LD Like Movies. Any Use in Learning LDs?

I think a lot of movies like the Matrix, can actually be helpful in understanding the world of LDing. Let's see what good and bad scenes we can pick out of these films, as far as if they have value, or are misleading in learning/teaching LDing.

I really like "What Dreams May Come" with Robin Williams. The way they showed the first dream (after-life) as being made of paint, and changing like an art being painted, helped me a lot. It helped me understand that you must view the visual field as non-physical and unlike our world. Later he can see stable and solid things, but his first visions are made of paint. I now never view the visuals as being real in a solid way. They are like computer graphics to me, not paint, but this movie helped me finally understand this.

Chime in. We can get a little off topic as long as we talk about scenes from movies or books, that kind of are like lucid dreaming.

Shark boy and lava girl lmfaoooooo, but seriously though. He kept a dream journal himself! You can learn a lot from the movie, I remember watching it as a kid and now that I think about it it's just one big lucid dream. I remember one scene, he had trouble with dream control (I think his name is Max) and shark boy told him that it was his dream, that he ruled over the land or something of the sort. Then he tried again and whatever he was thinking about came true in his dream. I think things like that, the very basics, are sometimes the most helpful.

In the movie Fight Club, there's that scene near the end where Edward Norton looks at his imaginary friend and says, "You're not real, that gun isn't...that gun isn't even in your hand, the gun's in my hand". For some reason when I saw that scene it clicked for me that all the characters in my dreams are not external, but they are me. I am the one behind the scenes playing all the parts and I have the ability to take control of them if I choose.

Then there's The Shining. Where they talk about Danny's visions of the dead people being just like pictures in a book. That helped me a lot with getting over my fear of the auditory and visual hallucinations that I got while falling asleep (I used to feel a little kid tickling my feet and hear this old lady whisper in my ear as she grabbed my side violently). It was also helpful for understanding that dreams couldn't actually hurt me.

The last one I could think of was the movie Dark City. I'm not sure that this movie was that helpful for understanding LDing but it definitely taught me a lot of cool ideas for controlling my dreams when I was younger. The way that the strangers could rebuild the town, rearrange everything, summon buildings, change the landscape, and even how the main guy summoned water and the sun out of nowhere. I thought it demonstrated quite nicely just how in depth world formation could get if you want to do it piece by piece rather than all at once. Nothing in dreams is concrete or permanent, everything can be changed. Also the way they used telekinesis to knock people around and blow stuff up, making their eyes get wider like they were gonna make a poop. I tried this making my eyes wider with focused concentration and it always helped me to move stuff with my mind.

I think one of the most misleading movies was Inception, with their whole dreams within dreams idea and slowing down time. It was really cool, but pretty misleading for people that know nothing about LDing. And Nightmare on Elm Street! I watched that movie when I was a little kid and it made me think that I could be killed by dying in my dreams and that there were demons trying to get me while I was asleep. Terrible ideas to put into a little kid's head.

Divergent.

Spoiler for plot+:

They enter a neural simulation in the movie, and most people don't know that it isn't real when it is happening. The main character (a divergent) knows when she is in the simulation and is able to break it, normally by saying "this isn't real".there is another reason, but I know it because iI read the book.

"What Dreams May Come" was very LD-like, and I think brilliant as a tool to illustrate lucid dreaming.

Also quite LD-like is the classical German tv-series "Welt am Draht" ("World on a wire"), where the main characters are involved with creating a computer simulated world, into which they may peek (and their own world turns out also to be a simulation :) ). This was remade in the US as "The 13th Floor".

"Waking Life" is overtly about dreaming with various degrees of lucidity illustrated.

Vanilla Sky; certainly a must watch.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Midgard

Vanilla Sky; certainly a must watch.

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Very cool moment in that one, "TECH SUPPORT!!!!"

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sensei

Divergent.

Spoiler for plot+:

They enter a neural simulation in the movie, and most people don't know that it isn't real when it is happening. The main character (a divergent) knows when she is in the simulation and is able to break it, normally by saying "this isn't real".there is another reason, but I know it because iI read the book.

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I was going to say Divergent! It's a great series ^o^

There was an NBC show about dreams called Awake, the main character would go to sleep and wake up in an alternate reality. I never finished it but I'd like to. There's a Japanese movie that I want to watch soon called "Wonderful Life" renamed in other countries to "After Life".

In the movie when you die, counselors (who are also dead) help you for a week to pick one memory for eternity. It's not about dreams (that I know of) but something about it has a dreamy feeling and sivason's first post reminded me of it.

Just remembered another one: "Dreamscape". It deals with technology assisted dream sharing. And there is a bad guy who rules supreme in the dream world, because he is explicitly lucid! He does get his comeuppance, as the hero also - finally - attains lucidity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gegNMYvY_yg
A great movie, that is basically all about awareness. So I would definitely recommend anyone to see this movie at least once. And it's absolutely not that predictable that it seems to be in the trailer.

Speaking of Japanese and lding, there's a TV series 'My little nightmare' that is about a girl who has precognitive dreams and her teacher who has lds helps her prevent bad things from happening. Very funny and Japanese. :D