Every Detail Matters: Why Del Toro's Obsession with Craft Makes You Never Want to Leave, and Why Nolan's Doesn't Care If You Do

(Spoiler alerts: story elements Del Toro's Frankenstein and Nolan's Tenet are discussed herein.)

I watched Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, along with the behind-the-scenes about how he made it. I realized something that’s been bothering me for years: the difference between a filmmaker who respects your attention and one who doesn’t.

Because I also tried to watch Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. I couldn’t finish it. Now I understand why.

Every Single Choice Serves the Story

Del Toro was talking about working with his costume designer. She mentioned—almost casually—that she adapted patterns from insects and other natural forms as designs on Elizabeth’s dress. Not because it looked cool. Not because it was pretty. But because those insects meant something about who Elizabeth is and what the story is exploring.

Every. Single. Choice. Serves. The. Story.

The colors of the lab aren’t random—they reflect Victor’s mental state. The way the composer layers the music creates tension that mirrors the emotional arc. The set design, the colors, the light, all of it is working together to tell you something about the world and the characters inhabiting it.

Del Toro said something that hit me: if something is wrong or off, it pops you out of the movie.

That’s his whole philosophy around filmmaking. Every element needs to reinforce the immersion. The moment something breaks that internal logic—the moment you notice a choice that doesn’t fit the character, a color that contradicts the mood, a musical cue that doesn’t match the emotional beat—your brain registers the inconsistency. You’re yanked out of the world he’s building. You’re reminded that you’re watching a movie, not living in one.

He obsesses over every detail. Not because he’s a perfectionist or micromanaging. But because he understands that immersion is built on consistency. Every choice reinforces every other choice. It’s a symphony, not a collection of random notes.

When You Notice the Craft, the Story Has Failed

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if I’m noticing how cool the lighting is or how pretty the cinematography is, you’ve done a sucky job at filmmaking on the story level.

Something could be gorgeous, and if done right, I will register it—like “oh, pretty” or “cool”—but I won’t stop to admire it. Frankenstein’s lab is gorgeous. I saw it. I registered the beauty. But I didn’t go, “Oh wow, the set building and cinematography here is fantastic.” I saw the beautiful overgrown entryway of the lab tower, the big Medusa head inside what was to become the main lab area and went “ooooo,” but I still followed along with the story. They were talking about where they could position the equipment in the lab, and I was like, yeah, this place is HUGE, and you get the scope of it within the story.

That’s the difference. The beauty serves the narrative. It doesn’t distract from it.

When you notice the craft more than the story, the filmmaker has prioritized spectacle over substance. That’s exactly what happens in Tenet.

Why I Couldn’t Finish Tenet

(I concede that it is possible that by some miracle, if I had watched Tenet in its entirety the rest of the movie may have answered some of the questions that came up for me. Possible, yes. Likely, no. But admittedly, some of the following assumptions may be faulty because of this.)

I sat down to watch Tenet because I saw the concept—playing with time, chaos, weapons that moved backwards in time. I’m a total time travel junkie (hello, Doctor Who!). I was genuinely curious.

I made it… maybe halfway through before I just couldn’t anymore.

I couldn’t properly articulate why until I watched Del Toro talk about his craft.

Tenet kept yanking me out. Constantly.

The dialogue was incomprehensible—not because it was complex, but because I literally couldn’t hear it. The sound mixing was so bad that I’d miss crucial plot points, then have to rewind, then miss them again. That’s not immersion. That’s frustration. That’s being ripped out of the movie every thirty seconds.

The action sequences were so visually chaotic that I couldn’t follow what was happening. I’d look away for a second and lose the thread entirely. The editing was so disorienting that my brain couldn’t process the spatial relationships. I wasn’t engaged—I was confused and exhausted.

The story itself—the logic kept breaking. But it wasn’t just that the plot didn’t track. The characters didn’t make sense. Like, at all.

Nolan sets you up to read a character as a certain kind of person, then has them behaving in ways that make absolutely no sense for why that character would do such a thing. Over and over. With practically every single character.

When you’ve been lied to over and over like that, it’s like, well, fuck. I don’t even know what to think anymore and now I don't even care, which is a death sentence for a good story.

A friend kept telling me, “It’s a MOVIE. You’re not supposed to understand why everything happens in it.” Like I was too picky about understanding bits of it. “Maybe they explain it later on…”

No. It’s just bad writing. Just magically having something happen because you need it to make the plot move along. That’s lazy, and it pisses me off.

Characters That Make No Sense

Take the wife of the arms dealer. She’s supposedly frightened for her life, trapped. Before the scene where her husband hits and kicks her, it's implied that she hasn't been physically abused. But in her explanation, it’s just that he’s blackmailing her with a painting that’s a fake (she’s an art authenticator), and he restricts her access to her son. I was willing at this point to fill in that he's also psychologically manipulating her, controlling her, threatening her and her son's lives. Okay fine. I was going with it.

In another meeting with super spy protagonist, she talks about being hopeless that she doesn’t even care that he’s got other women on his boat—clearly having affairs. Only that she’s jealous of another woman’s freedom to just dive into the ocean because she can’t even free herself because of her son.

I started to have problems with super spy dude and the arms dealer's wife's interactions because she continued to talk to him. And then because he needs to talk to the arms dealer, he come up with this plan that she introduce super spy to her husband as someone she met him at a conference before (like the bodyguards wouldn’t have noticed when they're tailing her every move). So now she brings up that “He will think I’m having an affair,” and he’s like, “Great, that’s perfect,” and she’s like, “But he’ll kill you.” He says, “No, he won’t. I just want an audience so I can basically partner up with him to steal the plutonium he needs to build his future machine.”

He gets invited to family dinner. He’s giving the wife a kiss on the head and sitting down. The arms dealer is like, “Have you slept with my wife yet?” Like he wouldn’t have already known that because, obviously, bodyguards. Then he listens to the dude’s proposition and agrees to it. Doesn’t just kill the dude. Just… agrees.

What the fuck.

The wife—in fear of her life—would NEVER have put herself into a situation where her husband would have thought she cheated on him. Fuck no. If she’s so worried about her son and survival, that would have been an absolute not on your life buddy. Even if the protagonist is promising to get her out of there, the risks to her son would have been too high. That made no sense based on what she told him about her situation.

The arms dealer partnering with this dude made no sense. As if he wouldn't have seen through super spy's really lame cover story. Okay okay, so at this point I was even willing to say okay maybe arms dealer sees through the lies and decides to use super spy dude to get what he wants without having to use his own resources. That still didn't explain wifey's willingness to have him think she was having an affair and that she could get away with that scot free.

The Plutonium Heist That Broke Me

Then there’s the whole heist of the plutonium. They get all these trucks to converge around the truck and box in the one carrying the “plutonium,” with two cars—one in front and one in back.

I looked at Paul and was like, “????”

Paul said, “There is no way that’s what they would have had to move that kind of material. It would have been a whole platoon of vehicles. Even an armored truck driver would have seen those trucks coming and would never have let that happen—to get boxed in." And then proceeded to switch away from the movie to show me YouTube footage of an armored truck guy fleeing an attack, which was pretty cool.

Anyway, so back to the movie, protagonist manages to get on top of the plutonium truck, drops a little explosive and gets in, manages to use another bit of explosive to open the safe door, and get a little plastic suitcase that supposedly has plutonium in it.

So after talking to arms dealer about having the proper resources to move plutonium, super spy dude just set off explosives. Right next to what he thought was plutonium. A lot of plutonium. Um... Yeah, no worries about setting off an explosive next to radioactive material, which while it is relatively stable in metal form, can accidentally set off a nuclear reaction or at minimum a radioactive fire with an explosion right next to it. Just saying.

Anyway...

So super spy gets back into the get away car and he opens the plastic case that supposedly has plutonium with absolutely no protection on. Good thing for him, it's not plutonium. It's a cylinder, presumably the future tech the arms dealer needs to finish his future backwards chaos creating mechanism. Super spy takes cylinder out of the case saying, “This isn’t plutonium.” His partner says, “That’s what he’s after,” and super spy is like, “No way.” Wow, really dude?

Anyway...

The arms dealer shows up going backwards in his car with the wife tied up in the back, careening along. Demands the case. The partner insists, “Don’t give him the case.” Super spy is like, “Well, it’s not plutonium. It doesn’t matter.” Never you mind that was his whole mission, to stop arms dealer from bringing the future war to current time with backwards moving arms. So because the arms dealer threatens to kill the wife, super spy decides, yeah, okay totally cool, here's the thing you clearly desperately want. I'll just hand it over and give it to you even though i don't know what it is because I'm too stupid to figure out that this is probably the exact thing he needs to finish his future backwards time machine.

Anyway...

So now that arms dealer has his future backwards device, he jumps into another car, leaving wife in a car that continues to careen backwards, oh yeah, the car's going backwards this whole time.

Anyway...

Super spy tries to save the wife who has now spent a supposedly exhilierating amount of time trying to use her toes over the front seat to unlock the door so that super spy can try to save her. The car is fantastically still going top speed in spite of no one actually touching the gas pedal because, I guess, future backwards time chaos?

Anyway...

We have exhilarating (so so exhilarating) few seconds of super spy trying to get into the other car to save the wife while the cars are banging into each other. Or trying to grab the wife or something. I don't know. Do I even care?

Anyway...

Super spy finally heaves himself into the back seat with the wife. Then reaches over the front seat and can...barely...reach...the...brake...pedal...with...his...fingers.... Oh thank goodness, he managed to tap the brakes with his fingertips. Car screeches to a halt. Wife is save. Whoopie. Except if that's all it took to stop the car which really shouldn't have been continuing to go after there was no one there to actually keep it going, the wife totally could have gotten into the front seat to do that herself.

That whole car chase scene was what broke me, and I couldn’t anymore. (And yes, this was an extraordinarily long description of that particular scene. Because it annoyed me that much.)

It’s About Ego, Not Storytelling

Here’s what really infuriates me about Tenet: it’s not about the story. It’s about Nolan’s ego.

He’s trying so hard to show, “See, I’m so clever! I’m making this movie that runs backward and forward at the same time!” If you don’t follow it, you just must not be smart enough to follow it.

That’s not intentional storytelling. That’s disrespecting your audience.

I’m taking time out of my day—time away from other things I’m doing—and you’ve just tried to tell me over and over that I’m too stupid to understand your movie. No, Nolan. You care more about your ego or a clever concept than you do about a good story and why any of your characters—or we—should care about anything that's going on.

The convenience of it all. The protagonists were looking for a way to create a fire on the outside of the vault to trip the alarm and protection system so they could go look around inside—because the inside locks would be easier to pick or something, I don’t know. The buddy was like, “Yeah, no problem." Of course it's child's play to find the right sized planes that have enough fuel, with no one on board except the crew whom super spy can totally fool with “Oh, we only have vegetarian meals, is that right?” Granted, if the crew isn't expecting something, I will concede that the two of them could have overcome the crew. But to have a plane that they can steal that happens to be in the right terminal at the right exact time they need it, with no passengers, just crew is a far stretch and then just lucked into finding it in time and execute without having done any research at all? We need a plane to run into the vault. Voila! Look, plane that fits all the criteria!

Stupid? No, not stupid. Infuriating.

If Nolan couldn’t even bother to take the time to figure out details that make sense in his movie, why the heck should I care?

Just conveniently having something happen because you need it to make the plot move forward — that’s lazy and bad storytelling.

Del Toro Respects the Story. Nolan Respects His Ego.

Del Toro respects the story. He respects the audience. His obsession with making these details matter isn’t fluffery—it’s a gift.

It’s not saying you have to be smart enough to follow the story. It’s saying: I’m making this story so real, so visceral, that you don’t even know why you understand and feel it so hard because I'm making sure all of that structure is solid underneath. That foundation is there so that you can float with the characters and their pain and love and realization and not be bogged down with trying to figure the plot out.

Because Del Toro does this, Frankenstein is beautiful. In a soul-hurting kind of way. Visceral. Deep. Sharp. Human. Very, very human. With love and hope and pain and everything in between.

He rips open the things we don’t want to look at and shows them to us—not in a grotesque or hideous way. Even the scenes where we should be horrified, with Victor Frankenstein taking apart bodies to create his obsession, it’s beautiful. Clinical. We see that Victor is an artist, as is Del Toro.

Nolan’s characters are there doing things just because it fits something to drive the story or to be manipulative and create a dramatic moment for no other reason than the story needs something, anything, to move along to the next hollow plot point.

Del Toro’s movies have soul because he pours himself into them. He shares himself—things like his feelings around his relationship with his father, his son. Whereas Tenet feels like it’s all flash and bang on the outside because you're not supposed to see that there's nothing underneath. There’s no real substance to it.

The Difference Between Complexity and Confusion

Complexity isn’t the same as confusion.

Del Toro’s Frankenstein is complex. There are multiple storylines, multiple perspectives, deep thematic layers, visual metaphors woven throughout. But you can follow it. Every element is clear enough that you can engage with it, or not, even if you’re also discovering deeper meanings on a second or third viewing.

Tenet is confusing. The dialogue is inaudible. The action is incomprehensible. The character motivations break down. The plot logic contradicts itself. When you point this out, the response is always: “You just didn’t understand it. It’s complex.”

No. If I can’t hear the dialogue, that’s not complexity. That’s a technical failure. If I can’t follow the action, that’s not depth. That’s poor editing. If the characters don’t behave consistently, that’s not nuance. That’s bad writing.

Del Toro respects your intelligence enough to make his complexity followable. He trusts you to engage with the themes and the metaphors and the layered storytelling, but he doesn’t make you work so hard just to understand what’s happening that you miss the meaning.

Nolan seems to think that if you can’t understand his movie, it’s because you’re not smart enough.

No. It’s because you told a shitty story.

Every Detail Is a Language

What I’ve realized watching del Toro’s process is that he’s not just making a movie. He’s building a universe where every element reinforces every other element.

The costume designer knows what the production designer is doing. The composer knows what the cinematographer is doing. Everyone is telling the same story. When one person makes a choice, it ripples through the entire production because everyone else has to make sure their choices reinforce it.

That’s why his films are so engulfing. You’re not just watching a story—you’re immersed in a world where everything makes sense, everything has meaning, and everything works together.

When you see Elizabeth’s dress with the insect patterns, you’re not just seeing a costume choice. You’re seeing a visual representation of her connection to nature, her delicacy, her place in the ecosystem of the story. When you see the color of the lab, you’re not just seeing a set design. You’re seeing Victor’s mental state, his obsession, his descent into darkness. When you see Frankenstein’s creation, he’s not a hideous patchwork—he’s beautiful.

Every detail is a language. If you speak that language fluently—if every element is consistent and intentional—then the audience doesn’t have to work to understand. They just feel it.

That’s why del Toro’s Frankenstein is a love letter to the human condition. Every choice, every detail, every frame is in service of something deeper—the story of what it means to be seen, to be loved, to choose grace over destruction, to accept the monsters within us and still find beauty.

That’s the craft. That’s the difference. That’s true storytelling.