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*SPOILERS* Inception Thread of Dreaming a Little Bigger

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Veidt said:
Dream within a dream gets soooo good at around 3:29 minutes. Holy shit.
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Is it the one playing at the JGL anti-gravity fight?

That action scene along with the music was the most thrilling moment of Inception.
 
Best part of the zero G fight is the end. Gravity comes back, the dude dives off the bed towards JGL who shoots him dead, and the body kind of faceplants into the wall.

Guzim said:
Can Leo's head even fit under the cowl?
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We're simply swapping Bale's figuratively large head for Leo's literally large head.
 
shagg_187 said:
Cilian Murphy's going to be ballin' real soon! He better get nominated for best supporting actor alongside JGL and Tom hardy! ;D
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Lukas Haas better get nominated for Best Supporting.

You could truly see the fear in his eyes when he was getting dragged away from the Inception set.

"But I'll have some scenes in the snow shoot....right?! RIGHT?!?!!!!"
 
I know its an action movie, but those dudes were getting shot at in that stupid van for like, at least 5 minutes straight. How the hell do you survive that? :lol :lol

Is that shit bulletproof?

Also, I'm confused about the ability of people to bring stuff into the levels. Like, the dude conjures up a grenade launcher out of nowhere. Leo obviously conjures up an entire fucking train somehow. Why can't they just do something more awesome than a van once the shit is obviously going down? Does it even matter if the subconscious is more aware of you at that point? Get a goddamn APC or something. A Stryker, I dunno.

Its hard to tell where the conjuring abilities begin and stop. The movie doesn't really pay attention to it too much and just seems to allow it sometimes, and other times it just happens and the movie almost doesn't even recognize that it did. Its odd.
 
BobsRevenge said:
I know its an action movie, but those dudes were getting shot at in that stupid van for like, at least 5 minutes straight. How the hell do you survive that? :lol :lol

Is that shit bulletproof?

Also, I'm confused about the ability of people to bring stuff into the levels. Like, the dude conjures up a grenade launcher out of nowhere. Leo obviously conjures up an entire fucking train somehow. Why can't they just do something more awesome than a van once the shit is obviously going down? Does it even matter if the subconscious is more aware of you at that point? Get a goddamn APC or something. A Stryker, I dunno.

Its hard to tell where the conjuring abilities begin and stop. The movie doesn't really pay attention to it too much and just seems to allow it sometimes, and other times it just happens and the movie almost doesn't even recognize that it did. Its odd.
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I figure it's a film more about concepts than specifics, and don't let myself get caught up on the little things.
 
The second viewing was bliss. I don't know how Nolan does it but I can't even imagine any movie production company green lighting and backing a movie of this sort for expanded release in this day and age. I'm sure I'll be seeing this a couple more times at least during it's theatrical run.

Films of late have just been getting worse and worse. In fact I saw a trailer today about a movie where a kid plays catch with his dead brother. :/
 
Just got back from seeing the movie. Read through some of the thread, until it started devolving into an argument about whether the movie was amazing or terrible, so apologies if some of these have been explained:

- How exactly do the totems work? My understanding was that only the creator knows some small flaw or unique quality about the totem, so if they're in someone else's dream, then whoever's dream they're in won't know to create the totem with that unique quality. However, if the totem-owner is in a dream, doesn't he have the power to manipulate it, hence "create" his totem properly? What if the totem owner is in his own dream (meaning the totem was definitely created correctly), how can the totem help him? Why would the top spin perfectly in everyone's dreams?

- How did Leo realize he was in limbo the first time when he was there with his wife and they grew old together? I'm assuming limbo is easy to escape (kill yourself) once you know you're there, but obviously it's a level so deep that most people never figure that out. Also, was the issue that his wife didn't believe him, or that she didn't want to leave? If she didn't want to leave, how did planting an inception that their world "wasn't real" fix that issue? Why did Ellen Page and Leo immediately know they were in limbo when they sent themselves there to save Fischer?

- If people are dream sharing, can anyone who's there control the dream, or only the architect and the original dreamer (once he realizes he's in a dream)? Is everyone in the dream vulnerable to their subconscious breaking in, or just Leo's because his wife was such a powerful memory?
 
BobsRevenge said:
Is that shit bulletproof?
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Police officers have been known to state its a myth that bullets can penetrate cars easily. Those guys were using buckshot shotguns and pistols for the most part, its not difficult to imagine that the guy lived through it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ummnOoSfd54, found this...ignore its FOX tripe as the incident and footage is real, no extreme violence, but viewer discretion is advised)
 
I have read some of the pages in this thread and I haven't seen Cobb's speech to Saito mentioned. To convince Saito that he is in a dream Cobb basically tells him EXACTLY what Mal tells Cobb when she is on the edge of the building. That realization scared Cobb to the core, you can see it in his face after he said it, that maybe she was right.

If we go by the Inception theory that moment would be the moment where Cobb's Inception takes place, where he is the one to come up with the idea.
 
MiamiWesker said:
I have read some of the pages in this thread and I haven't seen Cobb's speech to Saito mentioned. To convince Saito that he is in a dream Cobb basically tells him EXACTLY was Mal tells Cobb when she is on the edge of the building. That realization scared Cobb to the core, you can see it in his face after he said it, that maybe she was right.

If we go by the Inception theory that moment would be the moment where Cobb's Inception takes place, where he is the one to come up with the idea.
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So in a roundabout way, Cobb performed an inception on himself? :lol
 
shagg_187 said:
Cilian Murphy's going to be ballin' real soon! He better get nominated for best supporting actor alongside JGL and Tom hardy! ;D
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i've seriously found him really amazing in any movie he's done... he's a great actor
 
I am glad the Oscars went to ten movie nominations, now Inception will definitely be nominated for Best Picture. We now live in an age where movies that would always get ignored by the Academy Awards will have a spot for a nomination. It happened last year with District 9, a movie like that would never get a nomination in the old 5 movie format.
 
Sanjuro Tsubaki said:
The second viewing was bliss. I don't know how Nolan does it but I can't even imagine any movie production company green lighting and backing a movie of this sort for expanded release in this day and age. I'm sure I'll be seeing this a couple more times at least during it's theatrical run.

Films of late have just been getting worse and worse. In fact I saw a trailer today about a movie where a kid plays catch with his dead brother. :/
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I'm not defending Zac Efron's movie, although it will be interesting to see him in a dramatic role, but wtf? A movie doesn't have to have special effects and mind bending plot twists to be good.
 
DanielPlainview said:
Anyone think shared dreaming is an allegory for the internet? Our shared psychic space.
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Definitely. I often catch myself reading your posts and wondering if they are real or not

:P
 
dustytruly said:
i've seriously found him really amazing in any movie he's done... he's a great actor
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I've seen nothing short of great work from him every time I see him. It's a shame he's not getting any lead roles with much broader appeal. Maybe he likes it that way.
 
The entire movie was about someone (presumably the father-in-law) trying to perform Inception on Dom Cobb, to plant the idea in his head that he needs to stop living in the past and move on from the death of his wife. The revelation came, when he is speaking with his wife again, saying "we did grow old together. We had our time. Now I have to move on."

Dom never fully recovered from his first time in Limbo either. Only after being truthfully moved on, which he can only come to on his own terms, could he see his children again.

I dunno but that's what I feel after seeing it for the second time.
 
Ashhong said:
I'm not defending Zac Efron's movie, although it will be interesting to see him in a dramatic role, but wtf? A movie doesn't have to have special effects and mind bending plot twists to be good.
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?

It invokes usage of brain activity..something that has been severely lacking at the cinema for a long time. I can't think of the last thing released this wide of a scale to do so here. Besides this film and Toy Story 3, this has really been one of the worst movie summers I can recall.
 
Hasphat6462 said:
I've seen nothing short of great work from him every time I see him. It's a shame he's not getting any lead roles with much broader appeal. Maybe he likes it that way.
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I feel like he does, considering how out of the spotlight he stays in his private life.
 
Amir0x said:
The entire movie was about someone (presumably the father-in-law) trying to perform Inception on Dom Cobb, to plant the idea in his head that he needs to stop living in the past and move on from the death of his wife. The revelation came, when he is speaking with his wife again, saying "we did grow old together. We had our time. Now I have to move on."

Dom never fully recovered from his first time in Limbo either. Only after being truthfully moved on, which he can only come to on his own terms, could he see his children again.

I dunno but that's what I feel after seeing it for the second time.
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I don't think so.... but thats certainly a fresh theory :lol
 
The other thing that crossed my mind was the dream bar in the basement, that it could have been a jump on point. I disagree with Solo's Spielberg-ian ways, I do like how the film ends a bit open invoking thought to multiple conclusions. I do believe though in the end he makes it back to reality, personally.

Everything about this film was just a treat. Hans Zimmer score was also VERY surprising to me.
 
Solo said:
I don't think so.... but thats certainly a fresh theory :lol
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To me it makes sense. She was everywhere on every level on all the dreams. She was in fact the only single thread uniting all the dreams together. At level 3, he shoots Mal - literally being FORCED to kill his past. And at the final level, the deepest level, he has the greatest revelation of all.

Leo needed to be convinced it came from himself, that it wasn't planted, so the entire thing was set up to look like Leo was on an elaborate job. As an expert extraction artist, he would know the tricks, and so it had to be really convincing where the origin of the idea came from.

I dunno but this is definitely what I felt by the end of the second viewing. It merges with all the themes nicely and also blends nicely with the ambiguous STILL DREAMING ending and the "WHAT IS REALITY?" undercurrent.

The idea just keeps growing on me for some reason.
 
Sanjuro Tsubaki said:
?

It invokes usage of brain activity..something that has been severely lacking at the cinema for a long time. I can't think of the last thing released this wide of a scale to do so here. Besides this film and Toy Story 3, this has really been one of the worst movie summers I can recall.
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Brain activity :lol I don't know what you are replying to, but I'm merely saying that just because its a drama doesn't make it bad. You don't know anything about it other than "oh lol dude plays ball with dead bro". In Ghost, wife fucking made pots with a dead husband and that movie rocked.

Oh, and Karate Kid, Despicable me have both been pretty good.
 
Sanjuro Tsubaki said:
?

It invokes usage of brain activity..something that has been severely lacking at the cinema for a long time. I can't think of the last thing released this wide of a scale to do so here. Besides this film and Toy Story 3, this has really been one of the worst movie summers I can recall.
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He's defending the other movie (of which I also saw that cringeworthy trailer) not attacking your precious Inception :D
 
the walrus said:
He's defending the other movie (of which I also saw that cringeworthy trailer) not attacking your precious Inception :D
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I clearly said I wasnt defending it =P Keeping a slightly open mind though since I think Efron gets too much hate.
 
I wasn't attacking him either, I wasn't sure which way he was going with the statement hence the "?".

I know the difference between a bad trailer and a bad movie...I honestly have no idea how that movie in reference can be entertaining. The entire premise is trying too hard to give him a vehicle and just looks sickly morbid.
 
404Ender said:
- How exactly do the totems work? My understanding was that only the creator knows some small flaw or unique quality about the totem, so if they're in someone else's dream, then whoever's dream they're in won't know to create the totem with that unique quality. However, if the totem-owner is in a dream, doesn't he have the power to manipulate it, hence "create" his totem properly? What if the totem owner is in his own dream (meaning the totem was definitely created correctly), how can the totem help him? Why would the top spin perfectly in everyone's dreams?
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The top is constrained to the laws of physics in reality. In a dream, it's possible to make the top spin indefinitely. I imagine that anyone has the ability to do such a thing in a dream. However, no one has the ability to do something like that in reality.

- How did Leo realize he was in limbo the first time when he was there with his wife and they grew old together? I'm assuming limbo is easy to escape (kill yourself) once you know you're there, but obviously it's a level so deep that most people never figure that out. Also, was the issue that his wife didn't believe him, or that she didn't want to leave? If she didn't want to leave, how did planting an inception that their world "wasn't real" fix that issue? Why did Ellen Page and Leo immediately know they were in limbo when they sent themselves there to save Fischer?
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Cobb and Mal seemed to be intuitive regarding the whole process, which is fitting since they were experimenting with how far they could go. I think the dreamer can only perceive that limbo is actually a dream if they're willing to go there - whereas if you die under heavy sedation, you wake up in limbo and have no idea as to whether it's reality or not. In Mal's case, it seems she became so infatuated with the world that she and Cobb created - which led her to reject her waking life completely. Cobb's action of planting the idea that limbo isn't real convinced his wife that she needed to kill herself in order to experience reality. This doesn't fix anything, however, because no matter which life Mal is experiencing - she will always believe that it isn't real. (Which is really depressing.)

- If people are dream sharing, can anyone who's there control the dream, or only the architect and the original dreamer (once he realizes he's in a dream)? Is everyone in the dream vulnerable to their subconscious breaking in, or just Leo's because his wife was such a powerful memory?
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I'm certain that everyone can influence the dream directly. This extends to the subconscious as well. I mean, if Cobb can do it, then anyone will equally rampant memories (emotions?) can do so as well.
 
Knight and Day and The A-Team were fun and Get Him To The Greek and Macgruber were hilarious.

It's all about limited releases though, some utterly fantastic films.
 
Amir0x said:
The entire movie was about someone (presumably the father-in-law) trying to perform Inception on Dom Cobb, to plant the idea in his head that he needs to stop living in the past and move on from the death of his wife. The revelation came, when he is speaking with his wife again, saying "we did grow old together. We had our time. Now I have to move on."

Dom never fully recovered from his first time in Limbo either. Only after being truthfully moved on, which he can only come to on his own terms, could he see his children again.

I dunno but that's what I feel after seeing it for the second time.
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niiiiiiiicceee.

Although I'd like to think if something like that were true any character deemed worthy to be played by Michael Caine could think of a more elegant solution than this! :lol :lol

edit: Although, it would go against the movie's logic because DiCaprio's totem does work in the "real world" scenes.
 
DanielPlainview said:
Knight and Day and The A-Team were fun and Get Him To The Greek and Macgruber were hilarious.

It's all about limited releases though, some utterly fantastic films.
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Even Predators was fun, but as far as a "traditional" summer goes this year has been a little odd in comparison to the weekly release schedules of the past few years. It's just that this film would be a huge risk by all accounts but looks to be paying off tremendously. I'm happy for that.
 
Solo said:
What was Michael Caine doing in this movie besides cashing a check? :lol
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Having lunch and a chat with Nolan. Just buddies hangin' out, makin' movies. Nothing wrong with that.
 
BobsRevenge said:
Having lunch and a chat with Nolan. Just buddies hangin' out, makin' movies. Nothing wrong with that.
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Nothing at all. But Caine seems an expensive choice for such a minor role. Maybe he gave Nolan the hometown discount.
 
Solo said:
What was Michael Caine doing in this movie besides cashing a check? :lol
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2zjbc43.jpg
 
DanielPlainview said:
I actually didn't love him in TDK, but I loved him in this. I hated Is Anybody There? I guess I like my Caine in small doses.
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His best Nolan work was BB. Alfred/Bruce/Thomas Wayne was really the heart of that movie.
 
Dissapointed my last post wasn't quoted more, I thought I nailed it (or set up for some counter arguments), I even tied it into LOST themes :lol
 
John Harker said:
Dissapointed my last post wasn't quoted more, I thought I nailed it (or set up for some counter arguments), I even tied it into LOST themes :lol
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that's why it failed. Because LOST sucks.
 
Minor quibble in a movie in which I'm sure there are many others: I had a bit of a problem with the Escher staircase after they tilted the camera during the scene demonstrating it to show how it was just an optical illusion. So then it wouldn't actually work the way they said it did because it's not actually a contiguous loop, just an illusion that works from one specific angle.

Still thought it was very cool when JGL used it to double back on the guy who was chasing him. But it didn't actually make sense.

Also was anyone else surprised when the narrow wallspace in the trailer and Plainview's avatar turned out not to be a part of the shifting dreamworld but just a regular old narrow space in the real world? :lol
 
Speculator said:
Police officers have been known to state its a myth that bullets can penetrate cars easily. Those guys were using buckshot shotguns and pistols for the most part, its not difficult to imagine that the guy lived through it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ummnOoSfd54, found this...ignore its FOX tripe as the incident and footage is real, no extreme violence, but viewer discretion is advised)
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But if its a popular misconception wouldn't it be possible in the dream?

ScannersExplodingHead.gif
 
Amir0x said:
that's why it failed. Because LOST sucks.
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:lol
I'm an incognito nobody, but in 6 years, I don't think we've ever agreed on anything - but I'll give you that, well played
 
DanielPlainview said:
The Losers was better than a Paul Greengrass movie.
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Seriously. Lay off the Kool-Aid. :lol :lol

Also was anyone else surprised when the narrow wallspace in the trailer and Plainview's avatar turned out not to be a part of the shifting dreamworld but just a regular old narrow space in the real world?
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I'm with you there.
 
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