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Re: [Phys-l] Inception



Greetings, all,

Great movie? Really? Frankly, I was disappointed. Spoilers follow!

It wasn't terrible, but I thought it really failed to live up to its
potential. I think the movie lost track of what it was about. The
choice of plot kept sabatoging the strength of the premise. Think
about it: you’ve come up with a premise that lets you explore DREAMS,
but instead of coming up with a truly mind-popping dream world (think
what Neil Gaiman could have done with this), you invent a plot that
hinges on convincing the dreamer that he’s NOT dreaming, and therefore
you need to make the dream seem as normal as possible. So instead of
giving us something we’ve never seen before, we get... a warehouse and
a hotel. Wow. And then, when we get to the mysterious dream within a
dream within a dream, where it’s supposed to be so weird, we are
shown… an action set piece right out of a James Bond movie we’ve seen
a dozen times before. And we’re given the way cool M. C. Escher
infinite stairs concept… so that our guy can sneak up behind a bad guy
and push him off. Yeah, that’s really exciting.

There were flashes of interest – the train in the middle of the urban
street, the infinite mirrors with no camera in view, but these guys
really should have watched _Waking Life_ before writing this. I
appreciated the irony that Cobb had to convince Saito to kill himself,
which is exactly what Mal was trying to convince Cobb to do (what a
twisted premise: the only way to wake up is to kill yourself???
Suicide as leap of faith??). The best line in the movie, and one I
wish they’d done more with, was when Mal said to Cobb something like
“being chased around the world by shadowy corporate death squads? Does
that sound realistic to you?” Of course, the “reality” we’re presented
with *isn’t* real – it’s a MOVIE. If they’d made that the central
question of the film (kind of like _Existenz_) rather than what’s
ultimately a MacGuffin about the breakup of some corporation we don’t
really care about, or what this guy’s relationship with his father is,
it would have been a much more intruiging movie. Imagine what Terry
Gilliam could have done with this. Or just see _The Imaginarium of
Dr. Parnassus_; it's much better than _Inception_.

I wish Christopher Nolan could have given us a plot worthy to follow
_Memento_. The set up scenes (like with Paris folding over on itself)
were better than the payoff scenes. _The Matrix_ had amazing set-up
scenes, but then *topped* them with the payoff scenes, in part because
Neo was also learning and developing as a character through each
special effect extravaganza, which made them *matter*. With this one,
until we got to the "limbo" world, it just didn't feel that important.
It was watchable, but not engaging. Again, my frustration with it
wasn't that it was bad; just that it could have been much better.

Yours,

Don Smith

On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 4:26 PM, Anthony Lapinski
<Anthony_Lapinski@pds.org> wrote:
Yea, this is a great movie -- "Blade Runner" meets "The Matrix." I will
add it to my "Hollywood Physics" movie list for optics and forces -- neat
"anti-gravity" scenes. Unique special effects rarely seen before!


Forum for Physics Educators <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu> writes:
I highly recommend the movie "Inception". There is a great scene where
the character played by Ellen Page moves two giant mirrors during a dream
sequence. The two mirrors become parallel and form a classic set of
infinite images. It is the grand scale of the mirrors that makes it so
impressive. If possible, see it in an IMAX theater.

Bob at PC

--
Donald Smith
Guilford College Physics Department
http://www.guilford.edu/physics/dasmith