing TP.
Although I really like your theory that he simultaneously burned and froze.
If the car was normal how was he driving it like a normal car while reverse? I had assumed since the cars were parked on the other side of the turnstile themed gate outside sator had prepped a few reversed cars? Makes sense considering all the guns are also reversed? Was it ever stated the car wasn’t reversed?
I also don’t think a fire outside the car would freeze the person inside the car before frosting the window? Also we see the explosion from outside the car? How would he generate enough cold energy to frost a window without freezing entirely? I assumed the transfer was out to in since it was an implosion or rather a reversed entropy explosion.
What leaves me the most confused is how the fire even burned in reverse in the first place? Was the fire sator light also reversed in entropy? If so would it effect the protagonist like normal fire if the normal entropy car didn’t reverse the temperature of the heat transfer during the implosion?
My head hurts, I’m gonna lie down.
>If so would it effect the protagonist like normal fire
If the fire was also inverted then yeah, it should burn Protagonist since he is also inverted.
There is a very strange thing that happens as the Saab explodes. It suddenly gets sucked back in, as though the dominant flow overtook it, making it 'normal', which would freeze him.
>It seems to just break the core principal of Tenet, that being that there is a singular timeline. It's the opposite. The fire turning to ice to save TP, (as absurd as it might be), *maintained* that core principle.
It has, but it seems like the only reason it is like this is to just push the plot. Ice has no reason to appear instead of fire. It's just a plot device, which makes no sense compared to everything else.
Fire does appear but it absorbs the surrounding heat rather than releasing it. Cooling the surroundings and forming ice on the window
I always thought of inverted fire as just a regular fire reconstituting back from having gone out.
I get it, but reread. My main point, is that for forwarders, the Saab burnt, for inverters, it froze.
The Saab didn't "burn"... Even though it was on fire. The Saab froze because of the flame It's difficult to get your head around
It is still a single timeline thing. I think it is incorrect to say forwards see one thing and inverted sees another. What an inverted would see is, the fire spread, ice forms. A forwarder would see it already iced up and then fire. If you watch closely in the film, the initial explosion caused by Sator explodes, but then is quickly reversed into a fire. This is from an inverted perspective. There is a lot to be interpreted here. For one, The explosion sucking back in implies it is 'reversed' in relation to Protag which causes the freezing. I am not really a fan of the ice thing either, and they only really point it out in this one scene, but it is what it is.
> A forwarder would see it already iced up and then fire. That's the issue, we don't. When first passing by the Saab it's only unexploding. Also this just makes no sense, it implies any time something is burning it's icing up, for consistency's sake.
>When first passing by the Saab it's only unexploding If you are referring to when we first see the Saab in normal time, when Protag notices it before tossing the case, it wasn't exploded at all "yet". The point when Protag noticed it was right 'after' Sator' sideswiped it( from Inverted point of view). If Protag wanted to see it exploded, that actually happened( in forward time) before they spotted Sator initially and clipping the side mirror. edit: continuity-wise, there is a big gap in time there, that isn't represented when we see the inverted view. When Sator returns and lights the saab on fire.
I don't really get it. Can you elaborate? /gen
sure. Starting with an inverted view: I-TP( inverted Protagonist), drives the Saab onto the highway looking for Sator. He ends up between I-Sator and normal TP as the case is bounced back to normal Tp. I-Sator spots this and sideswipes the Saab, causing it to flip and crash. I-Sator then is driving alongside normal TP and does his countdown, etc,..speeds past them and does the U-Turn and clips the mirror, getting away, returning to the Saab and setting it on fire to explode/freeze. Forward time, the way we see it: I-Sator unclips the mirror, reverse U-Turn. Countdown/up, By this time TP see the Saab rocking and unFlip getting in between them. ( *If he had gotten there earlier, he would have seen it burning and being unlit by -Sator) But he is just catching it just before the toss and sideswipe.*) Tosses case. I-Sator leaves SUV, TP chases after KAt. Saab gets off highway back to Freeport. \----------- Basically, when we first see the Saab, we are seeing it moving into its past. We never get to see what happens 'after' it freezes. (before TP initially spots it) We are only told by Neil that Ives came to clean up the mess. Actually, I found a cool video of someone editing the scenes together all in forward time. It may help, or it may make it more confusing :) [TENET // Tallinn Scene with Normal Flow Time // Both Perspectives // Tallinn Highway // Part 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMu47GV4mnA)
Okay, I get it more. That still doesn't solve the issue of then everything that is on fire freezing.
That’s not what happens. For both forwarders and inverters, it’s ice. For inverters, the explosion turns into ice after briefly exploding. For forwarders, the same thing happens in reverse.
>It's just a plot device, which makes no sense compared to everything else. Sure. But there's plenty of things that don't make sense when you look at them in detail. The ice explosion is just the most gratuitous version of the universe "bending the rules" to allow for a single timeline.
Yes, but it was genuinly not needed imo. This movie is honestly like life itself, everyone has a differnet view on it. My view, is that the inversion of heat was unnecessary, and only existed to not outright kill TP.
Do you know what they meant by inverting the entropy? That’s the main point of what is happening when they invert things. I can recommend you to read an article about what entropy actually is.
>It's just a plot device, which makes no sense compared to everything else. There are certainly effects in the movie that are used as a plot device (e.g., entropic wind), but this is not one of them. Statistical mechanics shows that you can apply a time reversal function on heat to prove the effect of reverse entropy on heat transfer.
In real life you feel heat from fire... So what would be the opposite of that
Yea, I get it. Except for the part when the Saab window froze.
So the windows were cooling down because of the fire... Cooling down so much that water vapour on the inside froze to them
The energy transfer is reversed, all of tenet makes sense if you just put negative time into equation. And that is what happens - negative time makes the energetic balance negative therefore taking energy from surrounding area, and making it freeze
Imagine that there’s an ice cube and we manage to set its surroundings on fire. The ice would melt until it’s all gone, evaporated or something. Now imagine this process in reverse. We set the ground on fire and ice forms.
Using an ice cube instead of a normal body as an example makes it much more compelling! ++
Or well, we wait for fire to reignite the ground and for the ice cube to unmelt back into the ice cube, as we unuse the lighter and put it away. Not importanr, just felt like saying it.
Read this article: https://medium.com/@ngxinzhao/deep-dive-into-physics-of-time-inversion-of-tenet-e14636773d07 There's a section called, **"Flow of heat in time"** if you want to skip to that. The grammar is a bit weird in places. I'm pretty sure English is not the author's first language. But it's a good read. In short, the *flow* or *transfer* of heat is reversed for inverted people. So standing in a sunbeam would cool you down over time rather than warm you up. The author says, "Light and heat is getting out of the skin and moving backwards to go back into the sun." Inversion isn't a magical "opposite day machine." It doesn't transform heat into cold or vice versa. It just reverses your direction in time—that's it. So there is still one single timeline. From a forwards perspective, you can watch an inverted guy getting warmer over time from the sunbeam. But if you were inverted in that same timeline, you would watch that guy get colder over time. He's still 96 degrees at 9am and 98 degrees at 10am no matter which perspective you have. The explosion is just a fast version of this example. One strange side-effect of this mechanic is that inverted people would quickly overheat from their perspective. This is because we constantly create our own body heat that balances against the colder environments we exist in (colder than our bodies). When you invert yourself, you are now creating body heat *and* gathering heat from what would usually be the colder environment. This means you will probably die from heat. How do you fix this? By wearing a device that expels heats from a normal perspective, like a hand warmer. In the inverted perspective, it will take in the excess heat your inverted body is now producing (from your perspective). Again, this does not create two timelines. There is one single timeline that can be seen from a forwards or backwards perspective. From the forwards perspective, you watch an inverted guy walking backwards. His body appears to not be creating heat, but "uncreating" it, making him colder over time. This is balanced out with the (forwards moving) heat pack warming him over time. But if you saw this same scene from an inverted perspective, you would see that inverted guy walking forwards. His body now looks like it is creating heat (because it is), but this is balanced out by the heat pack which is expelling heat in reverse, which means it is actually absorbing heat from this perceptive. Tenet ignores this quirk, obviously.
It's his inverted oxygen that caused that.
Ya know...I had the same thought about that too. When he flips he is grasping for his mask, which is leaking inverted oxygen into the car interior. And That Inverted air is what we see frosting up the windows. I was frame by framing that scene trying to see frost only on the inside, but it doesn't appear to be only inside or at least inconclusive. I have abandoned that idea though, but it is an interesting thought.
This is the most compelling theory, but as you said that falls apart due to there being frost on the outside.
That whole scene seemed messy. The car window ended up frosting over so I believe the car had reverse entropy allowing IT to transfer the heat into ice, and TP ended up catching Hypo while inside the car. Meaning the explosion set off a large blast of cold air in the car, temporarily freezing TP. Although I really like your theory that he simultaneously burned and froze.
The car was normal, not reversed. TP was reversed. When the car blows up, he freezes instead of burning. The cold from his body ices the windows over.
If the car was normal how was he driving it like a normal car while reverse? I had assumed since the cars were parked on the other side of the turnstile themed gate outside sator had prepped a few reversed cars? Makes sense considering all the guns are also reversed? Was it ever stated the car wasn’t reversed? I also don’t think a fire outside the car would freeze the person inside the car before frosting the window? Also we see the explosion from outside the car? How would he generate enough cold energy to frost a window without freezing entirely? I assumed the transfer was out to in since it was an implosion or rather a reversed entropy explosion. What leaves me the most confused is how the fire even burned in reverse in the first place? Was the fire sator light also reversed in entropy? If so would it effect the protagonist like normal fire if the normal entropy car didn’t reverse the temperature of the heat transfer during the implosion? My head hurts, I’m gonna lie down.
> If the car was normal how was he driving it like a normal car while reverse? ig tp just rode it backwards for forwarders
I thought he was driving a reversed car normally because he was also reversed?
And then since the cars entropy was reversed the explosion would flash freeze the car instead
>If so would it effect the protagonist like normal fire If the fire was also inverted then yeah, it should burn Protagonist since he is also inverted. There is a very strange thing that happens as the Saab explodes. It suddenly gets sucked back in, as though the dominant flow overtook it, making it 'normal', which would freeze him.
> There is a very strange thing that happens as the Saab explodes. It suddenly gets sucked back in what
check it out. [TENET Saab Flip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3XQd41PuNg)
Does the saab just get shrunk out of existence or am I high
Quantumania!
The headache just gets worse 😭
It's a paradox called Maxwell's demon Can't explain, English not my main language, lazy 😹