Inception

[eegah]

My wife and I really enjoyed it. Probably need to watch it again to make sure they didn't "cheat".

There were only three nit-picky things for us:

- The passage of time at the different levels didn't always seem consistent with the given rules (sometimes it seemed like it was passing at the same rate for multiple levels).
- Why didn't the lower levels go zero-g like the second one?
- The movement in the zero-g level didn't seem to follow physics well. I was mentally picturing the wires that it seemed like were there.

[Darth Macho]

Here's my nit-picks.

...Whatsherface and DiCaprio entering a 4th dream (Driving Level > Hotel Platform Level > Snow Level > Final Boss Fight) to get Cillian Murphy breaks the movie's clearly-established rule that the drug induces 3 dream states only.

...Making a big deal out of totems only to abandon the concept halfway through and use it solely for an ending twist gag is lame.

...Making a big deal out of tricking Cillian Murphy into fighting his own subconscious only to abandon the concept once he hits the Snow Level is lame. When that happened he stopped being the dramatic conflict and Mal (a nonexistent antagonist) became the threat.

...Trying to explain away Mal as a remnant of DiCaprio's guilty conscience doesn't work when for the entire movie her character is a murderous Freddy Krueger. And apparently she was a crazy bitch in real life, too, so there's no pathos for DiCaprio beyond emo-whining.

...Cillian Murphy, heir to a billion-dollar conglomerate, is trained in subconscious corporate counterespionage yet doesn't recognize he's sharing First Class with his billionaire rival.

...Having morons like Neo and Morpheus resort to guns in the Matrix makes sense; here it seems like smart characters psychologically sucking on their thumbs.

...Every character has the same 'voice' in a dialogue sense. Any one of them, including Saito, could give three sentences about Technogaga and it would sound the same.

...If you're still explaining the rules by the Third Act you've done something wrong.

...Whatsherface, the Architect of the dreams, built a militarized bunker for the all-important Snow Level. This makes no sense.

...The dramatic tension is downplayed. The gunfights aren't real and they never put enough emphasis on the dangers of Murphy discovering their crime or the characters possibly going insane in Limbo. The former is dropped once DiCaprio makes a single Bluff check on Hotel Level and the latter is resolved once DiCaprio meets OldSaito... and Saito didn't even need his own totem, making the objects even less useful.

...'Is it all a Dream?' has only ever once worked as an ending: Total Recall.

That I didn't hate Inception says a lot about Nolan as a Director. As a screenwriter, though, he's got some issues. If he persists I can see him becoming the new M Night Shyamalan.

[doggans]

...Whatsherface, the Architect of the dreams, built a militarized bunker for the all-important Snow Level. This makes no sense.

It makes a LITTLE bit of sense. They did establish that the subconscious stores secrets in places that seem more secure, and they were looking to get him to discover his deepest secrets.

...'Is it all a Dream?' has only ever once worked as an ending: Total Recall.

In fairness, this wasn't "Is it all a dream"? so much as "Was the last fifteen minutes a dream?"

[Courtney]

Here's my nit-picks.

...Whatsherface and DiCaprio entering a 4th dream (Driving Level > Hotel Platform Level > Snow Level > Final Boss Fight) to get Cillian Murphy breaks the movie's clearly-established rule that the drug induces 3 dream states only.

That wasn't a dream state - that was limbo. They followed him into limbo, that shared consciousness state.

[Darth Macho]

Here's my nit-picks.

...Whatsherface and DiCaprio entering a 4th dream (Driving Level > Hotel Platform Level > Snow Level > Final Boss Fight) to get Cillian Murphy breaks the movie's clearly-established rule that the drug induces 3 dream states only.

That wasn't a dream state - that was limbo. They followed him into limbo, that shared consciousness state.

To go to Limbo they would have had to die (DiCaprio died IN the 4th level, then went to Limbo). What they did, if I understood the film correctly, was to enter DiCaprio's dream state to rescue Cillian Murphy from Mal (DiCaprio's subconscious). It was a dream level inside the Snow Level, Inside the Hotel Level, inside the Van Level. The abandoned city was DiCaprio's dream, not Limbo. A 4th level, which the people on the plane under the effects of the drug could not have done.

[spaceforarent]

Can we just make this a spoiler thread so we don't have to hide everything said here?

[Moe]

I'll get crucified for it i'm sure...

I didn't care for it.  It's that I didn't understand... I found it boring.  I'm not really into CGI anymore.  Sure, someone spent a lot of time and effort, but so...

I mean, it had it's moments of being kind of cool and entertaining, but all the fanboys giving it greatest picture of all time nods is getting old really fast.  Same for the people who just say it's garbage and give no reason for it.  It's a decent movie, just not one I really cared for much. 

I guess i'm also sick of the response that "if you don't like it, then you must be stupid and not understand it..."  Personally, I find that anyone who uses that kind of logic probably didn't fully understand the film either and this is a weak attempt to show intellectual superiority, by inexplicably defending a work that they viewed. 

It will probably do better overseas than it will in the US.  As for me, not much on the emotional level.  Characters seemed to be driven by nothing.  Di Caprio pretty much walked straight off Shutter Island and onto the Inception set.   interesting effects (i suppose)  and i'll give it an A for originality...  Having Michael Caine in for about 2 minutes... Ellen Page to be used to explain everything... why even cast them when the part could so easily be done with someone else.  I'll tell you why, marketing... The movie needed names to sell it over the idea itself. 

It's ok though, i don't get bent out of shape at people liking things I don't... just for me, the film was, Eh.  7.5 out ot 10... tops. 

[doggans]

Having Michael Caine in for about 2 minutes... Ellen Page to be used to explain everything... why even cast them when the part could so easily be done with someone else.  I'll tell you why, marketing...

Well, that, and they're probably people Nolan likes working with. Caine has been in every movie of his since Batman Begins.

[stansimpson]

Having Michael Caine in for about 2 minutes... Ellen Page to be used to explain everything... why even cast them when the part could so easily be done with someone else.  I'll tell you why, marketing...

Well, that, and they're probably people Nolan likes working with. Caine has been in every movie of his since Batman Begins.

Also, talent.  If you're gonna hire a young, smart girl in her late teens / early 20s, it's hard to get better than Page (imo).  Y'know, all the major parts have been filled by Oscar nominees (aside from Levitt who should've been nominated years ago)?  For instance, I didn't recognize Mal, so I just  thought about all the Oscar-nominated foreign actresses with a continental accent in the past few years.  BING!  Marion Cotillard!  Haha.  Nolan had his pick of the litter and he aimed high.  Also, it made following the story/characters a lot easier when the parts are filled by name actors.

[Thrashalla]

Alrighty, I saw it tonight and it was good, possibly better than good, but not great. Great for a modern Hollywood flick but I digress.

More in depth, with a few minor spoilers

The concept and execution were superb and Nolan's visual style is, as usual for him, immersible. However, he relies too heavily on golds and earth tones when it comes to lighting and atmosphere - for my taste at least - and the larger a shot gets in scope (mountains, sweeping landscapes, ets) he just doesn't excel the way he does with more intimate scenes.

The characters and plot - typical heist movie to the point where you could almost see the textbook it all came from. Well executed, but still very textbook and basic when you get down to the bare bones of the story. Other than Dicaprio, I felt no emotional attachment to any of the cast - Ellen Paige especially so since she was just there for the purpose of info-dumping ~85% of the time. "Hey, remember that crazy shit we did there? Well now that you're here we should explain what that was, simultaneously fulfilling our practical need to train you, and explain the mechanics of the world-building to the viewer in a way that doesn't seem like we're just vomiting facts onto their faces." I don't mind it when that happens, people need to know WTF is going on after all and it's a useful literary device, but it was REALLY transparent in this.

I enjoyed the ending a lot, it was a nice smartass way for Nolan to keep the promises he made and live up to his own hype. Incredibly well timed and executed.

Overall, 20-30 mins could have been easily cut - especially later on. A lot of the action sequences served no purpose other than visual flare and didn't build on the already established suspense in any way that justified their inclusion. I'm referring specifically to almost all of the snow scene and a good portion of the corresponding anti-grav hotel scrambling. Tightening the last 1/4 of the film in such a way would have more effectively communicated the urgency that Nolan was going for, IMO.

I realize I've done little but complain, but I really did enjoy it...I think that The Prestige was superior, but this was still damn good. I just won't be queuing up to blow Nolan like the rest of the nerd world seems to do whenever the guy so much as farts.

[Relaxing Dragon]

Having Michael Caine in for about 2 minutes... Ellen Page to be used to explain everything... why even cast them when the part could so easily be done with someone else.  I'll tell you why, marketing...

Well, that, and they're probably people Nolan likes working with. Caine has been in every movie of his since Batman Begins.

Also, talent.  If you're gonna hire a young, smart girl in her late teens / early 20s, it's hard to get better than Page (imo).  Y'know, all the major parts have been filled by Oscar nominees (aside from Levitt who should've been nominated years ago)?  For instance, I didn't recognize Mal, so I just  thought about all the Oscar-nominated foreign actresses with a continental accent in the past few years.  BING!  Marion Cotillard!  Haha.  Nolan had his pick of the litter and he aimed high.  Also, it made following the story/characters a lot easier when the parts are filled by name actors.

I don't think Tom Hardy is an Oscar Nominee yet either, despite also having deserved one for ages (especially after Bronson).

I've got nothing new to add to the conversation yet, as I need to rewatch the movie to give a half-way decent answer to some of the nitpicks here. So instead, here's an interesting article about how the movie ended (though I disagree with it): http://chud.com/articles/articles/24477/1/NEVER-WAKE-UP-THE-MEANING-AND-SECRET-OF-INCEPTION/Page1.html

[Courtney]

What's everyone's opinion on the end? I'm still uncertain.

I think everything from the moment Ariadne says Cobb went looking for Saito on was a dream. Everyone's staring at him in the airport just like when the other people in dreams realize something's off, obviously the top, obviously the kids wearing the same clothes. I think everything else was real, that everyone else made it, but they didn't. But I don't know. It's just as possible that it was all a dream or that he made it after all (it was pointed out elsewhere that in the dream sequences he's wearing his wedding ring and not wearing it in reality - at the end, he's not wearing it.

It's such a subjective ending I'm just curious as to what others thought.

[Relaxing Dragon]

Well, I'll give it a quick go to defend my position:

I don't think it was a dream at the end. The only people I noticed looking at him in the airport were the other team members and Fischer (who might've been a bit confused to see people from his dream there, but it does make sense since he saw them as he got on the plane. He probably just figured that's why they were in his head, because they were seen so recently. As to an earlier nitpick about not being suspicious about a billionaire rival being on the plane, well, said rival did own the airline (which was probably a well-publicized buy), and Fischer's mind was probably very preoccupied with his father's death. I'm sorry, I believe I got off topic). As for the children, the similar clothing and yard position were definitely done intentionally to mess with us, but keep in mind the only time we actually see their faces is at the end. At the very least, it makes it impossible to judge if they've aged over the course of the movie, since with their body positions, you can't really tell if they've gotten any bigger.

The smoking gun it-was-all-a-dream people seem to point to is that his totem, the top, wasn't really his and, since it was his wife's, it wasn't reliable. I say that it was, since the basic idea of it was simply whether or not it stopped spinning. And while I thought it started to wobble at the end (which could be nothing, as I've seen tops wobble slightly but keep on spinning), the cutoff before it does anything (though, it'd be hard to film it going on forever) has to imply that something was about to happen to it. It's like Nolan was hinting at one direction, but still wanted us to think for ourselves about it.

This post wasn't very coherent, I know, but it's early and I'm at work.

[spaceforarent]

As for the age of the kids that I brought up, according to IMDB there are different kids playing them at two different ages, two years apart. So that answers that question.
I assume one of them is Nolan's kid too, Magnus Nolan.

[eegah]

What's everyone's opinion on the end? I'm still uncertain.

We really liked it.

What??? That's not enough for you???