Ellen Page’s character in the new Christopher Nolan epic “Inception” turns to her fellow dream raiders mid film and asks, “whose sub conscious are we in again?”
Darned if we know, Ellen.
“Inception” isn’t the best film of the summer as critics and movie fans alike hoped.
But it’s the most maddening.
Nolan’s new film requires more brain power than a Mensa meeting. It makes up for every mindless action flick we’ve seen all year, if not this decade. Audience members should do Sudoku puzzles to warm up for this mental workout.
If only all that synapse stretching could unravel the tapestry of story elements sprawled out before our blinking eyes.
Leonardo DiCaprio, starring in his second dream-saturated movie of 2010, plays a man who can enter your dreams and extract ideas from them. Or, if the customer demands it, place a runaway thought in someone’s mind.
DiCaprio’s Cobb is hired by an Asian businessman (Ken Watanabe) to infiltrate the mind of the heir to a rival, played by Cillian Murphy.
Cobb must assemble a dream team for the gig, from his regular sidekick (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to a new recruit specializing in dream architecture (Page).
Complicating matters – the understatement of understatements – is Cobb’s wife (Marion Cotillard), a woman who lives in his dreams and keeps getting in the way whenever he does his mental landscaping.
What’s frustrating about “Inception” is the care Nolan brings to the film, fusing tiny logic circuits together into one long current that can’t help but intrigue.
The love story actually resonates, slicing through the narrative haze in impressive fashion. Credit Cotillard for enlivening a woefully underwritten role and giving the film a semblance of heart.
Page’s character is a fledgling dream expert, and a quick study at that. She represents the audience’s surrogate, and Cobb is constantly getting her up to speed on how dream busting works. But his exposition-heavy banter weighs down nearly every key player in the movie.
It’s the kind of tale that requires characters to describe what they’re doing,why they’re doing it and what the impact of their actions will be. That isn’t storytelling, and no amount of Nolan’s signature razzle dazzle makes it so.
The special effects teased in the trailer are dutifully mind boggling. Gordon-Levitt’s character has the most fun, engaging in zero gravity fisticuffs in one sequence that stands as a triumph of technical wizardry.
The score by Hans Zimmer is another marvel, a series of orchestral upper cuts that keeps the film at a near-fever pace.
That’s another problem with the film. “The Dark Knight,” Nolan’s previous epic, had a similar intensity, ramping up our emotions time and again until we were begging for the Joker to offer dark comic release.
Here, you won’t find many laugh lines, and when a bit of humanity peers through the haze it’s a chance to gulp clean air – and take a pause – before it’s back to studying the inscrutable storyline.
For all of Nolan’s attention to detail, major logic holes jump off the screen without 3-D glasses. At one point someone is firing at the bad guys with a standard-issue weapon when another character suggests he “dream” up a better gun.
Voila, a massive gun is suddenly on screen. Why don’t all the heroes try that trick?
“Inception” is so bold, so brash that it spends far too much time explaining just how bold and brash it is. That’s time that should have been spent letting us get to know the characters, the story arcs and the whole messy narrative.
(Photo: Leonardo DiCaprio stars as a man who can enter people’s dreams in “Inception,” the latest film from director Christopher Nolan./Warner Bros./Photo Credit: Stephen Vaughan)
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I think this film certainly could have been rooted better and delve into greater depth into its subject matter. Nothing said about the psychology of dreams and REM (rapid eye movement sleep)? Strange is the absence of any psychological approach to dreams. I think also I don’t get the concept of sticking tubes in veins and connecting it to a magic briefcase to enter a dream? I think also there is a blurring of “dreams” and “subconsciousness” which are two separate non inter-related things. Nolan has not exactly created an intelligent flick here but the special effects are probably what people will take away. It’s not classical film-making and @ PStags: there is arguably little rationale for watching a film let alone appreciating it in the longer term if it does not make some critique. This film’s pomposity could be sensed months ago and @ patrick I think Dicaprio isn’t a gifted actor and needs to get a new look.
I have to agree. After the premise was laid out it was just like any other recent summer flick. So much hype for as much disappointment. Not as bad as Watchmen in that regard. The first half of the movie was a bumbling clif note for the rules of the second half, which failed to connect congruently at the climax and end scene. The effects were beyond first rate. Serious next generation shit. They did feats I didn’t think possible. Also the concept was very cool, but there was no development for any character but leo. I couldn’t have cared less if they were shot in a hotel hallway or blown up on a snow covered hill. I don’t want to bitch too much, cuz I couldn’t write anything this good EVER. But the hype….it compelled me.
@rrpjr Yeah, I could see how you could get bored with seeing an entire city block fold in on itself, or a fight scene that goes on during suspended gravity and shifting buildings. Yeah, seen that stuff like a million times over, I mean, if I saw that going on in real life, I’d be like “eh…whatever” and then prolly take a nap.
Oh an um… Christopher Nolan is a “hyperactive adolescent engineer”…totally man, he should have taken his Ritalin. Boy, if we had our way, Chris would be kick out of the movie industry, never to make a movie again and we can be in peace to watch…um whatever it is you actually like. My guess is something Micheal Bay made.
Whoa! Lots of comments and didn’t read them all, so sorry if I repeat someone.
I liked this movie and didn’t find it difficult to follow. However, I wouldn’t advise seeing it drunk or otherwise mentally impaired. Also, I recommend peeing before you go into the theater because if you leave during any part of “Inception” you will never catch up.
I’ll admit, there were holes, mostly about the science around inception, but I’ll allow it. I mean, it’s sci-fi and it’s just a frickin’ cool idea! I don’t care how they are doing it, just that they are doing it and it looks really awesome.
Yes, the characters were underdeveloped, but I felt it wasn’t their story, it was Cobb’s story. I could go more in depth with that discussion but I might give away too much of the plot.
So I’ll just leave it with this – I wanted to like this movie, and thankfully I really, really did like it! I thought it was quite a ride.
However, this could all could all be a dream…
PS I agree that you should be Rosen’s new film review guy. Agree 110%!!
“Audience members should do Sudoku puzzles to warm up for this mental workout.”
This is exactly why I like Inception so much. It’s only every few years that a movie comes out that doesn’t bore me to death with simplistic storytelling. I go to movies to have my worldview expanded. That’s what storytelling is all about after all. Thankfully this movie delivers in that respect. Money well spent.
@ mito:
All you need to do is think, and these “logic holes” that you think are there will be filled.
1) Yes, the dream box probably regulates everyone’s REM cycle, as well as puts them to sleep and probably one or two other things. However, the architect FILLS the dream with finely-crafted buildings, rooms, equipment, etc. The architect brings in a dream box, and the dreamer’s subconscious (or even the architect) makes the box work exactly how it would in real life. So, when the dreamer’s fall asleep within the dream, they go further into their subconscious.
2) Again, the dream worlds are designed to be real. You FEEL a gunshot in the dream just like you would in normal life. You feel any physiological reaction normally, including falling. (SPOILERS). However, in this movie the first level of dreaming involved a car falling off a bridge – while the car was in free-fall, the DREAMER of the next level down (Joseph-Gordon Levitt) was in the free fall, but sedated enough to stay dreaming, so he was just floating. This created the zero-g in his dream. He had to kick everyone out of the third level by creating an explosion that would launch them against the wall of the elevator they were in. Various other explosions and falls in the other dreams kicked the characters BACK UP into the previous levels.
3. The time aspect was actually pretty clear. It’s a FACT that the amount of time felt in a dream is greater than the amount of time spent in REM sleep. So, in INCEPTION, 5 minutes gives you 1 hour of dreaming (12 dream minutes per 1 real minute). On the second level dream, they get 1 hour for every 5 minutes spent in the 1st dream, which means 5 minutes in the REAL world turn into 12 hours at dream level two (I THINK I did the math right). This goes on and on, except the powerful sedative they used in the movie made it more like 48 dream minutes per 1 real minute, and so forth and so on.
next time just pay attention.
I think Inception was completely boring. I am a therapist and I was not intrigued in any way by this mess. Nolan totally wasted Joseph Gordan Levitt, Cillan Murphy and Ellen Page. They can do alot more as actors than what they did on Inception.
How does the fact that you are a therapist help make your argument that Nolan wasted the talents of three actors? MY therapist is a therapist and she LOVED Inception. She thought all the actors were perfectly cast, and she’s a therapist!
Less research.
Dream length varies in direct comparison of mins of life compared to mins in dream.
I’m a fan of Nolan’s but Inception’s plot doesn’t hold up to even casual scrutiny. I didn’t find it hard to understand at all. It’s not even close to as clever as it thinks it is. The first half of the film painfully sets out the rules of extraction and then the second half can’t even adhere to that logic.
Spoiler-filled rant below:
1. Basic rule -if you die in a dream, you go up a level (so if you die in a first level dream you go up to waking, if you die in a second level dream you go up to the first level dream). ]This happens at the beginning, and at the end. It’s the basic rule. Except, EXCEPT, for Fischer, after he’s killed in the third level, he goes down a level to ‘limbo’, the fourth level. But then Nolan quickly goes back on this exception, and the next time he’s killed in the third level, he goes up like he’s meant to, to the second level.
2. They get the ageing wrong in the opening/last sequence. Time moves slower on the fourth ‘limbo’ level, so the longer you spend there the more you’d age. Cobb goes first, then Watanabe follows after giving him some cover in the ski shack. So Watanabe should be younger than Cobb in the opening sequence. But he’s obviously a lot older. It’s just a mistake but it’s SUCH a glaring one.
3. Apparently you can just dream up the weaponry you bring into other people’s dreams. So why didn’t they do that all the time? Bring with them an armoured tank, or some kind of awesome impenetrable safe room to keep their bodies as they go down to the next level?
4. At the beginning the distinction is -architect designs the dream world, subject populates it with people. But then Fischer populates his dream world with a collision-course freight train. Does a train count as part of the population? I would have thought it would be the infastructure.
5. What does Cobb actually do in the heist? His only purpose seems to be to bring the Cotillard-shaped liability with him. He doesn’t design the dream, he doesn’t disguise himself as other people, he doesn’t cover the sedation. If I was the others I’d tell him just to sit this one out.
Apart from all the mistakes, I found the execution a little torturous. There’s a point where it’s obvious exactly what’s going to happen and what the ‘twist’ is regarding his wife, but after that point there’s still about thirty minutes of watching that damn van coming off the bridge in mid air.
Some of the action is fun, some of the scenes are beautiful. But it should have either embraced its lack of logic and been a ball-buster thriller (which it wasn’t thrilling enough to be) or at least tweaked the plot so it had internal logic. It’s amazing that a film which spends so long laying out its own long-winded rules is too stupid to even try to follow them in the second act.
Please explain to me… Why at some points while in the 3rd level some actions were felt from the van..but during the fall they weren’t weightless like the “rules” you lined out said. Yet dude in the 2nd was weightless.
@EH
1) They say IN THE MOVIE that the sedative they used is TOO powerful to wake up after a death – the subconcious UNKOWINGLY goes into limbo because of it, and they are trapped. Cobb and Ariadne KNOWINGLY go down into limbo to pull Fischer, and eventually Saito, out. Because a brain would normally wake up after dying in a dream (but instead they end up in limbo) is the reason they become lost in limbo. They don’t realize they are still dreaming. Once they realize they are dreaming, they can come out again.
2) I’m not sure if you got this one right – I think Saito dies before Cobb enters limbo, but even if that wasn’t the case, Cobb knows he is in a dream, which means he knows he cannot age. Saito DOESN’T know he is dreaming, which means his subconscious fills the dream with normal things, like the aging process. Saito is old because he thinks he’s supposed to be.
3)No one dreams up any weapons. If you look closely, as Eames is telling Arthur to “dream bigger” he is ALREADY holding his gun, he’s just prepping it to fire, and holding it off screen. I don’t know if people do have the ability to dream anything they want up (i think just the architect of each dream can do that), but they don’t because the subjects subconscious turns on them. At that point, the subconscious already did turn on them, so it didn’t matter anyways.
4) EVERYBODY brings their subconscious into the architects dream. COBB brings Mal, and the train, not Fischer. Its the train that he had kill him and his wife over down in limbo.
5) Besides being the mastermind, Cobb is the one who knows how to navigate the dreamscape better than anyone else AND he is the one to pull the “Mr. Charles” con on Fischer.
get your facts straight before you complain about them.
@ “@Pstags”:
This is the best complaint of a flaw i’ve seen yet. it is a bit confusing. the best explanation I can give would be that they are all in free fall in the 1st dream. IN the first dream, they are all asleep, sharing Arthur’s dream, which is why Arthur stays behind, he’s got to maintain his level of dream. HE is the one that feels weightless, and therefore the gravity around him ceases to be. It has nothing to do with the others. On TOP of that, I can only assume that because they are on a third level, they are now far enough away from the 1st level (two steps instead of one) that the effects of the 1st dream don’t reach there. The only things they felt on the 3rd level were the missed kick, which was MEANT to permeate all the levels, as well as the second kick, which worked.
Thats it.
PStags
1) I know they ’say’ it in the movie, but does it make any sense, is it plausible or is it just a contrivance? Maybe if you’re an Inception worshipper you buy all of that stuff, but I just thought it was incredibly lazy plot contrivance that didn’t make any sense.
2) No, Saito dies afterwards. He covers Cobb for a while when he and Ariadne are under. Then Saito um, ‘unknowingly slips into limbo although his consciousness has been told that’s what will happen’. Because of the sedative, which is having this effect for the first time, conveniently. Again, don’t you just find that a little bit dumb?
3) My point is, if your pscyhe can bring anything you want into the dream, why don’t they do that? Why is that only utilised the once?
4) No, the train was described as being down to Fischer’s ‘militarised’ subconscious.
5) But anyone could have done what Cobb did, without bringing Mal. In a cost-benefit evaluation, he didn’t have any particular skills. Yes, we were told he was best at navigating the dream-scape, but we were TOLD that, we weren’t shown it. All the others seemed pretty competent to me. Cobb didn’t know his way around because he couldn’t be told because he was a great big walking liability. Anyone could have done the Mr Charles scam. Especially since apparently you can disguise yourself as anyone in a dream-scape, English Guy could have done all of it. Ask yourself, since the biggest risk to the whole operation was Cobb’s subconscious, wouldn’t it have just been a little smarter for them to leave him behind on this one?
It’s quite easy to bleat ‘but the movie toooold me so’, but that doesn’t mean it’s a great explanation for a poorly thought out plot. It was ambitious and that’s nice, but it wasn’t really well thought out enough to support itself in a satisfying way.
I think the ending was MEANT to be deliberately ambiguous, but maybe the only way to save the film is to say that none of it is real. ‘You only realise when you wake up that things were wrong’. So all the plot inconsistencies and lazy contrivances were the bits which were wrong. The reason why none of the rest of the crew have subconscious issues that manifest themselves repeatedly in dreams (Mal is the only seriously important figure in any of their minds?) is because they’re all projections which is why they are so one dimensional.
Like I said, I’m fan of Nolan’s, but that doesn’t mean I’m an unthinking disciple.
Dude, I’m not an unthinking disciple. I’ve clearly THOUGHT about this movie.
1) they SAY it in the movie and its true, and its plausible. There are drugs strong enough (in REAL life) to put somebody in a coma, and they cannot be woken up without OTHER DRUGS. Sedatives are strong enough to keep somebody asleep as long as we want in today’s world.
2) Cobb, at one point says “it’s my subconscious, I can’t control it” – the same thing is at work here. Saito dies, and his subconscious assumes he is back in the real world. NO ONE’S mind could handle dying unless their subconscious told them it was just a dream, now they are safe.
3) If they kept on changing things around them, even the non-militarized projections would start attacking them, like the riot in the opening scene.
4)It was NOT Fischer’s subconscious. at one point Ariadne says to Cobb something to the effect of “at any moment your subconscious could bring a freight train in” on everyone. Watch it again, It was Cobb’s train. The only other time a train is seen in the movie is with Cobb and Mal. It has to be Cobb’s train.
5) At this point, you are just nit-picking. A good hero has got to have flaws, yes? Cobb has them, but he still is a part of the planning, and the execution, and he thinks on his feet. Arthur and Eames don’t believe that just ANYBODY can do what Cobb does, the believe that ONLY COBB can do what he does, and they aren’t fully aware of how bad the setbacks of Cobb’s subconscious are. They didn’t realize they were in such danger with Cobb. THAT IS THE POINT.
Never have I once stated “The movie told me so” I’ve provided support from the movie, and my own spin on what I think happened. I also haven’t explained anything away. The fact that at least one other person besides Nolan can be on board with the movie and intelligently explain its plot points should tell you this movie isn’t a lost cause.
@PStags
They die in 3rd lvl on drugs -> they go to limbo
They die in limbo (that girl died falling from the building) -> they go to 3rd lvl
Also quite stupid was the fact that projections always spawned like 200 m away from guests. Like they couldn’t spawn matrix-like fashion o.o
Another thing , HOW exactly they chose who’s the host of the dream?
Also in those three-level dream Fischer was the sole host ( on every level projections kept attacking them) ,yet on the 3rd level they are in mountains attacking some base. In base there is a locked room (which is the ‘planted idea’) created by somebody (who?). Isn’t it a great interference in the dream?
Forgot to mention : On 3rd level , they *supposingly* broke into Uncle Sam’s (or w/e his name) head to steal dirty secrets , then why Fischer , knowing all this (rather being made to believe) , did enter this totally random code ,which he did thought up on 1st level and which was unknown to uncle sam, to safe (which was *Fischer’s secret* they wanted to *extract*) in the room with his dying father (which was supposed to be part of Uncle’s dream – glarh messy narrative)?
the narrative is not nearly as messy as the last two posts you put down. I’m really not sure what you were trying to say. Ariadne didn’t necessarily die before she woke up from limbo. She entered free-fall – which is a kick – and that could have woken her up.
It never showed projections “spawning.” People didn’t just appear, and even if they did, its the subconcious filling the dream up AS they go along, remember, Cobb talks about how in a dream, people create and discover simultaneously.
Fischer was NEVER the dreamer, or the “host” as you called it. He was always the one to fill the dreams with his subconscious. The architect (Ariadne) built the third dream level with the big locked door and the safe(so Fischer would FILL IT with things that need to be kept SAFE), and she also mentioned that she made the lower level a hospital, so Fischer would BRING HIS FATHER into the dream.
The rest of what you typed is not very understandable, so I can’t reply to it.
Yeah it’s quite hard for me to arrange those points understandbly.
New ones:
-To plant an idea you need to go deep into consciousness , 3rd level at least. So how did Cobb plant idea in Mal without this hardcore narcosis or any team?
-Ariadne asking about the dream (the maze) she created herself
- it’s a dream so no armies of marines are being gathered and sent to attack some base. they are just *created* ,why not create them in the base itself? They always spawn on the horizon.
-lol i don’t think Fischer brought his father with him. His father said the exact same thing the Cobb’s team wanted him to say : Don’t be like me and destroy my company. If he had this in the back of his mind all the time why bother going all the way to his dreams? Also this random code Fischer came up with opened the lock to testament created by Cobb’s team..
@ Mikaal
- Cobb planted an idea in Mal’s head in Limbo, which is LOWER than level 3. They were building worlds together down in Limbo, and neither believed the other to be hostile, because they weren’t, so neither Mal’s nor Cobb’s subconscious felt threatened.
-What specifically does Ariadne ask about? all I remember her asking about were things like the train and the people (which are subconscious projections, something she has nothing to do with – she built the buildings, streets, etc.) She also asks at one point who’s dream they were in on level 3, i think. Considering she had never done something like this before, she was confused. She still built/understood WHERE they were. because she designed it. She just got confused by the dream within a dream deal. As does the audience if they aren’t following closely.
-I don’t get why you think this. There is nothing within the movie that suggests they are spawning “on the horizon” as you say. There is a group of soldiers they draw AWAY from the base at one point, and then Eames takes them out so they can’t get back to the base. The rest of the soldiers are faught AT THE BASE, so what you are saying makes no sense and is completely wrong.
- No one else could bring Fischer’s father with them, because none of them had ever met him. Even Eames, who just got close to Uncle Peter. The whole POINT of Inception is to create a world where the person gives THEMSELVES the idea without realizing it. Cobb made Mal’s top so it wouldn’t stop spinning, then SHE realizes she’s dreaming, and needs to wake up. Cobb pulled a “Mr. Charles” to turn Fischer against his subconscious. Fischer believed (with the help of Eames disguising himself) that his uncle Peter was trying to extract ideas from him. THEN the team lied, and said they were going to go into Uncle Peter’s mind WITH Fischer, to extract the real secret (at this point, Fischer thinks Peter DOESN’T want him to split up the empire, but he is lying to him about the reason why). In the next level down, Fischer thinks he is looking for Peter’s secret of why Fischer’s dad would want his son to split up the empire. Fischer projects his father into the hospital room, and his subconscious provides the alternate reason for why his dad wanted to split up the company. It is a secret Fischer thinks his uncle Peter is willing to kill him over, so it must be beneficial to only Fischer, and not Peter.
as for the combination, the team lead fischer to believe his subconscious held the secret code, so his subconscious used the numbers he thought of as the code for the safe.
It’s starting to sound unreasonable : ‘Fischer projects his father into the hospital room, and his subconscious provides the alternate reason for why his dad wanted to split up the company. ‘ If he had filled the safe spots in the dream with his secret thoughts and believes -things he had already knew, but which were unavailable to others – than there was no reason for them to attack the base and go into 3rd level.
I guess if you make giant logic leaps and explain everything yourself the film makes sense. All in all it’s just a dream. The movie itself provides little to none explanation why *things happen* and even though the overall plot is understandable the continuous string of events is hard to follow and link with each other. Albeit , if it’s all a dream in a sick mind of Cobb’s ,as suggested in the finale , then that’s the sufficient reason for stuff to just happen ad hoc.
@ Mikaal
Actually he makes very logical and valid points above, many of which I connected while watching as well. Just because you didn’t doesn’t make them ’stretches’
@Mikaal
well, I’d worry about developing your grammar and syntax before attempting the supposed “giant logic leaps” you need to make to understand Inception. I guess I’m saying with this rude-enough comment that I’m done trying to explain it to you. Thanks, Chris, for chiming in. It’s nice to know there are people who could understand this movie, considering it’s probably the best one to come out so far this year.
Just cause you ‘think’ you understand this movie doesn’t make it cool/logical or whatever. You have the feeling it *makes sense* ,but since you can’t put your emotions aside you cannot see the gigantic holes in the rules of dreaming ,which were painstakingly created by Nolan ,but few of which can defend themselves. Thus you’re forced to make shit up and fill those holes with your imagination as provided by your *argumentation* (rather mental masturbation) above. The film does NOT make any sense – it does however if you assume it was ALL a dream in Cobb’s mind making any attempt to explain the plot aimless. The movie it
Just cause you ‘think’ you understand this movie doesn’t make it cool/logical or whatever. You have the feeling it *makes sense* ,but since you can’t put your emotions aside you cannot see the gigantic holes in the rules of dreaming ,which were painstakingly created by Nolan ,but few of which can defend themselves. Thus you’re forced to make shit up and fill those holes with your imagination as provided by your *argumentation* (rather mental masturbation) above. The film does NOT make any sense – it does however if you assume it was ALL a dream in Cobb’s mind making any attempt to explain the plot aimless. The movie itself it good ,but that’s all. Totally overhyped. You can’t identify with lifeless characters and the music sometimes is on the verge of blowing my ears up. 20 min of boring floating around the elavator and shooting while skiing a la James Bond – and I have to admit during mission in mountain base I didn’t know what the fuck is happening , who’s bad ,who’s good , who’s dying , why the stuff is exploding. My guess is Nolan did his homework in practical usage of NLP field and is using in his movie this little technique for storytelling called : Nested Loops. Google it.
@ mikaal
If you can research a little bit, you will find that some of the dream rules that Nolan uses in this movie are actually the same ones that apply to dreams you have when you sleep, ever heard of lucid dreams? Read a little bit. Oh, and for the other rules created by Nolan about dream world: this is a SCI-FI movie! Go watch the history channel if you want a story with nothing but reality.
Nolan did not recreate the experience of dreaming so it doesn’t matter to me that he mentioned a couple of things I can relate to (e.g. you cannot remember why you’re at the given place in a dream).
No rules, crazy trip , abstraction , blurring of reality and dreams ,fear that you can’t distinguish reality and being trapped were things(experiences) I expected from the movie after they went into Fischer. I felt thoroughly disappointed being told ,now and then, by characters on ‘which level of a dream are we?’ and watching action packed mission in mountains like from some Bond movie.
So I didn’t feel any anxiety and I wanted something to happen : mission to fail, someone die or anything. They all succeeded and Cobb was so cold blooded talking to his heroine in limbo ,which was supposingly the part of his subconsciousness .. ‘Stay with me!’ ‘No , sorry, I can’t. See you:)’ I guess Nolan didn’t care enough , the emotionless geek he is, to develop this part of the movie to the point where it has some credibility. That’s just poor storytelling.
Everything made perfect sense from this streeetched logic point of view. Like when you’re watching some complicated anime ,which constantly reminds you of its own rules just because they’re so complicated and the further you go the more complicated they get. Down to the nitty gritty stuff when they completely lose any sense and author comes up with some random explanation like : it was all MAGIC, it was all DREAM , it was ALL a lie.
The problem I got with Inception is that it DOES explain a lot of things and it explains it sooo hard. But there are many details , small things ,which movie does not explain so I feel the lack of consistency and this pisses me off ,because the only thing good in this movie – overcomplicated storyline and universe ,which require extra thought – is flawed. They explain a lot , but after a while Nolan got lazy and I cannot know why Saito was revived by respirator in a dream (lol). 13-th floor and the matrix are much better.
Christopher Nolan makes strangely detached films with poorly constructed action. While The Dark Knight was a great achievement, I think that Inception is actually quite simple, cheap and just not entertaining. I telegraphed the plot a mile away..just watch Shutter Island..same movie, different setting..There are so many unexplained elements…Who is Michael Caine exactly, who in hell is puzzle maker Ellen Page (who is very miscast), and who gives a rats ass about some energy magnate’s masterplan? And the whole Mol storyline is old and tired. She’s dead, he feels bad, she’s trapped in his dreams…gag me. And the trailer spoils every decent FX scene. I know I am in the minority here, but I believe Inception to be a pretty average film. If confused storylines are fresh and thought provoking, Mission Impossible (the 1st De Palma film) is a real mindf*&k. People are so dumbed down by silly franchises that when something that appears to be intricate and complex comes along, they flock to it, to dip into the collective sigh of pride the masses are feeling for appreciating something smart. Well, while its not Transformers, it is contrived, convenient and overrated. Inception is the summer’s biggest letdown.
People who dislike this movie are people who only care about pure action, not the thinking. A symbol of today’s society of ignorance, unlike the characters of the film who are under brain power 24/7.
@ Dave Mallet.
Michael Caine is EXACTLY Mal’s father (yes, it’s spelled Mal, not Mol… I start to see why you didn’t get this movie, you’re dumb). That’s it, what else do you want him to be? He’s Mal’s father, and he works as a teacher in Paris in some architecture related university.
Who is puzzle maker?? She is the architect. She is a student that Cobb met in Paris thanks to his father in law, that’s it. What in earth’s name did you not get about her character?? Really!
Who gives a rat’s ass about some energy magnate’s plan?? Seriously?? So you said you liked Shutter Island, so who gives a rat’s ass about about Rachel? Who gives a rat’s ass about Ted? Who gives a rat’s ass about some doctor’s plan?? Who gives a rat’s ass about Laeddis?? Well.. THE AUDIENCE, WHO ELSE? You want to hear that Obama or Putin or God cares about it? It’s not real, it’s just an element of the plot that forms part of the story. And again, I see you didn’t get the film because this film is not about the energy magnate’s plan, it’s about Cobb getting back to his family. Are you going to say who cares about Cobb getting back to his family? Well anyone that enjoys watching a film and accepting the story the director is trying to tell.
It’s not the fact that the plot is confusing that people like. It’s the fact that this movie’s plot is exciting, and is telling a very uncommon story, in a complex way so you actually have to do some work as an audience to connect the dots (not because it’s complicated, but because the story telling is complex and it makes you reach your own conclussions). I don’t think this movie is smart, but it’s a movie well done that takes you through an “epic”, complicated and stressfull journey through the dream world that Nolan imagined. His vision of dreams and the story he spent ten years writing doesn’t fit your ideas so you think it’s stupid or unoriginal, boring, predictable, confusing? Well WHO GIVES A RAT’S ASS. If you didn’t like the movie what’s the point on trying to criticize it as if you were right?? Remember that movies are a matter of preferences and no one is right or wrong, every person has it’s personal opinion and no one should try to change it. Note that I NEVER said this is a good, bad, regular, average… movie, my opinion of this movie is my own.
@ David Mallet.
Oh and you say that the special effects of this movie are decent?? Come on man, seriously.
The plot is fast to make you think it’s confusing , but in reality it’s pretty straightforward. Characters are not interesting and without genuine motives to act. The movie is good ,but I wouldn’t watch it twice. In opposite to “Exit through the gift shop” ,which in my opinion is BRILLIANT. It conveys so many different messages , makes you wonder and probably is one of the biggest movie pranks in history. Nothing short of amazing.
I agree with most of what you said, but i don’t think the plot is fast, i actually noticed that it stops a lot to explain the rules and it repeats a lot of information previously given, slowing the plot down. People think it’s confusing because of the way Nolan told the story, from the beginning the audience is just thrown in the middle of a story without any clear introduction, which gets everyone lost and thinking they don’t understand. Also, eventhough it explains a lot of concepts and rules many times, it leaves many plot pieces up in the air so people reach their own conclussions but most people just see this as trying to get thrm confuse because it didn’t explain something.
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