I agree with Solid Snake.

I didn't find the different dream levels to be confusing (meaning, seeing each character in a different situation), even with all the cutting between. The only part where both my wife and I got concerned was after the van falls in the water. We both thought "Cobb is going to drown!!" but then quickly remembered that it didn't matter.

You shouldn't try to relate the film's dream sequences to your own dreams. Nolan has created an entirely new universe with it's own set of rules, just as with any science fiction film. If you were to go into The Terminator refusing to accept time travel, you would also come out thinking that the film was utterly ridiculous.

The entire time watching the movie I didn't think of them dreaming like we know it at all. It was more of an implemented floor plan that gets filled with thoughts, memories and secrets -- it takes place in the mind but isn't a dream in the sense that it isn't reflecting desires so much as just structured thoughts. Yes, it takes place in the mind, but it was more like plugging into the mind, as if it were a terminal (similar to The Matrix and how it isn't a dream so much as a program).

And no, videogames had nothing to do with associating levels, not for me at least.

I figured that to be more like the 4 level REM sleep cycle most of us experience every night. Each level was just getting deeper into the subconscious.

Reminds me of when someone was bitching about the latest Star Trek movie because, and I quote, "That's NOT how time travel works!!!"

Ebert gave the movie four stars, and he's played less videogames than anyone.

I love that complaint

I hate video games, haven't played one in five years, and this is my favorite movie of the year (so far). You are just following Armond White. Fantastic.

Wow, if this planet is ever invaded by, say, Crotch Crickets from Hyperspace, I hope we can defend it as faithfully and devotedly as Blu Man does this movie.

All right. Let me try another tack. I'm not trying to bash this movie or its fans. I'm just trying to figure out the source of its appeal and what about it resonates with so many people.

What is the point of this movie?

What is it about?

Thank you.

It's a summer heist movie that was well crafted and extremely entertaining? That's the point of most Summer movies yah? I mean, what was the point of Crank?

Guy gets job, guy prepare for job, job gets screwed up, guy faces his own demons, guy gets stuck in mental limbo, or not.

It's also about moving forward and not letting memories and guilt rule you and your life. About potentially selling out your morals to get what you otherwise couldn't have. It's about brain espionage. It's about value, it's about time for rooms to go?

The point of this movie is to break the mindless summer trend. It's a heist film set within the mind, which is something that is rarely explored in cinema. It's a film that makes you question not only the reality of the film, but the reality of your own life. Inception is that summer rarity that makes the audience use there brain, to top the creative and well manufactured story it has beautiful cinematography, fantastic effects that aren't left up to computers, and great acting.


You've seen the movie so you should be clear on what it's about.

Your welcome, Armond.

I think this more than anything summarizes what I thought of Inception

http://movie-critics.ew.com/2010/07/...-didnt-get-it/

i just can't get into pokemon. all those creatures aren't real!

The snow scenes in Inception reminded me of the first level of Metal Gear Solid for Playstation 1. I remember being frustrated and I couldn't even pass the level, so I eventually had to print out a guide walk-through and the only way to get out of the snow and into the building was to climb through some small vent. I wonder if Nolan played the same game, because the characters in Inception have a hard time getting into the building as well during that snow scene!

I don't understand most of those complaints. The film clearly provides answers to most of those questions when dealing with the role of an architect and the mission planning.

The movie is very appealing because there hasn't been a creative, smart action movie in a long time in which it gives movie geeks (including myself) a reason to talk again and break the whole movie down and interpret every little scene in that movie as if it was Matrix or Star Wars. Inception is basically cinematic poetry. It doesn't matter if the movie was a whole dream or not. It's not the point of the film. We don't have to break down and analyze poetry to know that something is poetry and not shit. Inception is a very straight-forward yet complex film that needs to be watched a couple times just to catch everything if you didn't catch it the first time. (But then again, this is just one of my interpretations of the film - it can be broken down and have many different versions or it doesn't have to be broken down and it's just a straight-forward complex film that doesn't need to be interpreted! )


Regarding the question of why Mal would jump out of another building and concluding that was a dream, well she didn't jump out of the window of another building. It was the same apartment and same building that Cobb was in. If anyone knows anything about architecture, you will know that it was the same building. It was filmed like that out of techinical cinematography reasons.

Umm, it appealled because I didn't have to watch a G-rated movie with my kids all night or catch-up on Kitchen Nightmares

Seriously, the movie had a nice blend of story, action, effects and great actors. It doesn't HAVE to be about anything other than to entertain you and make money for the studio. Many movies -- say Hot Tub Time Machine -- can't boast that and HTTM was about "traveling" to another dimension. So I guess I would recommend watching that POS and then watching Inception again and try to answer your own question.

So most of the movie might have been a dream? That hasn't been interesting since Bobby Ewing was revealed in the shower on Dallas. Haven't there been at least 50 movies where "it was all a dream" ?

Apples and oranges, dude.

The story of Inception intelligently concerns dreams - creating, entering, interacting, controlling. It is not a cheap screenwriter hack device used to reset a dying television series after a tepid season and as a result insult viewers.

Video games have "levels," but they're delivered in usually a linear manner: you complete one level, then move on to the next one.

In some ways, movies like the current James Bond (e.g. Casino Royale) are more similar to video games. You fight through a extravagant location, obtain an objective, then move on to the next extravagant location and set piece.

The idea of levels-upon-levels like in Inception, where action is occurring concurrently on multiple levels at once, isn't typically used in video games (I can't think of a single example). However, it does have a strong antecedent in previous movies. Many heist movies, for example, have parts of the team pulling of certain actions at various locations in sync, and where getting out of sync can have dire consequences (something like the Ocean's 11 series). There's also the storytelling conceit of flashbacks, with sometimes flashbacks happening within flashbacks, or just altered or re-arranged chronology. For example, the "flash-forward" at the beginning of Inception has little to do with the fact that it's a dream, and more with building a mystery and drawing viewers in.

Most of the movie is a dream. We know that everything from when they go to sleep on the plane to when they wake up on a plane is a dream, and there are several dream sequences before that. I think something like 80% of the movie is definitively in a layer of dream. And even knowing that the majority of action is in a dream, it's still suspenseful as hell.

This has got me thinking that it could make for a pretty kick ass video game. You get 4 or 5 people together on multiplayer and each person is playing a different level. The actions in one person's game affect the other person's level. It doesn't necessarily have to be an Inception video game, just the basic concept. If someone could pull that off I'd be impressed.

The one thing in the movie that confused me was the snow "level". Who's dream were they in. I thought they told Scarecrow that they were going into Jake Taylor's dream but they were really going deeper into his own, I sort of get that. However why was Scarecrow dreaming about a ski chalet? Did Juno create that "level" as well? It seemed they dropped the Jake Taylor angle when they went to that third "level"

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Juno created that one as well. She even said it was meant to be a labyrinth, and someone said something about why couldn't she have made a beach or something.

Heh heh heh...