Submarine Channel

James Bond v Batman: Nolan, villains and plot holes

/Yassin/ Nolan knows how to write and direct a good villain. In The Dark Knight, Joker was an ideological challenge to Batman.

The Joker had its own character arc and even though he wanted to just wreak havoc, he was clear about his motives.

Even in Dunkirk, where there is no single Nazi soldier in sight, the film still manages to convince viewers that the enemy is everywhere, the danger is omnipresent.

With this in mind, I was deeply disappointed by Andrei Sator, the villain of Tenet interpreted by Kenneth Branagh. Sator is just your regular Sunday-morning-cartoon-villain who wants to destroy the world.

Furthermore, Branagh is an excellent Irish actor with a poorly exaggerated Russian accent. Come on Nolan, if you want to have a Russian character, please cast a Russian actor or at least somebody who actually speaks the language!

But the worst thing about Tenet is the pretentious plot which deliberately confuses the viewer with vague explanations. Honestly, Tenet really feels like the first draft of a script that needed a few revisions. The film has some huge plot holes—why travel across time and space to use a time reverse machine, while you are standing right in front of it?—and the sloppy edit just slaps you from one scene to another.

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This article is part of Submarine Channel’s interactive review of Tenet. You can start exploring it here.