奕詝 (Yìzhǔ)

Number Four: Inception

I have one regret about Inception. It has nothing to do with the film itself. I wish I hadn't known as much as I did about the movie going in. And I didn't really know too much. But I can only imagine what a great experience it would have been trying to figure out what was going on for the first fifteen minutes or so. With a movie as big as this one, would it have been possible for me to have even avoided knowing the basic idea?

I really respect Christopher Nolan for being as ambitious as he was, but also for mapping out all of the details. If you argue that some of the rules of the levels of dreams were ambiguous or arbitrary, I wouldn't argue too strongly against you. But my argument is simply that I'm glad there were rules, and within that world, they were clearly defined. Nolan did his homework. He obviously ran the ideas past people who told him which things weren't explained, and they worked toward an explanation. All it took was a couple lines of dialogue to explain a couple things. (ARE YOU LISTENING, WRITERS OF LOST? Just a couple throwaway lines of dialogue per episode would have been courteous!)

Inception at the very least proved that you can have an effects filled action movie that also has a plot. SPOILER ALERT! And the ending. I love that the ending is ambiguous. I've been to so many movies where I've said, "If the movie ends exactly here, it's perfect." But they always keep going. I love not knowing. I've read some theories and ideas online, and that's part of the fun. I also enjoy reading the people who are truly adamant that there is a correct answer, as if Nolan had run out of film at that moment and just couldn't get to show us. Inception left me thinking and it kept people talking. And it made a buttload of money.