SPOILERS!!! Discussion of Inception
POSTED BY: jewelstaitefan
UPDATED: Thursday, April 16, 2015 05:07
VIEWED: 15884
PAGE 5 of 8
Quote:
Originally posted by singate:
There was a bit in an earlier post about audiences being starved for a movie with some serious depth to it. My reaction is that I am really surprised this movie has been so successful. I have a firmly held belief that most people don't want to do any heavy lifting when it comes to entertainment. Hence the success of mindless sequels and reality TV.
I would agree that that is what most of the general cinema going public wants and gets. CG heavy but plot-lite fodder for their weak brains. It has it's place and can sometimes be entertaining. These days though there's too much of this type.
And then on very rare ocassions you get a movie like Inception. Normally a movie like this wouldn't be coming off the back of something like The Dark Knight which must help from a marketing viewpoint. It has a large, recognisable cast to anyone that watches movies even if you don't know their names. It has DiCaprio who is one of the biggest (and better) actors around. Plus the advertising was intriguing enough to make others curious to see what it was about.
For me, if you add these factors together, it's enough to make the intelligent cinema going public turn up and get the general public in as well. Some would be surprised and some wouldn't have a clue as to what to make of it. These would be the ones that have called it crap, pointless, boring, completely unoriginal etc etc (look on IMDB for these folks).
To me that why it's been so successful. It has ticked all the 'studio' boxes so they seem happy and it's now made lots of money. It has a fantastic plot, brilliant directing, top-notch acting, looks visually stunning (without excessive CGI, it has action, drama, tension, a little bit of humour and an ending that has left viewers talking about it and word of mouth pulls in even more viewers.
I just hope we see of few more examples of big intelligent movies before we are deluged with dross again. I'm not holding my breath.
"The greatest invention ever is not the wheel. It's the second wheel." - Rich Hall
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Pizmo: "And: I'm back to thinking it plays better if its Reality/Dream layers are legit the way they are presented, that thinking "it's Saito turning the wheels" is fun, but it's over thinking."
Well, I told you so myself, huh? LOL! No but really - my whole spiel may be overcomplicated, by I'll lay money that more is going on with Saito. The two showdowns between Saito and Cobb are brimming with something beyond the obvious storyline...
Quote:Me too. Both times I saw this I had moments of: "Holy shit I can't believe a movie studio actually allowed these people to put this story on screen. Thank God!"
Originally posted by singate:
There was a bit in an earlier post about audiences being starved for a movie with some serious depth to it. My reaction is that I am really surprised this movie has been so successful.
Quote:I like it! I have had that stuck in my craw as well - the idea that the dream Cobb ends in starts up somewhere in the middle. I think it makes more sense, actually, than what I was saying before.
So here's my theory. I think Mal is dead and Cobb is the one who was responsible. Cobb is also the mark but I don't think he was inside throughout the entire film. A partnership between Saito and Miles was brokered with dual intent: to find out exactly what happened to Mal and to learn how inception can be performed. So Ariadne is the architect, Miles is the dreamer, and Saito is the extractor. At the end Cobb is still inside. The similarity between his "real" children and the memorex version is too close for comfort. If I'm not mistaken the only other person to see his children during the film was Ariadne. I'm thinking that was the template she used in the final scene.
So many good possibilities!
Two: the Hollywood pseudo-technology that bugs me more was this idea that many brains shared one dream, but that one dreamer controlled the dream, and yet a third person was the designer. It's all handy for putting the plot together and defining people's roles, but it's not so realistic.
So the timing thing - yeah, smells of BS. But it's just so cooooool! LOL! I mean, the movie is so good that I can allow the bad science.
-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:I've already tried to gut-shot Inception for bad neuroscience, i.e. our meaty minds can't really run at 8000 times normal speed. But no one will listen to me because I am cranky! Today it is rated #3 on the Top 250 Movies of All Time www.imdb.com/chart/top
Originally posted by mal4prez:
Two: the Hollywood pseudo-technology that bugs me more was this idea that many brains shared one dream, but that one dreamer controlled the dream, and yet a third person was the designer. It's all handy for putting the plot together and defining people's roles, but it's not so realistic.
So the timing thing - yeah, smells of BS. But it's just so cooooool! LOL! I mean, the movie is so good that I can allow the bad science
I’m with Dana Stevens www.slate.com/id/2260582/ and Chris Orr www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/07/inception-summers-best-mos
t-disappointing-blockbuster/59855/ in finding Inception a bit too hollow on an emotional level to really be great despite many admirable qualities. But what neither of them mentions is the strange political economy angle.
It’s clear that Saito really wants to see that competing conglomerate broken up. The events depicted in the film are not cheap. Instead of investing all that time, energy, and money in a longshot cinematic dream-busting effort, wouldn’t it make more sense to just launch a PR and lobbying campaign to get anti-trust authorities (or other regulators) to do the job? That’s all even perfectly legal. And the film makes it clear that Saito has a fair amount of political pull as is.
The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity", where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
After watching a second time, I wondered if Murphy and Caine are the only carryovers Nolan brought from Batman. Anybody know?
The constructs as autonomous? No. Mal wreaks havoc everywhere, conspiring with Saito in the audition piece, shooting Fischer. If she is a construct of Cobb's, as Cobb thinks.
I had the impression that Cobb knew none of these characters in the real world but Miles, Mal, the kids. Everybody else is from after Mal gets him in trouble. If the "reality" level isn't, everybody else could be a construct.
Quote:
Originally posted by pizmobeach:
Cobb's trickery of Mal and it's back firing and causing her death (he changed her totem to make her think she was in a dream
WHAAAAAT? That never happened. Does anybody else think this happened? Please explain this jump from script.
Quote:
so she jumps to kick herself into Reality (btw DiCaprio's anguish over her jumping was really well done imo), that works for me.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:I read that review too. I just don't agree. I thought Cobb and Mal's story was very emotionally engaging, and that was enough for me. Digging into every character would have been distracting. And then there's the possibility that none of the other characters have depth because they're not real...
Originally posted by two:
I’m with Dana Stevens www.slate.com/id/2260582/ and Chris Orr www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/07/inception-summers-best-mos
t-disappointing-blockbuster/59855/ in finding Inception a bit too hollow on an emotional level to really be great despite many admirable qualities.
Quote:Yes yes yes. But this argument can be made for every movie and TV show out there. At some point, you have to make peace with the fact that Hollywood is not realistic, that no movie worth watching would ever really happen. Especially not science fiction. Hey - I'm a writer and a scientist. I have to turn that shit off to some extent when I go in a theater, os I'll never watch a movie again.
But what neither of them mentions is the strange political economy angle.
It’s clear that Saito really wants to see that competing conglomerate broken up. The events depicted in the film are not cheap. Instead of investing all that time, energy, and money in a longshot cinematic dream-busting effort, wouldn’t it make more sense to just launch a PR and lobbying campaign to get anti-trust authorities (or other regulators) to do the job? That’s all even perfectly legal.
And anyway, as much as the dream thing cost, the political path might have been more expensive, Saito's involvement in it would have known, and there would be no guarantee that he'd succeed. How has Apple done at forcing Microsoft to give up part of the market? Sure hasn't done shit through the kind of political means you're suggesting.
-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Mal and Cobb's story worked for me. But...
Originally posted by mal4prez:
I thought Cobb and Mal's story was very emotionally engaging, and that was enough for me...
At some point, you have to make peace with the fact that Hollywood is not realistic, that no movie worth watching would ever really happen. Especially not science fiction. Hey - I'm a writer and a scientist. I have to turn that shit off to some extent when I go in a theater, or I'll never watch a movie again.
I have to watch a movie like Inception at the theater. Just turn my brain off and soak-up the experience. Seeing it on DVD would ruin it for me. Hitting the pause button on a vaguely realistic Hollywood movie is like pushing the plunger on a dynamite detonator -- destroys it for me.
Movies on DVD, where if I want I can stop them and analyze and restart, like Avatar, How to Train Your Dragon, or Matrix 1 are the kinds of movies I enjoy without feeling any need to pick at their nits. But those are cartoonish, unlike Inception. I guess my tastes are immature. Or I need a shrink.
Try Five Ways of Looking at Inception www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/browbeat/archive/2010/07/20/five-ways-of-loo
king-at-inception.aspx
Try this review: www.aintitcool.com/node/45790 “Nolan makes one, small, somewhat pretentious, mistake in the film that undercuts its power and keeps it from attaining the level of brilliance it stands upon the precipice of achieving.”
The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity", where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
The constructs as autonomous? No. Mal wreaks havoc everywhere, conspiring with Saito in the audition piece, shooting Fischer. If she is a construct of Cobb's, as Cobb thinks.
Mal is a memory, or at least a construct from memory, not just something thats been made up. Cobb tells Ariadne that you don't use memories or real locations even though he has broken these rules himself. I took it that because she was a memory it made her stronger (dangerous?) and she could break through into the dreams featuring Cobb by using his guilt. Or something along those lines.
Quote:
After watching a second time, I wondered if Murphy and Caine are the only carryovers Nolan brought from Batman. Anybody know?
I know and I'm not telling.
Actually there is another. Murphy and Caine both appeared in both Batman movies and Ken Watanabe also played the 'fake' Ra's Al Ghul in Batman Begins.
Nolan seems to like using the same actors in different movies which has fed the speculation of who will appear in Batman 3. Joseph Gordon Levitt as The Riddler? Marion Cotillard as ??? (Poison Ivy maybe? Catwoman?). I even remember Empire magazine touted Ellen Page as Batgirl before Dark Knight was released.
We'll just have to wait and see.
As for the movie itself I wonder if Nolan will do a commentary on DVD/Blu-ray?
He's done one for all his other releases except Dark Knight (which had some pointless BD Live commentary).
It could confirm soooo much but it could also spoil, what to me is, the fun part of the movie. Talking about it after, sharing thoughts, ideas and theories. Do we really want a definitive answer??
"The greatest invention ever is not the wheel. It's the second wheel." - Rich Hall
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:I could own Inception, jsut so I could be free to look for all those little details. I think it'd stand up to several viewings. As did the Matrix, though I've worn that one out now. There's bits of dialogue that make me cringe.
Originally posted by two:
I have to watch a movie like Inception at the theater. Just turn my brain off and soak-up the experience. Seeing it on DVD would ruin it for me. Hitting the pause button on a vaguely realistic Hollywood movie is like pushing the plunger on a dynamite detonator -- destroys it for me.
But definitely the big visuals must be seen in the theater. The only movies I've gone out to see in the past year were Inception and Avatar, twice each. Because it just won't be so good on my little TV. Oh, and Knight and Day, but I was forced into that one. It was either Tom Cruise or the Twilight movie. *shudder* (sorry Twilight fans I just can't do it)
I've opened those links and will read them when I have more time. Very limited internet these days!
-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I am back to attack Inception with another's comments because I'm cranky and soulless. I just can't appreciate great art:
Cliché and Pastiche in Inception
by Matt Yglesias http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/08/cliche-and-pastiche-in-incep
tion/
LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne offers a criticism in the form of a question about Inception: “Why are the movie’s architectural settings, for the most part, so hackneyed?”
It seems to me that there’s a perfectly good answer to this question. As Hawthorne notes later in his piece, the reliance on cliché physical forms is of a piece with the film’s general repackaging of very familiar cinematic tropes:
Quote:This is just one of the film’s pet notions—that life inside the dreams of hardened psychics resembles action movie clichés in which vast quantities of heavily armed goons assault you with terrible aim. Similarly, near the beginning of the film you’re given a series of very cliché heist movie “getting the gang back together” scenes complete with Joseph Gordon-Levitt swearing he’s just trying to pull one last job. Whether you like this or not (my dad [the screenwriter] said the movie is “too postmodern” for him) being original by creating a pastiche made up of individual clichés is the whole movie and there's nothing in particularly different about its treatment of architecture.
Christopher Nolan's hyper-complex psychological thriller doesn't just make architecture a central theme; the whole story hinges on the ability of architects to design buildings, neighborhoods and whole cities inside other people's dreams. Early on, Leonardo DiCaprio's brooding hero, Cobb, gives us reason to look forward to those invented worlds when he warns the young architect he's hired, Ariadne ( Ellen Page), that she should "never create places from memory" and "always imagine new places." (Sounds promising, right? Sounds like a manifesto! Sounds like the Bauhaus circa 1920!) In the same scene, Ariadne's skittish subconscious causes a whole section of Paris to fold deliriously in on itself, as if Baron Haussmann's grand boulevards had suddenly turned to rubber.
From then on, though, the architectural set pieces grow increasingly trite and familiar. The bulk of the dream sequences take place in the following spaces: on the streets of downtown Los Angeles, including a wide intersection in front of a Famima store; the inside of a van; a hotel room; hotel hallways; an elevator; an elevator shaft; and a quasi-Brutalist mountainside complex where, in the deep snow, you can make out the boot-prints of both James Bond and Jason Bourne.
We've seen all this before, haven't we? The infrastructural guts of the modern city as a setting for explosions, gunfights and increasingly manic race-the-clock scenarios? How many movie heroes have climbed atop an elevator, as the character played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt does? How many more have plotted an ingenious route through a building's air ducts? These places aren't new. They're architectural clichés, dredged up from Hollywood's collective memory bank. www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-architecture-inception-201008
08,0,6654866.story
The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity", where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
That Hawthorne guy obviously didn't get the movie or the reason for the architecture styles in the dream levels.
It's purpose was that they didn't want Fischer to know he was dreaming until they told him. This means that each level had to look realistic to Fischers POV. If Ariadne had put the Eiffel Tower or the some other famous building in the LA chase scene Fischer would know it wasn't real. Same thing if they'd used fantastical architecture or physics (like the city folding over) that too would have told him something was wrong and the plan would have failed.
As for cliches then every single movie and TV show out there uses cliches, including Serenity. You can't escape it. The guy needs to loosen up a lot or stop watching movies.
"The greatest invention ever is not the wheel. It's the second wheel." - Rich Hall
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME