Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discussion

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by Aragorn, Jul 15, 2010.

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Grading

  1. Excellent

    71.0%
  2. Above average

    23.7%
  3. Average

    3.6%
  4. Below average

    1.8%
  5. Poor

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  1. RoJoHen

    RoJoHen Awesome Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    Consider me eased up. ;)
     
  2. Flying Spaghetti Monster

    Flying Spaghetti Monster Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    ;)
     
  3. Ryan

    Ryan Commodore Commodore

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    It looks like gravity/kicks only effect the level immediately below it. I don't know where the music in level three came from though. The only two people who should have heard it were Arthur (from Yusuf) and Eames (from Arthur) before the kicks. But it seems like everyone in level three can hear the music when Yusuf begins the kick.
     
  4. RoJoHen

    RoJoHen Awesome Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    Wasn't Level 3 being dreamt by Eames? If so, anyone stuck in his dream would have been able to hear it.
     
  5. SG-17

    SG-17 Commodore Commodore

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    Goldeneye 64 (Level 3) was Fischer's. They pulled a turnabout on him and got him working against himself.
     
  6. RoJoHen

    RoJoHen Awesome Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    Hmm. You're right (I think). I don't remember. There was a lot going on. :lol:
     
  7. T'Baio

    T'Baio Admiral Admiral

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  8. jadcox@mindspring.com

    jadcox@mindspring.com Commodore Commodore

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  9. Deckerd

    Deckerd Fleet Arse Premium Member

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    Nah, I wasn't convinced.
     
  10. Lindley

    Lindley Moderator with a Soul Premium Member

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    There are some interesting ideas in the article. The possibility that Mal was right did occur to me independently, FWIW.
     
  11. JacksonArcher

    JacksonArcher Vice Admiral Admiral

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  12. OdoWanKenobi

    OdoWanKenobi Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    No, it was Eames. Cobb even says so. The reason the music was heard was because Arthur played music for Eames in level 2.
     
  13. JacksonArcher

    JacksonArcher Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    Wasn't Level 2 Fischer's sub-conscious? They had to convince Fischer was dreaming so they could take him another level deeper and bring him into Eames' sub-conscious for Level 3, right?

    ... right?
     
  14. OdoWanKenobi

    OdoWanKenobi Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    Fischer's subconscious populates every level, but he is not the dreamer in any of them. He is the subject.
     
  15. JacksonArcher

    JacksonArcher Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    DAMNIT. I need to see the movie yet again. Two times is not enough. MIND OVERLOAD. :scream:
     
  16. stj

    stj Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    The CHUD piece was wrong. In the movie, Cotillard was at various times working against DiCaprio, interjecting personal symbolism like the train, a normal loving wife, acting like an independent agent when she "kidnapped" Murphy. She argues that the dreams aren't real and they must die to escape to reality and that they should stay in unconstructed dream space to keep dreaming. If she is just an id monster that DiCaprio must reject, this makes no difference, but the CHUD thesis seems to me to demand that she is either a real character (except she isn't) or that she be the embodiment of creativity. However, the general notion that dreams are the source of creativity is far too simplistic in reality to bring credit to the movie. Indeed, the idea is kind of dumb. Maybe it's the stupidity lurking in the background that keeps most of the movie from being very engaging?

    Not to mention, that the woman is explicitly called evil. The suggestion that the director is the primary creator and the script writer is just the Ariadne shows proper fealty to conventional wisdom but is otherwise silly.

    Closely related to the problem of Moll/"Mal" (it is extraordinary how people can accept this name without comment!) is the question of what catharsis DiCaprio undergoes. How rejecting his wife (if Cotillard is somehow misinterpreted as a real character) enables him to see his children is a mystery. Of course, if it's all a dream, how we know there are children is equally mysterious. If Cotillard is supposed to be the creative muse, again there is no catharsis that would allow him to see his kids. Only if Cotillard represents a malicious mockery of reality does rejecting her constitute a catharsis that leads to the happy ending with the kids. Except if it's all a dream, then there was no catharsis because he didn't reject movies as life or whatever.

    I still say that only if you willfully misinterpret the top falling as still somehow ambiguous do any of these insoluble problems in making sense arise.

    There is one thing the review does, which is to emphasize that the movie, despite all the talk about dreams, does not do dreams, it does movies/virtual reality/video games. And it correctly emphasizes the thematic importance of Murphy's imaginary reconciliation with his father. The movie itself doesn't. At what should have been a key part of the climax, the confrontation between Murphy and DiCaprio, Murphy is bound, mute and helpless, while DiCaprio is haring off after Watanabe. The movie practically buries the dramatic irony of the difference between Murphy and DiCaprio. It is after all Murphy and DiCaprio who are actually making choices. They should have real scenes together about them. Having them in the same scene and not addressing the themes of the movie is bad writing. And denying the difference between DiCaprio and Murphy is, sorry, bad interpretation.
     
  17. Kirkman1987

    Kirkman1987 Commodore Commodore

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    I'm late to the thread but only saw the movie two nights ago. Have read a lot of this thread's comments and enjoyed them.

    The movie itself is likely to be my favorite of the year. Excellent in every way, and an instant classic for me at least.
     
  18. Arrqh

    Arrqh Vice Admiral Admiral

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  19. Peter the Younger

    Peter the Younger Commodore Commodore

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    Saw it again, and while I noticed a lot of great detail in the dialogue, I didn't see anything that would convince me "it was all a dream." If anything, the number of scenes were Cobb is not present (and which he would have no need to picture in his own mind) make that interpretation unconvincing. Yes, you could say that the rules of Cobb's top level dream are all different from everything else we have seen, that is porjections are so deep they have a psychological reality of their own, that Nolan is just planting these scenes to fool us. Well, some creationists argue that dinosaur fossils were planted by God to test our faith, but Occam says it's bull puckey.
     
  20. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    Re: Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discuss

    Just saw it again myself and some thoughts:

    The totem/top has a noticeable favor developing in the axis of it's wobble. I.E. it looks, and sounds, like it's going to fail. I didn't really notice much difference in the kids but, I suppose, they looked a bit older and that Cobb sees their faces and he couldn't in his dreams/memories I think says a lot and he also says that he couldn't stand to live in a dream world as it wasn't good enough for him.

    The drugs made the dream "time dilation" much more severe, a factor of 20 in the first level, IIRC. Dialogue in the "Goldeneye 64" level suggests that the deeper levels were the standard 12, probably because they'd be using a standard sedative? (This is noticed when at one point Cobb says that the guy in the Zero-G Hotel level has a "couple of minutes" to initiate his kick giving them in the GE64 level "about 20" this suggests the standard 1:12 dilation and not the 1:20 the drug was giving them.

    The protectiveness in Fischer's brain caused them to improvise their plan. They expected to have around a week in the first level (the city level which I'm going to call the GTA level to keep with our video game theme ;)) but the immune system forced them to have to do it inside of a couple hours as opposed to the time they originaly would've had.

    The heavy sedative meant that killing themselves wouldn't work, thus the need for "the kick."

    Wantabe doesn't get injured in either the hotel level or the Goldeneye 64 level but as his injuries worsen in the GTA level they begin to manifest themselves, and hinder him, in the deeper levels.

    The "time dilation" is tougher to compensate for in the deeper levels. As I said upthread the hotel level and the Goldeneye level both move at "normal time" compared to the slow-mo of the GTA level while Leo and Ellen are in the Limbo level (which was Cobb's dream). When Leo and Ellen are Limbo the Goldeneye level should be moving 12-20 times slower and then another 12-20 times slower in the hotel level. The only way I can reason this is that time isn't passing on the G64 level or hotel level when we're not watching it. A scene ends in one of those levels, we watch another one, go back, and pick-up where we left off. Only the "GTA level" is occuring when we're not watching and its time is so off that it appears to us in slow motion.

    The only explantion given for the dream-sharing machine is that it was developed by the military for traning purposes.

    Wantabe, because so much time passed from him "dying" in the Goldeneye level and when Leo goes down there it seems that decades had passed. The time dilation between Limbo and the final dream level must be vastly dfferent than the other levels.

    Leo put the "inception" in Mal hoping it'd convince her to leave Limbo. He didn't know it'd grow into the idea of her thinking the real-world is still a dream. He does this by spinning her token in the safe, she had put it in there laid down which is what probably convinced her to think of Limbo as reality and want to stay there.

    The idea seemed to be that one would spend so much time, ages, in Limbo that when they woke up in the real world the real world would be so far forgoten they they wouldn't be able to re-adapt again. Leo and Mal, possibly, got around this by being together or by the "short" time they spent in Limbo (around 50 years as opposed to centuries.)

    It seems that the "kick" being timed precisely wasn't completely necessary just the most ideal way to do it. Leo says he has to find Wantabe and that'd he find his own way to kick himself "awake" through the levels back to reality.

    Wantabe says he'll keep his promise and Leo, as a young man, talking to Wantabe reminds him of this which, perhaps, helped Wantabe not be in PVS when he woke up in the real world.

    It's not made clear what everyone did once they woke up in the GTA level as they'd need to wait out for the sedative to wear off, again after as long as a week. They either hid-out from the immune system during this time or killing the immune system in the lower levels somehow got rid of them.

    I had to laugh seing the standard video game "+" medical box (with a defibulator!) in the "Goldeneye" level. :lol:

    The Goldeneye level was supposed to be the maze to get to vault room, Emma and Leo's right-hand man has developed a short-cut through it just in case which was used when their time was cut short.

    This movie has got some serious twists and turns in it but, damn, it just makes my mind spin as I just get off on this kind of mind-bending stuff. :lol: Excellent movie, well done, Nolan!