Review of Inception (2010) by Mahmus — 25 Sep 2020

This movie is pure exposition, especially the first act. Once the mission starts it gets a bit better, but unfortunately the exposition never stops, and the characters delivering it are honestly not all that interesting.

I also hate how it justifies all the exposition. They literally get rid of a character that knows all the rules and replace him with someone who knows nothing, all so they can explain the rules to her / us. That's the only reason Ellen Page's charcter is in the movie. It feels very lazy.

This is a major flaw in almost all Nolan movies. The characters feel like tools to explain the story and perform the plot rather than real people.

It mostly makes up for this with its concept and structure (aside from the purely expository first act), but even then, it doesn't go as far as it could. For a movie set inside dreams, there was so much potential for surrealism, but Nolan limits himself to rather mindane things like a train in a street, or an avalanche.

The wildest thing is the spinning/zero-gravity hallway, but I kinda would have prefered if it had presented it as an actual spinning hallway by actually keeping the camera static so we see the rotation (like that one still sugests the scene is like). While we get some shots that look like that, it's mostly just poeple flying around and fighting on the walls, which while still impressive, has been done many times.

It also never pays off a lot of its setups.

The whole folding city thing is never done in the actual mission despite being set up in the planning stage. The Penrose stairs are done again, but the effect is not repeated, so it's kinda hard to tell what's happening. The only reason I know it was the penrose thing again it's because Arthur said "paradox" again.

Still, despite all my criticims of this film (many of which apply to most Nolan movies), I think that this movie is very entertaining to watch thanks to it's structure, editing (between the dream layers. For some reason simple conversation scenes are very weirdly edited), music and ending.

It's good. I really like it, but definitely very overrated. Also, not anywhere near ass confusing as many claim (I wish it was more confusing). It's the most Nolanesque Nolan film, for better and for worse.