It's an action film. If you're looking for a point or for character development, it's probably not going to interest you no matter how many times you sit through it.
Sometimes I think movies need a warning like this before they're released. Some people just never catch on to that it seems. I'm tired of hearing complaints like that against movies where the focus obviously isn't about these f***ing things anyway.
You are arguing against the basic principles of conceptual fiction, which is why I made that somewhat patronizing statement (the beauty of fiction). No offense, but you really don't seem to get it.
I definitely get it, whether you believe that I do or not. I can't think of a comment that speaks to someone's not getting it more than, "The beauty of fiction is that ideas that cannot be explained/rationalized can be explored."
A whole lot of fiction exists that is just as beautiful and that college courses can be dedicated to because those ideas are interesting and can be explained. I know because I have taken those college courses myself, and in doing so have completed my undergraduate work in English. :D
LOL OK. Yeah ideas don't need to flushed out and organized, not in fiction writing or anything else. Stephen King is probably the only writer to sit down and vomit his ideas onto the page. Melville, Hawthorne, Dickens....these are all writers with clear ideas or themes that they try communicating to readers effectively. The intention should never be to obscure these ideas and frustrate readers.
A lot of people really disliked it. A considerable amount of the criticisms I encountered where regarding the believability of the device. Personally I liked the film, and obviously both Richard Kelly with his box (which, by the way, is an adaptation of an award winning piece of literature) and Christopher Nolan with his briefcase are not concerned about establishing a scientific context for their concepts.
In terms of narrative, it is a waste of pages/screen-time to explain something that cannot be explained. If that is seriously beyond you, I give up. This is my last effort:
There is no briefcase in real life.
People cannot enter dreams.
To explain how people can enter dreams would just be bullshit.
Get it?
Things like "the flux capacitor" are not absolutely central to the story.
The flux capacitor is as integral to Back to the Future as the briefcase is to Inception.
But how would you like to watch the movie if characters were time traveling in the Delorean like it's no big thing without the Delorean ever being explained?
Yes, it was enough in Hot Tub Time Machine. If they stopped to explain how the Hot Tub worked, it would have been wasted screen time.
Wouldn't you need just a little more than that? We may not know how it works or how "the flux capacitor" works, but we do know that the Delorean is something that allows time travel and something that the characters have created.
Only, yet again, if it comes naturally in dialogue. If a story is set in a world where for example toasters exist, I don't expect the characters to explain the inner workings of a toaster. In Inception, the technology to enter dreams exists. In How to Train Your Dragon, there are dragons.
In fact, we even see the characters working on it. They give us enough information for us to say, "OK, I get it... let's move on..."
No they give you enough information to suspend disbelief, not us. That's the distinction. Personally I like being able to immerse myself in fiction regardless of believability and I feel sorry for people who are incapable of doing so.
But you can create something, be it a short story, novel or film, that approaches a fantastic idea without being confusing. If the idea isn't clear and the audience is left wondering what is going on, then there's not something wrong with the audience, there's something wrong with the approach. You may have understood the movie, and maybe the movie didn't confuse you, but it confused me, and if the movie confused other people as well (I'm willing to bet that it did), then something's wrong. I'm just going to leave it at that.
No they give you enough information to suspend disbelief, not us. That's the distinction. Personally I like being able to immerse myself in fiction regardless of believability and I feel sorry for people who are incapable of doing so.
No offense taken. I am absolutely capable of immersing myself in fiction. I study it. I teach it. I do it myself... so trust me, no offense is taken at all.
verso, there's a clear difference between written and visual forms of literature. time constrainst are far more apparent on film. it is a difficult balance to get both information and pace when concepts become more complex or unusual on film.
You may have understood the movie, and maybe the movie didn't confuse you, but it confused me, and if the movie confused other people as well (I'm willing to bet that it did), then something's wrong. I'm just going to leave it at that.
But don't assume that since you didn't understand it, then others didn't. the minority of posts in this thread had difficulty with the device in inception. It's fine if it frustrated you, by all means express this frustration. Just don't pose the cause of it as objective fact, when clearly others don't feel the same way.
It's an action film. If you're looking for a point or for character development, it's probably not going to interest you no matter how many times you sit through it.
Yeah. I honestly didn't know if it was an action film, or what. I knew it had something to do with dreams but that was about it. I did not care for the Matrix either. Long ongoing fighting sequences bore the shit out of me.
Sometimes I think movies need a warning like this before they're released. Some people just never catch on to that it seems. I'm tired of hearing complaints like that against movies where the focus obviously isn't about these f***ing things anyway.
Well, an action movie can have awesome characters that I connect to. I have enjoyed many action movies, war movies, etc when I feel connected to the characters. I just didn't connect to these characters too much from what I saw so far.
IMO just the fact that Nolan directed it and it was advertised as a conceptual sci-fi promised more than the film could deliver
Oh. I forgot Nolan did this movie. This explains a lot. I honestly haven't really enjoyed very many of his movies. While I think they are well done, they always seem to be missing some fundamental.. something that I require to really get pulled into a film. Not sure what.
I felt this exact same falling asleep feeling during the Batman movies. Just not my thing I guess, but I won't put him down at all, he's a talented filmmaker.
Yes, it was enough in Hot Tub Time Machine. If they stopped to explain how the Hot Tub worked, it would have been wasted screen time.
If a story is set in a world where for example toasters exist, I don't expect the characters to explain the inner workings of a toaster. In Inception, the technology to enter dreams exists. In How to Train Your Dragon, there are dragons.
Great posts in this thread - and I liked Hot Tub Time Machine too
I've only watched Inception once, but I thought it was fantastic. Need to watch it MANY more times. From what I did pick up, however - I'm amazed at how many people are stuck on "this doesn't make sense", "why didn't they just dream better dreams?" and "the ending was stupid".
I'll do my best to try and explain, cuz I think this really was a movie worth enjoying and worth thinking about what bigger themes and concepts lie beneath the basic (very enjoyable!) action plot...
This Doesn't Make Sense - TheDeceased explained the absolute necessity of suspension of disbelief on some level in ALL fiction, however there are some more specific criticisms I think I can explain...
1-- Getting Into the Dream World(s) - Unless I'm totally hallucinating this, I remember at some point it being explained that this whole system was derived from government experiments in shared dreaming with a heavy emphasis on the rationale for it (explained through subtext, not direct dialogue) being collective consciousness not as a social construct but as a real scientific truth. You also have to understand three basic things, and what their existence entails, to understand how the movie weaves between realities and characters as well -
1a----- There are three states of consciousness - conscious (awake/reality/external), unconscious (asleep/imaginary/internal) and subconscious.
1b----- The subconscious is an uncontrollable layer beneath the realm of active thought. It is wholly informed by the other two states, though in turn it can be used to inform (for sure) perception of the unconscious and (at least to some degree) perception of the conscious. That is all real science and psychology and there is nothing all that abstract about it. The subconscious is the bridge between all states of consciousness, all thought, all knowledge and all learning.
1c------ In real life nor in this movie (well, for the most part... this comes back as something of a plot twist later on), we cannot actively manipulate our subconscious, however we/they can "program" it to some degree - especially in a world where shared/multi-level dream states exist and lucid dreaming is easily attained through technology and chemistry. What does that all mean in the world of Inception?
2-- Moving Pictures In the Lucid World - The entire dream world is created as a movie would be. One person sets the landscape and physical characteristics (Architect/Ariadne), while another's subconscious dreams a reality, like a director, within it. The people on this mission within the dreamed landscape/reality are the actors trying to resolve the plot while appearing authentic as possible to the dreamer's subconscious and the setting created by the architect.
2a----- That's why there are no bad guys. The "bad guys" are the dreamer's subconsciousness realizing that it's within an unconscious construction of someone else's mind, turned on to the fact by the "actors" behaving in a manner that does not jive with what that subconscious has been programmed to accept as a conscious reality.
2b----- When the subconscious mind of the dreamer realizes it's not within the realm of perception it should be, it folds inward on itself... and to the dreamed perception of the "actors" within this world, that subconsciousness closing on itself is realized as "bad guys" trying to kill them. Why typical movie bad guys with machine guns that miss? Because isn't that the kind of thing most people imagine when they dream? Don't most people dream based on movie stereotypes and other similar things they have learned? No one has real experience with situations like that, so it comes from things learned but not directly experienced. That's why the snow fortress and "villains" look like something from a James Bond movie.
2c----- Within the dream world, the architect can place anomalies that appear to the dreamer's subconsciousness as an optical illusion would to the waking mind, yet the "actors" can utilize these anomalies to function outside the constraints of that created reality eating itself. I think the example they give in the movie is "something like a wormhole"
Why Not Dream a Better Dream? - As explained in section 2 above, you can't just decide "oh I can fly now" or something like that, because what your lucid mindstate does within someone else's dreamed reality, and yet another person's created landscape & world has intimate effects on it and your states of consciousness tied to being. When one of the characters (I forget which) states "dream bigger" and pulls out a huge gun, this is a construction of one of those "wormholes" within Ariadne's landscape. We know this because it is effective at stopping the subconsciousness from destroying itself and those within it*.
*=Those constructions of Ariadne also may serve to further destabilize Cobb's unconscious/subconscious mindstate... at least temporarily. Not really here nor there in the grand scheme of things, though.
1-- Sedatives - In a normal shared dream where an extraction is taking place, getting killed within the dream means waking up. That's it. Because heavy, specialized sedatives are required to go 4 "levels" deep within someone's subconscious to perform Inception however, getting killed means you drift off to a deeper, chaotic level of less controllable dream within your own consciousness ("Limbo").
2-- Time and Perception - As most people know, Limbo occurs because time in a dream world - while experienced as it is reality - is in the real world occurring at a MUCH faster rate. That means that when you get "killed" within a deep layer under heavy sedatives, there is a significant gap of time in the dream state before it's possible to wake up... equivalent to MANY decades even. Everybody seems to get this part!!
3-- Limbo - I don't want to give away too many spoilers here, I'm really trying to just focus on things you should watch the movie trying to understand already, but Limbo in this movie is essentially the unconscious/lucid equivalent of conscious perception. In conscious perception, we use physical tools and learned knowledge to create, do, function, etc. In the world of Limbo, the creations of the unconscious mind can be manipulated through programming the subconscious... and within this state, anything truly IS possible if you are able to program it into your subconscious -- but that has many other ramifications as well!!!
The Ending Was Stupid - I'm gonna NSFW this part, and even though there are gonna be major spoilers in here, I don't think it'll take anything away from your enjoyment of the movie if you read this... but it's up to you!
NSFW:
1-- What Does it All Mean?!? - Anyway, in the end - we're left hanging not knowing if Cobb ultimately DID get out of his Limbo world or if he's just created another dreamlike state within it. Many people have correctly referenced the ring on his hand and the change of his children's clothing as signs that the movie is telling us "this may be reality". However we also get the conflicting imagery of Cobb's totem taking a lengthy spin, and still turning when the credits cut to black -- suggesting he has just created another alternate, ideal world within his Limbo state. Which one is correct? I don't think either are. I think it's left open ended intentionally, and I think the point it's trying to make is that - as in Cobb's mind - we will NEVER know what's truly "real" and what's not in our own reality or our mind's construction of whatever the fuck THIS all is. I think this whole sequence, specifically the fact the he walks PAST the still spinning totem and towards his children is very in line with the writings of Albert Camus and the Absurd - a confusing and often confused take on Existential philosophy. There is really a LOT that could be said about this, way more than I can accurately describe (or even comprehend for that matter) - but for our purposes here, let me just say that a lot of this school of thought deals with trying to rationalize an insane world with no constants, no gods, no inherent natural law - a world more dominated by the constructions, fallacies and shortcomings of our individual and collective perceptions... THE EXACT SAME THING Cobb's Limbo represents to him, the world itself represents to the Absurd philosophy.
"For want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it" - regardless of what the hell world Cobb is in, the only way for him to exist, the only way for him to maintain sanity, the only way for him to get passed his inner demons, fears, etc. - is to embrace whatever it is that reality is throwing at him and find the things like love, happiness and emotional attachment that are the more positive aspects of human frailty. This is much the same way the movie is telling us we need to detach ourselves from worrying (but not THINKING ABOUT) the world around us and embrace it's stupidity and flaws and find whatever it is we cherish in them. In other words, yes - this whole thing around us... it's all probably bullshit, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy yourself while you plow your way through time and consciousness.
2-- Ariadne's Role - Another poster on here summed up the whole Ariadne character and her relation to the central plot of the movie perfectly earlier on, so I don't want to rehash it... plus I couldn't explain it that well!! But go read that... Ariadne's purpose, in relation to the story at least, is to guide Cobb towards his acceptance and understanding of the world he's built for himself.
3-- Symbolism and Themes - This movie is chock full of symbolic hints and clues very relative to the story, however like I said - I've only watched it ONCE and failed to pick up on a lot of them. The overwhelming one that does come through is allusions to France and French culture over and over and over again. The Paris scenes in Ariadne's mind, the Edith Piaf song triggering the kick, Mal, the strong influence of 20th Century European philosophy, sociology and psychology. I believe this is because, well... at least to me and many people I know, France is symbolic of revolution and The Enlightenment... two of the major historical precursors to existentialism and two things that also have obvious parallels with Cobb's story arc and process of arrival at his ultimate fate. Additionally, I didn't pick this up myself - but I read somewhere that the name Ariadne is taken from a story in Greek Mythology and that is relative to what TheLoveBandit discussed regarding her being essentially a guide and therapeutic device for Cobb -- taken straight from the InceptionWikipedia page:
"Ariadne, a graduate student of architecture who is recruited to construct the various dreamscapes, which are described as mazes. The name Ariadne alludes to a princess of Greek myth, daughter of King Minos, who aided the hero Theseus by giving him a sword and a ball of string to help him navigate the labyrinth which was the prison of the Minotaur"
So... ALL that said :D, I gave it a 4/5. I absolutely loved it and plan on watching it a million times in my life, but I don't think it was a certified "classic". Great, abstract story... great special effects... SOME great actors (Ellen Page is not one of my favorites, but she does OK in this) however I think truly great movies have an immediate emotional attachment. This one does, but it's by means of the head only. I'm not really criticizing, I don't know how this could possibly have been better... just one of the unfortunate constraints of making a movie like this.
My fingers and brain hurt now, that took almost an HOUR to write :D
Great posts in this thread - and I liked Hot Tub Time Machine too
I've only watched Inception once, but I thought it was fantastic. Need to watch it MANY more times. From what I did pick up, however - I'm amazed at how many people are stuck on "this doesn't make sense", "why didn't they just dream better dreams?" and "the ending was stupid".
I'll do my best to try and explain, cuz I think this really was a movie worth enjoying and worth thinking about what bigger themes and concepts lie beneath the basic (very enjoyable!) action plot...
This Doesn't Make Sense - TheDeceased explained the absolute necessity of suspension of disbelief on some level in ALL fiction, however there are some more specific criticisms I think I can explain...
1-- Getting Into the Dream World(s) - Unless I'm totally hallucinating this, I remember at some point it being explained that this whole system was derived from government experiments in shared dreaming with a heavy emphasis on the rationale for it (explained through subtext, not direct dialogue) being collective consciousness not as a social construct but as a real scientific truth. You also have to understand three basic things, and what their existence entails, to understand how the movie weaves between realities and characters as well -
1a----- There are three states of consciousness - conscious (awake/reality/external), unconscious (asleep/imaginary/internal) and subconscious.
1b----- The subconscious is an uncontrollable layer beneath the realm of active thought. It is wholly informed by the other two states, though in turn it can be used to inform (for sure) perception of the unconscious and (at least to some degree) perception of the conscious. That is all real science and psychology and there is nothing all that abstract about it. The subconscious is the bridge between all states of consciousness, all thought, all knowledge and all learning.
1c------ In real life nor in this movie (well, for the most part... this comes back as something of a plot twist later on), we cannot actively manipulate our subconscious, however we/they can "program" it to some degree - especially in a world where shared/multi-level dream states exist and lucid dreaming is easily attained through technology and chemistry. What does that all mean in the world of Inception?
2-- Moving Pictures In the Lucid World - The entire dream world is created as a movie would be. One person sets the landscape and physical characteristics (Architect/Ariadne), while another's subconscious dreams a reality, like a director, within it. The people on this mission within the dreamed landscape/reality are the actors trying to resolve the plot while appearing authentic as possible to the dreamer's subconscious and the setting created by the architect.
2a----- That's why there are no bad guys. The "bad guys" are the dreamer's subconsciousness realizing that it's within an unconscious construction of someone else's mind, turned on to the fact by the "actors" behaving in a manner that does not jive with what that subconscious has been programmed to accept as a conscious reality.
2b----- When the subconscious mind of the dreamer realizes it's not within the realm of perception it should be, it folds inward on itself... and to the dreamed perception of the "actors" within this world, that subconsciousness closing on itself is realized as "bad guys" trying to kill them. Why typical movie bad guys with machine guns that miss? Because isn't that the kind of thing most people imagine when they dream? Don't most people dream based on movie stereotypes and other similar things they have learned? No one has real experience with situations like that, so it comes from things learned but not directly experienced. That's why the snow fortress and "villains" look like something from a James Bond movie.
2c----- Within the dream world, the architect can place anomalies that appear to the dreamer's subconsciousness as an optical illusion would to the waking mind, yet the "actors" can utilize these anomalies to function outside the constraints of that created reality eating itself. I think the example they give in the movie is "something like a wormhole"
Why Not Dream a Better Dream? - As explained in section 2 above, you can't just decide "oh I can fly now" or something like that, because what your lucid mindstate does within someone else's dreamed reality, and yet another person's created landscape & world has intimate effects on it and your states of consciousness tied to being. When one of the characters (I forget which) states "dream bigger" and pulls out a huge gun, this is a construction of one of those "wormholes" within Ariadne's landscape. We know this because it is effective at stopping the subconsciousness from destroying itself and those within it*.
*=Those constructions of Ariadne also may serve to further destabilize Cobb's unconscious/subconscious mindstate... at least temporarily. Not really here nor there in the grand scheme of things, though.
1-- Sedatives - In a normal shared dream where an extraction is taking place, getting killed within the dream means waking up. That's it. Because heavy, specialized sedatives are required to go 4 "levels" deep within someone's subconscious to perform Inception however, getting killed means you drift off to a deeper, chaotic level of less controllable dream within your own consciousness ("Limbo").
2-- Time and Perception - As most people know, Limbo occurs because time in a dream world - while experienced as it is reality - is in the real world occurring at a MUCH faster rate. That means that when you get "killed" within a deep layer under heavy sedatives, there is a significant gap of time in the dream state before it's possible to wake up... equivalent to MANY decades even. Everybody seems to get this part!!
3-- Limbo - I don't want to give away too many spoilers here, I'm really trying to just focus on things you should watch the movie trying to understand already, but Limbo in this movie is essentially the unconscious/lucid equivalent of conscious perception. In conscious perception, we use physical tools and learned knowledge to create, do, function, etc. In the world of Limbo, the creations of the unconscious mind can be manipulated through programming the subconscious... and within this state, anything truly IS possible if you are able to program it into your subconscious -- but that has many other ramifications as well!!!
The Ending Was Stupid - I'm gonna NSFW this part, and even though there are gonna be major spoilers in here, I don't think it'll take anything away from your enjoyment of the movie if you read this... but it's up to you!
NSFW:
1-- What Does it All Mean?!? - Anyway, in the end - we're left hanging not knowing if Cobb ultimately DID get out of his Limbo world or if he's just created another dreamlike state within it. Many people have correctly referenced the ring on his hand and the change of his children's clothing as signs that the movie is telling us "this may be reality". However we also get the conflicting imagery of Cobb's totem taking a lengthy spin, and still turning when the credits cut to black -- suggesting he has just created another alternate, ideal world within his Limbo state. Which one is correct? I don't think either are. I think it's left open ended intentionally, and I think the point it's trying to make is that - as in Cobb's mind - we will NEVER know what's truly "real" and what's not in our own reality or our mind's construction of whatever the fuck THIS all is. I think this whole sequence, specifically the fact the he walks PAST the still spinning totem and towards his children is very in line with the writings of Albert Camus and the Absurd - a confusing and often confused take on Existential philosophy. There is really a LOT that could be said about this, way more than I can accurately describe (or even comprehend for that matter) - but for our purposes here, let me just say that a lot of this school of thought deals with trying to rationalize an insane world with no constants, no gods, no inherent natural law - a world more dominated by the constructions, fallacies and shortcomings of our individual and collective perceptions... THE EXACT SAME THING Cobb's Limbo represents to him, the world itself represents to the Absurd philosophy.
"For want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it" - regardless of what the hell world Cobb is in, the only way for him to exist, the only way for him to maintain sanity, the only way for him to get passed his inner demons, fears, etc. - is to embrace whatever it is that reality is throwing at him and find the things like love, happiness and emotional attachment that are the more positive aspects of human frailty. This is much the same way the movie is telling us we need to detach ourselves from worrying (but not THINKING ABOUT) the world around us and embrace it's stupidity and flaws and find whatever it is we cherish in them. In other words, yes - this whole thing around us... it's all probably bullshit, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy yourself while you plow your way through time and consciousness.
2-- Ariadne's Role - Another poster on here summed up the whole Ariadne character and her relation to the central plot of the movie perfectly earlier on, so I don't want to rehash it... plus I couldn't explain it that well!! But go read that... Ariadne's purpose, in relation to the story at least, is to guide Cobb towards his acceptance and understanding of the world he's built for himself.
3-- Symbolism and Themes - This movie is chock full of symbolic hints and clues very relative to the story, however like I said - I've only watched it ONCE and failed to pick up on a lot of them. The overwhelming one that does come through is allusions to France and French culture over and over and over again. The Paris scenes in Ariadne's mind, the Edith Piaf song triggering the kick, Mal, the strong influence of 20th Century European philosophy, sociology and psychology. I believe this is because, well... at least to me and many people I know, France is symbolic of revolution and The Enlightenment... two of the major historical precursors to existentialism and two things that also have obvious parallels with Cobb's story arc and process of arrival at his ultimate fate. Additionally, I didn't pick this up myself - but I read somewhere that the name Ariadne is taken from a story in Greek Mythology and that is relative to what TheLoveBandit discussed regarding her being essentially a guide and therapeutic device for Cobb -- taken straight from the InceptionWikipedia page:
"Ariadne, a graduate student of architecture who is recruited to construct the various dreamscapes, which are described as mazes. The name Ariadne alludes to a princess of Greek myth, daughter of King Minos, who aided the hero Theseus by giving him a sword and a ball of string to help him navigate the labyrinth which was the prison of the Minotaur"
So... ALL that said :D, I gave it a 4/5. I absolutely loved it and plan on watching it a million times in my life, but I don't think it was a certified "classic". Great, abstract story... great special effects... SOME great actors (Ellen Page is not one of my favorites, but she does OK in this) however I think truly great movies have an immediate emotional attachment. This one does, but it's by means of the head only. I'm not really criticizing, I don't know how this could possibly have been better... just one of the unfortunate constraints of making a movie like this.
My fingers and brain hurt now, that took almost an HOUR to write :D
I had to watch Inception twice before I really understood what was going on. I noticed that people are starting to talk more and more about there dreams around here ever since Inception came out.
It makes you wonder, if in the near future, that people will be able to do this kind of stuff? like going into peoples dreams, or setting up a program where you are a first-person viewer of whats going on when someone sleeps.
I really don't like that idea, because then the government might think of someway to tap your dreams, or something crazy like that.
Theres been many times where I'll have that "falling" feeling, and catch myself. They said they if u don't catch yourself then you die.
It makes you wonder..
I had to watch Inception twice before I really understood what was going on. I noticed that people are starting to talk more and more about there dreams around here ever since Inception came out.
It makes you wonder, if in the near future, that people will be able to do this kind of stuff? like going into peoples dreams, or setting up a program where you are a first-person viewer of whats going on when someone sleeps.
I really don't like that idea, because then the government might think of someway to tap your dreams, or something crazy like that.
Theres been many times where I'll have that "falling" feeling, and catch myself. They said they if u don't catch yourself then you die.
It makes you wonder..
I also need to watch it many more times to fully flesh everything out - I know there's even more to it in there that I missed.
I think the US government stopped trying to mess around with mind control and experiments like that in the early 1970s, but then again - we'll never really know, right? That would be terrifying. As cool as it would be to experience in a positive manner, you KNOW that kind of technology would never be used for good!!
BTW - Sorry this is OT, but can you (or anyone) direct me to the forum where we're allowed to talk about dreams? I'm new here and I'm an idiot
