I think the reason Inception went over so well this weekend (to the tune of $61 million) is because it works on multiple levels. And if you’ve seen the movie, no – that is not a pun.
Inception has both visceral and intellectual thrills. I think you can figure out that comic-Tom is probably responding to the former rather than the latter. But for real-life Tom, I found myself thoroughly engrossed by all of the film’s many facets.
Inception is the rare Hollywood blockbuster that rewards you for having an attention span longer than 5 minutes. There’s a lot going on in this movie – some high-concept stuff. But it never treats the audience like idiots and leaves a pretty clear trail of breadcrumbs for you to follow as it establishes the rules at play in its universe.
At it’s core, Inception is a heist movie and I love how they gave each of the players a specific role – The Point Man, The Chemist, The Architect, etc. Everyone is sharply dressed in elegant suits and form-fitting vests as they trot around the globe on personal jets for high-profile and dangerous clients.
Incidentally, Christopher Nolan has expressed an interest in directing a James Bond movie. After watching Inception, I say LET HIM!
A few things that crossed my mind while watching Inception:
- The weightless fight sequence in the hotel hallway succinctly and authoritatively spit in the eye of Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski and everything they accomplished with The Matrix.
- The physical prowess Joseph Gordon-Levitt displays in that sequence puts his Donald O’Connor homage from hosting Saturday Night Live last year in a completely different context. If I could find a clip right now, I’d be sharing it.
- Between Inception and Shutter Island, Leonard DiCaprio (or “Leo-Dio,” as I like to call him) has delivered two fascinating portraits of broken family men wrestling with their subconscious. Maybe it was the suits, but for some reason, I kept thinking of Jimmy Stewart’s performance in Vertigo while watching DiCaprio in Inception. I think when The Academy puts together his inevitable lifetime achievement reel, people are going to look back to this time as the height of his power.
- Lastly, I don’t want to say too much about the ending. But I have to share it was probably one of the best audience reactions I’ve heard in theater in a long time.
So, what about you guys? Did you see Inception over the weekend? What did you think? Leave your comments below and let’s see if we can untangle the Christmas lights this movie left behind in our brains, shall we?
What was it about?
I HAVE NO EFFIN' IDEA!
I saw it, and loved it. Except for the last 5 seconds of it. I felt like that ending was somewhat beneath Christopher Nolan. It’s the same ending that’s used for any other story that takes place inside the protagonists’ head for any length of time. If Nolan wanted to use that ending, he could have done it better, I feel, less blatant, less obvious. I knew that’s how he was going to end it from the moment they brought up dream within a dream, and felt a little robbed when it came up.
Your dissatisfaction with the ending comes with your assumption that it was all in Cobb’s head.
My argument regarding the ending is that regardless of if it’s a dream or not… it doesn’t matter. Nolan is intentionally messing with us. He’s making us question the reality we’ve been presented with – no differently than what Cobb did to his wife.
Nolan performed inception on the entire audience.
…That actually makes a heck of a lot of sense.
Saw it twice. Movie rocks.
The end hit me hard. (I cried a bit)
The first show was a small audience, so no crowd reaction. The 2nd time was a sold out show and everyone laughed at the end. Not sure what that was about.
Maybe they thought Nolan was playing a practical joke on them. “Oh, ho, ho! You got us THAT time, Nolan!”
More likely than not it was nervous laughter made contagious by people who didn’t understand what the ending attempted to achieve.
Yeah. Sadly their were people sitting behind us who would laugh anytime Mol came on screen also. I guess emotions are icky and must be laughed at by real men.
“Hur, hur! French accents are weird!”
Saw it.Loved it.End of story.
I loved the movie, the only real big problem I had with it was I cared about all the other characters more than I did Leo, and they were hardly developed at all.
I saw it and thought it was amazing.
Greatest film of the decade.
I won’t say the best of all time (We have smokey the bandit for that 😀 ), but i would say somewhere in the top 20. even top 10 if i may say it.
And how insulting! I’m sure that Comic-tom is quite the intellect! You should hang out with him more often, real-life tom!
*SPOILER*
A friend of mine believe that Cob (“Leo-Dio” like you call him) no longer cared about what was real. If he had, he would’ve stayed to see if his “Totem” dropped. He wanted to be with his children more than anything and instead of taking the path of his wife where she committed suicide because she accepting everything as false, he would accept everything as true, even if it wasn’t.
While another friend of mine’s theory is that all this was a dream he created after his wife died and that his conscience made him believe he was working to see his kids and that his totem was falling down when he tested reality (it wasn’t even his to begin with, remember?).
Food for thought, that’s all.
*END SPOILER*
I’ve heard that argument about not waiting for the totem to drop, but it doesn’t have me convinced. The kids came in the room. The dude hadn’t seen them in however long. Wouldn’t you stop what you were doing to give them a hug?
After all, it’s not like he couldn’t go back and spin the totem again later! 😉
I think he was in a dream still, but at that point it no longer mattered to me. If it was all still a dream, good. Cobb deserves at least that. If its real, even better.
I think people are over-analyzing the ending…there were homages all through the movie to classics of the genres Nolan brilliantly blended together.
*SPOILER*
I think closing with a “The End…OR IS IT?” as the finale of a dream/reality movie is a wink at the audience and a reminder of the core story, not a trick. It is Cobb’s final acceptance of the reality of the loss of his wife that closes his character arc – the narrative ends firmly in reality. Cobb abandons the totem because it is no longer relevant – remember, the top is Mal’s totem…Cobb’s totem is his inner guilt – he has come home and is no longer living his nightmare hoping to wake up.
IMHO.
Good call on ownership of the totem and turning his back on it.
I took the ending as Nolan telling the film industry that he can take a quintessential tired cliche and make it fresh and interesting.
Saw it, loved it, had many arguments with my friends about it (with more still to come!). As I begin to read more about what others thought about this it seems like I’m in the minority in regards to how the ending plays out (I take the not so cynical path, so to speak), but I need to watch the film a couple more times to properly defend my belief there. And also because I really, really want to watch this a few more times.
And Tom, you’re right about the audience reaction at the end. Was practically worth the price of admission at my midnight screening to hear that groan.
I think when you hear the audience react like that, it’s a true testament to how invested they’ve become in the story.
The disappointment in my theater was palpable, but one guy shouted “GODDAMMIT!” and it just cracked everyone up.
That your audience was disappointed disappoints me.
At the sold out showing I went to we all kind of made the sound when you’re waiting for something to fall you know the “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh.” and then it went black and we all clapped, I had a good audience.
*SPOILERS*
Although I hadn’t even thought of what if just the last scene was a dream I think the biggest argument for ending in the real world was that if it was a dream then wouldn’t Mal have gone in to try and wake Cobb up? All she’d need to do is kill him and then he’d be up.
I think the ending did a great job of telling us that, even if Cobb wasn’t in the real world he made it his reality by leaving the top like Mal did when she made limbo her reality.
This was pretty much me when I sat down to write a review on the movie. I had to remember what went on and actually needed help to explain it in a summary.
I’ve heard that some people don’t like it cause of the ending; it was ‘disappointing.’ Personally, I think the endings that we DON’T want for a character are the ones that are more memorable, like ‘The Mist.’
Some people said, “It doesn’t explain what happened to him!” I think Nolan wanted the audience to choose themselves; not everything has to be written out in plain view to make a good story.
I watched it yesterday, loved every minute of it. The first half hour or so was a little confusing at first as you come to terms with what’s happening. All in all a solid film with good performances all around.
One thing that left me perplexed at the end though, if Cobb has been away from his kids for so long wouldn’t they have grown more than they had. I mean hasn’t seem them in I would guess a year or more. They should be taller and generally bigger, but they look the same when he see’s them at the end as they do when he dreams them.
Bah I say it’s all an elaborate dream Cobb concocted and leave it at that. Lord knows if I think about it much more I’m apt to try and create my own little dream world and live in it 🙂
As I was watching this and the ending happened I think I actually shouted “Mother f-” in the theater since before this his previous non-batman movie was Prestige and that had an unresolved ending also (that my friends and I still to this day argue about)
*Spoiler*
I think it’s as simple as this. When he and the Asian guy ( can not remember his name) were discussing the dream at the end/beginning the top was spinning completely up right and never shifting but at the end when he spun it the top was shifting and thought we never saw it fall, it was about to. Also his children never showed their faces in his dream, they just ran away. So my theory is that he was in reality.
*End Spoiler*
Brilliant movie though. I hope we get more mind bending Nolan movies like this and Prestige.
You should watch ‘Memento’ then. This was one of Nolan’s movies BEFORE the Batman films came out.
I’m not a fan of Leo Dicrappio, yet I do like Chris Nolan…I’m so conflicted!
So. Good.
I haven’t watched a movie like this in forever and it was just so good!
SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING!!!
Nolan said if you want to know if it’s a dream at the end, use your ears, not your eyes.
Wobble, wobble?
SPOILERS
Yes use your ears while everyone else is either angry or clapping. As for why the children don’t seem much older I’d assume it hasn’t been that long for the kids, obviously his son hasn’t come to terms with his mother’s death yet and his daughter was only just starting to think Cobb wasn’t coming back. Meanwhile of course Cobb has been living in dreams where time is much slower, let’s face it for all we knoe he hadn’t seen his children in like 100 years.
I think that’s what threw some people off. The kids haven’t aged much but for HIM it’s been much longer since he spends so much time in dreams. Since for most of the movie we get his perspective on it we’re expecting the kids to be older than they are.
As has been said previously, the reaction in my theatre was the typical “ohhhhh no he didn’t!”.. then applause. So far, every argument my friends and I have made either way whether it’s a dream or reality has been easily toppled (hehe).
One of my friends however was like “man the movie sucked because I knew how the whole plot twist from the moment they had the dream in a dream at the start!” And I felt sad for that friend because she clearly watched the movie from a “let me guess the plot twist!” angle, instead of enjoying it, because overall, there was no plot twist, it *was* obvious, Nolan’s messing with the audience about perceived reality. It’s not a twist at the end, it’s a cliffhanger, which is a big difference. The ending doesn’t alter how you think back on the entire movie (like say, the Usual Suspects).
Saw it! Loved it. I think it was a dream, but it has less to do with the top, and more to do with the dialogues that happen at the end of the movie. Between Cobb’s last discussion with Ariadne and his last discussion with Saito it’s implied that he’s constructed the elaborate reality. However, there’s another layer to the movie that I think people are glossing over.
** Going into spoiler territory **
The whole movie is a philosophical debate about what makes reality real. You have to take into consideration how Fischer’s arc ends to understand what I mean. The “Inception” works because they managed to create a reality where Fischer reconciled with his dying father. He knew he was in a dream at that point, but it didn’t matter. He excepted it as reality because that’s the reality he wanted, and as the audience we get choked up to see that reconciliation, even though we know it’s all a construct (or at least I did).
Cobb’s arc parallels Fischer’s almost exactly, and to prove it, I’ll ask the question, why was Cobb’s father at the airport and the house? The last we saw him (I think) he was working in Paris. However, that being said, in the end, it doesn’t matter if he was dreaming or not. It only matters if Cobb (and the audience) accept it as his reality. The ending is no less satisfying if he’s dreaming, so long as you leave the theater knowing that Cobb believed it’s real, and he was finally happy.
Fischer knows he’s in a dream, but he’s in Browning’s mind. Fischer’s father is a projection of Browning’s subconscious. I think the reconciliation is incidental, isn’t it? The point was that he got in his father’s safe and retrieved the idea that the kidnapped Browning (Eames) suggested – dissolving the empire.
Cobb’s father (Actually, I think it was Mol’s father, wasn’t it? He originally met with him in Paris) was at the airport because Cobb said he was sending Grandpa home with some presents when he talked to his kids earlier in the film.
Ah, but Fischer only believed he was in Browning’s mind. Remember, this was all happening in Fischer’s head, supposedly. So the reconciliation took place in his own mind, and it’s not incidental. We’re told when they’re planning the job that the reconciliation was necessary for the inception to occur. Without it, would he have been motivated to open the safe? He’s carrying out what he believes to be his father’s dying wish, which is to be his own man. I would argue that the dissolving of the empire is more incidental to Fischer then the reconciliation is.
As for the father (whether Cobb’s or Mol’s, since I’m not sure which he was supposed to be), when Cobb handed him the presents he commented about taking them to the children “when he had time” which implied to me that he wasn’t necessarily planning to go with any immediacy. Again, that detail is probably not as important. The parallel breaks down somewhat, but you could still draw a similar parallel with his children.
Regardless of who’s right or wrong, the movie is fun to talk about, and that in and of itself is a comment on the strength of the narrative.
Does anyone else have the feeling that this will be passed over come Oscar time?
A little bit. Only because the stigma of “summer blockbuster” doesn’t always lend credibility come Oscar-time.
Overall I loved the film. The last 1 and a half hours were among the most intense experiences I’ve had in a theater in a long time. If I were to start the movie around the time that they begin the mission I’d rank it up there with my top 5 films of all time.
I did not enjoy the beginning. Nolan did not suspend my sense of disbelief for the first 30-60 minutes and I found myself thinking the whole concept of entering dreams to be a bit contrived and cheesy. The matrix comparisons were obvious, and before the film really get to the meat of the story where it comes into it’s own as a film, the comparisons were not a good thing.
As someone else pointed out, I also did not connect with the characters as strongly as Nolan would have liked. I understood the motivation and I wanted the characters to succeed, but the movie was never going to illicit any sort of real sadness or catharsis out of me had it tried.
In the end I feel the film succeeded in taking cliche formula’s and turning them on their head to create a highly suspenseful and fun “summer blockbuster ride” while upholding a highly textured cerebral experience. The films production was spectacular and the film also impresses visually. Perhaps my favorite aspect of the film was its ability to maintain a concise and relatively easy to follow story within a highly complex plot. I never once felt lost in the movie, but at the same time I continually had the feeling of “what just happened, and what’s going to happen next?”
I think it would have been very easy to cheat the plot using “dream logic” as an excuse. But as it is, I believe Inception adheres to its own rules very closely and doesn’t jerk around the audience with unexpected twists or locations.
Didn’t see it opening weekend, but I did catch it yesterday. I really like these kind of films that allow you to make them as complicated as you want. This film begs for multiple re-viewings. Right now I feel strongly for one outcome but the seed was planted and the harder I think about it I can pull my theory apart.
Anyone else lip the words ” Keep it together, Teddy” when Leo stared into the mirror after splashing water on his face. I know I did. Also, whenever someone is named Mal, especially a French person, it only spells doom.
I am a little late to the party but here is my veiw.
Spoilers ahead. (duh)
Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is in a coma and this is all in his head.
The totem (metal top) is not his, it is his wife’s. It signals to him when he is “dreaming” and when he is “awake”. When “dreaming” his emotional struggle with the loss of his wife finds a way to affect him. When “awake” he is occupied with other thoughts.
When he is “awake” everything is still perfect. Everyone is exactly who he needs them to be. Because they are projections of his subconcious. They are what he needs them to be and where they need him to be.
Even the “plan” to convince Fischer to break up his father’s company follows every thing that was planned out exactly. Even under pressure. Not because it is poor writing (maybe) but because it is Cobb’s plan which is a ruse to get Cobb to delve deeper into his own “dream state” as each level pushes him closer to dealing with his wife’s death.
When Browning meets Fischer at the hotel level he is a construct of Fischer’s mind according to the “Forger”. So hooking the construct up to the machine should have no affect. It is just a pantomime within the pantomime of pretending to hook people up to the in dream machine. There cannot be a working machine in the dream. It is a dream. The concept of a dream within a dream within a dream is not possible within the construct of the story itself. Unless the story is a construct of a single character shown from within but without an awareness of being in a dream state.
ie: a coma.
There are no animals in the movie. In the “real” world there are no cats or dogs or pidgeons or sparrows or rats or cockroaches. It is possible it is just something overlooked in the movie.
Also, as advanced as the dream sharing machine might be technologically when you put a needle in someone’s vein there is usually a small wound or mark. When they disconnect on the train in Japan the Exectuive (forgot his name) looks at his arm and sees unbroken skin. There is no physicality to the machine because it is in a dream.
This, unfortunately, calls in to question everything in the movie since it presumes everything is a construct of the main characters subconsious. Is his wife dead? Most likely. Does he feel guilt over it. Sure. Are there dream devices? Who knows.
Considering this is the same writer who gave a man a device that can duplicate anything and he wrote him as a mass murderer out of petty jealousy I am not fond of where Christopher Nolan wants to go nor am I that impressed by how he gets there, story wise.
The special effects were quite interesting and the hallway scene presents some interesting questions. It would seem reasonable to to the rotating room for the hallway which is a pretty tricky physical effect. I am wondering about the zero gravity fight in the hallway. I think they used the same physical effect to simulate zero gravity in Apollo 13. They may have built a hallway set inside a huge airplane and then plummeted downward to creat the lack of gravity. That is a complex way to do it but it keeps from having wires that would get tangled in the rotations during the fight.
and that is my blah blah blah on the movie.
It is thursday so chances are no one will read this any way. 🙂
Micmacs also takes place in Paris and has a surreal quality to it. Also reccomended.
‘Prestige’ is based off of a book by the same name. In the book the character and the machine are similar to the movie (sorry if that is really vague, didn’t want to spoil the book). I think Nolan made it darker in a different way. The book is a fantastic read if you are interested in it.
There is a small mark on Ken Watanabe’s wrist when he looks at it. (I looked for it the 2nd time I saw the movie cause I kinda had the same thought the 1st time through)
I never noticed the no animals thing, will have to look out for that next time.
I must have missed the mark. I did not see it at all.
I completely agree that the metal top totem was not Dom’s, it was his wife, which means it shouldn’t have any meaning to Dom in telling him whether he is dreaming or not. Dom’s totem are his childrens’ faces. Remember he said in his dreams he doesn’t want his children to turn around though he wants to see their faces so bad…that’s because their faces are his totem. So at the end, it doesn’t matter that the metal top either spins or falls down, seeing his children is the reminder that he’s in the real world
Hmmm, I guess I’m an anomaly; I found everything pretty predictable in the context of it’s genre, the visuals were corny for my tastes, I thought the acting was a little “ohh look at me, I’m dramatic oohh”, and I found a music to be just another round of Hanz Zimmer pressing the horn sample on the bottom end of the keyboard.
Mind you, the movie was cleanly put together, but the same could be said about a sitcom or a soap opera; I guess I’m just looking for more then just cleverness in my movies. Like I said though, pretty much an anomaly.
Also, didn’t it share the general plot to an episode of Star Trek?
Did anyone else see similarities between Inception and Ocean’s Eleven? Think about it.