algorithm

This article contains spoilers for Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. The Protagonist didn’t even know what it was when he first saw it. John David Washington’s lead character without a name thinks he’s looking at a bizarre “encapsulation” when he first sees a piece of the “Algorithm” in Tenet’s opening moments—which is to say he thinks it’s a nuclear weapon. Hidden inside of a backpack at an opera house under siege, what else could justify this level of violence and chaos during the movie’s confounding start? But then, that’s the type of linear thinking which the Protagonist and his audience are asked…