10 Movies That Pissed You Off Straight Away
2. The Atrocious Sound Mix - Tenet
Christopher Nolan's Tenet is a sublime technical marvel from an aesthetic standpoint, and an incredibly annoying one from the perspective of sound mixing and basic comprehension.
Despite much praise for Nolan's imaginative, timey-wimey premise, many were left irritated by Nolan's intentionally muddy sound mix, whereby it was difficult for the audience to understand much of the spoken dialogue, which is often drowned out by both music and ambient noise.
This is apparent from the opening Kiev opera house siege - a spectacular sequence from a visual standpoint, but one rendered immediately irritating because it's extremely difficult to understand what The Protagonist (John David Washington) is saying to his mark.
The Protagonist explains to his target, "You've been made. This siege is a blind for them to vanish you," but without subtitles you'd struggle to glean that rather important piece of information.
As a result viewers are paradoxically gripped by the sheer stylistic brio of what they're watching and thoroughly annoyed that Nolan so insistently opts for "impressionistic" audio design over something that, you know, paying customers can actually understand.