10 Dumbest Movie Plot Twists Of 2020
5. The Protagonist Is The Mastermind - Tenet
Audiences remain massively divided on whether or not Christopher Nolan's Tenet is a masterfully complex sci-fi action film or a sloppy, near-incomprehensible work of filmmaking hubris.
As much as most can agree that the action sequences are creative and visually stunning, many have misgivings about the film's twist ending, which is dropped in the audience's lap in the final moments and barely elaborated upon.
The final scenes reveal that not only was Neil (Robert Pattinson) recruited by the Protagonist (John David Washington), but that the Protagonist has actually been the mastermind of the Tenet organisation all along, and set in motion the events to stop Sator's (Kenneth Branagh) apocalyptic ploy.
Granted, quite a few fans predicted this twist months before the movie came out, as the in-over-his-head operative turning out to be the man at the top fits neatly within the film's theme of how reality, perspective, and context can be altered by the flow of time.
But for many, it just wasn't a twist that felt earned or even particularly coherent: a smug attempt by Nolan to once again prove his cerebral smarts as a filmmaker, yet failing to do the leg-work to earn our reverence as he did in the likes of Memento and Inception.