Inception (with implanted spoilers)

i think the idea isnt that it was too easy to understand, just that it was overexplained and inelegant - more a style issue than a concept one

from upthread = OTM

Just watched this. Yeah, pretty good, but also a little too much GENERIC ACTION MOVIE in alot of parts. Also by having the whole movie focus on one long caper (instead of maybe a couple small ones then a big one), it really felt more or less like they were making up the rules as they went along. Good movie but I don't really feel the need to watch again.

And the ending was pretty lame imho.

It kind of reminds me of the owl movie.

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_li48mzmEJI1qe11kdo1_500.jpg

don't know what this new meme is where everything's spelled horribly, i just liked that they included her neckerchief.

this was fucking silly. the first time Nolan's made a genuinely bad movie.

http://movies.msn.com/story/taxing-movie-people/christopher-nolan/

In "The Dark Knight," characters announce the movie's themes in the form of lectures to the audience while the movie is playing. "Inception" has no discernible themes because it consists of nothing but game rules, most of them arbitrary. Since the movie's "dreams" aren't dreams at all, and have little connection to the ways in which the human mind actually works, what we're left with is an overblown, complicated (but not complex) version of 3-D tic-tac-toe. We're constantly reminded of the regulations and restrictions the game master has put in place for operating on and between the levels... but so what? What does it all signify? I'd much rather watch a movie that's actually about something.

this is my 9 year old's new favorite movie

it is a great movie for boys but adults not so much

watched this again from the hotel slumber initiation onward

still rocked, although I was kind of annoyed that the snow level didn't also get affected by weightlessness (I guess maybe the reasoning would be they were too far down to be affected by it? ie things only transfer down one level; was it raining in the hotel level?)

coming in at that point, I'd forgotten that they started out on an intercontinental plane ride, so when Mal came back up I was all "A-HA MUST BE A DREAM because how could they get comatose bodies into first class????" and my wife gave me such a pitying look

your wife otm.

she often is

on the other hand she married you.

haha i don't even know why i said that. i'm like a child with a fork near an electrical outlet who's been told "no."

lol

she's still kind enough to feel pity

a keeper for life, imo

i learned to dislike this movie a lot less once i accepted the banality of nolan's idea of "dreams."

I hate it when these movies come out and everyone's all OMG, THERE'S A TWIST! DON'T WORRY, I WON'T TELL YOU WHAT IT IS.

Because it only took me five seconds of understanding the plot of the movie to figure out, well, I guess in the end he'll still be dreaming.

Still I enjoyed it and there weren't too many plot holes. So did that chemist piss his pants and make it rain, or what.

xp The dreams were designed specifically to extract secrets, why make them crazy? Do we even see a non-designed dream that's not a memory? Limbo stuff, I guess.

i don't know. if i have a dream where paul lynde doesn't show up with a jack-o-lantern or the care bears aren't discovered to be behind the jfk assassination i'd start getting suspicious real quick.

the whole idea of designing dreams to be linear and rational so as not to freak out the dreamer's unconscious mind seems basically bananas to me given the nature of dreams.

you mean if you have a real life where Paul Lynde doesn't show up with a jack-o-lantern or the Care Bears aren't discovered to be behind the JFK assassination, since the whole point was to make the dreams be plausible real-life scenarios that were "real" enough to lull the target but built like a maze to keep the target's subconscious from rofflestomping you

PP that wasn't the twist and the director and everyone have said the ending is real

the TWIST is that:
1. Mal is his dead wife and he's wanted for killing her
2. They end up making the mark think he's in someone else's dream

actually I take it back, the movie had no twist, I have no idea what these people were talking about

again for me the issue isn't so much "do these dreams make sense within the logic of this world" as "this film is some bollocks you are making up, why choose to make up some boring shit?"

dan you know damn well that's precisely what my real life is like

paul lynde and i are drinking mojitos and discussing borges right now

(lynde smells terrible btw)

I'd a dream incepted in which two Nolan thread were resurrected at once by Thundercats.

like, the entire point is that the person dreaming isn't supposed to know it's a dream; flinging in unicorns and bare-breasted barristas bearing bold roast and bananas would kind of give the game away

xp: well okay point taken, you would get a technicolor acid inception; Cilian Murphy was a boring fucker tho

strongo & NV both OTM imho

the dreams are linear and boring aka not like actual dreams at all

and on top of that, why bother making a movie about boring dreams. if you want to make a heist movie where things blow up, just make a heist movie!

xp

also the movie didn't have a "twist", it had "ambiguity" which apparently folks can't deal with

I thought the point was that they were constructing flimsy plots that wouldn't make the marks pay too much attention, because it wasn't really fucked up stuff that would make them notice it was fake (huge riot outside of Saito's love nest) but small things like the carpet

i guess my point (if i even have one) (i'm so fucking tired) is why even call them "dreams" if they're just some kind of audio-visual "real world" feed piped into the brain of an unconscious person

that's not as snappy, obviously

i'm okay with the ambiguity, i just get bored of explaining to dweebs that the ambiguity doesn't have a secret hidden correct answer that they shd spend weeks developing elaborate theories about

"this carpet... it does not match the drapes"

also the movie didn't have a "twist", it had "ambiguity" which apparently folks can't deal with

Soooo true. It also was apparently difficult for some people to follow, which I don't get.

I think there's some movie audience who is intrigued by the deeper ethical struggle in Avatar, doesn't quite get the plot of Inception, and sees deep moral issues in The Dark Knight and I do not relate to these people

I guess the twist is really that THERE ISN'T REALLY A TWIST.

http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/2161/dramaticprairiedog1.gif

good deployment of gif

can someone release a cut of this movie with the tree of life whispering behind it

Mullholland Drive is actually Back to the Future Part IV: the Silencio of Biff

You people who claim to have nothing but dreams that are a combination of Yellow Submarine and a David Lynch movie scare the piss out of me tbqh. Most of the dreams that I can remember are pretty pedestrian, by and large, with perhaps a few out of place elements.

ambiguity re: twist isn't all that ambiguous iirc s/thing to do with the top when he's explaining stuff to juno iirc, but i may not rc tbf

if your dreams are consistently insane it's the ones where you drive to work, work, and then drive home that are the scare-the-piss-out ones tbh.

xxpost - I know! All of my dreams are like working at work and driving around and although when waking the dimensions and scenery are a little odd its just a mishmash of various places of lived/worked/studied/etc and pretty boring and sensible.

I don't know what all these pomo Dali-esque dreams are all about, I must be missing out.

the worst dreams are the ones where you drive to work and yr boss is leo dicaprio

it's not that they're all technicolor rainbows and serial killers, it's that they aren't linear or bearing any resemblance to the real world. people's identities shift and change, locations shift and change, there's no real cause and effect happening, my own motivations and goals shift from moment to moment etc.

I dunno about everyone else

xp

nah i'm pretty certain that is standardly the case with dreams

mine are insane because they really ARE like movies in that they are pretty linear and narrative

it's just that the plots usually revolve around things like the statue of liberty coming to life and going on a rampage

my own motivations and goals shift from moment to moment etc.

yeha, this more than anything else.

if inception were true dream style, then leo would have been distracted by a dude he knew in 5th grade passing by and just followed that guy for the nest 90 mins instead, catching up on dude's imaginary news

like, say I'll have the distinct sense that I am stranded in Oakland and need to get home, except the environment I'm in bears no resemblance to anywhere in actual Oakland I have been to, I find a BART station but it doesn't look like any actual real-life BART station, then I see somebody I know and get distracted and we go buy a hot dog or something.

xp

but yeah weird gaps in the "plot" and strange transitions that have a creepy emotional "rightness" but otherwise make no sense seems to be otm to me