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Comment by awiesenhofer | Hacker News Reader

> Even worse, Christopher Nolan's "Tenet" – released in September by Warner Bros – basically bombed at under $60M

This is so sad, it's such an incredible movie! Were it not for covid it surely would have been the blockbuster of the year in typical Nolan fashion.

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From what I heard from people who saw it in theaters, the sound mixing was terrible so you could only understand half the dialogue, and it was overall very confusing. It was basically made for multiple viewings.

I would like to confirm, it was just truly awful mixing — the only way the theater was able to get you to vaguely hear the dialog was to have volume loud enough the music physically hurt to listen to; the difference between the preceding trailers and the movie itself was so clear I can only assume someone important got hit in the head sometime during development.

International friends have mentioned it wasn’t an issue, because they had subtitles and could keep the film at reasonable volume, and they overall enjoyed the movie.

Maybe it was intentionally designed to eliminate the English speaking audience. But multiple viewings won’t help you.

I do wonder if I got some sort of hearing damage from seeing it in person. It was incredibly loud. I’ve been to many loud movies and several obnoxiously loud concerts, and Tenet was easily the loudest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Frankly, it was an irresponsible choice by its creators. If it physically hurts, viewers can’t engage with the movie at all. They’re distracted by pain. I can’t even call it an artistic choice because it goes so far beyond that. I would never see it in a theatre again, even without COVID.

I can’t wait to watch it at home so that I can properly digest and enjoy the movie.

I don't understand how this happens, and it's not just a Nolan issue. It's like the movie in its entirety has never been watched by the creators before it being released.

From my understanding, this is a Nolan problem. The Dark Knight rises had similar issues with sound mixing, especially with Bane's voice in certain scenes. I remember Interstellar having issues as well. Funny enough, Googling his last few movies (ex: "Dunkirk sound mixing problems") all lead to articles around the time of the movie's release and the audience complaining about sound problems.

Slightly off topic, but I personally use subtitles for everything I watch now because I got tired of missing dialogue for different reasons. More movies being on demand is a blessing for me in this regard.

I moved to subtitles on always years ago for that reason! Poor mixing and it made it harder to multitask. Sometimes I have to look at my phone watching TV or something and I might not totally comprehend a line, but then I can quickly glance up and read it. At this point it's subconscious. This also enables me to enjoy foreign films and shows a lot more, since I'm so used to reading subtitles already. I watched "To the Lake" on Netflix a few weeks ago and enjoyed it more than I thought I would after seeing it was all in Russian. That experience opened me up to watching more foreign live-action TV and I'm getting back into anime again. Come to think of it, I've watched subs anime for most of my life. There are only a few series that I think the English VAs are better than the original Japanese ones.

The only genre I do not turn subtitles on for, is stand-up comedy, for obvious reasons.

The audio mix for Interstellar was awful when I saw it in at the cinema too. I spoke to the manager, thinking it was a problem with the sound setup at that venue, and he said it was being widely reported around the world.

Devil's advocate, much of the first (and second...) times you watch the movie, your main job is to figure out the forward/backward time stuff. The sound mixing makes it less clear that the backwards speech is backwards. This a) sucks, but b) makes it more rewarding when you eventually figure it out.

But overall, I'd rather Christopher Nolan sit in a normal theater and listen to it before he signs off on the final sound product.

The sound mixing was very deliberate artistic expression that is somewhat controversial. See https://www.indiewire.com/2020/11/christopher-nolan-director...

This is all Nolan movies. You've got to go in expecting not to be able to understand what they're saying.

Saw it in theatre a few days ago, and agree that the sound mixing was bad, making the dialogue difficult to follow. Didn't he learn anything from Interstellar in regards to this?

Excellent movie otherwise, and I look forward to watching it again with subtitles. (Although it's possible I already have.)

Even better, this is a problem that is nearly 100% solved by watching with subtitles (esp at home). I mean, it may sound bad but at least you can understand it by reading.

People praise Solaris all the time. I've tried several times to watch it, but it's just unbearably dull.

The original is a crappy attempt at outdoing 2001. The remake isn't bad and Viola Davis's performance is worth seeing along with the twist added to the story.

Sorry, I meant the original.

Tenet was incredible. It’s one of the few movies lately that I spent a lot of time reading about and watching breakdowns and explanations after the movie.

Eh it may have been good but from the trailers my thinking was, “oh look another condescending Chris Nolan movie,” which is a shame since I loved his stuff up to inception.

Interstellar was condescending!?

"Interstellar" was an excellent film, physicists who haven't learned to suspend disbelief may have trouble enjoying it.

A friend of mine who is a physicist said he literally got up halfway through the movie, yelled "Fuck this" and walked out.

EDIT: Another physicist friend sat through it, but he said in his defense he was drunk and fell asleep.

I don't work as a physicist (but I got my degree in Engineering Physics @ CU-Boulder, 2009) and I went to see Interstellar in IMAX on opening night. I really enjoyed it overall, and the scenes involving the realistically-rendered black hole were worth it alone.

I'm relatively easy to please when it comes to movies, but to each their own of course.

I'd probably be more inclined to use a word like pretentious. I actually liked Inception quite a bit but didn't much care for Interstellar.

That’s the word I was looking for

Ah damn I thought that was before Inception. Although, yeah, it kinda was.

Opinions vary. We walked out of the cinema when cars starting traveling in reverse. Simply unwatchable, utter crap. For reference, I liked Interstellar very much.

I'm almost sure it would have bombed in any year, in fact, because everyone is postponing releases and freezing production until Covid-19 passes, it probably got an even higher box office than what it would have got in a competitive environment.

Yeah, every single person I know who started to watch it, gave up in the first 30 minutes - excepting me. I mean the final movie twist was obvious and my wife called it before getting up from the living room and leaving to browse her phone in bed.

The editing was rough and it wasn't fully explained what was happening. What other team members, that weren't the team members betraying him and not the guy in the chair "who lasted 18 seconds"? What?

I didn't like it that much 6/10 from multiple perspectives.

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