Thread: Inception - Do you like it? - Post your Review

The perfect movie for me. I enjoyed it more than anymovie I've watched in a long time. Now prety much my favorite movie. Stoy, acting, action, special effects, music, all perfect. The only thing about dreaming that wasn't completly acurate was the time dialation which dosn't ALWAYS seem like its been so long. Its actualy been proven that dream time is usualy prety much the same as normal time but it worked out perfectly for the movie. I also love movies where you have to think alot but it if you dont pay attention it would take a lot away from the experience. Also it has a great ending.

Originally Posted by Black_Eagle

I thought it was good, not very good. It was a bit too dramatic for my tastes. There were some flaws in logic as well. Like why couldn't they just turn themselves into giant dinosaurs or mecha to defend themselves? It's what I would have done. Definitely one of the season's best films, but it's not winding itself onto my top favorites.

I'm going to be pissed if the lucid cat gets out of the bag because of this movie. I cringe at the thought of an association being drawn with this movie every time lucid dreaming is mentioned. And besides, I like our happy little subculture of lucid dreamers.

First off I would like to say that I loved this move AS A MOVIE. Great acting. Great effects. Nice sexy man floating around in fight scenes that rival the matrix.

But this has got to be one of the worst lucid dreaming movies out there!!

I agree with Black Eagle (and any others, haven't finished reading this thread). The dream logic made no sense. After the movie I started complaining to my sisters how lame they were, strictly using guns, never flying if they needed to.

My sisters who know NOTHING about lucid dreaming roll their eyes and explain "Duh, they have to act normal or else the projections will notice them". Okay, I can go with that. Act normal. Don't make the projections suspect anything.

But what about once the projections do suspect them? Why still limit yourself to physics of physical reality? Especially when there's this evil void threatening them if they 'die'? Nothing about what they did in the dream even remotely resembles lucid dreaming - except for when the girl manipulates the dream scape!

The other really annoying part that wanted me to pull my hair out was the injured asian man. Hello! IT'S A DREAM! Why is there some written law that says he can't heal himself. IT'S A DREAM!

This movie is a poor representation of lucid dreaming. Leaves viewers feeling that shared dreaming is escapism instead of an exploration of a different kind of reality. It also carries the idea that people who dwell in the art of lucid dreaming or even shared dreaming are destined to become insane and jump off a roof. I solved this insanity years ago . You levitate from standing position. Not jump. Oh wait, that's right, they can't do that in this movie because for some reason I can't figure out why - none of them could fly.

And I'm not sure why the movie needed the whole plot with a big corporation. Dreams are fascinating enough without needing to add that kind of drama.

I like this movie as a movie. But lucid dreaming? No.

The only valuable lucid dreaming skill it teaches is to use a totem to question reality.

Well, Juroara, think about it.

"Oh, you could just snap your fingers and the other guy who is lucid will explode"
Well what about that guy who is lucid who is gunna explode? "Just make it that you are unexplodable"

And also

"Dude, just fly away"
Well what about the other guy who is lucid? "Just make it that you can't fly here"

And

"Heal yourself, asian man"
Well what about the other lucid peoples? "Make it that he dies a bloody death"


etc. etc. etc.
Kinda a mindfuck.

THAT's what I disagree with what you are saying, juroara.

However, it is still disappointing that there isn't flying and shit. But, I'm just saying, it isn't a poor representation of lucidity.

Seriously, I don't really understand why people are getting all worked up over how Inception isn't a realistic interpretation of lucid dreaming. Just because it was inspired by it, doesn't mean that it's supposed to model or show it realistically. Movies are targeted at large demographics and most people simply don't care whether the dream world in Inception depicts the "real" dream world correctly.

I think if your expecting to learn some techniques to improve your LD quantity and quality by watching a movie, then your watching the movie for the wrong reasons. (Unless the purpose of the movie is to educate people about LD.)

lol, sleepy, that's the kind of thing you put in [ spoiler][/spoiler] tags

Someone who hasn't watched the movie probably won't understand his spoiler.

Well, I now know that

Spoiler for ...:

he was being chased by a corporation for failing a job that was created as a test to begin with

The reason thy didn't use dream powers is because if they did to much the subconcious of the person they were in the dream of would anialate them. Plus the guy they where in the head of had his subconcious trained for that kind of stuff. Wern't you guys paying attention.

I guess he could have healed himself though. I doubt that would have drawn as much attention as sumoning a gernade launcher.

there is a theory going around that the entire movie is just leo's dream. that he never got out of limbo, and he is just continuing to create, and that he has lost track of what is reality, and what is not. they go as far as to say that he just created Mal and his kids. here is a post from another thread explaining some of the logic.

Spoiler for Spoiler:

Yes, but you're assuming that Mal exists outside of the dream. Who's to say that Dom didn't create her while in limbo, while he was creating buildings and cathedrals and beaches? If he went into a dream alone, then maybe he tried to convince himself that he could create a companion. But on that one level of limbo he could never be truly satisfied because he could always see her lack of genuine complexity, true perfection, and beautiful imperfections, and would always remember that he had created her. Therefore, he had to implant an inception on himself: the idea that they were both in a dream together, and that by killing themselves on the train tracks they could wake up into "reality" together--a reality that is in fact just a deeper stage of limbo.

Why, when they wake up in this "reality" after spending all this time going deeper and deeper in exploration of these dream layers--why aren't they attached to the sleeping machines? Why don't they have the wires in their arms? They're just sleeping on the floor. How could they have managed all that incredibly complex mutual dreaming without the advanced technology?

If Mal is just something that Cobb created, then her suicide isn't going to manifest into some real person who can slap the sleeping Cobb on the face. Part of the inception was that Cobb had entered a "reality" where the "real Mal" commits suicide and actually does disappear.

The ultimate inception, though, is fooling himself into thinking that he had children with a person who never existed, burying himself and distracting himself with so many mazes, ruses, plots, and layers that it never occurs to him that these oddly named, brightly lit children--who always look the same and wear the same outfits whether they're on the beach or in the front yard or whatever, whose faces he can't even remember ever having seen, who he for some reason can't just take with him to Buenos Aires--are real people. The inception which he pulls off successfully at the end.

The whole thing occurs in deep layers of limbo. Only Dom truly exists in reality--and perhaps something close to Dom's father (Michael Caine). Maybe even some version of Mal exists in reality--maybe they even were married and "grew old together" (how do you explain that random shot of the old couple holding hands, the part that Mal "doesn't remember"?), but then perhaps she died and the reason he entered limbo was to try to rebuild her, to restore immortality to her--think of the film as a futuristic Orpheus and Eurydice, possibly. But the Michael Caine we see and the Mal we and all the other characters--all of them are just manifestations of Dom's imaginings, either partially based on a reality that we never fully see, or else completely imagined (which would explain why almost all of the supporting cast--while being colorful--is pretty one-dimensional, most of the characters having almost no back story. Anyone who's seen Nolan's other films knows that his characters are anything but one-dimensional. The characters are just interesting enough so that we can enjoy watching the movie without asking too many questions, but far less interesting than, say, Robin Williams in Insomnia or Michael Caine in The Prestige.)

The "reality" makes no sense when you really start to jab at it. That hotel room that wraps around so that he's looking at her face while she's standing on the ledge contemplating suicide--doesn't that seem more like a layout that would exist in a dream rather than in an actual hotel room? Her having "gone to three psychiatrists to declare herself sane." Really? That, coupled with the letter filed with the lawyer, sounds like the kind of convoluted obstacles that we come up with in dreams to explain why we're having so many difficulties. Dom jumps to Mombasa and France--where an American girl is learning--what? architecture? sleeps studies?--from a British professor who is a pioneering expert of the technology and yet his best pupil knows absolutely nothing about the technology--in fact, she seems never to have even heard of it before. In Mombasa--where Dom is being hounded by strange, suspicious chasers who very closely resemble angry subconscious projections (even a waiter and a restaurant full of people start yelling at him for no discernible reason)--he meets with Eames, who tells him that they need to contact a chemist. One cut later they're--where? Down the street in Mombasa? India? China? Ancient Mystical Asia? And who or what is Saito, anyway? He's a bad guy? He's a businessman? He works for the dream company? This Japanese dude's telephone call is really the ONLY way that this American man can ever see his children again? Why is Michael Caine in Los Angeles when a few days ago he was teaching in France? How does he know when to expect to pick up Dom, and if he's so sure that he is going to pick up Dom, then why doesn't he bring the kids with him to see their daddy get off the plane?

In other words... why does the "reality" of the film make so much less sense than the dreams?

Even the dreams don't obey their own supposed rules. If a dream can only truly be manipulated by the dreamer and the architect, then why is Dom--who is never the architect and who supposedly is never the dreamer--unable to keep his subconscious projections (Mal, the train, etc.) from blasting through the landscape of the dream? (Answer: because it's all his dream!)

And as for Dom's totem--which isn't even his totem, it's Mal's--it's a useless artifact that doesn't serve a purpose. A useful totem is one that behaves consistently yet in a manner that is inconsistent with expectation--Arthur's loaded die always lands on one secret side, Ariadne's chess piece has the center of gravity shifted so that it falls rather than sliding. This kind of useful totem still does not distinguish between fantasy and reality; it instead distinguishes between A and B, where A is either reality or the totem holder's own dream and B is a dream created by someone other than the totem holder. A can be reality (Arthur's die will always fall on one side) or the totem holder's dream (Arthur may remember in his dream that his die will always fall on one side). And even that's not a guarantee because it's possible that the totem holder's subconscious may fool him even within his own dream.

Dom's totem, though, is useless. A top is supposed to fall. In reality it will fall. In Dom's dream it will fall. In an architect's dream it will fall. Because that's what it's supposed to do. The only time it won't fall will be within a dream that Dom knows is a dream--then he'll know to make it keep spinning forever. But if he thinks that the dream is reality, then he knows to make it fall. And if any other architect wants to fool him into thinking he's in reality (and many people know that he has a top; it's no surprise to most people), they simply need to make the top fall. Part of the inception--Dom's inception on himself; Nolan's inception on us--is making us think that the top simply distinguishes between fantasy (the top doesn't fall) or reality (the top does fall). We never see the top fall at the end, which is Nolan's hint to us that we're in a dream. But we know that the top is about to fall, which simply means that Dom has bought into his "reality."

it holds it's weight, i must admit... i have to see it again, keeping this theory in mind.

Spoiler tags please.

I don't want to sound over confident, but its clearly not reality at the end unless this nolan guy is a terribly sloppy director.


1. He sees his kids out in the courtyard, playing in an oddly similar position to everytime from his dreams

2. The kids are the same age and dressed in the same clothes, I mean, they should have age alittle in that amount of time.

3. The top starts toppling before he sighs with relief and walks over to them, and then you see minutes later that its spinning perfectly fine.

4. Also, who is this person that is taking care of his children that magically drops his kids off at his old house hearing that he'd be returning from buenos aires? The same women that won't let them talk to him on the phone.

5. its never explained how him and the asian guy get back, do they kill themselves? No. Not on tape anyways. The screen just fades to him waking up on the plane.

The question is really more, did none of the movie exist outside his mind, or are he and the asian still in limbo.

The interesting thing is, if they are, well then the movie still ends happy cause they'll be awake at the same time as the rest of the crew, it'll just be thousands of years to them.

rofl

The top was spinning perfectly fine? What movie were you watching? The top begins wavering and wobbling more and more as the camera stays on it. You never see it actually fall, but it's clearly going to any minute.

My favorite movie. Period.

Spoiler for DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED!:

When he was in the dream with the girl, Ariadne I don't know how to spell her name but he mentioned trying to remember how you got there as a reality check I instantly thought about this website and LD'ing. I had stopped LD'ing but this movie just might get me back into it

It had some humor too and a lot of action. I remember the entire theater cracked up at the part where they were on the second level of the dream and leonardo decaprio's assistant told the girl to give him a kiss to make them blend in.

Also, I love it when I don't understand the movie at the start but then it all makes sense, pure awesomeness xD.

If I'm writing about the movie I couldn't have left the next part out.

When Leo opens his eyes and see's himself on the plane and everyone gives eachother looks. And the guy makes the phone call and seeing Leo walk through the airport, ect. That scene made me smile uncontrollably lol, just a really happy scene.

Also great ending, it's left up to the viewers opinion but I think the totem would have fallen meaning he was in reality.

AWESOME MOVIE! Sorry for the wall of text if you opened the spoiler but honestly, it was amazing.

Originally Posted by metcalfracing

I don't want to sound over confident, but its clearly not reality at the end unless this nolan guy is a terribly sloppy director.


1. He sees his kids out in the courtyard, playing in an oddly similar position to everytime from his dreams

2. The kids are the same age and dressed in the same clothes, I mean, they should have age alittle in that amount of time.

3. The top starts toppling before he sighs with relief and walks over to them, and then you see minutes later that its spinning perfectly fine.

4. Also, who is this person that is taking care of his children that magically drops his kids off at his old house hearing that he'd be returning from buenos aires? The same women that won't let them talk to him on the phone.

5. its never explained how him and the asian guy get back, do they kill themselves? No. Not on tape anyways. The screen just fades to him waking up on the plane.

The question is really more, did none of the movie exist outside his mind, or are he and the asian still in limbo.

The interesting thing is, if they are, well then the movie still ends happy cause they'll be awake at the same time as the rest of the crew, it'll just be thousands of years to them.

rofl

Bro, you gotta apply the movie logic

Also as someone mentioned above, the top was going to fall which pretty much disproves your theory It's still your opinion though and you can think it if you want but just don't use it make assumptions.

it wasn't going to fall

Originally Posted by slash112

Well, Juroara, think about it.

"Oh, you could just snap your fingers and the other guy who is lucid will explode"
Well what about that guy who is lucid who is gunna explode? "Just make it that you are unexplodable"

I have no idea what you're talking about!

Since when can you make another dreamer explode?

I was talking about the interaction of the dreamers and the dream characters. I never said that lucid dreamers exert control over other lucid dreamers, obviously not. What I did say was that lucid dreamers should be able to fly and heal themselves from imaginary injuries. In other words, they should be able to exert control over THEMSELVES regardless of whats happening or whose dream it is.

"Heal yourself, asian man"
Well what about the other lucid peoples? "Make it that he dies a bloody death"

I'm not sure what you're trying to get at, or why it's a mindfuck

It's not all that complicated. A dreamer gets injured, a dreamer heals himself. It doesn't matter what other dreamers do to him. In other words there is no threat or danger in lucid dreams. And I agree with Dannon, this element of imminent danger in the dream MAKES NO SENSE! Therefore, not a good portrayal of lucid dreaming.

No one, not even a person you dream share with could ever hurt you unless you believe you are injured. That's the reality and the nature of dreams.

Instead of exploring the weirdness of dreams, it transformed the dream into some virtual reality with a bunch of silly rules.

The top was spinning perfectly fine? What movie were you watching? The top begins wavering and wobbling more and more as the camera stays on it. You never see it actually fall, but it's clearly going to any minute.

I was watching the same movie you were, the top began to wobble before it cut to black, but before anything happens in that scene he sets it down onto the table and spins it, he watches it spin until it starts to wobble alittle, he then sighs with relief and then he walks away. then the scene happens where he talks to his father and sees his girl's face, then it zooms back to the top and its spinning perfectly straight again, then it begins to wobble again and it cuts to black.

it spun, began to wobble, then after the scene, was spinning pefectly straight for a several seconds, then began to wobble again.

I thought the movie was great. Despite few flaws, it was entertaining and much better than most of the movies that come out today.

As for everyone saying that in a dream there are no limits, you have to realize that there would practically be no storyline then. If they could do whatever they wanted like in a real LD, it would have just been like insta killing all of the projections with the flick of a finger and then trying to do the inception. Without the limits of reality, it would be hard to actually make a good story out of it.

For the ending, I thought he was still dreaming. It shows that in real life when he uses the top it IMMEDIATELY falls over, like when he was at the alchemist's place with all the dreamers. When he was washing his face and tested the totem, it just fell over, no spinning beforehand, so I think it would be a dream.

Have you ever played with a top? They don't immediately fall over. That's kind of the point.

Well no they don't, but they don't start wobbling then pick speed back up either.

I mean, I hate bad endings as much as the next guy, but it seems pretty cut and dry. He's still in a dream

I'm not going to argue with you about how tops work. To me and the 11 people I saw the movie with, it wasn't even a point of discussion: it was completely obvious. But you're welcome to your opinion.

I don't really see why you're so bent out of shape about it, I mean, the top thing is pretty much irrelevent by comparison to the rest of my agruments. Why are his kids the same age, in the same clothes, in the same positions, doing the same thing, as the one in his dreams. Also, how did he get them back anyways?

The age thing was suspicious. However, we don't actually know how long he's been away. They never say. So there's no special reason to think they should be a lot older. The other things (clothes and etc.) seem trivial; they don't matter. As far as how he got them back... are you kidding me? That was perhaps the movie's major plot point.

The reason the top ending works so well is that it's a major breath-holding moment. I was really very worried as I watched it spin that it would never stop. When I saw it start to wobble more and more, I breathed out a huge sigh of relief. As any eight-year-old can tell you, tops that start increasingly wobbling are about to fall over. And from what we saw in the dream sequences, it apparently doesn't wobble in dreams, it just keeps spinning perfectly.

Originally Posted by slash112

Whoa, who votes it terrible? o_O

Might have been me on accident lol. I meant to vote very good.