Inception (with implanted spoilers)

just watched this - it was pretty good once nolan ditched his sandcastle rulemaking and just focused on the action sequences

like replace the first hour with a 5 minute text scroll and then drop everybody in and it would be a good movie

Disagree. The expository scenes with Cobb and Ariadne were among my favorite parts of the movie. Certainly more so than watching a bunch of anonymous masked skiers firing guns.

if you liked this movie you'll love philip k. dick's ubik which is almost the same exact thing

They've been trying to get that off the ground for a while, wonder if this will provide more impetus. Great book, of course. They can even keep the bit where a character watches a 3-D version of The Lord of the Rings.

Disagree. The expository scenes with Cobb and Ariadne were among my favorite parts of the movie. Certainly more so than watching a bunch of anonymous masked skiers firing guns.

― jaymc, Wednesday, July 21, 2010 3:23 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

ehh it felt so much like "you can do this...but wait! watch out for...and also! there's this that will happen when..."

I would have liked this movie a lot better if it had started out trying to ground in the audience in reality to help w/ the suspension of disbelief instead of starting out in media res - I never got quite to the point of caring about what happened in the movie, it was like opening up the back of a mechanical watch and seeing what happens as the hand reaches 12

Doesn't starting in medias res lend credence to the theory that the whole thing is a dream? re: that line about never remembering the beginning of a dream

Snowscape: reminded me of CoD4. I thought it was going to be a deliberate gag at expense of games-playing young billionaire waster's subconscious.

― stet, Saturday, July 17, 2010 9:31 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark

hahaha otm, I was waiting for soap to tell me which guys to kill

Doesn't starting in medias res lend credence to the theory that the whole thing is a dream? re: that line about never remembering the beginning of a dream

― Sensational Howard (admrl), Wednesday, July 21, 2010 8:32 PM (37 seconds ago) Bookmark

ayo scott picked up on this and it was one of the best bits. also one of the most meta bits. fascinating shot in that sequence of jgl doing s.thing we don't quite grok. looking fwd to rescreening.

aimless otm up there with the zhuang-zi reference

Speaking of A.O. Scott.

Much else that happens within the film’s packed and hectic 148 minutes — which in third-level dream time is at least a month, and which for some deep slumberers may last forever, or at least feel that way — has occasioned intense and contentious speculation on the Internet. The discourse is marked by the ritualistic incantation of two words that may at this point be redundant: spoiler alert.

So consider yourself warned. But, in the manner of the movie itself, which seems to begin in an uncanny present only to jump abruptly backward in time, let’s cut to a flashback, the kind that in a more literal-minded movie would be established by the words “three weeks earlier.” Remember? It was a more innocent time, when families were flocking to “Toy Story 3.” Back then all that was known of “Inception” was that it was, after months of elliptical “teaser” advertisements and trailers, arriving soon in theaters.

And I fell asleep here.

I got really hazy on the details at the snow palace bit, but is there a possibility that it was all 'real' as presented to us, except for the end bit with Leo waking up on the plane - i.e. he chose to stay with wifey in the deepest level of the dream... and then presumably the rest of them would wake up on the plane in a similar way but we don't see this?

This last bit definitely felt dreamy and not seeing whether the top fell implied to me that this scenario was possible - if it was all a dream then the top/totems are irrelevant, right?

movie should have ended with chris nolan plucking the spinning top from the table, looking into the screen and winking.

with "magic man" playing over the credits

no the entourage theme song

just because it would be cool

that would be kind of meta

i mean, ish. pushing it. borderline. but still basically meta [via e being in leo's irl entourage iirc]

it would just be cool if inception was just a prequel to the new season

it would be cool if they mated inception and the departed and it was about leo trying to incept matt damon while -- oh yeah -- matt damon tries to incept leo

framing a film by starting in media res then filling in the gaps that led up to that point is pretty tiresome to me. i don't think it worked all that well. i was disappointed it turned up in the latest Claire Denis film, though it did work considerably better there.

re: "it was all a dream". people be overthinking this, picking up clues that are too subtle by half. nolan was trying to make a complicated flick that's lucid, not obscure.

dude it's like one of the oldest most elemental storytelling techniques in existence xp

was there any explanation for why the top had to fall over if things were real? like, why couldn't you just dream it falling over?

yeah I feel kinda silly taking this movie at face-value but if it's been established that each dreamer can change the physics of the dreamworld according to their subconscious then how can you be sure of the veracity of your totem... or is it like when you are imagining your totem you are trying to make it do what it won't do in real life

do you find the odyssey tiresome or xp

man now I really wnat to rewatch paprika :(

do you find the odyssey tiresome or xp

― al-goreda (s1ocki), Wednesday, July 21, 2010 3:57 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

ehh we pretty much already know the terms of the odyssey cause we read the fucking iliad first - in medias res can be great but not when you have to retconn 50 million things

End credits song shoulda been:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-kVFfKezVo

i know it's really old, but it feels like it's being used a lot more recently (granted, this could just be because i've been watching a lot more televisionI. like any storytelling trick, it should be used to enhance some aspect of the work and not just relied upon to pull the audience in.

xposts

also end credits should have been

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_xFNa7YKDw

I don't think I like level-crossing sci-fi movies / tv anymore. I think calling attention to the varying levels of 'reality' within the movie itself makes it harder to accept that the 'top level' of the movie is real and not just, you know, a story that was written and filmed and acted by a bunch of writers/directors/actors.

― sous les paves, Sunday, July 18, 2010 11:48 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Exactly. Suspending belief in a regular movie and believing the characters are real is more effectively dream-like.

― gato busca pleitos (Eazy), Sunday, July 18, 2010 11:55 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark

The audience, at that point, starts to take on the role of the 'subconcious agents' (or whoever the dudes with guns are) in the film, and starts to look for flaws and shoot holes in em.

― sous les paves, Monday, July 19, 2010 12:33 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark

this, really - when you start off with the dream-within-a-dream scenario you are pretty much asking the audience not to believe that any level in the movie reflects reality

err not reflects reality, is reality

When they talked about the levels I kept thinking about

http://www.theonion.com/articles/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades,11056/

or is it like when you are imagining your totem you are trying to make it do what it won't do in real life

this, I think; the point is you take the totem and imagine it doing something it can't do and if that happens, you're still dreaming

And specifically that it is "your" dream, right?

yeah but what if your subconscious fucks with you! xp

I was kinda disappointed by how little control they had - it was all cool like when tom hardy brought out the grenade launcher but why couldn't they imagine better things like dogs and bees and dogs with bees in their mouths so when they barked they shot bees at cillians subconscious

i know the defense is that if they did some outlandish shit then everybody's subconscious would get grumpy with you, but christ you're already in a dramatic shootout, bring out the bee dogs

also it's not like this "dreams must be as mundane as possible" rule is based on anything but the director's vision

how malleable things are, and by whom, and how much control any one person has, eh i dunno... the totem stuff, plus the little detail of (eurotrash dude) saying "dream bigger darling" and pulling out a hueg gun when JGL is trading potshots, plus the fact that they left the details of exactly what the machine does and how it functions etc deliberately unsaid, means... nolan wanted wiggle room!

i don't think there's any secret code to crack that explains all the details. you can't go aha! and find the solution. there isn't one, i don't think. there's enough structure to keep things moving along, but more than enough fuzziness to have cool shit happening. that's about it really.

... but to contradict myself a little, i think it's important to remember that what we see are not really dreams, these are fake dreams made up by outsiders for the purpose of pulling shit on you. they aren't really spontaneous, or dreamy!

dude, a train can just show up in the middle of the street if you're feeling guilty, that's pretty spontaneous and dreamy! you might as well grab that bull by the horns and use bee dogs when cillian's not looking to see what you're doing.

it'd have been funny if some professor showed up and told dileep rao he forgot to take his final or something, otherwise Leo's guilt manifestations are really egregious signs of workplace incompetence.

there's enough structure to keep things moving along, but more than enough fuzziness to have cool shit happening. that's about it really.

yeah, ultimately I feel this movie was all about using $200 million to set up that minute where the synchronized kicks kick in and everybody wakes up 3 times in a row

also for nolan to use as a pick up line at bars "hey babe you wanna know what really happened in inception...well why don't we go back to my hotel room and I'll incept you"

Good article that argues for the theory that the whole movie is Cobb's dream:
http://www.chud.com/articles/articles/24477/1/NEVER-WAKE-UP-THE-MEANING-AND-SECRET-OF-INCEPTION/Page1.html

set up that minute where the synchronized kicks kick in and everybody wakes up 3 times in a row

Yeah, but tbh, that scene was nowhere near as over-the-top as I expected it to be. I was half-anticipating a series of close ups of each character gasping awake in rapid succession. Kind of happy Nolan handled it the way he did.

it's lame if it's literally ALL a dream and cobb is just some guy we never see awake

think you have to accept that some of it is real

counterpoint to that (already posted upthread):
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/07/inceptions_dileep_rao_answers.html
xxp

FWIW the film has been making scary good money in the US this week -- $10 million Monday, just under $10 million yesterday, projections are it should hit $100 million by tomorrow night. So it's getting people into the theaters at the least.

It's a limbo party now — who can go lower?

Rao gets a million points for making this joke

Had to wait to read the whole thread until I saw the movie last night.

I pretty much came to a similar conclusion to San Te wayyyyyy upthread. I feel like the only thing really in question is whether or not Cobb came out of that subconscious level. I don't buy the 'it was all a dream' stuff. And I can't really buy into a happy Reality ending for Cobb. It's a happy ending for him, but it's on his terms, not reality. I feel like he's still in the subconscious level. Little things for me, like us not ever seeing him come out of the first (?) level (van underwater)...the movie seems to set up a precedent that you get to see each person come back, in each level they're in. (I might be remembering that wrong though, don't know if I saw Cillian Murphy do all the levels now that I think of it.) Anyway, the way I remember it, we only see Cobb come out of the top level back to 'reality'. That stuck out to me. Whoosh he's back on the plane? It didn't sit right. And there was that small exchange with Cobb and Mal, where he said 'At least let me keep them', or something to that effect, and she said 'Only if you stay here with me.', which I took to mean he could keep the children if he stayed there. I think that he stayed. Because that was the only place he could see his children. I don't feel like Watanabe came out of it either, so that meant there could be no deal for Cobb. I think he finally saw the children's faces because he had resolved his guilt with Mal. Or Mol, or whatever her name is, when he told her about the inception. And I think maybe the 'viral' nature of inception had maybe planted itself within his mind somewhere too. Maybe not to same degree as Mal, but to the point where he felt like the subconscious level was more of a home to him than reality.

but maybe I'm reading too much into it.

But damn I can't stop thinking about it and I must go see it again. I feel like I'm enjoying it more and more as time passes, because it took me a couple of hours afterwards of just sitting, thinking, digesting to really figure out how the movie sat with me. I enjoyed the experience of watching it, it just took me a while to figure out if I really understood it. And I like that.

I don't feel like Watanabe came out of it either

hm, why? he reaches for the gun, and then ...

if Watanabe was lonely couldn't he have dreamed himself up some hot women who had old guy fetishes?

it's lame if it's literally ALL a dream and cobb is just some guy we never see awake

think you have to accept that some of it is real

Not to pick on you here, because I've heard this argument a lot, but why does it bother you so much for it to be all a dream with no reality shown on screen? Do you really NEED that reality anchor to feel invested? (These are honest questions here)