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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Inception (Spoliers)

Madman in the ruins.

11:37 / 25.07.10

(evicts spiders and blows dust off forum)

Ok Starting a thread on this. And a spoiler thread to discuss the concepts of what is a worthy sucessor to DD and the first Matrix film.

The Matrix comparisons are almost immediate, with the Dremworld replacing the Matrix-in fact the zero G hotel fight seems to be a direct nod to the fight scenes of the Matrix Movies.
As for DD, theres a lot of time streching, the deeper levles of dreaming the longer time lasts, Moral ambiguities, At the end of the film has Cobb escaped the dreamworld and enterd reality or not?
The Totems, reminiscent of the Artifacts of DD?
Visually its stunning, Paris turning upside down, the freight train attack.
DeCaprio plays a blinding role, as good as he was in Shutter Isiland and Blood Diamond.

One small critisism was that it felt like a long film, the Snowbound hospital complex section seemed a bit unessasary. But a film with some very inresting concepts.

12:09 / 26.07.10

I still have to wait, it still hasn't premiered here. So frustrating. People everywhere are buzzing about this and I still can't watch it!

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

02:09 / 28.07.10

I thought it was great, like everyone else--I was excited about Joseph Gordon Levitt, but the role didn't really give him much to do. DiCaprio was great as always.

The hallway fight didn't seem like any direct nod to the Matrix, and I'm not sure what makes you think it was--given that Nolan said here and there that he uses CGI only when absolutely necessary and prefers to do stunts as physically as is possible, it seems more like an "eff you" to the Matrix, if any connection can be made at all (and I'm not sure that it can). This film, to me, is what the second and third matrix films wished they could have been.

Madman in the ruins.

07:58 / 28.07.10

The World of the Marix was a shared dream state, the World of Inception is shared dream states. The Hallway fight takes place in Zero G, reminiscent of the gravity bending Neo/Smith fights.
Styilsticaly the films are very diffrent, The Matrix films became a parody in black leather, Inception is much more understated, where the Matrix films were almost claustraphobic with their tunnels and underground sets, Inceprion is all encompassing, its played out on the world stage, Paris, India, Switerland?
Totaly agree it is what the 2nd and 3rd Matrix films aspired to be.

Keith, like a scientist

17:49 / 01.08.10

Comparisons to The Matrix are odd to me. Inception is about dreams, Matrix is about a virtual world. One is governed by the subconscious, the other is governed by computers. Big difference. Calling The Matrix a shared dream state seems misleading.

22:38 / 03.08.10

I like the ending quite a bit. I think it's not as ambiguous as it at first seems. The top begins to wobble but the camera cuts right before it would fall. The fact that it wobbles already shows that it's the real world. I think the end is more of a play on movies being like dreams, dropping you right into the story with no hint of you got there.

Just a thought.

Aha! I am Klarion

02:19 / 04.08.10

I surprised that Barbelith's more magickally inclined members didn't mention that the process of "Inception" is a bit like making a sigil for some-one else and then hijacking them.

Even the white board in planning stages says:
I WILL BREAK UP MY FATHER'S EMPIRE.
WLBRKPMYFTHSP

You get the idea.

Plus there is that whole leap of faith/fool symbolism thing in the movie.

Soldier of the Green

06:55 / 11.08.10

Just saw the movie today. It was brilliant.

The ending was very interesting, but I am not sure how the top is supposed to work.

1) It doesn't seem like the other characters' totems. Arthur had a loaded die that he knew the weight and feel of, to ensure that he always knew when he was in someone else's dream. Ariadne made a similar totem. The idea was that another dreamer would not be able to replicate your totem. So why would any other dreamer make Mal's top spin forever?

2) If Cobb has given himself a perfect dream reality, then he would have included a properly behaving totem. The totem doesn't tell you if you are dreaming.

08:06 / 12.08.10

Yes, that's Mal's totem at the end, not Cobb's. Some speculate his totem might have been his wedding band.

Also, as some people elsewhere have pointed out: If he wants to see his kids so much, why not let Michael Caine fly them in to Paris? Seems less difficult than building a dream in a dream in...

I find it a cop out that Nolan is so ambiguous about the end. That has been done so many times in movies. Don't keep people guessing, just tell them what happened. This way, it looks as if he couldn't work out a proper ending.

13:18 / 12.08.10

I didn't find the ending ambiguous more open to personal interpretation, which I feel is a bit different. Either the heist goes according to plan and everyone gets out, or it doesn't and Cobb and Sato don't.

I personally liked the snow-covered facility "level". As I was watching it I was thinking that the deeper they went the more primal it would get. So down in the third level of the dream things are operating on a more animal level where the way to get to the objective is fight/climb/run/combat.

Keith, like a scientist

15:46 / 15.08.10

The simplest explanation for the ending is that it wobbles and falls.

The evidence is his wedding ring. In scenes we are told are in the real world, he doesn't wear it - his wife is dead and doesn't exist anymore. In scenes we are told are a dream, Cobb wears his wedding ring because he knows she still exists in the dreams. If you watch the last scene where they wakeup on the plane, he isn't wearing a ring as he hands security his passport. Ergo, it's reality.

However, it's entirely possible we are watching a dream and the ring shenanigans has to do with levels of the dream that Cobb is in. Possible but that's kind of a boring movie... not sure why people want to believe the whole thing takes place in a dream. It's a much more interesting movie when the main character goes through a real catharsis.

As for the totem, it was originally Mal's but Cobb took it as his own when she died. So this also leaves the possibility that Mal could fuck with Cobb in a dream because she knows the mechanics of it, she's not really alive in his subconscious, so she only has the thoughts that Cobb gives her. This only leads me to the feeling that the movie plays it straight with us until the final cut away. At that point, it's a mystery that is solvable by the wedding ring thing.

22:01 / 18.08.10

The other say I remembered that Ariadne (Ellen Page) was manipulating the physics of the world within a dream. Now what Emaes (Tom Hardy) said about Arthur (Gordon-Levitt) is that he's damned good at his job but lacks imagination. I thought the fact that he decided to use an elevator to cause the dreamers to fall in a world with no gravity was a sign of him gaining an imagination..... Then I realized that he could've just manipulated the physics of the world to regain gravity thus causing the floating dreamers to fall and thus wake up.

Just a thought.

11:03 / 26.08.10

I was a little disappointed with it, it was fun but it felt like a pretty normal heist movie to me, it didn't really make me think much about the nature of reality etc that I was hoping for, but I just think I had my expectations way to high.

But about the ending, what do you say about the fact that the kid was the same age, clothing, and position as in his memories, I just thought that when he allowed that scene to play out that he knew that he was dreaming/dead but that he was ok with it. Didn't really realize it was supposed to be all that mysterious until I read everything about the ambiguous ending on the Internet and in reviews.

16:33 / 26.08.10

I read that the children in the last scene supposedly were different and older children. But I also saw them as being the same age.

17:00 / 26.08.10

I assumed Arthur wasn't overtly manipulating the dream world due to the weaponised "aspects". The bigger you change things the quicker the regular ones home in on you. One presumes the weaponised versions are worse, or at least more trigger happy.

Keith, like a scientist

13:55 / 27.08.10

I read that the children in the last scene supposedly were different and older children.

True. You can check this on IMDB.