[daigo]

I really enjoyed Inception.  An engaging and active movie with an excellent cast.  Whether or not it's the best film of the year, the latter half of 2010 will have to decide that. 

 

[fuseboxx]

Quote:

 
 
 
Okay, it's a heist film encapsulated in a metaphysical, pseudo-intellectual, and thrilling sci-fi wrapper.
Two thumbs up

Wasn't that pretty much what you already said before, though?
 
What distinguishes "intellectual" and "pseudo-intellectual" by the way and how does Inception fit into the latter?
 
Thanks!
 

 

[Pepsi]

Inception is easily one of the best films of the year. I loved this film, i also need to catch it again at a better theatre. 

 

[Suigeneris]

Anyone notice the amazing soundtrack?

 

[logwed]

Quote:

Anyone notice the amazing soundtrack?

The soundtrack didn't do anything for me even though I was listening closer on the second time.

 

[grokit]

I agree that Hans Zimmer makes a great soundtrack, especially with Nolan movies. And by pseudo-intellectual I just meant more imaginative, entertaining and accessible than the actual science would have been in this movie.

 

[joomongj]

I very much enjoyed the score. My pick thus far is 528491.

 

[chadbang]

WARNING, SO MANY SPOILERS YOU'LL KILL ME
 
Well, I hate to miss a good opportunity for a rant, so i'll post at Headfi what I posted elsewhere.


Well, I just saw Inception - at least most of it. I walked out without a 15 minutes to go. I just couldn't take the pointlessness of the film at all. I absolutely hated it.

The film just strained any credibility or logic. The filmmakers (and writers) obviously became so entranced with their concept of these "dream raiders" that they didn't bother to work at selling the idea to the audience on a core level. Instead, they apparently thought the idea of "shared dreaming" was so obvious and plausible, that they became more worried about creating a cool team of characters to give the story appeal. "It's like the "Mission Impossible: II" meets "The Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.6, get it?) We're just supposed to swallow the plausibility of all these rules that get spewed out at us at 60 mph through snappy patter. HELLO, would you mind selling me on the primary concept first? 

Not for one instance did I believe in the concept of group of people being connected to share dreams through whatever scant science they barely bothered to pitch. I think there was some minor reference to it being "military." Right, isn't it always? Hey, medical professionals, get rid of those all those bulky magnetic resonance imaging scanners. What you need is are IV tubes connected to Zero Haliburton suitcase with a big rubber button in its middle! Eeeech.

But besides not even bothering to linger for a moment of basic plausibility, the writers then went on to complicate the idea even further: What if there are a couple levels of dreaming that our rescue team can descend through like shoppers on a Macy's escalator. Hell, I don't think Freud even dared to go there. "Yeah, you gotta watch out for those super-ego pedestrians, they're really mean sonofabitches." I just sat there incredulous that I was supposed to be swallowing all this tripe as the hunky actors zipped metaphysical fastballs past me. "You mean we can drop into the limbo state of the unconsciousness, rescue your ex-wife from the dream prison you keep her in, then grab the McGuffin and kick our way back out simultaneously through four psyche levels at once -- because time is relative?" What the @$#?!

There's was just so much psychological/metaphysical/Sci-fi mumbo jumbo twisted up in this ludacrist action flick wrapper that I couldn't stand it. It was like something the Wachowski brothers would have written after getting out of Psych 101, smoking some herb and watching "Sneakers." Some people have tried to pass this off as "thinking man's" cinema. If you want to give me thinking man's cinema, then please don't insult me with the other 75% of the film being endless gun battles and car chases. 

And, oh yeah, and DID I mention there were a whole bunch of cool scenes of guys on skis fighting bad guys in at a winter fortress. Great action! What were they fighting about? Well, they want to get into a safe on the 2nd dream level where a character might finds a psychological clue as to why he really should like his father so the team could implant the idea in his brain than he should break up..... Arrrrrrrrrrrrrraggggggh!

 

[crowley]

I have a friend who said he didnt like it because a movie is supposed to entertain and make you relax, and not make you think.
I like the movie because i was entertained because it made me think which made me relax. 
and those were cool action scenes

 

[semisight]

     Quote:

WARNING, SO MANY SPOILERS YOU'LL KILL ME
 
Well, I hate to miss a good opportunity for a rant, so i'll post at Headfi what I posted elsewhere.


Well, I just saw Inception - at least most of it. I walked out without a 15 minutes to go. I just couldn't take the pointlessness of the film at all. I absolutely hated it.

The film just strained any credibility or logic. The filmmakers (and writers) obviously became so entranced with their concept of these "dream raiders" that they didn't bother to work at selling the idea to the audience on a core level. Instead, they apparently thought the idea of "shared dreaming" was so obvious and plausible, that they became more worried about creating a cool team of characters to give the story appeal. "It's like the "Mission Impossible: II" meets "The Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.6, get it?) We're just supposed to swallow the plausibility of all these rules that get spewed out at us at 60 mph through snappy patter. HELLO, would you mind selling me on the primary concept first? 

Not for one instance did I believe in the concept of group of people being connected to share dreams through whatever scant science they barely bothered to pitch. I think there was some minor reference to it being "military." Right, isn't it always? Hey, medical professionals, get rid of those all those bulky magnetic resonance imaging scanners. What you need is are IV tubes connected to Zero Haliburton suitcase with a big rubber button in its middle! Eeeech.

But besides not even bothering to linger for a moment of basic plausibility, the writers then went on to complicate the idea even further: What if there are a couple levels of dreaming that our rescue team can descend through like shoppers on a Macy's escalator. Hell, I don't think Freud even dared to go there. "Yeah, you gotta watch out for those super-ego pedestrians, they're really mean sonofabitches." I just sat there incredulous that I was supposed to be swallowing all this tripe as the hunky actors zipped metaphysical fastballs past me. "You mean we can drop into the limbo state of the unconsciousness, rescue your ex-wife from the dream prison you keep her in, then grab the McGuffin and kick our way back out simultaneously through four psyche levels at once -- because time is relative?" What the @$#?!

There's was just so much psychological/metaphysical/Sci-fi mumbo jumbo twisted up in this ludacrist action flick wrapper that I couldn't stand it. It was like something the Wachowski brothers would have written after getting out of Psych 101, smoking some herb and watching "Sneakers." Some people have tried to pass this off as "thinking man's" cinema. If you want to give me thinking man's cinema, then please don't insult me with the other 75% of the film being endless gun battles and car chases. 

And, oh yeah, and DID I mention there were a whole bunch of cool scenes of guys on skis fighting bad guys in at a winter fortress. Great action! What were they fighting about? Well, they want to get into a safe on the 2nd dream level where a character might finds a psychological clue as to why he really should like his father so the team could implant the idea in his brain than he should break up..... Arrrrrrrrrrrrrraggggggh!

I guess you're just not a scifi fan? As a scifi fan, I thought the ribbon cable dream connectors were plausible enough. I kind of wondered why they didn't attach to the head, but they seemed to work. Also, he never rescues his wife. She's always been a figment of his imagination (since she died). If this is not your thing, then don't watch. I thought it had a great deal more depth than the average movie.

 

[Maxvla]

Still trying to understand why people think this is science fiction...?

  Just because it's different than the status-quo doesn't mean it's science fiction. It's a fantasy thriller, nothing more.

 

[semisight]

     Quote:

Still trying to understand why people think this is science fiction...?

  Just because it's different than the status-quo doesn't mean it's science fiction. It's a fantasy thriller, nothing more.

The difference between fantasy and sci-fi is plausibility. Sci-fi explains events with technology, whereas fantasy either explains with magic or doesn't at all. Example: if the shared dreaming in Inception was not explained by the mysterious technology, but was instead due to a "psychological" breakthrough, it would be fantasy.

 

[logwed]

Quote:

Still trying to understand why people think this is science fiction...?

  Just because it's different than the status-quo doesn't mean it's science fiction. It's a fantasy thriller, nothing more.

And fantasy and sci-fi are the same section at Barnes and Noble, thusly, they are the same.

 

[Maxvla]

Quote:

     Quote:

The difference between fantasy and sci-fi is plausibility. Sci-fi explains events with technology, whereas fantasy either explains with magic or doesn't at all. Example: if the shared dreaming in Inception was not explained by the mysterious technology, but was instead due to a "psychological" breakthrough, it would be fantasy.

I'll agree to plausibility, but Inception offered no explanation, through technology or otherwise. The use of the tubes appeared to be to deliver the sedative/mind altering drugs. It's never explained how the dream sharing actually occurs. One can infer that the mysterious innards of the suitcase 'powers' the connection, yet there is never a control device or even power source shown or mentioned. The starter is almost literally a plunger like you'd see on a hypodermic needle. There doesn't seem to be an off switch, merely to end the dream the 'real' body must be jolted (the kick they mention) in some way or a dreamer controlling their dream can wake themselves up with just a thought. Many fantasy stories make use of drugs (in various forms) whether good or bad to either make the 'trip' possible or enhance it in some way. This doesn't make it sci-fi.
 
Also, if it is to be believed that he has been dreaming during the entire movie, (which I'm inclined to believe) this would support a completely fantasy base.

 

[chadbang]

 
Quote:

     Quote:

The difference between fantasy and sci-fi is plausibility. Sci-fi explains events with technology, whereas fantasy either explains with magic or doesn't at all. Example: if the shared dreaming in Inception was not explained by the mysterious technology, but was instead due to a "psychological" breakthrough, it would be fantasy.

Nicely said. Whatever genre you want to put it in, I still think is a very flawed film. Technically, it was fine. Also very nice to look at and well acted. Even the story might have been okay, but I really think the writing just sucked. There's this thing in screenwriting called "exposition." That's where a character speaks unnatural dialogue because he is needed to explain to the audience what's going on. "Inception" was practically nothing but "exposition." I found it just complete wearying and unpleasant that way. Ideally a situation is set up well enough that you let people just start acting like people - that's how we relate to characters. Think about James Cameron's "Aliens." Everybody loves that movie because it's full of humor and heroes and villians and emotion. We all love classic bits from an exasperated Bill Paxton or pissed-off Ripley. But what if all the dialogue in "Aliens" had been all exposition as in "Inception?"
 
Ripley: These aliens, a silicon-based life form, can't be killed unless except with extremely powerful weapons. Still, we need to find the queen and kill her to stop the production of worker drones. If we don't they will continue breeding and eventually make it to earth, wiping out all life there by using us as food for their larvae.
Pvt. Hudson: But these aliens have already killed half of our patrol. We've attempted to seal ourselfs into this base, but they keep breaching our defenses because they know every underground passage way in this facility. There's no way for us to escape except by spaceship. That's the only chance we'd have to use a thermo nuclear device and eradicate them to prevent their escape to earth.
 
As you can see, exposition gets really dull. It's called "on the nose" writing. And that what I thought really killed "Inception." If I had to listen to one more bout of dialogue like:
 
 "When you construct your dream mazes you can create shortcuts like endless staircase to save time by bending spaces back upon itself."
"And that helps to disorient participants so that can't escape easily from our dream constructs"
"Exactly... however never create scene completely from memory because..."
 
WHAT?  Why am I having to continually ingest all this technical jibberish? So one chase scene can end with someone falling off an unfinished staircase. That's the payoff?  Could someone tell my why the young actress from Juno was picked out as a perfect "architect" by Cobbs father? Michael Cane was a professor of ... what? Doctor of Imgination? Was the girl really good at euclidian geometry or did she get an "A" in ceramics class? I'll tell you why she was there - so the writer had a newbie character that had to have everything explained to her for the audiences' sake. And, boy, was it dull and unbelieveable. Maybe if they had a scene where the new architect has created some flawed, bizzare dreamlike "world" I would have said, yeah, that is kind of cool. How the hell would you try to create a dream world? I'd probably screw up and put a sky instead of a roof or put the wrong number of legs on a floating chair. But instead she instantly creates a world that's perfect and looks exactly like Leonard DiCaprio's own dream world. Just stuff like that made my utterly dismiss this film.
 
Oh, I might as well get it all out, here's my BIGGEST bone to pick with this film. The whole "INCEPTION" concept. Oh, its this very difficult concept of planting an idea into someone's mind so they think they came up with the idea. Very delicate work which must be subtly and psychologically accomplished.  The subject can't possibly have any inclination that the idea was given to them... So what happens when they finally get this industrialist's son into their manufactured dream world?   Leonardo DiCaprio walks right up to him and says.:You're dreaming. You've been told about this: how people can get into your mind and steal ideas while your dreaming. I'm a professional at getting into people minds and I'm here to protect you...."
 
 Yes, VERY delicate and tricky stuff this subtly implanting an idea into people's minds. Jesus.....