So I went to see this yesterday with two friends. It's not my first time in the cinema since after (during?) the pandemic - I saw Unhinged a few weeks back.
Spoilerfree;
Unengaging, messy, spectacular, creative, drawn-out, drab, stylish. All apply. Overall, it's basically a film which dials up the worst things about a Nolan film and removes all the rest. His strong suit has been creating engaging, stylish and creative stories with rather complex scripts and massive setpieces filled with practical effects. As with Inception - this film has a very specific gimmick involving time-travel which permeates almost every aspect of the film. Unlike Inception - that's all there is. There is no personal journey for the protagonist at all, we don't get to know him or anyone else really. There is a very weak emotional subplot that feels almost shoehorned in, and whenever it surfaces amidst the film it exists only as a contrived way for our character to make awkward choices that the plot needs him to make in order for the conflict to deepen.
The dialogue, of which there is a lot, is almost entirely exposition and maybe this is the films worst aspect. So much information about the world, the gimmick and the complex layers of the conflict are thrown at you piecemeal that it's difficult to sit down and enjoy the film - and the downside is that if you don't piece all of these things together, you will not be able to enjoy the action scenes to their fullest since they actually rely on you having grasped how they intend to use the gimmick in this particular scene.
At the end of the day, I feel this is peak Nolan. This is what Nolan is interested in - setting the stage for elaborate and unique setpieces. The plot is very complex, but also contrived. One aspect of this is that the protagonist, who is thrown into this world as a newcomer, seems to learn and accept this new reality far too quickly. He doesn't really act as the placeholder for the audience that we need him to be. None of the characters do, and they are all paper-thin. They are paper-thin clichés of Nolan characters - stoic, ready, excellent at their craft and never, ever dropping even the slightest quip to lighten the mood. This is a film that takes itself very, very seriously and unfortunately... It doesn't quite hold up to that.
As I mentioned, there are a few nice scenes. The time-travel aspect is certainly used creatively a couple of times, to good effect. The film works best when it's not trying to be all that epic, but focuses on how one character is trying to figure his way through a scenario. Of course - there's also larger action scenes and these do not work. Imagine the messiest of Nolan's action scenes and then add an extra layer of narrative complexity that unfolds at breakneck speed. I couldn't enjoy it.
I've loved all of Nolan's films. Great cinema experiences, all of them. Upon second viewing, I've always felt that their weaknesses have shined through. This is the first time I've seen a Nolan film in the cinema and felt a bit bored, or unengaged. There's just zero emotion and all technical and narrative gimmicks.
I was gonna write a bit with spoiler tags as well, but can't be arsed. There's lots of interesting setpieces in this which try to one-up the audiences expectations, but to my mind there's no outright provocative plot holes. Some things don't make sense, but the big problem with me is just that I don't really care about them, rather than them being glaring plot holes.
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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
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Originally Posted by bassman
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