Inception

[Walter]

Spoiler

I really don't understand your gripe with the mindless hordes...Their function in the movie was to both act as cannon fodder

Spoiler

That's my problem, right there. They're so much fodder that they get in the way of every action scene in movie. By the end, every action sequence was tiresome and without any sense of progression. I'm reminded of the Agent Smith fight in Matrix Reloaded. Just a big mindless horde that won't stop coming.

Spoiler

As for the architect not being able to mend wounds... it seemed like they could not influence people sharing in the dream at that level

Spoiler

Ok, then. Why not indirectly? The architect can warp the entire subconscious world, so why not just create some medical supplies to help staunch the wound? Cobb could have told Ariadne to be prepared with some supplies to perform basic surgery or something else, in case they got injured, knowing the dangers of this particular job.

But no, they didn't do any of that. They just insert this massive superpower, and then arbitrarily limited its extent. Why? Because it's more suspenseful this way. That felt contrived, to me.

The New Yorker, snobbiest magazine in the world, had this as the conclusion to their review:

[quote author=http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2010/07/26/100726crci_cinema_denby]
"I would like to plant in Christopher Nolan’s head the thought that he might consider working more simply next time. His way of dodging powerful emotion is beginning to look like a grand-scale version of a puzzle-maker’s obsession with mazes and tropes."
[/quote]
I agree wholeheartedly.

 

[Griffith]

Saw it, thought it was good, lots of cool stuff, super well made, but almost to a fault... it was so good I wanted it to be perfect and so it left me wanting a little (expectation are a bitch that way). Like my head liked it, but even though I was primed and ready til the end, it somehow just didn't capture my imagination like it should have.

My initial thoughts, I haven't read any other spoilers or reviews yet, will after:

Spoiler

Why didn't he just fly his kids out to France? Boom, headshot! Movie ruined!

I think the whole dream technology should have been better introduced from the beginning. It starts out as a matter of fact everyone accepts without the audience being properly transitioned from our reality to theirs, until Tommy gives a vague explanation of it's original military development. By that point though, if you hadn't just already suspended your disbelief, it would have been better left unsaid, or just taken care of right off the bat.

Nolan undercut the overall suspense by the end. It was good in the beginning, these were radical, dangerous things being embarked upon, but it became clearer and clearer as the movie went on that nobody was really going to suffer any real consequences (that hadn't already). The worse thing that happened was Tommy getting deliberately maimed at the beginning. I mean, I was more worried about the characters fucking around in dreamland and something going wrong than they were, and I guess they were right not to be worried, because for all the talk of how dangerous the situation was getting, it kept becoming clearer nothing was actually going to happen to them. This was compounded by the fact we already knew Leo was going to meet back up with the Last Samurai. It kind of ended the movie, from the perspective of my overall emotional investment, prematurely.

Addendum to that, it was ludicrous that nobody else was hurt or killed despite the extreme violence going on, literally guns being fired into the back of a stationary car at point blank range, and an endless "army" firing off guns at everybody (except when it was convenient for them to be unarmed), and the worst part was that the longer that kept happening, the more confident I was nothing of consequence was going to happen. Once that danger and suspense is removed, it becomes motion and not action.

The one hold out for that was Mal, after the train hit their car, I was expecting anything, I thought that was the fucking gauntlet being thrown down. Instead it was like a premature climax. They go to do the inception, right off the bat they get hit by a big ol' honkin' train in the middle of the street, and we hear she'd be more prevalent the deeper they went, so HOLY SHIT! Right? But, the train was basically the highlight of her interference. She had zero presence in the next dream, and then just sort of nonchalantly showed up in the third to do what the script called for in as straightforward a fashion as possible. Like I said, after that train, I was ready for anything, and then nothing much happened with her. Instead of the stakes rising, by the time they get to limbo, they literally just have a conversation at the dinner table they probably should have had, ya know, before she killed herself. I know there was plenty of trouble and complications otherwise, but she was infinitely more interesting as an antagonist than the barely explained or developed, and faceless, "security."

This is the nitpickiest of nitpicks, but it was almost like everything was too well explained if that makes sense. Maybe my expectations for complexity were just too high from what I'd heard, but Nolan almost did too good a job spelling out the rules, to the point that some of the wonder was gone. I actually might have liked it to be more convoluted, not to the point of Lost or anything, but within reason... though, come to think of it, it's a dream, it doesn't have to be within reason. Like, you'd think they could get away with more in the dreams, especially considering what Juno could do after her impressive introduction to the dream world. I know it was demonstrated that the more you change, the more attention you attract, but there's still a advantageous balance one could strike before hitting the point of diminishing returns, and they didn't even address taking advantage of that to help themselves. It also didn't help that the MacGuffin was a lame, paper-thin industrial espionage plot that nobody really cared about. More focus and emphasis should have been put on Leo's tortured mind.

Finally, I didn't like the ending. As I exclaimed when the credits started, louder than intended, "Two and half hours and you cut it 1 second before real closure?" Crappy trend, already passe at this point, just make a decision, commit to an ending, and own it, 100%, I would have been equally fine with it either choice, though as written neither would have totally rang true. I think by Roger Ebert's strictest definitions, that disqualifies it from being art. =)

Having said that, I'm holding the movie to an extremely high standard that it set for itself because it was so well done, and because its premise and everything else had so much potential. Like even if it's an 8 out of 10, I'm still a little bummed because it had the potential to be an 11. So, despite my complaints, this might be the best movie I see this year. It's like the reverse of my experience with Avatar.

I agree wholeheartedly.

As do I. I feel like Nolan's non-Batman movies are all semi-autobiographical in a way, they all seem to be about the structure and making of the movie itself, or how he makes it, like we're literally watching him design and solve a maze or puzzle right before our eyes, like the movie is a documentary about itself (Leo even resembles Nolan a little =). It's always impressive and stimulating, but it doesn't necessarily provoke a passionate response. Like it's so deliberately well put together, you can't help but notice how well it was put together, which ironically takes you out of it a bit. I'll give it this though, I'm liking it the more I think about, the urgency of my gripes are fading, easy to overlook as I think about everything I did like about it. Usually, when it comes to such vacillation, it's the other way around (the aforementioned Avatar, or typical dreck like Predators that doesn't even hold up as you watch it). Speaking of which, James Cameron went from making clever technical movies to ones based on simple emotion as much as effects... based on the results, maybe we should be careful what we wish for.


P.S.

Spoiler

Great, all that, and overall I come off sounding as inconclusive as the ending I didn't like.

P.P.S. I realize I don't like Nolan's endings except for Memento, because it's perfect and the way it had to be, and The Dark Knight, because it's appropriate and emotionally satisfying.

 

[IncantatioN]

I watched it last night at an IMAX, and it was incredible. I was just grinning a lot throughout the movie haha! Definitely a re-watch is in store, and I'll give it a while for the movie to sink in.

Spoiler

3. Spinning Top Scene: if the first scenario I mentioned is indeed correct, then Dom is actually so deeply wrapped in layers upon layers of dreams that he can no longer differentiate dream from reality. It's like that one Twilight Zone episode where the guy kept waking up from nightmares - except in this one the "dream machine" serves as Dom's way of constantly digging deeper into the dream world. While various sites have mentioned that this is supposed to be a "buzzed" and "open-ended" finale, I'd like to think that this entire movie was but a segment of Dom's larger dream that he never left.

If you think about the significance of the last scene ...

Spoiler

notice how his father is wearing the same Green shirt, and the kids wearing the same clothes as he always pictured them in his own memories - these sort of trigger the thought that (i) they're not real and he's in limbo at this point or dreaming about it, or (ii) it actually did happen and Cobb's reality is mixing with the dreams/ memories he's had of his family, making them appear to have the same clothes.

 

[SrCraneo]

I watched it last night at an IMAX, and it was incredible. I was just grinning a lot throughout the movie haha! Definitely a re-watch is in store, and I'll give it a while for the movie to sink in.
If you think about the significance of the last scene ...

Spoiler

notice how his father is wearing the same Green shirt, and the kids wearing the same clothes as he always pictured them in his own memories - these sort of trigger the thought that (i) they're not real and he's in limbo at this point or dreaming about it, or (ii) it actually did happen and Cobb's reality is mixing with the dreams/ memories he's had of his family, making them appear to have the same clothes.

Spoiler

They're not wearing the same clothes. Cobb's kids are even played by different actors when we finally see their faces.

 

[Johnstantine]

Spoiler

Why didn't he just fly his kids out to France? Boom, headshot! Movie ruined!

Spoiler

When he speaks with them on the phone, the grandmother doesn't even want to talk to him so why would she send the kids all the way to France?

 

[Griffith]

Spoiler

When he speaks with them on the phone, the grandmother doesn't even want to talk to him so why would she send the kids all the way to France?

That's the best explanation I've heard so far, problem is it's so much a smaller hurdle compared to what he's actually doing. There's no good reason to do insanely more risky and illegal dream capers when he could simply convince her to bring the kids to visit where her husband, whose sympathetic and friendly to him, works and obviously lives part time; I mean, we don't even know if that was an obstacle at all, and if she really felt that strongly about it, she probably wouldn't let him see or even talk to his kids anyway. However you look at it,

Spoiler

he's going to infinitely more trouble to see his kids in an extremely roundabout fashion than if he just put a 10th of that effort into devising a straightforward plan to see his kids,

it doesn't make sense unless you just totally suspend your disbelief on a cartoonish level (he's the dream man, that's how he handles everything!) or ignore it.

I'm glad you brought it up again, because it was still on my mind, and it's driven everyone crazy I've pointed it out to (especially if they really loved the movie). Basically, the human premise of the film is fatally flawed, and we'll just have to accept that. If I ever meet Christopher Nolan, it's the first thing I'd ask him, just like I'd ask Miura about Guts having sex with an Apostle on the first page of Berserk (the difference is he didn't supposedly map out the story for 10 years before releasing that page =).

 

[CowTip]

Just saw it, it was pretty good but left me a little confused on some details.

Spoiler

I think it's interesting that you point out how plainly Nolan explains this dream universe that he's created, but I don't necessarily feel the same way. Unless I missed something, it seemed like the limbo world was very poorly touched upon. They said int he movie that if you were to die in the dream so heavily sedated, you would end up in Limbo and when you woke up in the real world you'd basically be an empty zombie, yet it seemed easier to get out of limbo than any other place they were. Just get hit by a train, get shot in the head etc. And what was with the quote of "There's nothing in limbo except the remnants of people who have been there before"? So these subconsciousnesses are shared realities amongst all people? And everyone needs a kick to wake up or not, but they have direct control over whether to use that kick or not? I thought the whole point was that they didn't realize what was happening and just jerked awake. None of that made a lot of sense to me and I felt it was more or less glossed over. I can let it slide though because it was such a cool movie.

My favorite part... dream #3... the storming of Shadow Moses Island. The entire time I was expecting someone to turn a corner and "Metal Gear?!"

 

[Johnstantine]

That's the best explanation I've heard so far, problem is it's so much a smaller hurdle compared to what he's actually doing. There's no good reason to do insanely more risky and illegal dream capers when he could simply convince her to bring the kids to visit where her husband, whose sympathetic and friendly to him, works and obviously lives part time; I mean, we don't even know if that was an obstacle at all, and if she really felt that strongly about it, she probably wouldn't let him see or even talk to his kids anyway. However you look at it,

Spoiler

he's going to infinitely more trouble to see his kids in an extremely roundabout fashion than if he just put a 10th of that effort into devising a straightforward plan to see his kids,

it doesn't make sense unless you just totally suspend your disbelief on a cartoonish level (he's the dream man, that's how he handles everything!) or ignore it.

I'm glad you brought it up again, because it was still on my mind, and it's driven everyone crazy I've pointed it out to (especially if they really loved the movie). Basically, the human premise of the film is fatally flawed, and we'll just have to accept that. If I ever meet Christopher Nolan, it's the first thing I'd ask him, just like I'd ask Miura about Guts having sex with an Apostle on the first page of Berserk (the difference is he didn't supposedly map out the story for 10 years before releasing that page =).

Also, something worth pointing out: at the beginning, Saito touched Dom's totem. From what Arthur told us, if someone touched your totem then it would render it moot--or something along those lines. So, ya know, maybe he IS dreaming and will never know it because the totem is no longer valid?

Just something I picked up on

 

[Lithrael]

From what Arthur told us, if someone touched your totem then it would render it moot--or something along those lines.

What it was exactly was that if someone else held it then they'd know its exact feel and be able to create a copy of it in a dream, making it useless as a way to test that you were creating the totem yourself. Saito (or someone pretending they were Saito) would have to be the one creating the dream with the copy of the totem in it for him touching it to be the catch. I think.

Even if nobody else touches your totem you can't use it to check whether you're awake. You could be in a dream you're creating yourself.

 

[Johnstantine]

Even if nobody else touches your totem you can't use it to check whether you're awake. You could be in a dream you're creating yourself.

That's not the case with Dom, apparently. It was said that in dreams the top never stops spinning.

So, yes, he could use it to see if he's awake.

 

[Lithrael]

Hahaaa, I actually missed that. No wonder I didn't get what was exciting about the cliffhanger.

 

[Rhombaad]

I saw it on Friday night and it surpassed my expectations. While I agree with Walter that the vast mob of projections didn't amount to much more than cannon fodder in the end, throughout the movie I was in awe wondering how they would survive against such massive resistance, so it didn't bother me too much while watching the film.

Spoiler

The open ending didn't bother me that much. In fact, I kind of liked it.[/quote]

 

[Griffith]

About Dom's totem, since he got it from Mal, couldn't he theoretically be trapped in her dream? That's my theory!

Spoiler

I think it's interesting that you point out how plainly Nolan explains this dream universe that he's created, but I don't necessarily feel the same way. Unless I missed something, it seemed like the limbo world was very poorly touched upon. They said int he movie that if you were to die in the dream so heavily sedated, you would end up in Limbo and when you woke up in the real world you'd basically be an empty zombie, yet it seemed easier to get out of limbo than any other place they were. Just get hit by a train, get shot in the head etc. And what was with the quote of "There's nothing in limbo except the remnants of people who have been there before"? So these subconsciousnesses are shared realities amongst all people? And everyone needs a kick to wake up or not, but they have direct control over whether to use that kick or not? I thought the whole point was that they didn't realize what was happening and just jerked awake. None of that made a lot of sense to me and I felt it was more or less glossed over. I can let it slide though because it was such a cool movie.

Yeah, I was wondering about that after too, and sort of just let it go (I heard and came up with some explanations that didn't quite satisfy me, but can't remember them, so I'd have to see it again). Worst of both worlds in that regard, lots of rules, not always followed consistently (hey, that was a theme though =), that's why I would have rather things been a little more unknown and mysterious anyway, would have taken care of all that.

Spoiler

My favorite part... dream #3... the storming of Shadow Moses Island. The entire time I was expecting someone to turn a corner and "Metal Gear?!"

!​

I was in awe wondering how they would survive against such massive resistance, so it didn't bother me too much while watching the film.

The thing is though, it was totally hollow resistance

Spoiler

, by the end that one guy took on that entire base and didn't even seem scared or in any real danger, same for the rest of them

. Those projections had worse aim than stormtroopers. =)

 

[Rhombaad]

!​

The second I saw the base that sound effect popped into my head. "It's just a box."

The thing is though, it was totally hollow resistance

Spoiler

, by the end that one guy took on that entire base and didn't even seem scared or in any real danger, same for the rest of them

. Those projections had worse aim than stormtroopers. =)

Oh, in retrospect I totally agree. For some reason it just didn't bother me during the movie.

 

[Griffith]

The second I saw the base that sound effect popped into my head. "It's just a box."

I'm proud to say I made both those jokes during the movie. =)

Oh, in retrospect I totally agree. For some reason it just didn't bother me during the movie.

Yeah, I was bothered early and often

Spoiler

, starting about the time bullets were flying into their car from all sides and nobody was dead.

 

[IncantatioN]

Wasn't Cobb away from his kids for 4 or so years? If that's true, then

Spoiler

at the end, his kids don't look 4 years older than the last time he saw them, which we can safely assume could only mean that he's visioning his kids from his memory, and that he's still dreaming, in Limbo.

 

[Konketsuji]

Outstanding movie! Haven't seen anything that good for some time.

 

[SrCraneo]

Spoiler

They're not wearing the same clothes. Cobb's kids are even played by different actors when we finally see their faces.

Edit: Nvm.. I read that somewhere and many people seemed to be in agreement. Don't know about the different actors but I went to see it again today and

Spoiler

I think they wear the same clothes every time, except from the elevator scene where they are seen in the beach with mal