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OTHER SCIENCE FICTION SERIES
SPOILERS!!! Discussion of Inception
Wednesday, July 21, 2010 7:40 PM
JEWELSTAITEFAN
Wednesday, July 21, 2010 8:14 PM
Thursday, July 22, 2010 4:03 AM
LWAVES
Thursday, July 22, 2010 4:45 AM
Thursday, July 22, 2010 1:16 PM
KHAMBILO
Thursday, July 22, 2010 3:23 PM
Friday, July 23, 2010 12:23 AM
Thursday, July 29, 2010 5:03 AM
Thursday, July 29, 2010 6:25 AM
PIZMOBEACH
... fully loaded, safety off...
Thursday, July 29, 2010 7:55 AM
MAL4PREZ
Thursday, July 29, 2010 9:58 AM
Thursday, July 29, 2010 10:26 AM
Thursday, July 29, 2010 10:34 AM
Quote:Originally posted by jewelstaitefan: OK, all. Think of this. You are Mal. You're in reality, and Cobb didn't come back with you, he thinks he's in reality. He's living weeks in the span of your seconds. How do you get him to kick out? You can infiltrate his dream, but he discounts you as his construct. He's dreamt himself some high-excitement, spyworld and guns and explosions, how can you trick him into leaving? You 2 are really the only 2 who've done this - you've lived lifetimes in the span of hours, nobody else will know until you tell them. So all these other architects are constructs, plus the CEOs of worldwide companies, etc. Exciting, but not real. So work out the film from how she is tricking him into kicking out, without him knowing he is.
Thursday, July 29, 2010 10:48 AM
Thursday, July 29, 2010 11:23 AM
Quote:Originally posted by pizmobeach: M4P, yeah, I thought the score was great too. That opening sequence with the musical rolling dread just made it for me. No one does Grand Impending Badness like Hans.
Thursday, July 29, 2010 11:40 AM
Quote:Originally posted by mal4prez: All the big booming music was the wake-up tune that they played through the ear phones, slowed down. Brilliant. The deeper they go, the more time slows, the deeper, slower and boomier the music gets. I just love it.
Thursday, July 29, 2010 12:10 PM
Quote:Originally posted by lwaves: ....but the music used in the earphones to wake them up was that French song about regret or no regrets by Edith Piaf. She was recently played by Marion Cotillard in a film who of course also plays Mal. Something? Not something?
Thursday, July 29, 2010 12:21 PM
Quote:Originally posted by mal4prez: Quote:Originally posted by pizmobeach: M4P, yeah, I thought the score was great too. That opening sequence with the musical rolling dread just made it for me. No one does Grand Impending Badness like Hans. Did you read that article? All the big booming music was the wake-up tune that they played through the ear phones, slowed down. Brilliant. The deeper they go, the more time slows, the deeper, slower and boomier the music gets. I just love it. And the boom-y sounds were lovely. Not brass, not synth, not drums, but some bizarre combination. So cool. Even without the cool storyline, I'd go to the movie again to hear that in surround a second time. My take on the combination was that they got him to say some numbers early on, then wrote it on the later stuff (the architect can change things as she goes) The dreamer guy (I forget names) would see the numbers and feel they were familiar, which gives the dream weight for him. Because part of the challenge is to get him to open his top-secret safe. It's just a dream right - the combination isn't really a set sequence. It's just whatever the guy's subconscience believes will work. Yeah, the scene with Cobb and Saito definitely seems central. I've been pondering whether Saito was the one driving Cobb's dream (in the it's-all-a-dream scenario). Why did the last scene mimic the first? It might have been more than Saito shaping his own limbo. BTW, when they first talked about limbo and said you could be there for years, become an old man, did anyone think of the first scene? Right away, I knew there was a connection there. Why else was Saito old in that first scene? Definitely something fishy going on. And yes, I absolutely must see this again!
Thursday, July 29, 2010 1:51 PM
Quote:Originally posted by pizmobeach: Yes, I did read that article, thx! Fascinating, talk about layers within layers - I want that job! If it wasn't for a complete lack of musical talent... the whole cd is very good btw, not just those big signatures, there's more variety than I remembered.
Quote:The combo - if he said those numbers earlier I missed it but definitely might have been there. It seems odd that they would use them for the hotel room numbers though - what would that mean to Fisher, the guy they were trying to take down?
Quote:Yes, definitely (that make-up job kind of stuck with me). The fact that he was the only one shot... must see again.
Friday, July 30, 2010 12:39 AM
Quote:Originally posted by mal4prez: I am tempted by JSF's idea that Mal is alive out there, trying to get Cobb to come out. But I just can't shake Saito. He has to be involved. Come on - a mark that happens to be trained, and happens to put together this huge job which Cobb *has* to take because of his faceless kids, and then Saito comes along in the dream and gets shot, and his limbo was foreseen by Cobb.... It's all too much. Something's going on.
Quote: Or I could be inventing a overly complicated fanfictional take on something meant to be much simpler. Wouldn't be the first time. :)
Friday, July 30, 2010 7:06 AM
Quote:Originally posted by lwaves: Seeing as you guys bought up the music in the film I thought I'd mention this now as I don't think anyone else has. Probably nothing to do with the plot, just a nice coincidence.... ....but the music used in the earphones to wake them up was that French song about regret or no regrets by Edith Piaf. She was recently played by Marion Cotillard in a film who of course also plays Mal. Something? Not something?
Friday, July 30, 2010 8:29 AM
Quote:Originally posted by mal4prez: CD is out already? Excellent. I'm going to look for it as soon as I get a chance. That and the new Starcraft.
Friday, July 30, 2010 10:35 AM
Quote:Originally posted by jewelstaitefan: One thing I never worked out, must do on next viewing: old Saito is spinning the top, which might be Cobb's totem, and was Mal's totem. Why?
Quote: If Cobb is the architect of the dream we see as the film, cannot he dream they will go a dream level deeper, and one of his constructs is the next level architect, making it merely a sub-dream of his creation?
Quote: If the film is Cobb's dream (or one he's in), which of the characters are his constructs, and which are those inserted in from the above level (working with Mal), and which are constructs of others, or of Mal's?
Quote: I'm not seeing the kids as being Cobb's totem. Maybe I'm more inclined towards sequels, but the dream of the film may be to remove him from the exciting version of his dream (much more addicting, more rush, etc) and back to "his kids" so that it might be the same level as the exciting dream, but now he's more able to get a kick from the more stable, predictable dream - remember one year is a day is a minute and the exciting dream is so unpredictable that Mal in the level above can't get in front of the quicker dream pace effectively.
Quote: They both stated the Marion/Edith connection was not intentional, they hoped nobody thought it was a joke, and they adamantly kept that song since they felt it was integral. So, not something.
Friday, July 30, 2010 11:55 AM
Quote:Originally posted by jewelstaitefan: I'm not seeing the kids as being Cobb's totem.
Saturday, July 31, 2010 11:54 AM
Quote:Originally posted by lwaves: What if Cobb's real totem is his ring? I believe he wears it at the beach in the beginning (he may even glance at it) but I can't say for sure if he's wearing it all the way through the movie. The blog I read pointed out that he wasn't always wearing it. Any thoughts on that one?
Saturday, July 31, 2010 12:00 PM
Sunday, August 1, 2010 1:43 AM
Quote:Originally posted by mal4prez: this movie is deliciously open to many interpretations
Quote: 4. The wedding ring. Cobb has it on at the beginning, when he’s on the beach, then when he’s eating rice and talking to old Saito. The only other scene where I saw it on Cobb’s hand was when the girl joined him in his elevator/memory dream. The ring showed prominently when one of them was saying that this was HIS dream, a place HE built. Mal often wears the ring, but I never saw Cobb wearing it other than those two times. Most scenes, he clearly does not have it on. I have to think that the movie makers did this deliberately – didn’t show the hand.
Quote: When Cobb gets home, those damn kids are in exactly the same position, wearing the same clothes(?) as his memory.
Quote: 6. The spinny top. Cobb uses the spinny top to implant an idea in Mal. I assume that she opened her safe, saw it still spinning, and then figured out that she was not in reality. Cobb later uses it with the same rules—if it falls over, he knows he’s awake and safely in the “reality” layer. But should he be trusting this? It wasn’t his totem, it was someone else’s. He used it for inception with Mal. Might someone else be using it for inception with him? To convince him that returning home to his children is indeed returning to reality? Might someone be trying to do an inception on him?
Sunday, August 1, 2010 2:56 AM
Quote:Originally posted by lwaves: Cheers for some kind of clarification. I still don't know myself what I feel is the significance of it but I do now remember that you don't see his left hand a lot of the time.
Quote:So they are not the same as his memory, like we thought. This leads me to believe that it is someone elses dream and that when it cuts to black he wakes up to the proper reality.
Quote:This is a point I tried to illustrate in my other post about the expected behaviour of the totems.
Quote:As for the differences between the Cobb and Saito meetings at the beginning and the end I kind of take it that at the start Cobb was in Saitos dream trying to get the location of the secret (hidden in a safe I think) so that world would be Saito's world.
Quote:At the end Saito 'dies' first and enters limbo a good while before Cobb, which would explain the age difference. It is Saitos world again because he's the one that there, Cobb is the guest or whatever.
Quote:So to me Saito plants the idea originally in Cobb that it is possible to go home, that he has a way. This grows over the job in Cobbs mind. Cobb then uses that idea to persuade Saito of the same possibility that he can go back and in the process convinces himself that he can go home too but needs Saito to fulfill his promise to do that.
Sunday, August 1, 2010 4:04 AM
Quote:Originally posted by mal4prez: Like cuts to black end of movie? I took it to be just the end of the movie. Interesting thought though, that he woke up.
Quote:Quote: This is a point I tried to illustrate in my other post about the expected behaviour of the totems. I disagree. You're saying: if it doesn't fall: Cobb's in his own dream it if falls: Cobb's in someone else's dream But how about when it falls in reality? Which it would do. Must he then take reality to be someone else's dream? See, I understand it quite differently - I think the totem is a reality detector, not a dreamer ID'er. Hey look - there's wikipedia about this movie already! Totem is defined as: "an individualized object carried by extractors in order to tell when they are dreaming. Cobb's own totem is his wife's: a spinning top. If the top spins indefinitely, Cobb knows he is in a dream; if it slows down and eventually stops, in accordance with the laws of physics, then he is not." The times Cobb gets most stressed over the spinner in when he's in "reality," when he sees Mal and so isn't sure if he's really awake. So he spins the top - if he's dreaming, it will spin forever. In the movie's "reality", it falls. So he believes himself to be awake. Hence the ending - if it falls he's awake. And it seems about to.... The thing I've theorized is that maybe the spinner lies. Saito did touch it, after all. (I know this is a pretty thin fanwank, but still....)
Quote: This is a point I tried to illustrate in my other post about the expected behaviour of the totems.
Quote: Not so - apparently Limbo belongs to no one. It's a "shared" level, whatever that means. Check out the figures in the other Inception thread. (I think this is primarily a way of explaining why there are no random people in Limbo to come after the non-dreamers. It's the only way Cobb and Mal could spend years there without being hunted by each other's subconsciousness.)
Quote:Quote: So to me Saito plants the idea originally in Cobb that it is possible to go home, that he has a way. This grows over the job in Cobbs mind. Cobb then uses that idea to persuade Saito of the same possibility that he can go back and in the process convinces himself that he can go home too but needs Saito to fulfill his promise to do that. Which is totally what I think, only I think "going home" could be a metaphor for accepting a dream as reality. Like Cobb changed "Break up the empire" to the more positive and meaningful message: "Be my own man". Cobb would never have accepted the idea to "Stay in the dream," but "Go home to your kids"? Sure.
Quote: So to me Saito plants the idea originally in Cobb that it is possible to go home, that he has a way. This grows over the job in Cobbs mind. Cobb then uses that idea to persuade Saito of the same possibility that he can go back and in the process convinces himself that he can go home too but needs Saito to fulfill his promise to do that.
Sunday, August 1, 2010 5:36 AM
Quote:Originally posted by lwaves: Yes the cut at the end of the movie. Going on the idea that the whole movie is a dream why show any proper reality. It starts with him beginning a dream and ends with him waking up. We don't see anything before or after that because we are watching the dream,
Quote: kind of like a passive viewer. We can see it but can't alter anything and because it is a dream we can't see Cobb's true reality. I guess we (the cinema goers are also sharing this dream with the characters in an odd way).
Quote: It may lie (or maybe Cobb makes it lie because he thinks he's in reality) but my thing is we don't know what Mal did to make it react differently, what she was looking for when she spun it.
Quote:Yes 'going home' is a metaphor for going to true reality, that's the way I meant it. But I don't think it's the home/reality we see at the end, I think that is one level below true reality
Sunday, August 1, 2010 8:05 AM
Quote:Originally posted by mal4prez: Well, and also because a movie can't go on forever. Really, if they did mean that Cobb's dream was going to go on and on, are you saying they could only accomplish that by never ending the movie? Or might they suggest it by resolving all his difficulties, putting him in a peaceful place, and showing a spinny top that doesn't fall?
Quote: Ah yes. I like the idea of the movie goers sharing the dream. It certainly had that feeling. Could you feel how entranced the audience was? No one talked, though I heard gasps occasionally. Not just at effects and action, but at some of the lines about true creativity. It was such an engrossing movie. I saw it NYC both times, and experienced some pretty intense surrealism coming out into the streets again. Especially walking through crowded Times Square. It was bizarre, and very much like waking up confused by a dream. BTW, have you ever had a waking dream? I have. In fact, had a little bit of one the night after I saw this movie the first time. Interesting parallels to Ariadne's first experience.
Quote: I don't think we'll know what Mal's original idea with it was unless they make a sequel. I really really hope they don't. Leave this beauty as is and don't do what the Matrix did!
Quote: Anyhow, there's also the possibility that the spinny totem is part of Saito manipulation. We do first see it in his hands, after all. Perhaps he added it, perhaps he took it from Cobb's mind and changed it. It could be like the will in Fischer's dad's safe: an object purely meant to help the subject construct the implanted idea. What do you think of Saito being active in this way? I've pretty much convinced myself of it. Obviously LOL! But I like hearing other ideas.
Quote: I think he was convinced that this home/kids dream was real. You think he was just passing through it, and on his way up to "true" reality. Right?
Quote: What you're saying is certainly possible, and it does has a beautiful symmetry, but I don't see much evidence to support a immediate post-movie wake-up. Why would he wake up then? Where was the kick? He didn't think he was dreaming. He was quite convinced that home and kids were real. He didn't fall, he wasn't killed, none of the main characters were around to shoot him. Every circumstance puts him in a smooth, steady state, with no reason to wake up.
Sunday, August 1, 2010 12:42 PM
Monday, August 2, 2010 1:31 AM
Quote:Originally posted by pizmobeach: I know that there were plenty of Hollywood types that said this movie would fail because it was too long and it asked too much of the audience. Hah! Turns out we actually have brains and we do like to use them. Seeing the press and reaction this movie is getting it's almost like we were starving for a movie like this.
Quote: Why would Cobb even spin the top at the end? What would be the point if he didn't even stop to watch? What was he thinking?
Quote: Just found this while looking for the script...
Monday, August 2, 2010 4:43 AM
Monday, August 2, 2010 5:30 AM
Monday, August 2, 2010 7:22 AM
Quote:Originally posted by jewelstaitefan: Scattered points: 1. Top at the end. He spins it to see if this is a dream where he sees his kids. He looks at it to see the result. THEN the diversion - dad appears,
Quote:2. I don't recall Cobb spinning the top at any level other than the level he thinks is reality - the highest level we see in the film. Am I wrong?
Quote:6. I don't see the constructs as mindless zombies.
Monday, August 2, 2010 8:27 AM
Wednesday, August 4, 2010 5:19 AM
Saturday, August 7, 2010 5:54 PM
SINGATE
Sunday, August 8, 2010 3:44 AM
TWO
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Sunday, August 8, 2010 10:51 AM
Quote:Originally posted by singate: There was a bit in an earlier post about audiences being starved for a movie with some serious depth to it. My reaction is that I am really surprised this movie has been so successful. I have a firmly held belief that most people don't want to do any heavy lifting when it comes to entertainment. Hence the success of mindless sequels and reality TV.
Sunday, August 8, 2010 2:50 PM
Quote:Originally posted by singate: There was a bit in an earlier post about audiences being starved for a movie with some serious depth to it. My reaction is that I am really surprised this movie has been so successful.
Quote:So here's my theory. I think Mal is dead and Cobb is the one who was responsible. Cobb is also the mark but I don't think he was inside throughout the entire film. A partnership between Saito and Miles was brokered with dual intent: to find out exactly what happened to Mal and to learn how inception can be performed. So Ariadne is the architect, Miles is the dreamer, and Saito is the extractor. At the end Cobb is still inside. The similarity between his "real" children and the memorex version is too close for comfort. If I'm not mistaken the only other person to see his children during the film was Ariadne. I'm thinking that was the template she used in the final scene.
Sunday, August 8, 2010 5:09 PM
Quote:Originally posted by mal4prez: Two: the Hollywood pseudo-technology that bugs me more was this idea that many brains shared one dream, but that one dreamer controlled the dream, and yet a third person was the designer. It's all handy for putting the plot together and defining people's roles, but it's not so realistic. So the timing thing - yeah, smells of BS. But it's just so cooooool! LOL! I mean, the movie is so good that I can allow the bad science
Monday, August 9, 2010 2:44 AM
Quote:Originally posted by pizmobeach: Cobb's trickery of Mal and it's back firing and causing her death (he changed her totem to make her think she was in a dream
Quote: so she jumps to kick herself into Reality (btw DiCaprio's anguish over her jumping was really well done imo), that works for me.
Monday, August 9, 2010 4:23 AM
Quote:Originally posted by two: I’m with Dana Stevens www.slate.com/id/2260582/ and Chris Orr www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/07/inception-summers-best-most-disappointing-blockbuster/59855/ in finding Inception a bit too hollow on an emotional level to really be great despite many admirable qualities.
Quote:But what neither of them mentions is the strange political economy angle. It’s clear that Saito really wants to see that competing conglomerate broken up. The events depicted in the film are not cheap. Instead of investing all that time, energy, and money in a longshot cinematic dream-busting effort, wouldn’t it make more sense to just launch a PR and lobbying campaign to get anti-trust authorities (or other regulators) to do the job? That’s all even perfectly legal.
Monday, August 9, 2010 5:40 AM
Quote:Originally posted by mal4prez: I thought Cobb and Mal's story was very emotionally engaging, and that was enough for me... At some point, you have to make peace with the fact that Hollywood is not realistic, that no movie worth watching would ever really happen. Especially not science fiction. Hey - I'm a writer and a scientist. I have to turn that shit off to some extent when I go in a theater, or I'll never watch a movie again.
Monday, August 9, 2010 11:31 AM
Quote:Originally posted by jewelstaitefan: The constructs as autonomous? No. Mal wreaks havoc everywhere, conspiring with Saito in the audition piece, shooting Fischer. If she is a construct of Cobb's, as Cobb thinks.
Quote: After watching a second time, I wondered if Murphy and Caine are the only carryovers Nolan brought from Batman. Anybody know?
Tuesday, August 10, 2010 3:53 AM
Quote:Originally posted by two: I have to watch a movie like Inception at the theater. Just turn my brain off and soak-up the experience. Seeing it on DVD would ruin it for me. Hitting the pause button on a vaguely realistic Hollywood movie is like pushing the plunger on a dynamite detonator -- destroys it for me.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010 5:24 AM
Quote:Christopher Nolan's hyper-complex psychological thriller doesn't just make architecture a central theme; the whole story hinges on the ability of architects to design buildings, neighborhoods and whole cities inside other people's dreams. Early on, Leonardo DiCaprio's brooding hero, Cobb, gives us reason to look forward to those invented worlds when he warns the young architect he's hired, Ariadne ( Ellen Page), that she should "never create places from memory" and "always imagine new places." (Sounds promising, right? Sounds like a manifesto! Sounds like the Bauhaus circa 1920!) In the same scene, Ariadne's skittish subconscious causes a whole section of Paris to fold deliriously in on itself, as if Baron Haussmann's grand boulevards had suddenly turned to rubber. From then on, though, the architectural set pieces grow increasingly trite and familiar. The bulk of the dream sequences take place in the following spaces: on the streets of downtown Los Angeles, including a wide intersection in front of a Famima store; the inside of a van; a hotel room; hotel hallways; an elevator; an elevator shaft; and a quasi-Brutalist mountainside complex where, in the deep snow, you can make out the boot-prints of both James Bond and Jason Bourne. We've seen all this before, haven't we? The infrastructural guts of the modern city as a setting for explosions, gunfights and increasingly manic race-the-clock scenarios? How many movie heroes have climbed atop an elevator, as the character played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt does? How many more have plotted an ingenious route through a building's air ducts? These places aren't new. They're architectural clichés, dredged up from Hollywood's collective memory bank. www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-architecture-inception-20100808,0,6654866.story
Tuesday, August 10, 2010 6:45 AM
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