Why Inception Failed as a Movie (Spoilers)

Rene Ritchie

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It amazes me how we get so few great movies anymore we're willing to accept great premises with botched stories as awesome cinema.

Some of Inceptions problems were just laziness. Others were structural.

1) Leo wants to get back to his kids. His kids are in America. He?s in Europe. Their grandfather flies back and forth from America to Europe. Either have him bring the kids to Europe or explain why he can?t. (Doesn?t want to take them out of school?)

2) First half of the movie sets up girl as powerful architect (she can bend the world) but that she can?t change things or she risks projections attacking her. Second part of movie is devoid of projections that aren?t defenses ? which are already attacking her ? yet she doesn?t then start using her architect power to, you know, start bending worlds to save them. ?If you put a gun on the mantle in act 1, you need to shoot someone with it by act 3″.

In Matrix, Morpheus tells Neo when the time comes he won't have to dodge bullets. At the end of the movie, we see exactly that happen. Inception needed to let the architect loose at the end.


3) They?re expressly told the heist mission is so dangerous because they?ll be under sedation and if they ?die? in the dream layers, they?ll end up in limbo and they can?t ?die? in limbo to come back to the ?real world?. Yet Leo and his wife die in Limbo to come back to the ?real world? during the exposition, and during the ending, Leo and Watanabe ?die? in Limbo to come back to the ?real world?. The entire movie lacks internal consistency.

4) The heist mission is ultimately meaningless. If the Leo had really been in limbo the whole time and his wife had planned everything as an inception to get him out, then the elements would have taken on meaning. Any larger plan reveal at the end would have made the movie better because the heist itself lacked any import of its own. Nothing compelling, no MacGuffin. It ends with a cheap trick rather than an earned conclusion. It?s like Usual Suspects absent the last 5 minutes.

And all of the above is a shame really because all the elements were there for some truly amazing cinema. The last act could have been one hell of a dreamscape ride, with the girl twisting reality and the audience?s beliefs in what was dream and what was reality genuinely twisted just as much.

As it was it fell flat.
 

kmiahali

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Wow! Good analysis Rene! These are things that I never even thought of after watching the movie! You have some great points there!
 

sting7k

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Man no suspension of disbelief for Rene? Or coming up with your own ideas?

1) If the grandfather took the kids with him it would prob tip off the fuzz and they would follow them to Leo. If just the grandfather they know he is a prof at where ever and so Leo could show/not show any time.

2) As soon as they got to level one they said the mark's mind had been trained by an extractor to guard against people like Leo and his team. So the instant attacks made sense to me. Just changing the world wouldn't really stop the attacks, if anything it would intensify them because then every projection would be attacking. On level 2 the second in command got fairly lucky he was able to change the world enough to fend them off.

3) I thought the reason was because of the time differences in each layer. If you die in layer 1 then they are so heavily sedated that they can't wake up and get stuck in limbo until it wares off (which while in limbo can be a century), something Leo didn't say was the case when he was in limbo with his wife. And Leo, real last samuri, girl, and mark all actually road the "kick" out of limbo as it was time to wake up in the real world. Or Leo had been there before so he knew how to handle it.

4) The Inception mission was Leo's last chance to get his one true dream to become real. By doing this the real last samuri was offering to clear his name. It had meaning for him. It was real, he wasn't in limbo, his wife was his own projection. At the end the top was going to fall over, it kept spinning (IMO) to tell the viewer that Leo had finally achieved his one true dream of getting back home too his children.
 

ctt1wbw

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I thought the movie was awful, too. Complete jibberish and so overly convoluted as to be woefully boring.
 

davejas

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Leo Dicarprio is just not compelling enough to get me to see a movie with him in it. Just a personal preference maybe, just not interested in anything he does.
 

KingofHeart4711

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You made some good points here with your problems with the movie. however I really enjoyed it. Alot of people were making it out to be this extremely complex film but it was really simple in my opinion. BUT wonderfully simple. I have a few counters to your post....



1) Seeing as how the grandfather of the children lives in europe he is obviously not the legal gaurdian of the children....It is against the law to take minors out of the country without legal guardians consent and since we werent introduced to any other family members we have to assume that the children were either in some sort of foster care OR the rest of the family believed him to be guilty and therefore would not allow the grandfather to take them out of the country as he may have let their father come see them. They could have explained this yes but I didnt see it as a problem. He really just wanted to be able to go HOME to his children free of guilt.


2)Her altering the world drew attention to her. As someone else said here, we learn in the begginning of the mission that the marks mind has been trained to defend itself already. Her being new and them being as deep as they were I think she was already pushing it enough as it was.

3) What was said was that they cannot die in the other layers because that particular sedative was so powerful that they will descend into limbo if they die until the sedation wears off. The sedation was designed to bring them back by use of a "kick" however that is only for the first layer. The problem with limbo is that time goes so fast that you are there for years and years and lose your ability to judge whats "real" (as explained by Leo when discussing what happened to he and his wife.) All of the kicks were planned to go off at exactly the same time thus waking up all the layers. I think they were very much consistent, you just have to pay attention to whats being said.

4) I think it ended exactly as it should have.

I thought this was a great movie. I think its something that you shouldnt question and try to analyze so much or else you miss the movie itself. This is one of those that can and should be watched more than once.
 
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greenapple

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I thought the movie was awful, too. Complete jibberish and so overly convoluted as to be woefully boring.

i thought it would be awful but it was interesting, simply because this plot/idea has never been done before.

if anything, the idea of dream walking, and planting, is intriguing and story wise original.

its entertaining if you don't over-analyze it.
 

Top10

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Great analysis and counter-analysis. I think Inception did an overall good job at tying everything up. But there are some things that will always seem inconsistent or confusion because of the kind of movie it is. I think that's why people went to see it a second, third, even fourth time! I thought it was a great movie and luckily everything made sense.
 

ctt1wbw

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i thought it would be awful but it was interesting, simply because this plot/idea has never been done before.

if anything, the idea of dream walking, and planting, is intriguing and story wise original.

its entertaining if you don't over-analyze it.

The movie Dreamscape came out in the 80's. Same concept.
 

ctt1wbw

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Sort of. It is about using people to enter other people's dreams to cure them of horrors like the kid who keeps seeing that monster. But one of the dream dudes goes bad and tries to kill the Prez. It was a good movie.
 

KingofHeart4711

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Sort of. It is about using people to enter other people's dreams to cure them of horrors like the kid who keeps seeing that monster. But one of the dream dudes goes bad and tries to kill the Prez. It was a good movie.

Ive had it in my instant queue on Netflix for a really long time. I heard that it was very good. Im gonna have to check it out tonight I believe
 

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