Why You Can't Hear The Dialogue in Tenet

It sounds like Nolan makes movies for film geeks, rather than for people that enjoy watching movies.

Because your hearing sucks ass.

Period

Ive never had a difficulty with Nolan films. Ever. Its you.

i tried watching this movie on a flight with bad earphones, chinese subtitles and engine noise, i had no chance

Bane wasn't even difficult to hear

its like a bad font combination. it amateurish

It's not a good creative choice, it's just Nolan's intended choice..

McConaughey explaining something important to his daughter while pointing out something off screen: *unintelligible
Nolan: Dialogue are just for the vibes

How about making the audio properly.

I put my tv on 100 and HEARD NOTHING

It’s not a problem

Just use subs, your welcome bro. Bye

this scene was NOT supposed to be heard, the translation in fact have the same "issue"

Sounds like Nolan doesn't care if the poors can understand his movies, but he'll gladly take our money anyway

Neil: "Yoga" (smiles)

If you distract ppl with inaudible dialog, theyll be too absorbed with that to notice how Nolan casually ignores the laws of physics and causality...

Is it a good creative choice? No. No, it's not.

I didn’t like Tenet at all when I saw it in the theatre. Couldn’t make head nor tale of the already bafflingly complex story because of the way the dialogue was presented.
I decided to go back and give it another try last week and watched it with the subtitles and I absolutely loved it.

The sound mix was a big problem with this film no matter how hard Nolan wants to double down on it.
Imagine Memento with half the dialogue missing. That just wouldn’t have worked at all.

The argument that you can understand the emotions of a scene without understanding words doesn't really hold water unless the scene itself is an emotional scene, with emotional performances, and not just a moment of dialogue where characters are unemotionally delivering exposition. In addition to his audio choices, Nolan often also has issues with emotion in his films, and I don't think trying to forcibly push people away from making sense of his dialogue is going to help people connect emotionally with his work.

The problem started with Nolan's work on Buster Keaton's films. Couldn't hear a damn word over that rag-time piano soundtrack.

Honestly I’m Nigerian, speak and understand English perfectly but when I watch movies like these and not hear/understand the dialogue I just assume it’s because my ears aren’t used to some of these foreign accents. Good to know it’s a general problem

I saw Tenet in a community theatre in my home town when it had just reopened. I had previously seen 2001: A Space Odyssey in that same theatre, and the sound was waaaay too loud. So watching Tenet in that theatre was pure pain to my eardrums. Thankfully, they fixed the sound system not long after, but for the longest time I thought the bad sound mixing was my theatre's fault, not the movie. Now I know it's both their faults lmao

Who wants to hear it ? It's complete bollocks anyway

It also comes down to whether the dialogue is hidden under diegetic audio or not. If people are talking in a noisy club and you can't hear them, that feels intentional. If it's drowned out by a normal action movie soundtrack or background noise that wouldn't be that loud, it feels like a mistake.

I- the first time watching tenet sucks. Universally not a good viewing experience. That's pretty obviously intentional. You're rewarded for watching the movie a dozen times and actually figuring out the canon. I figured that I couldn't hear the dialogue in theaters cuz I wasn't supposed to. Then took it home, deciphered what actually happened, got all the dialogue, and it's one of my favorite movies. It wouldn't have mattered if I could've heard the dialogue in the theater. It still would've sucked. I'd argue even more. But getting all those payoffs on watch #9 is fucking incredible

Well, Nolan's films are that good because of the music. It's doing 60-70% of the work. Seen that way it's totally understandable that he's making it so much louder than the dialogue 😅

Who says I wanna hear you talk? ... What? - The Dark Knight

Interstellar came out before tenet

in a theatre. I feel like im living in the film

It's not a problem. He's doing it on purpose, he wants to push the boundaries on realism. His whole filmmaking is based on that.

Nolans artistic decisions are arrogant.

the problem is Nolan knows what the dialog is so he thinks its clear and audible when he hears it. its like not being able to understand song lyrics until someone tells you what it says and then suddenly you can hear it.

someone needs to tell him to knock it off and he needs to stop being too much of a control freak to listen.

I saw the Tenet IMAX rerelease last year at the lincoln square IMAX in NYC. probably the best theater in the country. it was every bit as bad as any other theater.

I just watched this on 4K Blu-ray with 7.2 audio and I understand maybe half the lines... Very frustrating experience.

Watching tenet in my grandmas living room was a workout😮‍💨😮‍💨

A Masterpeace. Thank you for this review.

These are just fire comments

I thought the muffling of the dudes dialog in the port facility was to convey that Neil isn't really listnening to him but his mind is on how to exploit the weaknesses that he is seeing, and only surfacing from his thoughts to ask questions when he needed some information from the dude.

TLDR: IMAX cameras are ridiculously loud and no amount of editing can help remove the sound.

i watched tenet in korea and even though i'm a native english speaker i found myself having to read the korean subtitles to understand what was going on

Why couldn't he just ship 2 edits? Is editing like half the budget or he just lazy/dumb?

He is demonstrating that the character isn't actually listening to the dude telling him about the facilities. He asked questions to keep his mind off of the suspicious activity of spying on the security system, in a smooth way

My opinion, the Tenet mix is straight up bad. If he’s mixing for the highest quality systems then why is it in 5.1 and not 7.1 or Atmos? The mix is so loud I have to turn down my volume to about 40% of what I normally have it on to avoid an earache

And then he made a movie where you could hear the dialogue and they gave him an Oscar for it. There you go Chris. Keep turning up the dialogue and you'll sweep the season.

i watched tenet for the first time the other day on prime video, i had no issues with the audio at all, when i watched oppenheimer in cinemas i had no issues with the dialogue either however every time i watch interstellar thats when i notice how quiet the dialogue is and its a shame cause interstellar is my favourite of his films 😭

Man, I thought I was going insane. I absolutely love Tenet and I've watched it 3 times now just in the last few weeks, but at first I was so confused. Specifically, the pacing of the movie felt insanely fast in the first arc, and the story progressed so quickly despite giving extremely little information. And then the music was mixed very loud, which I like a lot, but I think that added to the strangeness. But then I kept missing what it was that they were saying. My first viewing was almost dream-like, and I would periodically skip backward because I couldn't tell if the dialogue sounded muffled, or if I just wasn't paying enough attention. And THEN to top it all off, John David Washington's performance in combination with his lines felt really weird at point. Lines like "Made his billions in GAS," or "Why does it feel so strange?"

Subtitles, all this video needed to say was use subtitles. Honestly i didnt know that people couldnt hear it, i watched it on my laptop with subtitles and when I heard that people couldnt hear it, i tried it without subtitles. I could not hear a word😂 But rather than trying to understand what the filmaker is doing, just do what you want. You cant hear? Try different ways to hear, subtitles, better cinematic quality. The filmaker is not going to listen to anyone after he has made up his mind. So just do what we do best, adapt.

there is difference between dialog muffed by sound from surrounding world vs music. muffled with music is just stupid. there is no music in real life except in elevators.