'Inception' Mega Thread *SPOILERS FROM POST 292 ONWARDS*

quarryman

krudler wrote: »

Indeed, I thought the rotating hallway fight was done with cgi, wirework and some camera trickery, nope, they just rotated a bloody big set :pac:

Funny the first thing i thought when i saw it was "that's a big-ass set that they are just rotating". It was amazing. Reminded me a little of 2001 A Space Odyssey where physical effects were required since CGI wasn't available then.

Eirebear

Got around to seing it this morning, i have to say i enjoyed it a lot....despite the fact it felt like the film stopped every 15 minutes or so in order to explain what was going on to us stupid viewers.

Agricola

Really enjoyed this. Alot of obvious similarities to the Matrix and I dont remember seeing a film since that released in 1999, which was this original.

Most movies nowadays are turn your brain off material. Its so nice to go to a film and have to actually pay attention. The twisting plot and layers of overlapping situations, from reality, to dream level 1, dream level 2 etc should make this a bitch of a film to make explicable to an audience, but it was really expertly handled.

The only thing i think it lacked was that it maybe wasnt ambitious enough. Surely the fact that so much of the film takes place in people's minds means the world was ripe for all sorts of fantasical happenings. Apart from the scene where the city folded over on itself, there wasnt any real WOW moments.

Skerries

this critic had a right go at it

When the theatrical trailer for the upcoming September thriller called Devil hit the screen at a Friday showing of Inception to a packed Burbank audience, it seemed as if everyone in the theater was engrossed and intrigued with the concept. That is until the following words hit the screen: FROM THE MIND OF M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN. And then everyone started laughing. I mean everyone. Shyamalan has tarnished his name so badly that it is now dangerous for him to associate his own brand with his films. My hope is that one day the same can be said for Christopher Nolan.

See More

WesternNight

Saw this today. I wish I hadn't heard the hype, because I was expecting to be completely mind-blown.

That said, I really enjoyed it. I left feeling a bit fatigued, but in a good way (it's strange having to engage the brain in the cinema these days), and quite exhilarated.

Loved the last 45 minutes or so. Really took off then for me.

MrStuffins

I absolutely loved this movie. I was gripped from start to finish and i loved the complex plot. I literally couldn't take my eyes off it from start to finish.

I understand the criticisms as to whether or not the audience would care about the characters. I actually didn't care emotionally about any of the characters, but it didn't detract from my enjoyment of the movie.

Even though the plot was complex, the story was told very intelligently so it was very easy to keep up (although i'm glad i went with my other half, a couple of times i got a bit muddled and had to ask her what the craic was).

At the end i was dying to see it again and i'm definately gonna go again this week or at the weekend.

Snake Plisken

This handy map gives a breakdown of the 5 Levels of Inception

johnny_ultimate

I'm not going to disagree with anyone saying it was sometimes explained too much. I actually didn't see this as a bad thing though.

On a purely practical level, Warner invested $170 million in this. It wasn't going go turn out an endlessly confusing, ambiguous arthouse film. This is a film with big ideas playing to a big audience.

Perhaps it was dumbed down, but this works well artistically too, or at least Nolan uses it to his advantage. What I loved about the 'exposition' in Inception was that all this general dream jargon was being around, but then Nolan visualises it for us to help explain the situation. We're kind of like Ellen Page's character, learning how it all works. Her 'training' sequences are a great example of this. Many key concepts are introduced there, but what makes them easily understandable is how Nolan uses setpieces and visuals to illustrate them. The ideas of construction, subconscious, projections, trauma etc... are all explained here, but then Nolan shows us bending cities, Page defying gravity, the suspicious strangers and Mal's violent reaction to practically illustrate the ideas. Giving into the audience isn't always a bad thing - ensuring they understand before moving on is vital to their enjoyment of the extended inception sequence itself. I wasn't left behind by the plot at any point. Is that a bad thing? I readily admit many, many cinema goers are, well, idiots, but Nolan just wants them to buy into the concepts, and hence explaining them felt somewhat necessary for me anyway.

Really, this is a genre movie, albeit many genres. It's a heist movie, an action movie and a psychological thriller all at once. What elevates it above say Ocean's Eleven or a James Bond film is how the central concept of dreams and subconscious works so well within these genre confines. As entertainment, this is first rate. It's a heist movie in which the layers of security are the subconscious. A simple idea when written down like that, but Nolan's delivery makes it endlessly compelling.

It isn't Primer: it's not a low budget film that is free to leave extremely complex ideas up to the viewer to untangle and negotiate. This is a high budget blockbuster, and it's a genre movie that has the balls to have big ideas and clever subversion of genre tropes. Yeah, it's entirely possible to look at this as being dumbed down or over-explained. For me, it was two and a half hours of refreshingly competent, entertaining, ambitious and smart cinema going. Most of the puzzle pieces are in place at the end, but seeing it come together was a joy.

Eirebear

I dont disagree that it was probably needed for many people, ive already spoke to people who said they found it "too confusing" for their liking.

However i also feel that it felt a little obvious at times, which is why i likened it to stopping the film for a recap in my previous post.
The first example of this happens very early on in the film, with the line

"That you were trying to steal from me, or that we are all asleep!"

I have expected the character to laugh up his sleeve and dissapear in a puff of smoke after that line.

It also lead to the dialogue feeling extremely repettive towards the end of the film, how many times did they have to tell us that time takes longer to pass the deeper into the subconcious you go?
Or that its impossible to "kick" in zero G?

I enjoyed the film, however it seemed hellbent on reminding me at every turn, that i was watching a film.

WesternNight

I'm a bit surprised that there aren't many theories about the possible scenarios/explanations.

For example...that the entire film is an inception of Michael Caine's character to either find out what really happened to his daughter, or to help Cobb to get over it.

Also, Cobb's kids never change - always the same age, always wearing the same clothes...even when he's "back in reality". Perhaps the totem at the end isn't so much for us to make up our own minds but to imply that Cobb doesn't know whether or not he's in reality or doesn't care. Or, since it was Mal's totem, that he'd let her go and didn't need the totem anymore...that his children or the image of his children were his real totem.

krudler

WesternNight wrote: »

I'm a bit surprised that there aren't many theories about the possible scenarios/explanations.

For example...that the entire film is an inception of Michael Caine's character to either find out what really happened to his daughter, or to help Cobb to get over it.

Also, Cobb's kids never change - always the same age, always wearing the same clothes...even when he's "back in reality". Perhaps the totem at the end isn't so much for us to make up our own minds but to imply that Cobb doesn't know whether or not he's in reality or doesn't care. Or, since it was Mal's totem, that he'd let her go and didn't need the totem anymore...that his children or the image of his children were his real totem.

In the end credits they're listed as having different ages, and we he speaks to them on the phone at the beginning they're clearly older

Corholio

Skerries wrote: »

this critic had a right go at it

When the theatrical trailer for the upcoming September thriller called Devil hit the screen at a Friday showing of Inception to a packed Burbank audience, it seemed as if everyone in the theater was engrossed and intrigued with the concept. That is until the following words hit the screen: FROM THE MIND OF M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN. And then everyone started laughing. I mean everyone. Shyamalan has tarnished his name so badly that it is now dangerous for him to associate his own brand with his films. My hope is that one day the same can be said for Christopher Nolan.

See More

While I agree he has every right of course to criticise the film if he dosent like it, the way he does is quite funny, not purposely though.

Most of his review is basically " Well i didnt think it was very good and this other guy from this other media platform thought so too and he was so right, good on him"

krudler

That review is terrible, lost me at this line:

But I can’t help but think about how much of a rip Inception is off The Matrix.

Any film critic worth their salt should know the Matrix itself is a rip off of a dozen other sci-fi ideas.

edit, acutlaly I read the whole thing, its gets worse!

Casting-wise, Inception is an utter mess, reminding us that Ellen Page is still Juno and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is ultimately too boyish for the big screen to be the next leading man outside of an art film (Shia Lebouf is doing an ok job and he’s five years younger!) As much as we all embrace post-Titanic Leo DiCaprio, his typecast is becoming a nuisance at this stage of the game and he’s simply overexposed. Michael Caine’s presence in this movie is a complete joke and another reminder of Nolan’s recent Batman blunders. And listening to Ken Watanabe is like trying to guess the English translation of R2D2’s dialogue in Star Wars.

Shia LeBouf is a better leading man than JGL? pffft. DiCaprio typecast? lets see, in the past decade hes played a cop, secret agent type, Howard Hughes, a South African mercenary, a husband on the verge of divorce, a mentally unstable federal marshall, a 19th century gang member and a 16 year old con artist, .....so wheres the typecasting exactly? "Batman blunders"?! thats just laughable, two of the most respected and well reviews comic book movies ever, as well as one of the being one of the biggest grossing movies of all time do not make "blunders" oh and a nice racial slur at the end too, Watanabe is Japanese cockbag! his accent is sometimes hard to decipher because English isnt his first language!

Snake Plisken

Intersting theory from a guy on imdb

EDIT: I no longer truly believe this because I think it's far too complicated. Upon a second viewing, the story was incredibly EASY to follow especially with all of the discussion I've read on this board since then. I think the story has an easy solution and not something only a small percentage of viewers would ever think. The only thing I'm unsure about is if Cobb was dreaming at the end or not, due to the long amount of time the top was spinning and that the camera cuts away before it would have lost even more momentum.

Also, I don't know why people are saying you hear the top fall when the credits start. You just hear the start of the music. That's it.

---

The idea of 'Inception' is to be a story crafted in the architecture of the mind - Cobb's mind. What people perceive to be real isn't necessarily so, because the mind can make things appear to be as real as ever. An important thing to remember is the start of the film. Dom Cobb wakes up in a place that we later find out to be limbo – more importantly, Saito's limbo.

What happens next is something that is meaningless the first time a viewer watches the film. Saito is seen handling Cobb's totem (which was a top that he took from Mal while in limbo). At first, this is meaningless. Upon a second viewing, the viewer should realize that everything that happens after this scene (the jump cut to Cobb's attempt at extracting information from Saito, and so on) is something much deeper.

Saito promises to give Cobb the one thing that he wants, and that's to find the way back home. How does he convince Cobb to do this? He tells him to "take a leap of faith." This is another line that goes unnoticed at first. On a second viewing, the viewer should remember that line as something that Mal told Cobb when she jumped off of the building. Is the picture becoming clearer yet?

While in Mombasa, Cobb gets chased by anonymous agents (which he perceives to be Cobol agents) through a fantastic action sequence where Cobb escapes the dream-like narrow tunnel and is rescued by none other than Saito. A bit later, Cobb and Saito visit Yusef who brings them into a basement with various figures connected to the dream machine. The idea was for Cobb to experiment with the deep sedative. He does, and when he "wakes up," he tries to use his totem only to be interrupted by Saito. Cobb never does find out if he is in the real world or not. In fact, he hasn’t been yet. He’s been in limbo ever since he got there with Mal. Ever since then, he's been going deeper and deeper to the point where he created Saito as a projection to help him "get back home" - Did you really think Saito can just pick up the phone and make murder charges disappear? No. But, Cobb believes it and thus Saito is used to thrust Cobb further and further into a state of limbo – where at the end of the journey, Cobb truly believes he is with his children after confronting and getting over his projection of Mal.

While in the limbo, Cobb, using Mal's totem, put the idea in her head that she was in the dream world. She was, she just hadn’t realized it yet. What the viewer forgets is that all knowledge of limbo comes from Cobb's character. To think that Cobb is 100% accurate about it is absolutely wrong. He wouldn't know dream from reality – not in the limbo that he describes to people – and definitely not if inception were performed on him to believe that limbo truly was the real world.

Mal and Cobb never really left limbo at least, not that layer of it. When Mal jumped off the building, she gave herself the very same "kick" that Ariadne improvised later on in the movie. Mal was right about still being in the dream world. Cobb was still engulfed in limbo and didn't realize it. When Cobb and Mal had killed themselves with the train, they simply moved one layer deeper just like Saito did when he was killed, Fischer did when he was killed, and so on (this happens again at the end of the film when Saito picks up the gun in front of Cobb).

Cobb, deep in limbo, unknowingly uses the projections of his team to keep going deeper and deeper until the idea of inception is performed on his mind, and he truly believes he was able to find a way back home. Saito's promise to Cobb was kept - in the form of Saito (a projection from Cobb) making sure that Cobb ended up in limbo, so that he could live his "life" with his kids (who are in the same position as they were all throughout the film).

The team were projections in Cobb's mind the entire time. It's how he was able to go to Miles in Paris and find an architect named Ariadne (a name which comes from a Greek mythology story about a labyrinth) who improvised the "kick" at the end of the movie the same way that Cobb had seen (but not accepted as a dream) Mal do previously when she jumped off the building. It's how Eames happened to know of Yusef, and so on and so forth. Everything Cobb needed to make this inception work happened to work out for him. It's even how Cobb's lawyer knew so quickly that Mal had gone to 3 different shrinks to be declared "sane" and how he happened to have a ticket for Cobb to be able to get out of the country before the police would have arrested him.

The movie ends with Cobb appearing from place to place, going from limbo with Saito, to the plane where Saito magically makes one phone call to free Cobb from his problems, to walking through the airport, to meeting Miles who is with Cobb's children. Cobb spins his totem and it spins just like it was a dream. He fixes his eyes on his children and the totem begins to lose speed – this is because inception has worked – Cobb truly believes he is in the real world. His totem will not spin like it did in the dream, not as long as he has his kids. The title of the film is now shown to us, making complete sense because the title was really Cobb's journey through his own mind: INCEPTION

opr

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

I'm not going to disagree with anyone saying it was sometimes explained too much. I actually didn't see this as a bad thing though.

On a purely practical level, Warner invested $170 million in this. It wasn't going go turn out an endlessly confusing, ambiguous arthouse film. This is a film with big ideas playing to a big audience.

Perhaps it was dumbed down, but this works well artistically too, or at least Nolan uses it to his advantage. What I loved about the 'exposition' in Inception was that all this general dream jargon was being around, but then Nolan visualises it for us to help explain the situation. We're kind of like Ellen Page's character, learning how it all works. Her 'training' sequences are a great example of this. Many key concepts are introduced there, but what makes them easily understandable is how Nolan uses setpieces and visuals to illustrate them. The ideas of construction, subconscious, projections, trauma etc... are all explained here, but then Nolan shows us bending cities, Page defying gravity, the suspicious strangers and Mal's violent reaction to practically illustrate the ideas. Giving into the audience isn't always a bad thing - ensuring they understand before moving on is vital to their enjoyment of the extended inception sequence itself. I wasn't left behind by the plot at any point. Is that a bad thing? I readily admit many, many cinema goers are, well, idiots, but Nolan just wants them to buy into the concepts, and hence explaining them felt somewhat necessary for me anyway.

Really, this is a genre movie, albeit many genres. It's a heist movie, an action movie and a psychological thriller all at once. What elevates it above say Ocean's Eleven or a James Bond film is how the central concept of dreams and subconscious works so well within these genre confines. As entertainment, this is first rate. It's a heist movie in which the layers of security are the subconscious. A simple idea when written down like that, but Nolan's delivery makes it endlessly compelling.

It isn't Primer: it's not a low budget film that is free to leave extremely complex ideas up to the viewer to untangle and negotiate. This is a high budget blockbuster, and it's a genre movie that has the balls to have big ideas and clever subversion of genre tropes. Yeah, it's entirely possible to look at this as being dumbed down or over-explained. For me, it was two and a half hours of refreshingly competent, entertaining, ambitious and smart cinema going. Most of the puzzle pieces are in place at the end, but seeing it come together was a joy.

Really good post and something I was trying to get across to a friend earlier who was slightly disappointed with the film.

It wasn't going go turn out an endlessly confusing, ambiguous arthouse film. This is a film with big ideas playing to a big audience.

That sums up perfectly what I was trying to get across to my friend. Nolan has proven time and time again he can can do the subtle complex story with real finesse but this movie was about something else.

The different kind of ride that this film brings you on I thought was equally enjoyable and in its own way very unique. I have seen other films mesh stories together but not on this scale.

While its never complicated it does have this wonderful rollercoaster feel in the later stage of the film when your trying to keep track of each individual dream level, the overall story arc, what is actually happening on screen, trying to figure out how you think the story is going to end while at the same time being treated to a visual feast of mayhem coupled with a powerful musical score.

Opr

yermandan

Snake Plisken wrote: »

Intersting theory from a guy on imdb

Oh my god my mind is truly ****ed now having just watched it for a second time this makes total sense to me....haha

opr

Even with all that said above I am still not sure the film doesn't go deeper like the theory Snake Plisken posted but the point is its works very well on a simple superficial level of how its explained within the film if you want to leave it at that. This needs to happen due to nature and size of the audience the film was looking to capture.

I just can't let the film be for a number of reasons but having only seen it once the main thing is the scene when Cobb is getting chased through the town and its just seems the whole scene is so cliché to have a market place as the venue. Then how Cobb manages to find an escape route of two walls that is just big enough that he can fit through! I remember when watching the scene for the first time straight after it finished it felt wrong.

Opr

PostHack

Saw it last night, my mind is blown!

A few things:

Annoyingly, "due to factors beyond my control", i missed a teeny bit at the start, probably just seconds. I came in at the bit that's also near the end, cobb and the old saito. Is this the very start? Appreciate it if someone could clear it up for me......

Amazingly crafted film. Hard to believe that one person can come up with something like this from nothing and bring it to fruition. There were many scenes to take your breath away, from a visual perspective. The first "training" dream sequence with Page's character. When the dream was coming apart, loved it. Loved the super slo-mo stuff (van falling into the water) the zero-gravity type stuff were some of the coolest scenes I've ever seen.

BlitzKrieg

Annoyingly, "due to factors beyond my control", i missed a teeny bit at the start, probably just seconds. I came in at the bit that's also near the end, cobb and the old saito. Is this the very start? Appreciate it if someone could clear it up for me......

yes it opens on the beach much like how they were on the beach when they first enter limbo

I enjoyed it immensely but I felt for Christopher Nolan it wasnt a step forward but more of a sidestep and slightly back in comparison to his previous works, I didnt like Ellen Paige's character and ken watanabe is criminally underused for a large chunk of the film. Not to mention it has a weird issue with scale with the whole risk vs reward with alot of character choices and challanges.

seraphimvc

That post from imbd is the ultimate explaination for the 'bad ending'(aka the whole thing is an inception of Cobb) theory, in which,it is fully acceptable and is what Nolan did purposely

however tho,the spinning top didnt stop in the end(at least we are not shown), will make the 'good ending'(aka Cobb is back to reality) theory lover like me can forever argue with the 'bad ending' theory people - i can simply say every evidence in that post are merely coincidence.free fall 'the kick' is from Mal's jump? coincidence :pac:

which is why i love this film, i am afraid there is no absolute answer for the ending

stevenmu

Great film. It's fantastic to see a talented director making the film he wants to make without compromise.

On the ending/plot, I haven't read through all of the other posts yet, but a few things struck me.

Cobb seems to aquire his totem during his first time in limbo with his wife (he takes it from the safe with in her 'childhood home'). Wouldn't this mean that any time he has it (i.e. the whole film), he is dreaming? One other thing leading in this direction is that the whole film itself, including the 'real life' parts, do have a dream like feel, and remember how we were told near the start that when you find yourself in a situation without knowing how exactly you got there it is a dream; well we did kind of just arrive into the film in the middle of a story. I think Nolan has a kind of film/dream meta-metaphor going on there (i.e. the film is a dream about a film about a dream)

also

assuming the totem is real and 'real life' in the film is 'real life', then I don't think Cobb got out at the end. Saito got hold of his totem in limbo. He had already seen him use it after Cobb was testing out the sedative and so would have suspected what it was, and could have then figured out how it worked in limbo. That could explain why he could guarantee to get Cobb home, and could be part of why he was so insistent on coming on the job with them: to raid Cobbs mind and figure out how to trap him.

Earthhorse

Corholio wrote: »

Most of his review is basically " Well i didnt think it was very good and this other guy from this other media platform thought so too and he was so right, good on him"

The reviews he links to are actually better critical reviews than his own.

opr wrote: »

I just can't let the film be for a number of reasons but having only seen it once the main thing is the scene when Cobb is getting chased through the town and its just seems the whole scene is so cliché to have a market place as the venue. Then how Cobb manages to find an escape route of two walls that is just big enough that he can fit through! I remember when watching the scene for the first time straight after it finished it felt wrong.

Yeah, it's almost like something out of a dream.

PostHack wrote: »

Hard to believe that one person can come up with something like this from nothing and bring it to fruition.

It's based on a book.

fulhamfanincork

Does anyone know how this movie is doing financially?

Basq

fulhamfanincork wrote: »

Does anyone know how this movie is doing financially?

Well, it took $62.8 million in it's opening weekend in the US.

Outside of that, I'm not sure.

Burning Eclipse

Earthhorse wrote: »

It's based on a book.

Nope, I don't think it is. Nolan began writing it ~10 years ago. Went through numerous treatments of the script and story, but no book. If there was, I'd imagine it would be on the front page of amazon...

TheInquisitor

Film ended and i was just flabergasted at how good a movie it was. Looked at the two people to my left and they hadn't a clue what was going on. I think thats how the movie will go down. If you get it you'll think its amazing , if you don't pay attention or are just plain slow it wont make any sense.

Absolutely brilliant movie

Only think i thought was a bit ridiculous was how quickly the student girl just accpeted she wanted to be part of this crime. She didnt even bat an eyelid...

Earthhorse

Burning Eclipse wrote: »

Nope, I don't think it is. Nolan began writing it ~10 years ago. Went through numerous treatments of the script and story, but no book. If there was, I'd imagine it would be on the front page of amazon...

Yeah, you're right actually. I'm getting confused by something else someone posted (on another forum). Nevermind!

Renn

Agricola wrote: »

Really enjoyed this. Alot of obvious similarities to the Matrix and I dont remember seeing a film since that released in 1999, which was this original.

Really?

Maybe I'm listing movies that aren't that 'original' themselves but here's a few:

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Mulholland Drive/Inland Empire
Goodbye Lenin!
The Fall
The Science of Sleep
Synecdoche, New York
Shortbus
Stranger Than Fiction
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Punch-Drunk Love


Well, like I said, maybe I'm way off the mark here.

Sean Quagmire

TheInquisitor wrote: »

Only think i thought was a bit ridiculous was how quickly the student girl just accpeted she wanted to be part of this crime. She didnt even bat an eyelid...

Intentional, if you are to believe the theory that she is a character inside Cobs' dream. She knows what he knows subconsiously

Pace2008

Renn wrote: »

Really?

Maybe I'm listing movies that aren't that 'original' themselves but here's a few:

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Mulholland Drive/Inland Empire
Goodbye Lenin!
The Fall
The Science of Sleep
Synecdoche, New York
Shortbus
Stranger Than Fiction
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Punch-Drunk Love


Well, like I said, maybe I'm way off the mark here.

I'd add Dark City to that list.