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(Inception)?
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  • Locked thread
Doctor Spaceman
Jul 6, 2010

"Everyone's entitled to their point of view, but that's seriously a weird one."
Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, Moon, Her, District 9 are all better sci-fi films than Inception.

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SIDS Vicious
Jan 1, 1970


Doctor Spaceman posted:

Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, Moon, Her, District 9 are all better sci-fi films than Inception.

:agreed:

Al Cowens
Aug 11, 2004

by WE B Bourgeois
Namedropping some lesser-known sci-fi worth looking into

La Jetée (supposed inspiration for 12 Monkeys, old and french and slow)
Stalker (eh you know what this is)
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (romantic, time travel, exactly what the title says, tw: anime)
Fantastic Planet (Weird and French and trippy, animated)
Beyond the Black Rainbow (Canadian and trippy, not very deep but amazing unique ambiance on a budget)
Controller (Taiwanese cast and location, UK/US production, soundtrack, other stuff) http://vimeo.com/71495477

etalian
Mar 20, 2006

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, Moon, Her, District 9 are all better sci-fi films than Inception.

Inception is basically a joyless unquotable heist movie.

Doctor Spaceman
Jul 6, 2010

"Everyone's entitled to their point of view, but that's seriously a weird one."
People say that Last Year at Marienbad was an influence on Inception but I don't really see the link.

It's a good film if you're in the mood for weird b&w 60s french arthouse stuff though.

etalian
Mar 20, 2006

Sabel posted:

Namedropping some lesser-known sci-fi worth looking into

La Jetée (supposed inspiration for 12 Monkeys, old and french and slow)
Stalker (eh you know what this is)
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (romantic, time travel, exactly what the title says, tw: anime)
Fantastic Planet (Weird and French and trippy, animated)
Beyond the Black Rainbow (Canadian and trippy, not very deep but amazing unique ambiance on a budget)
Controller (Taiwanese cast and location, UK/US production, soundtrack, other stuff) http://vimeo.com/71495477

Edge of Tomorrow was pretty decent if not god tier

Vargs
Mar 27, 2010

everyone talked it up like it was the smartest poo poo to ever exist, then i see it and it's just another action flick, except set in some really surprisingly mundane "dreams". oh great a longass scene where indistinguishable people in ski masks shoot guns at each other. great for me to fall asleep to

Al Cowens
Aug 11, 2004

by WE B Bourgeois
Controller has an interesting premise, a few plot holes which is kind of shameful for a 10 minute long film, but great atmosphere, music, and amazing fight choreography.

Could potentially be a great feature film in the hands of a *little* bit more competent writer, and budget

Xaris
Jul 25, 2006

Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry

Vargs posted:

everyone talked it up like it was the smartest poo poo to ever exist, then i see it and it's just another action flick, except set in some really surprisingly mundane "dreams". oh great a longass scene where indistinguishable people in ski masks shoot guns at each other. great for me to fall asleep to
yea i was away for the summer but all i heard was how good it was, etc etc so when I finally got back to the states, I saw it and was let down. I really liked some of Nolan's work like Memento (before he got popular :hipster:) and Prestige and I don't know what the gently caress he was doing here but it was bad. even michael bay would have been better for inception.

i mean it was ok summer blockbluster action flick with surprisingly not a lot of action. some of the action that was there was p. cool at least. but there was a lot of dumb explaining poo poo to ellen page for idiot americans and some plot holes and just general boring psuedo-intellect writing. woulda been better if it was people running around in dreams shooting up poo poo for 2 hours with explosions

The Protagonist
Jun 29, 2009

The average is 5.5? I thought it was 4. This is very unsettling.

Sabel posted:

Namedropping some lesser-known sci-fi worth looking into

La Jetée (supposed inspiration for 12 Monkeys, old and french and slow)
Stalker (eh you know what this is)
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (romantic, time travel, exactly what the title says, tw: anime)
Fantastic Planet (Weird and French and trippy, animated)
Beyond the Black Rainbow (Canadian and trippy, not very deep but amazing unique ambiance on a budget)
Controller (Taiwanese cast and location, UK/US production, soundtrack, other stuff) http://vimeo.com/71495477

I'm gonna have to look into a few of these

Doctor Spaceman
Jul 6, 2010

"Everyone's entitled to their point of view, but that's seriously a weird one."
inception felt like an exercise in plate spinning; nolan wanted to show off how many rules he could build on top of each other and keep everything going

memento's the polar opposite: everything that happens is built off one simple rule about leonard's ability to form memories

I disagree about the action being bad though; this is loving impressive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6XkEEzjVFA

the bad guys in the snow scenes have black beanies on, the good guys have white ones on. it's literally colour coded

ballistics statistics
Nov 27, 2003

:shepface:God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title:shepface:


Posting in a thread where goons, who are notoriously bad at picking good movies, call a good movie bad.

I don't even have to defend that the movie was good. Jesus himself could literally explode from an atheists brain and prove that he was real, and that the only reason mankind was created was to spend thousands of years preparing for how awesome Inception would be... and goons, especially SMG, would still say it sucked.

Guess what: Nobody gives a poo poo about goons opinions. Deal with it.

Cnut the Great
Mar 30, 2014
all the criticisms in this thread are pretty fair actually

Fortuitous Bumble
Jan 5, 2007

I liked it the first time i saw it because I thought the scene with the japanse dude at the beginning was the same as the one at the end and that the guy recreated the entire universe in limbo as it existed shortly before the movie began and got himself trapped in an infinite recursion, but when I rewatched I'm pretty sure that's not what happened at all and the real ending is actually kind of dull

Robo Reagan
Feb 12, 2012

by Fluffdaddy

ThaGrandCow posted:

Posting in a thread where goons, who are notoriously bad at picking good movies, call a good movie bad.

I don't even have to defend that the movie was good. Jesus himself could literally explode from an atheists brain and prove that he was real, and that the only reason mankind was created was to spend thousands of years preparing for how awesome Inception would be... and goons, especially SMG, would still say it sucked.

Guess what: Nobody gives a poo poo about goons opinions. Deal with it.

nobody gives a poo poo

BOAT SHOWBOAT
Oct 11, 2007

who do you carry the torch for, my young man?
Inception (2010) is probably the most recent big-budget blockbuster to inspire mass confusion amongst it audience.

The key to understanding it, and particularly its somewhat frustrating ending, is to consider Inception to be a movie about movies.

Inception ending

Let me backtrack a bit. Obviously, in talking about the ending of the movie, I’m going to spoil things. Inception is of course not “literally” about movies. No character talks about movies during the film’s running time. Taken at face value, it’s just a thriller about dreams, and people who can go inside them. Each of these people has a totem, a small object which only they know the specific properties of, which cannot be replicated in a dream (thereby allowing its possessor to discover whether the space they are in is real or not). Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) chooses a little spinning top to be his totem - the idea therefore being that if the top falls down after being spun, he is in the real world, but still in the dream world if it continues to spin. Following this, the last shot of the movie is the top continuing to spin (though we don’t see whether it falls or not).

This of course lead to many debates coming out of the theater, and onto the message-boards, as to the true answer to the movie. One camp pointed out that the top’s continued spinning, as well as other clues meant that Cobb was still dreaming. Another noticed a slight faltering of the top’s speed just before the movie ends, and argued vehemently that what is depicted is reality. As with any contentious issue, there were also fence-sitters, who suggested; “it’s ambigious, it’s up to your interpretation”.

So is there a real answer? Or is it just ambiguous?

Leo and Marion

The answer is that Cobb is not in reality. But he isn’t in a dream either.
The answer is that Cobb is in a movie.

No, I’m not trolling. I know this is obvious. But is it? If we knew this, why would we have spent so long trying to figure out what really happened at the end? Nothing happens after Inception's ending. There is no sequel. The film reel ends. That's it.

Now, you could tell me I’m being lazy, that I could say the same thing about any movie with an ambiguous ending.

What’s different about Inception is that the plot of the film is about ‘incepting’ a false idea into a target’s mind through the use of a created, imaginary space. There is a slight difference as to what that space is; in the story of the movie it’s through dreams whereas in reality, Inception is convincing you that there is a truth to the movie being depicted through the movie itself.

Now that’s layers.

Cityscape

I am not trolling you. Christopher Nolan is.

The really funny thing is that I don’t think ‘dreams’ are a major theme of Inception at all. Reality, consciousness, and illusion are, but not dreams.

If you want a movie about dreams, watch A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Freddie is able to effectively stalk his victims because the teenage cast are able to confuse his appearance with the surreal insanity that can happen in nightmares. Nothing is all that surreal in Inception. We do get manipulations of physics and physical space, but I’m certain nothing in the movie rivals the weirdest dream you’ve ever had. But they might rival images seen in other movies - and movies often do strive to look like your reality.

The dreams in the movie are all constructed carefully to match reality - which dreams actually don’t. That’s why the biggest themes of the movie are not dreams, but creation and obsession.

Thus, most of the cast in Inception do not play dream-weavers; they play movie-makers.

You could, if you wanted, connect every character in the film to that of a crew-member commonly found on a movie;

cobb and nolan

The main character, Cobb, would of course be the director. He even looks the bloody same as the movie’s director, Christopher Nolan, doesn’t he?

Eames (Tom Hardy), with the ability to impersonate others, represents the actors.

Ariadne (Ellen Page), the architect of the dreamscapes, would be the set designer.

I could keep going, but most importantly, Fischer (Cillian Murphy) is the audience stand-in. The heist of the film revolves around trying to alter his ideas as to what he should invest in. Inception is trying to make you make an investment as well; you are investing your time to watch it, if you saw in in a cinema or bought or rented it, you invest your money, and in order for you to suspend your disbelief and the film as real-world heist to work, it needs you to invest your emotion into it.

It’s interesting that Inception has two major plot threads; the first is about the heist, the second about Cobb’s obsessions and the way his own creations corrupt him. If we take the film to be about films themselves, than the first storyline is about the magic of cinema, and how film-makers create an illusion for us to be entranced in. The second is more sinister, and I think more self-reflective on Nolan’s part; obsession has been the driving force of all of his films, from the Batman trilogy to Memento (2000) and The Prestige (2006), though this is one of his first films not based on prior source material; and also the one where the obsessor most clearly corresponds with himself.

That is the true genius of Inception.

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN

ThaGrandCow posted:

Posting in a thread where goons, who are notoriously bad at picking good movies, call a good movie bad.

I don't even have to defend that the movie was good. Jesus himself could literally explode from an atheists brain and prove that he was real, and that the only reason mankind was created was to spend thousands of years preparing for how awesome Inception would be... and goons, especially SMG, would still say it sucked.

Guess what: Nobody gives a poo poo about goons opinions. Deal with it.

I actually liked it, but don;'
t let that spoil your weird frustration.

General Dog
Apr 26, 2008

Everybody's working for the weekend
Inception was really fun the first time I watched it and was then less fun each subsequent viewing, but I really don't hold that against it. Like pretty much every Nolan movie, it's the kind of movie that's made to be watched once.

free Trapt CD
Aug 22, 2013

*~:coffeepal:~*
I've got plenty of java
and Chesterfield Kings

*~:h:~*
before Inception came out I thought the way people circlejerked about Primer had been bad. little did i know...

Doctor Spaceman
Jul 6, 2010

"Everyone's entitled to their point of view, but that's seriously a weird one."

Heartbroken 2Twice posted:

before Inception came out I thought the way people circlejerked about Primer had been bad. little did i know...

Regardless of the plot and stuff, Primer is legit impressive given the complete lack of resources involved, especially given it wasn't shot on digital.

Same goes for Following.

rcman50166
Mar 23, 2010

by XyloJW
op you bitch, you hosed up another goku poll.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXLDv-fUINM

Xaris
Jul 25, 2006

Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry

ThaGrandCow posted:

Posting in a thread where goons, who are notoriously bad at picking good movies, call a good movie bad.

I don't even have to defend that the movie was good. Jesus himself could literally explode from an atheists brain and prove that he was real, and that the only reason mankind was created was to spend thousands of years preparing for how awesome Inception would be... and goons, especially SMG, would still say it sucked.

Guess what: Nobody gives a poo poo about goons opinions. Deal with it.
haha holy poo poo

Action Tortoise
Feb 18, 2012

A wolf howls.
I know how he feels.
Remember how Ken Watanabe impressed Leo and his bud into service? They had to work for him or else. And then in the end they're like bros for life because they shared a very intense dream?

a misanthrope
Jun 21, 2010

:burgerpug::burgerpug::burgerpug::burgerpug::burgerpug:

redshirt posted:


Don't see what the big fuss was.



maybe you should try killing yourself? no offense, i'm just trying to help

Monday_
Feb 18, 2006

Worked-up silent dork without sex ability seeks oblivion and demise.
The Great Twist
Interstellar's gonna be good, right? The trailer sucks.

stratdax
Sep 14, 2006

MondayHotDog posted:

Interstellar's gonna be good, right? The trailer sucks.

nope

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redshirt
Aug 11, 2007

Reporting for shovel mission Sir.

BOAT SHOWBOAT posted:

Inception (2010) is probably the most recent big-budget blockbuster to inspire mass confusion amongst it audience.

The key to understanding it, and particularly its somewhat frustrating ending, is to consider Inception to be a movie about movies.

Inception ending

Let me backtrack a bit. Obviously, in talking about the ending of the movie, I’m going to spoil things. Inception is of course not “literally” about movies. No character talks about movies during the film’s running time. Taken at face value, it’s just a thriller about dreams, and people who can go inside them. Each of these people has a totem, a small object which only they know the specific properties of, which cannot be replicated in a dream (thereby allowing its possessor to discover whether the space they are in is real or not). Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) chooses a little spinning top to be his totem - the idea therefore being that if the top falls down after being spun, he is in the real world, but still in the dream world if it continues to spin. Following this, the last shot of the movie is the top continuing to spin (though we don’t see whether it falls or not).

This of course lead to many debates coming out of the theater, and onto the message-boards, as to the true answer to the movie. One camp pointed out that the top’s continued spinning, as well as other clues meant that Cobb was still dreaming. Another noticed a slight faltering of the top’s speed just before the movie ends, and argued vehemently that what is depicted is reality. As with any contentious issue, there were also fence-sitters, who suggested; “it’s ambigious, it’s up to your interpretation”.

So is there a real answer? Or is it just ambiguous?

Leo and Marion

The answer is that Cobb is not in reality. But he isn’t in a dream either.
The answer is that Cobb is in a movie.

No, I’m not trolling. I know this is obvious. But is it? If we knew this, why would we have spent so long trying to figure out what really happened at the end? Nothing happens after Inception's ending. There is no sequel. The film reel ends. That's it.

Now, you could tell me I’m being lazy, that I could say the same thing about any movie with an ambiguous ending.

What’s different about Inception is that the plot of the film is about ‘incepting’ a false idea into a target’s mind through the use of a created, imaginary space. There is a slight difference as to what that space is; in the story of the movie it’s through dreams whereas in reality, Inception is convincing you that there is a truth to the movie being depicted through the movie itself.

Now that’s layers.

Cityscape

I am not trolling you. Christopher Nolan is.

The really funny thing is that I don’t think ‘dreams’ are a major theme of Inception at all. Reality, consciousness, and illusion are, but not dreams.

If you want a movie about dreams, watch A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Freddie is able to effectively stalk his victims because the teenage cast are able to confuse his appearance with the surreal insanity that can happen in nightmares. Nothing is all that surreal in Inception. We do get manipulations of physics and physical space, but I’m certain nothing in the movie rivals the weirdest dream you’ve ever had. But they might rival images seen in other movies - and movies often do strive to look like your reality.

The dreams in the movie are all constructed carefully to match reality - which dreams actually don’t. That’s why the biggest themes of the movie are not dreams, but creation and obsession.

Thus, most of the cast in Inception do not play dream-weavers; they play movie-makers.

You could, if you wanted, connect every character in the film to that of a crew-member commonly found on a movie;

cobb and nolan

The main character, Cobb, would of course be the director. He even looks the bloody same as the movie’s director, Christopher Nolan, doesn’t he?

Eames (Tom Hardy), with the ability to impersonate others, represents the actors.

Ariadne (Ellen Page), the architect of the dreamscapes, would be the set designer.

I could keep going, but most importantly, Fischer (Cillian Murphy) is the audience stand-in. The heist of the film revolves around trying to alter his ideas as to what he should invest in. Inception is trying to make you make an investment as well; you are investing your time to watch it, if you saw in in a cinema or bought or rented it, you invest your money, and in order for you to suspend your disbelief and the film as real-world heist to work, it needs you to invest your emotion into it.

It’s interesting that Inception has two major plot threads; the first is about the heist, the second about Cobb’s obsessions and the way his own creations corrupt him. If we take the film to be about films themselves, than the first storyline is about the magic of cinema, and how film-makers create an illusion for us to be entranced in. The second is more sinister, and I think more self-reflective on Nolan’s part; obsession has been the driving force of all of his films, from the Batman trilogy to Memento (2000) and The Prestige (2006), though this is one of his first films not based on prior source material; and also the one where the obsessor most clearly corresponds with himself.

That is the true genius of Inception.

Thanks for this. I was looking for some deep spin on the movie, and this is pretty good.



I'll have to re-watch it sometime later with this in mind. Not in a rush though cuz to be honest I was kinda bored the first time.

Also, what was up with the Bane guy? Who the hell was he and why is he a super ninja and also able to look like other people? Can everyone in a dream do that?

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