Inception Aftermath

Inception suffers from many things: Poor ideas, unachieved visuals and lackluster characters.
Who is the main character?

It’s not Cobb. The only reason to like the guy is . . . his wife is dead and he wants to be with his kids. Other than that he’s a thief and a bad one at that: fucking things up with the ‘projection’ of his wife. He has only one redeeming quality is that he feels guilt for the death of his wife. Though we don’t find this out TILL AN HOUR INTO THE MOVIE. A main character (Especially in scifi/adventure films; Think Indiana Jones or Luke Skywalker.) must be related to early in the film. It would have been a good idea to use that hour to let the audience relate to the main character. At the end of the movie I still didn’t like the guy. Mainly because he got off the hook by doing something illegal for a kingpin who had to use illegal methods to LET A GUY GET OUT OF A MURDER CHARGE. You don’t just walk away from that shit. Main Character: Not Cobb.

It’s not Ellen Page. I use the actor’s name because I can’t remember her character at all. So, Page’s character is supposed to be the audience surrogate. She’s there to ask all the questions for the audience. She’s also just a college student, so that’s relatable character, right? No. She comes off annoying right away and doesn’t show up TILL AN HOUR INTO THE MOVIE. And to compound the annoyingness, she starts to bitch out Cobb for just about everything but his slacks. Main Character: Not whatever-her-face.

All the other characters are so two dimensional they are not worth mentioning.

If we are in dreams, why can’t they be trippy?
‘The subject must not know they are dreaming.’ Says Cobb a million times. So what? If there are people crawling around in a dream I want some crazy-ass shit going on. You wouldn’t have to explain a million things about the protocol of ‘dream sharing’ if you got rid of Page’s annoying character and the whole notion of structured dreams.
The only time the dreaming got crazy was the only truly great part of the movie. The fight scene in the hotel hallway with –the very handsome- Joseph Gordan-Levitt was by far the most capable use of the idea of being in a dream. The weightlessness thereafter can be used as a metaphor for the movie going back to blandness.

A perfect counter to this film is 2000‘s ‘The Cell.’

1. There is NO explanation of how the technology in the film works, it just does.
2. The mindscapes are amazing and create a sense of collision of thoughts that might actually be happening in someone’s mind.
3. The characters are compelled by knowing they have a time limit to save the life of an innocent girl.

‘Inception’, 2010

1. ‘Inception’ however spends most of the movie with dialog explaining how awesomely hard it is to dream and shit.
2. New York City, a warehouse, China and a hotel. The snow fortress has been done in a million James Bond movies. Unstructured dream land is a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Boo.
3. The characters are compelled because they want to force a man to destroy his empire and let a thief see his kids again? And we’re supposed to like these characters?

The final act?

Is complete bat-shit nuts.

Final Word?

I saw this film twice. The second time I was more aware of the things I didn’t pay attention to at first. It didn't explore the ideas deeply enough, had too much in the way of explanations for the audience (I don't see how any critic could fail to understand the plot as presented), and no Main Character. I really enjoyed it, but I wanted more from the film.