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Ok If you haven't seen the movie get out of this thread if you dont wanna spoil the experience.

The movie is fun and interesting to watch all the way through,however...
Some things that bothered me.
First of all the whole more time in dreams seemed like a bit too big of a "leap of faith".
This whole concept doesn't seem to be based on anything we know.
I can still suspend disbelief when it comes to penetrating another persons dream's or mind(lets say the wires were just an abstraction for some futuristic way of penetrating the mind and thoughts of other people) the time concept was a bit too much to ask IMO.
Another thing is the complete lack of any character development except leo's.
Why Wasn't Ellen page's character developed more(it really felt like a missed opportunity and the connection between Ellen's character and the rest of the group seemed very quick and not really explained or told properly,they were just suddenly all friends and stuff) and Leo's friend's character as well...Except Leo all characters seemed a bit bare and blank.
the few humorous bits seemed a bit out of place.
The japanese CEO character and its behavior wasn't as believable as one might want.
I also felt like the whole part about being confused about reality and dream wasnt pressed hard enough it was pressed hard but not pushed hard enough.

Those are my gripes with the movie,maybe if it was longer or in 2 parts it would have had the time to fully develop itself.
Perhaps when its released for DVD there will be a longer version,who knows maybe there were many scenes cut out of the final product.
It felt to me like a very good beta of a brilliant film but not quit the finished product.
Despite all this criticism its still probably the most interesting film iv seen in a long time.

I really enjoyed it...my main qualm was the standard action movie trope of having invincible protagonists. They were in multiple gunfights wielding pistols against trained paramilitary personnel with assault rifles, often in a state of immobility (in the first dream layer when their vehicles are boxed in, for example) - and the named characters took a grand total of exactly one bullet. I found it pretty easy to suspend my disbelief about the time dialation thing; it was a cool concept for them to be having a battle two layers deeper while their van was in free-fall.

I've had dreams before such that in real life the alarm goes off, and I hit snooze, and fall back asleep, and then have a full long dream until the second alarm wakes me up again... In real life it's a maximum of 9 minutes, in the dream it seems like half an hour or longer... I'm thinking that's where they got the concept of dream time being slower.

I think it's totally absurd that if you "dream in a dream" you can slow time by like 500 times or something. 1 hour becomes 50 years. Your brain would become mush if it had to work anywhere near that hard.

SwiftSpear wrote:Your brain would become mush if it had to work anywhere near that hard.

Well, actually, it would probably just retain less information during the time compression. Moments here and there, but little continuity.

Well i think he overstretched it a bit there,just a bit beyond the border of sci fi and bullshit.

a lot of routines do not have to run, and an other big bunch can run minimized (sometimes these more, sometimes others more, depending on the person and dream) while dreaming. so say.. you are having a purely emotional dream, which does not get interrupted by logic ("but that makes no sense, there is no ever lasting love, cause you die after some years ...") or environment/body ("damn, its so hot here..." or "have to hurry to catch the train" or "i have to eat, feel hungry"). the dream flow can be much smoother/faster. if it is so, then having a dream inside a dream does make the 2nd dream not run faster then the 1st.

My main problem was how un-dream like all the 'dreams' were. They were going deeper and deeper into someones mind, and yet each level was almost completely 'normal' and logical. Everything worked exactly like you'd expect the whole time. The whole concept of 'dream layers' was really interesting, but they never did anything particularly interesting with it. It's not the first time the idea of dream within a dream has been thought of, but in other incarnations of it, there's always confusion, disorientation, etc.

They were inside someones head, inside their subconscious, and yet it was all almost exactly like the real world. I dunno about you guys, but my dreams are absolutely crazy, with the most unbelievable shit happening all the time. Of course I don't realize how unbelievable most of it is until I wake up, and that's something they should have brought to the film, the characters that were inside the dream should have had a very hard time realizing what was going on and who was who.

I thought the first 5 minutes would be how the rest of the movie went, where things didn't go according to plan, there was something unexpected happening that they didn't deal with properly, their surroundings were continually shifting, and how something happening in the 'real world' would carry over to the dream, like the water coming in when he fell in the bathtub. The only other time they did that in the movie was with the falling. Which was cool, but was too isolated, imo.

You didn't leave the theater with a sense of amazement, or like "holy crap what just happened" like I was hoping, and like so many people made it out to be. I left with a sense of disappointment, when you tackle a subject as deep and insane as a dream, you need to really SHOW that insanity, which they didn't really do. The closest they came was when you saw Cobb's memories, and that was really interesting, but they never really took that idea into the dreams themselves. All in all it was decent but underwhelming. It didn't feel like a movie about dreams, but just another espionage action movie with a slightly more interesting undertone.

Hobo Joe wrote:They were inside someones head, inside their subconscious, and yet it was all almost exactly like the real world. I dunno about you guys, but my dreams are absolutely crazy, with the most unbelievable shit happening all the time. Of course I don't realize how unbelievable most of it is until I wake up, and that's something they should have brought to the film, the characters that were inside the dream should have had a very hard time realizing what was going on and who was who.

I thought the first 5 minutes would be how the rest of the movie went, where things didn't go according to plan, there was something unexpected happening that they didn't deal with properly, their surroundings were continually shifting, and how something happening in the 'real world' would carry over to the dream, like the water coming in when he fell in the bathtub. The only other time they did that in the movie was with the falling. Which was cool, but was too isolated, imo.

You didn't leave the theater with a sense of amazement, or like "holy crap what just happened" like I was hoping, and like so many people made it out to be. I left with a sense of disappointment, when you tackle a subject as deep and insane as a dream, you need to really SHOW that insanity, which they didn't really do. The closest they came was when you saw Cobb's memories, and that was really interesting, but they never really took that idea into the dreams themselves. All in all it was decent but underwhelming. It didn't feel like a movie about dreams, but just another espionage action movie with a slightly more interesting undertone.

Not all dreams are that chaotic. For example, I often have dreams that are very story-like and involve exploration. I had about 5 different dreams last night all of which I don't remember and they weren't all that chaotic. In one of them I discovered a barn owl nest with little owls in it and in another one I was sitting on a ship listening to someone tell me as story. There are some unusual environmental factors here and there like very vibrant colors and objects such as clouds that glow like their highlighted and I definitely don't know all of the characters names, but I wouldn't say that these dreams are that chaotic. They were also probably all very short even though they seemed like they lasted for a while in the dream and not extremely complicated dreams. Therefore, in my opinion, it is ok if the dreams in the movies weren't that chaotic. However, I do think that it would be if they were at least quirky. For example, I think it would be funny if someone was having a dream that they were on a ship and, all of a sudden, out of the sky came the voice of someone saying "Breakfast!", then everyone on the ship agreed that they should eat breakfast. That happened to me once and I got up and ate some breakfast because I was obviously very hungry. I'm someone who really likes to eat breakfast and doesn't ever skip it.

Please excuse the double post. I received a server error message the first time I tried to post.

Cool effects it had at least.

Ive also had 3 dreams in one actually

I dont think iv ever had a dream in which I was dreaming something...That would be fucked up.

And I agree with hobo.
Dreams are usually many cut off sequences,like an edited film.
Usually dreams are bizarre as fuck jumping from locations to others and from one time to another.
I wish the movie would have explored all the psychological aspects of having the ability to be in a place where u can manifest your thoughts and the concept of losing touch with whats real.
The movie touched the subjects but didn't focus on them.
Maybe the movie was just so good I want more of it XD

I still think Nolan's best work was Memento though no doubt he is very talented since he writes the screenplays for his own movies,in fact every time he worked on a screenplay someone else wrote It wasn't as good.

I am somewhat confused by everyones love for Nolan. I mean he's better than the average director but that's not saying much. Memento was his only truly good film, and though this one was well done it was way too light and conservative in its attempt to tackle an extremely complex and bizarre subject.


I mean goddamn, batman was pretty shitty except for the parts with Heath Ledger and yet everyone seems to get all hot and excited when they hear the name Nolan now.

Hobo Joe wrote:I am somewhat confused by everyones love for Nolan. I mean he's better than the average director but that's not saying much. Memento was his only truly good film, and though this one was well done it was way too light and conservative in its attempt to tackle an extremely complex and bizarre subject.


I mean goddamn, batman was pretty shitty except for the parts with Heath Ledger and yet everyone seems to get all hot and excited when they hear the name Nolan now.

Not many directors write their own screenplays.It's actually pretty rare.
By the way I think by Batman Standards the DarkKnight was a very good film.
The first wasnt written by him.
I mean He is a blockbuster director but He doesn't completely insult his viewers intelligence like say..Roland Emmerich !!! (2012) who also writes the screenplays for his movies.
Nobody is saying he is one of history's best directors or screenplay writers just that he is of a high quality when it comes to making blockbusters,at least up until now.

Gota wrote: Not many directors write their own screenplays.It's actually pretty rare.
By the way I think by Batman Standards the DarkKnight was a very good film.
The first one he didn't write.

I guess it's all a matter of opinion. I didn't think Dark Knight was anything special, apart from Heath Ledgers performance (which, just to be clear, I thought was absolutely stellar). The rest of the movie was badly written, a horrible mix of super-serious trying-to-save-the-world vibe mixed with the cheesiness of a comic book movie. Much of it was badly acted(Christian Bale is such a poor excuse for an actor), two-face, though very well acted, had (imo) very cheesy writing that did not do the actor or the pre-incident character justice.

Anyway sorry for going OT, small rant.

Christian bale is a decent actor...Watch "The Machinist" (2004).
I actually was amazed at how Nolan managed to bring some depth to characters like two face or the joker...I think the plot was constructed pretty well and I cant really ask anything more from a movie based on a comic book,personally.
Of course the hype for it was exaggerated.
I didn't find anything amazing about Ledger though...Apart from having cool makeup.He did what needed to be done but I cant say he was amazing.

Gota wrote:I dont think iv ever had a dream in which I was dreaming something...That would be fucked up.

Yeah, the movie was right on it though: the more dreams you see in each other, the more unstable it becomes. When i went to the third dream, i didnt really see anything, it was mostly just random thoughts / darkness. And second dream was really hard to focus on too. It didnt last long either, or i wouldnt be able to go back to the first dream because i forget where i came to the second dream, here the movie was right again, but you dont get stuck in limbo lol. just continue different dream if you forget the first one... Shortly; seeing multiple dreams in one is like trying to play many games at same time, you have to "update" the first dream in your memory, so you wont forget it.

Wait your saying you were having a dream while you were having a dream while having a dream?

I've had dreams within dreams before, but it's almost always the kind of thing where you're dreaming, then you wake up, get out of bed, get ready for school/work and leave, then you wake up again and wish you were dead because you have to do it again.

Gota wrote:Wait your saying you were having a dream while you were having a dream while having a dream?

Yes, just like in the movie

TradeMark wrote:

Gota wrote:Wait your saying you were having a dream while you were having a dream while having a dream?

Yes, just like in the movie

INCEPTION!