Inception (Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio) Grading & Discussion

[T'Baio]

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

The movie went into extensive detail on why it couldn't get too weird.

I mean, don't like the choices because you don't find them entertaining, sure, but when the movie goes out of its way to explain these things and people still don't get it?

 

[RoJoHen]

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

The whole point of making the dreams real was to trick the "victim" into thinking he was still in the real world.

You mean, like when Cobb and Cillian Murphy were in the bar, and Cobb flat out told him he was having a dream? That's some trick.

They had to improvise when they discovered that Fischer had trained his mind against extraction which is why Cobb brought up "Mr. Charles" so they could get past Fischer's defenses.

Exactly.

 

[Wynterhawk]

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

While Leo was great in it. Anybody wonder how Nolan's other leads: Christian Bale, Guy Pearce, Hugh Jackman and maybe in some aspect Robin Williams or Al Pacino would have faired as Cobb?

Hm, I hadn't thought about it, but now that I have, I prefer Dicaprio. While the others are competent actors they would have brought a flavor to Cobb that I wouldn't have liked. But then again, hey, you never know how you'll react to someone until you see them doing it.

 

[JacksonArcher]

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

I think in the past all of Nolan's leads have worked out exceptionally well given the characters they were chosen for. I think DiCaprio was fantastic as Cobb. I don't think I could see Bale, who would have probably given Cobb too much of a chilly demeanor in my opinion, would have fared well in the role and I don't think Jackman has the right sense of intense desperation that somehow DiCaprio was able to pull off. I don't know. I just think DiCaprio was properly suited for Cobb.

However, given Cillian Murphy's surprisingly effectual and emotional performance as Fischer, it would have been interesting to see him as Cobb but I think DiCaprio had the right acting prowess and of course star power to pull off Cobb, and he did.

 

[Trekker4747]

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

The movie went into extensive detail on why it couldn't get too weird.

I mean, don't like the choices because you don't find them entertaining, sure, but when the movie goes out of its way to explain these things and people still don't get it?

Not shit. The entire second act of the movie was devoted to expalining to us their mission, how the dream world worked, and why things had to happen the way they did.

 

[coolghoul]

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

I just got back from seeing Inception for the first time and there were about 7 people in the theater. I was originally just going to save my money and stream it online, but decided against it. I'm glad that I did. It was amazing and I was surprised that I enjoyed it so much. I absolutely loved the ending. It totally fit the theme of the movie and was a perfect choice.

Glad you liked the movie too. Would you go into more detail about the what and why of the "loved the ending"? Are you talking about the 4 level dreaming climax (which I thought was fantastic as things are drawing to a close) and having to escape or are you talking about Cobb meeting his kids or are you saying that having the film end with a deliberately ambiguous shot of Mal's top fits the theme of the movie.

Join the fun...

I also disagree with the dreams should be surreal crowd. I think the movie does explain that the dream could be surreal but then your subconscious does start realizing you are having a dream. Everybody is talking about their own dreams and how they experience them. One of the points that Nolan could have made clearer (but it would have meant even more exposition) is that people dream several times during the night and most of the times they don't remember a majority of their dreams. The point of inception or extraction is to do that in a manner where the "mark" doesn't wake up thinking that he was in any way violated/oppressed in the dream. The "extraction" should not be noticed. And similarly the "inception" must not be noticed. So, to do that, they have to do mundane dreams and not frivolous dreams where Jason is morphing into Freddy Kruger or something cos the first thing the dreamer will do is remember it on waking up (or try to force himself awake by sheer force of will). While I am not always successful, but in some of my nightmares, I have been able to tell myself that this is only a dream, wake up and then I've actually woken up (typically with muscles all tensed up and sweating). That should not happen with the "mark". If anything, the film's opening sequence (after the 'Saito is old man' setup) actually shows Saito detecting the dream and waking up. So - to remain successful dream thieves, they need to keep the dream mundane.

I think this was explained in *some* detail in the movie. Tho' they didn't have anybody ask "but my dreams are soooo surreal".

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

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

Not all dreams are surreal and unworldly. It all depends on the dreamer and the dream itself. So it seems foolish to criticize Nolan for not making the dreams dream-like enough when "dream-like" simply means anything.

Secondly, Cobb quite frankly points out that making the dreams too unreal, to take too much control of the dream, deminishes the reality of it and is more likely to tip-off the dreamer and his projections that he wasn't in reality.

Which is an arbitrary rule that I suspect Nolan only came up with to justify his painful literalism & lack of imagination in this movie.

Ultimately, all dreams are believable when we are in them because our brain has no choice but to accept its own "eyes." I'm not saying that dreams have to be fantastic, surreal, or unworldly. However, I do think that they need to contain an element of the unreal & the arbitrary. Just because a dream takes place in a mundane, "realistic" environment, that doesn't mean that everything has to follow the exact same rules of the real world. Even in my most mundane dreams, there's always something in there that is different from the real world yet made perfect sense while I was there.

To go back to Joss Whedon again, I thought his dream episodes frequently contained nice little touches of stuff that isn't realistic but made (dream)sense. To quote a couple of perfect examples from "Restless" & "Soul Purpose":

"I think I've figured out how to steer by gesturing emphatically."

"Thank you, bear."

However, given Cillian Murphy's surprisingly effectual and emotional performance as Fischer, it would have been interesting to see him as Cobb but I think DiCaprio had the right acting prowess and of course star power to pull off Cobb, and he did.

I think I would have prefered Cillian Murphy as the lead. Overall, I think he's a much more interesting actor than DiCaprio.

The movie went into extensive detail on why it couldn't get too weird.

I mean, don't like the choices because you don't find them entertaining, sure, but when the movie goes out of its way to explain these things and people still don't get it?

Not shit. The entire second act of the movie was devoted to expalining to us their mission, how the dream world worked, and why things had to happen the way they did.

Oh, I understood it perfectly. Ultimately, I think the great failure of the movie is that so much is so easily understandable, that so much of the dreams could be summed up in rules, right down to an exact mathematical formula for how long dream time translates into real time and even the dreams within dreams. In reality, I think dreams are very subjective experiences. Sadly, this movie sacrifices that subjectivity and any real chance for an examination of the subconscious in favor of the kinds of gun battles that we've seen in every action movie made in the last 30 years.

 

[Trekker4747]

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

Why does it smell like spam in here?

 

[Rett Mikhal]

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

Almost 150 votes and not a single one for poor, with extremely few others in the negative categories.

I think we have a winner.

 

[Set Harth]

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

I saw it very much as being like lucid dreaming too, only the "lucid dreamers" were the team the "mark" wasn't lucid dreaming.

The mark can be, according to the online prequel comic The Cobol Job:
“Saito’s probably been trained for this. And if he’s familiar with the dream-share, then he’s going to be a lucid dreamer."

 

[Trekker4747]

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

Just in case anyone needed to know how insane the internet is, here's some more proof: LINK

An Inception Wiki!

I'm not sure how they came up with it and the information there isn't very in-depth or revealing considering, you know, there's only one damn movie to base an entire encyclopedia off-of. But there it is.

By the way, I hate Wikia Wikis because they run like complete shite on non-MS browsers.

 

[Unicron]

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

Good for a chuckle...

LifFormers #197

 

[CaptainCanada]

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

Leo has gots the benjamins.

 

[Trekker4747]

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

$50m?! Geeze!

 

[JacksonArcher]

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

I feel much more comfortable with an actor of the caliber of Leonardo DiCaprio getting paid $50 million for an extremely cerebral and intelligent movie than let's say Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson getting paid that amount for doing the exact same thing they've always done.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

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

If nothing else, this shows that DiCaprio trusted Nolan to make an incredible film.

 

[JacksonArcher]

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

I think DiCaprio, based on Nolan's "impeccable track record" (DiCaprio's own words), had a lot of trust and faith in Nolan. It clearly paid off.

 

[Level 2 Diagnostic]

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

lol. Or maybe he figured out that working for the director of the #3 highest grossing movie of all time might be a positive thing for his career. I love how people here think DiCaprio was taking some kind of tremendous leap of faith.

 

[JacksonArcher]

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

lol. Or maybe he figured out that working for the director of the #3 highest grossing movie of all time might be a positive thing for his career. I love how people here think DiCaprio was taking some kind of tremendous leap of faith.

Well, he was. In a summer full of remakes, sequels and adaptations, Inception was a risk because it was based on a solely original concept. Directors of famous and popular movies before have had missteps and failures. Just look at Bryan Singer, who directed the very popular The Usual Suspects and then the first two X-Men movies, and went on to direct Superman Returns which was tepidly received. Peter Jackson, director of the mega-famous and successful Lord of the Rings films, did the tepidly received King Kong and then The Lovely Bones which did even worse.

There was plenty of risk that Inception would have failed to connect with movie-goers, similar to Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. I think the most compelling thing to point out is that Leonardo DiCaprio just didn't take a one lump slum payday, he gambled on the film's box office chances. It was clear that no one could predict the box office of Inception -- there was certainly buzz but there was a lot of trepidation that it would fail because it was a brainy, cerebral, intellectual movie premiering right smack in the summer movie season where audiences pay to see movies where they can just shut off their brain, and not actually use it.

The fact that Inception resonated so well with movie-goers was a big and unexpected surprise. So DiCaprio definitely took a risk, but the gamble paid off. He invested in the right man.

 

[Level 2 Diagnostic]

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

Well, he was. In a summer full of remakes, sequels and adaptations, Inception was a risk because it was based on a solely original concept.

lol, So, accepting a role in a movie that's not a remake/sequel/adaptation is now an amazing act of courage? Where's the thread for admiring the bravery of Angelina Jolie for appearing in Salt?

So DiCaprio definitely took a risk, but the gamble paid off. He invested in the right man.

Seriously, what's the worst that could have happened to DiCaprio? The guy was getting $20 mil paydays in the wake of Titanic, so I'm pretty sure he's set for life. And one poorly received movie is not going to kill his career. And he got to vacation in Paris and Japan on the studio's dime. In general, "taking a risk" implies that a person stands to actually lose something if things go badly.