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.
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.