Inception (2010)

10 February 2016

Another A-movie I've finally gotten around to watching. Unlike The Social Network, Inception was underwhelming.

The Good

The acting is first rate all around. Leonardo DiCaprio does his usual excellent work as master thief and dream guru Dom. Joseph Gordon-Levitt gives a stand out performance as Arthur, Dom's right hand man. And Ellen Page is fine as Ariadne, the female lead. Sadly, I see she hadn't done much with her career after Inception. Oh yes, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, and Tom Berenger all deserve a mention.

Oh yes, Inception is a gorgeous film. While the mechanics of the dreams are muddled, the actual dreamscapes are superbly realized.

The Bad

Inception is a film that didn't have me at the edge of my seat by the end. Even the stuff about the sedatives causing death and being lost in limbo forever didn't generate much suspense for me. They were just kind of mentioned and then the characters moved on.

Ariadne is in the movie to stand in for the audience as Cobb and Arthur explain the dreams. But the film dribbles that information out while other shit is happening, making it hard to follow. Inception needed to take a page from The Matrix and spend a minutes just having Cobb explain to Ariadne all in one go.

The Ugly

Inception's high concept is half-baked.

Leo and his friends have military skills in the dreams. How do they get their skills? Do they all have military training in reality? Do they just automatically have whatever skills they need because its all just a dream?

I'm still fuzzy on the relationship between the architect, the dreamer, and the dreamscape. Ariadne and Cobb were in his dream. His projections were reacting to Ariadne when she was doing all that shit with the dreamscape. But if it was his dream, how did she do it? Ugh.

The multi-level dreaming doesn't make sense. If I understand it correctly, they aren't in Fischer's dreamscape until the winter fortress. So how can his military dream defenses show up in preceding dreams if those aren't his dreams? And if defenses can show up in other people's dreams, why didn't everyone have their own defense showing up in all dreams to fight each other? That actually would have been interesting.

Limbo was a major wasted oppurtunity. Dom and Mal spend decades building their a city in limbo, a city that no one lives in. That's like a transformer that turns into a building. What's so fun about that. Inception needed to take a page from Snow Crash or something like that, where a door leads into a completely different dreamscape.

The only really interesting part about the dreams was those old people using Yusuf's sedatives to dream non-stop, where reality becomes the dream.

The ending is pretty much like the rest of the movie, more confused than actually ambiguous.