INCEPTION Review Thread (SPOILERS!!)

[SquidPuppet]

Originally Posted by Diesel

Maybe it was

[Show spoiler]made from some of that bullet proof alien rhino hide

I agree though, that scene lasted way too long for

[Show spoiler]nobody to end up being shot. How many times did the driver duck?

Something else I wondered about...

[Show spoiler]how come the falling sensation from the bridge would have been able to kick them, but the falling down the hill didn't? Was it not a large enough fall or something?

Originally Posted by garlad

Was it

[Show spoiler]cos they didnt turn upside down? The van landed on it's 4 wheels, dont remember it ever turning over.. ??

IIRC,

[Show spoiler]didnt it roll over and come to a stop right side down?

[Drew664]

Originally Posted by SquidPuppet

IIRC,

[Show spoiler]didnt it roll over and come to a stop right side down?

Yes.

[Ghasta]

I definitely liked this one....will have to watch it a few more times on blu!! Really liked the soundtrack and the whole idea of the movie.

[Show spoiler]I wonder if they'll sell some of the "totems" they had in the movie. Leo really plays the "struggle within" character well. I thoroughly enjoyed him in this one and Shutter Island. And, I was just in awe during all of the anti-gravity scenes with Gordon-Levitt. Awesome flick!!

[mjbethancourt]

Originally Posted by reallyagi

Not sure if this has been posted already, but Jim Emerson explained the disappointment I felt with the movie better than I could.

Inception: Has Christopher Nolan forgotten how to dream? By Jim Emerson
"Boy, was I misinformed. I'd gotten the impression that Christopher Nolan's "Inception" was about dream states, but what this movie's facilely conceived CGI environments have to do with dreaming, as human beings experience dreams, I don't know. For what it's worth, Warner Bros. describes it as a "science fiction action film." But the movie's concept of dreams as architectural labyrinths -- stable and persistent science-fiction action-movie sets that can be blown up with explosives or shaken with earthquake-like tremors, but that are firmly resistant to shifting or morphing into anything else -- is mystifying to me.

As is the writer-director's conception of dream-time as something linear, scalable and reliably convertible with a calculator. (There's an app for that: Let's see, 5 minutes of real time equals -- what? -- one hour of dream time, equals a week of deeper dream time, equals ten years in limbo... Have you ever experienced seven consecutive days in the course of a single-setting dream?)

Objects and characters maintain their identities without randomly changing or melding, and nothing is ever more than one thing at a time (with the possible exception of a family home with a repetitive skyscraper view that's constructed like a Hannah-Barbera background loop). The emotional components of dreaming (not to mention the universal archetypes) are nowhere to be found. No shame, lust, embarrassment, exhilaration; no flying, nakedness in public, pop quizzes, "actor's nightmares," quicksand floors, teeth falling out... There are lots of guns, and even those aren't anything but... guns. Dream reality behaves predictably and reliably according to the rules of the experts who've figured out to a certainty exactly how The Human Subconscious works.

In an "Inception" dream, when something happens, it stays happened and the dream-narrative continues in a straight temporal line from there. Cause-and-effect is still in effect. Sure, there are video-game-like "levels," but all the same organizing principles still apply from one to another. There's a rainy traffic jam world (and the usual Nolan action sequence in which the audience can't tell where anything is in relation to anything else, although the characters in the scene can), a hotel supposedly inspired by M.C. Escher but actually more by "Royal Wedding" (and Kubrick's "2001"), a James Bond "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" snow fortress... Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) even has an elevator to take you from one level to another in his subconsciousness. It's all so neatly organized! In other words, not dreamlike at all. Just disappointingly flat, sterile, cold, rational. If a filmmaker is going to dream, the challenge is to dream big, to show us things in ways we haven't seen before, not to simply regurgitate indifferently executed cliches from action pictures and heist movies: car chases, kidnappings, gunfights, interrogations, elevators, ski chases ("Help!"), burglaries and vaults that simply open up when you reach them. (OK, I don't remember seing that last one before.)

As the philosopher and rhythm guitarist David St. Hubbins famously said, "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever." Nolan is clever, clever, clever. He is not stupid, but you can see stupid from where he is. (It's right over there, where characters in a dream consciously try to kill themselves so they'll wake up.) This was promising premise, and it's too bad the writer-director did so little out of the ordinary with it. Nolan makes crafty little puzzle boxes (and sometimes big ones), but they never quite get beyond merely clever. Like "Sleuth" or "The Usual Suspects," they're not about characters or emotions or ideas or human experience at all; they're just self-contained gadgets, amusing but mechanical."

What? Did you miss the part where they explained that

[Show spoiler]every dream that was depicted in that movie was deliberately constructed specifically for a high degree of stability, otherwise it would be impossible for multiple people to share a dream? In particular, take that comment about the linearity of dream time: did you and the reviewer miss the part where Yusuf explained that time perception was a specific construct induced by the chemical compound? How he had different compounds for different time-perceptions?

That's not a lack of imagination, it's a technological parameter specific to the dreams people have when plugged-in.

[Show spoiler] I also think that the bland monotony of Dom and Mal's personal dream space was deliberate, I think it was meant to indicate an obsessive tendency.

And that last line, how the movie is not about characters or emotions or human experience: which movie was he watching? That's all it was about. This review is awful, he is taking Nolan to task because the reviewer can't be bothered to pay attention to detail.

Jeez, what an obstinately negative perspective of this movie that reviewer has. One should never review a movie when they're obviously suffering from the cramps or hemorrhoids or missed their nap time.

P.S: Nice non-use of spoiler tags.

[lDlisturb3d]

Everyday i get on this site i just think about inception!! This movie is a masterpiece and i cant wait to add it to my collection!!!!!

[ScarredLungs]

Originally Posted by lDlisturb3d

Everyday i get on this site i just think about inception!! This movie is a masterpiece and i cant wait to add it to my collection!!!!!

I'm right there with you! I've seen it now 3 times. 5/5 every time

[mjbethancourt]

Originally Posted by kpkelley

Yeah, at times I was wondering if they even bothered writing a new score, or if they just ported over the score from The Dark Knight.

Hans Zimmer has always had that problem. All of his scores sound the same.

I did enjoy it for this film, though. I thought the theme was really effective, I believe it was meant to make you think of the tolling of a bell or an alarm clock, (like at the end of the film adaptation of '1776').

[mjbethancourt]

[Show spoiler]I think one really cool aspect of irony was that Dom had, in effect, performed an inception on himself. His guilt, his festering, viral guilt, is an inception.

I'm both amused and amazed at the degree of detail in this movie. People will be discussing this movie for a long time because of it.

[Show spoiler]I was tickled by that little bit when they first enter the dream with Fischer, and there is a heavy downpour, so Arthur says to the dreamer, Yusuf, "couldn't you have peed first?" and Yusuf says "sorry, I had too much champagne."

[Fred Bang]

For those (like me) who absolutely love the score, here's a video of the orchestral performance Hans Zimmer gave at the premiere with Johnny Marr (from The Smiths). Amazing!

http://incontention.com/?p=26383

[bootsy]

$300 million for Inception? Anybody think it can make it. I hope it does I think it deserves it. I am not even close to a box office guru but it seems like the Monday and Tuesday numbers look very good.

[D-Blitz]

Originally Posted by Fred Bang

For those (like me) who absolutely love the score, here's a video of the orchestral performance Hans Zimmer gave at the premiere with Johnny Marr (from The Smiths). Amazing!

http://incontention.com/?p=26383

I absolutely am in love with the score - it's absolutely top notch and perfect in every way! It's the best I've heard in a long while! It should win an Academy Award in that department.

[lDlisturb3d]

Originally Posted by Fred Bang

For those (like me) who absolutely love the score, here's a video of the orchestral performance Hans Zimmer gave at the premiere with Johnny Marr (from The Smiths). Amazing!

http://incontention.com/?p=26383

Dude great find, i love how dicaprio says that basically this is Nolan's Masterpiece.

[ArmyOfDarknessAW]

Originally Posted by bootsy

$300 million for Inception? Anybody think it can make it. I hope it does I think it deserves it. I am not even close to a box office guru but it seems like the Monday and Tuesday numbers look very good.

Well i think it definitely will overall with domestic and foreign. I don't think it will with just domestic. I guess it all depends on drop-off.

[Blu-Malibu2009]

A bit of a rant here regarding sound quality in theaters...

I hate the obsession with loud surround sound in theaters. I just got done watching Inception for the third time and I swear the surround speakers were louder than the center channel, meaning a lot of the dialogue was completely drowned out by various sound effects and music in the surround channels. Part of this is a problem with the sound mixing itself, but part of it is the lazy theater itself too. I had this exact same issue when I went to see Terminator Salvation last year at this particular theater. You would think in the age of home theater that these nitwits would figure out that loudness doesn't necessarily impress moviegoers. I want to be able to hear what the characters are saying more than anything else including explosions or music. Turn up the center channel or drastically turn down the surround channels, please. It's not much to ask for.

This is exactly why I rarely go to the theater. If they're not screwing up the sound, they're screwing up the picture quality in some way. The other day I watched it on another screen and they had a huge glare thing in the middle of the screen that was distracting as hell throughout the movie. So I tried another screen today only to discover that the sound is overcranked in the surround channels. I can't wait to get this movie on Blu-ray so I don't have to put up with this garbage.

Has anyone else had this same problem?

[ScarredLungs]

Originally Posted by D-Blitz

I absolutely am in love with the score - it's absolutely top notch and perfect in every way! It's the best I've heard in a long while! It should win an Academy Award in that department.

I bought the soundtrack! I love it!

[ScarredLungs]

Originally Posted by Diesel

Something else I wondered about...

[Show spoiler]how come the falling sensation from the bridge would have been able to kick them, but the falling down the hill didn't? Was it not a large enough fall or something?

[Show spoiler]The fan rolled and I would imagine that the force of the van hitting the water would produce much greater force and cause the kick. The falling sensation did not cause the kick, the kick happened more when they actually hit the water.

[mjbethancourt]

Originally Posted by cvm

[Show spoiler]The fan rolled and I would imagine that the force of the van hitting the water would produce much greater force and cause the kick. The falling sensation did not cause the kick, the kick happened more when they actually hit the water.

[Show spoiler]They did say at that time that they "missed" the kick when the van fell off the bridge. So apparently, under those conditions of heavy sedation, the kick is not fail-proof and requires some sort of active co-operation.

And, yes, in fact, it IS supposed to be the falling sensation, and not the landing, that makes the kick work. They explained that pretty explicitly, and it is supported by real science. It's believed to be some relic of our evolutionary past, perhaps from when we used to sleep in the trees like monkeys. They had to improvise their kicks at that point, because things had not gone according to plan. Using the landing as a kick, and all the jostling and tumbling of the van, is a minor plot hole, and there are a few... but nothing that should spoil a generally excellent movie.

[Batman1980]

Originally Posted by mjbethancourt

[Show spoiler]They did say at that time that they "missed" the kick when the van fell off the bridge. So apparently, under those conditions of heavy sedation, the kick is not fail-proof and requires some sort of active co-operation.

And, yes, in fact, it IS supposed to be the falling sensation, and not the landing, that makes the kick work. They explained that pretty explicitly, and it is supported by real science. It's believed to be some relic of our evolutionary past, perhaps from when we used to sleep in the trees like monkeys. They had to improvise their kicks at that point, because things had not gone according to plan. Using the landing as a kick, and all the jostling and tumbling of the van, is a minor plot hole, and there are a few... but nothing that should spoil a generally excellent movie.

[Show spoiler]Pretty sure there was a back-up kick for emergencies, not quite sure what it is at the moment. That they woke up from hitting the water doesn't bother me at all.

[mjbethancourt]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Stormcrow

[Show spoiler]Pretty sure there was a back-up kick for emergencies, not quite sure what it is at the moment. That they woke up from hitting the water doesn't bother me at all.

[Show spoiler]I thought that was part of the fun of that movie, seeing how they had to improvise the kicks with very little time to do so. That's why Arthur and Eames were so important to the team, they were both very clever about improvising things on the job.

[Batman1980]

Originally Posted by mjbethancourt

[Show spoiler]I thought that was part of the fun of that movie, seeing how they had to improvise the kicks with very little time to do so. That's why Arthur and Eames were so important to the team, they were both very clever about improvising things on the job.

Yeah, I think Arthur and Eames'

[Show spoiler]combat skills and ability to think on their feet was a good counter to Cobb's unpredictability, which is probably why he picked them to go with him.