#inversion science got me real messed up lmao

[iamtheprotagoneil]

Part I I found a pre-release interview with RPattz about Neil in a Spanish mag. "I'm still not sure what I can say about my character without revealing too much. Let's say he is complex, as the world he movies in, and this complicates his desires, or maybe he sees [his desires] as secondary. There's no ideology that convinces him, and he refuses to reduce the world to what is right and what is wrong. Maybe he doesn't have the time to think if what he does is correct, or what he desires is wrong"

hi, friend. idk if you meant for this to have a part ii, but i only got this one ask in my inbox, so i’ll answer it for now.

anyways, this just confirms what we’ve already known, doesn’t it? that neil would always put duty above his desires because that’s just how good he is. but then “there’s no ideology that convinces him” makes me think of how neil didn’t actually do it for the sake of the world. sure it might be his sense of duty that urged him into that turnstile and march down that hypocenter to open the door, but it was his love for his protagonist that rushed him forward when volkov was advancing and took a bullet to the head.

it also makes me think of how he’d be convinced to join tenet. perhaps not by the ideology it presented, but by the man who recruited him – who gave him a better purpose for everything he’s done and would do.

and it would make sense that neil would see the world more in grey terms than just pure black and white. he was an intelligent man, after all. i’m not sure what “desires” rpattz was talking about in that interview, but i imagine it had to do with his growing feelings for the protagonist? the feelings he’d carry with him through the years of inversion, and have to shove down to make room for duty and the greater good when it was finally time to go?

and it’s funny that rpattz mentioned how he didn’t have time to think about his actions and said desires. neil would have the whole mission already layout for him the moment he accepted it – and he would accept it without a second thought, with the incentive of saving the protagonist of the story. throughout the movie, he’d just do most things as planned, in accordance with the mission briefing he’d been given. and he’d just do it; he wouldn’t think too hard on it because what’s happened, happened. there was no point in dwelling, just doing his parts to set everything else in motion.