Ok a little late to the party, but man I finally saw Inception last night and I don't know what you guys are talking about. To me it was boring. My girlfriend had already seen it but wanted to see it again so we were able to have a thorough discussion about it afterwards too, and my dislike is not because I'm missing things. She couldn't believe I wasn't on the edge of my seat the whole time, but what was there to be on the edge of your seat about. I never once thought, "oh no will they not get out of the dream?", to me the movie didn't set it up too well like they had to accomplish a certain task in the dream or all is lost. Oh no if they don't go 3 layers deep in the dream, the mark will never think to break up his father's company. Is the audience supossed to really care about that?
Also I just feel those types of movies are so predictable. Once you understood the movie deals with layers of dream, I think most people can predict the movie is going to try to flip it at the end and make you think "wait was what we thought was reality actually a dream." I see Shutter Island mentioned here and it's the same thing, "guy explores an insane asylum, wait he's really insane all along, or is he?" Same kind of predictability, guy goes into dreams, wait he was dreaming all along, or is he?" Yawn.
Yup, this is the part that really lost me too. I wasn't feeling the sense of attachment to the urgency. It was all about money and power.
Well, the job wasn't about that... Saito was the owner of a rival company, yes and all that other good stuff. But the only reason Cobb took that job in the first place was because Saito had promised him that he would finally be able to go home and see his kids.
So no, the dissolving of Fischer's company isn't really what the audience is supposed to care about. We were supposed to care about Cobb getting back to America to finally reunite with his kids.
I mean I understand that part too, but I don't think they set it up well.
1. I don't feel attached to him or his kids, so the reuniting part doesn't really call out to me. All we have from them is hearing their voices on the phone for a few seconds, and they sound like little kids with short attention spans, like they don't even miss their parents that much or realize they're gone. It feels like they're just at grandma's for the weekend. Not seeing their faces (although aides other parts of the movie) doesn't help me feel anything for them. I felt about as much for Cobb's kids/family as I did for the rest of the team's families.
2. I don't feel any urgency if he doesn't complete his task. So if he fails, he gets off the plane, goes through customs, gets flagged, and is arrested? We've seen guns, fights, planes, helicpoters, get aways, etc., I somehow don't feel like this guy's life is over if he steps off a commercial flight. The cops, feds, etc. aren't going to be waiting for him the second he gets off the plane, it would be when he is flagged going through customs. He seems like he could evade the law if things didn't go right, kind of like he has been doing. So basically, if he fails his task, he steps off the plane, and life continues as it was before, which we don't really know if it's that good or bad. I can think back to a movie like Enemy of the State (I don't know why, first movie that popped in my head), we see Will Smith's life fall apart, we see it in shambles, ok I want to see him get it back to the way it was, I feel for his family situation. Not the case here, when Cobb steps off the plane, whether he completes the task or not, I feel like it's just going to be another day.
I think the continual switching between multiple dream worlds and (possibly) reality causes me not to be attached to what is going on in any of the worlds.
