Inception

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It was a date night so I have to see it again but the science seemed a little shaky.

Cool movie though.
 
My wife loved it, and although I thought it was cool, I started to get seriously lost as they went into more and more dream layers. Then i thought it started to drag on to long. Cool premise none the less and I got back into it when i could see the end was near.

The guy on Thelastpsychiatrist.com discusses it, but as is customary for him..he makes it way to long, diluted, and complicated, so that his actually opinion of it is lost. I used to enjoy reading his opinions, but his writing has become increaingly hard to follow, with every point being that something means the opposite of what you probably think it means. 🙄
 
Kinda hard to pull off the twist at the end since it has been done so many times before.

Also, if you can come up with tech like this then you can come up with a better failsafe than a personalized object.

If you like the idea of psychiatrists entering dreams then you might like the anime Paprika.
 
I thought the science of it was really weak, almost non-existent, since we're spared any account of how one can enter into one's dreams. There were also lots of artificial artifacts which are not scientifically justified like the limbo thing, or the "fact" that one needs to dream within a dream to get into a deeper level of the mind to embed the idea (huh?). One also have to wonder why do the same rules have to apply in dream and in reality for them to enter and engage out of dreams. You can tell I didn't think much of the movie, other than being a cool action flick that ended up being too ambitious.
 
But Leo was so dreamy!! He has come a long way since Titanic and Growing Pains!
 
The science seemed... completely shakey? It seemed like there wasn't even a remotely theoretical way to do what they did.

Cool movie though. The anti-gravity/gravity changing fight scenes were my favorite since The Matrix.

Apparently movies that question the nature of reality have good fight scenes. I don't think Total Recall had any great ones though, did it?
 
I think questioning the science or the ending actually forces you to miss the more important points of the movie. The point of science fiction is, given that you ALLOW the science to be real, is the human psychology correct? If you question the science in a science fiction movie (at least, in a way that distracts from the point of the movie), you should have went to play miniature golf instead.

SPOILER ALERT

I think the point of the ending is largely missed. You're told the whole time that this spinning top tells you whether what you are watching is "real" or not. But, you are sitting in a movie theater, watching unreal science, with impossibly attractive people riding snow mobiles in Cillian Murphy's head. I'm pretty sure this is a comment on film-making itself. It's not that Leonardo DiCaprio is still in a dream. Because it's all a dream, because it's a movie, and you as the viewer are the one who is in a dream-like, escapist state sitting in a cold theater in a hot summer. The point is that the movie has created something wonderful, a dream-space, in which your imagination can run and play and you can be distracted from all that is so much less dreamy in the world.

In essence, the "trick ending" is "the kick" that sends you back into the real world, the thing that signals that your dream (the movie) is over, and that it is time to wake up and go to Costco to buy paper towels.

See, I think that's absolutely brilliant. I hate trick endings, and that's not what this really was. It's not Mulholland Drive. It's A Midsummer Night's Dream. I think worrying about whether Leonardo DiCaprio is still dreaming or not is the opposite of the point. And I think the latter can ruin the movie for you.
 
I think questioning the science or the ending actually forces you to miss the more important points of the movie. The point of science fiction is, given that you ALLOW the science to be real, is the human psychology correct? If you question the science in a science fiction movie (at least, in a way that distracts from the point of the movie), you should have went to play miniature golf instead.
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I don't completely agree. The science in the science fiction movie needs to be "realistic" in the sense that given what we know in the sciences, it's realistic and possible to envision what the movie presents. Aliens, robots, space colonization..etc are all scientifically "realistic", and I think that's an important point and we can't just dismiss the science. If the science is not realistic, then the audience is less engaged and we are less likely to seriously treat the human psychology part and the problematic that this certain advancement in science poses. I think if the movie was trying to pass a point about epistemology and the nature of reality (the point being is that dreams and reality are possibly indistinguishable), it's important for them to get the science realistic; otherwise the message wouldn't have weight.

Having said that, I really like your take. If the whole movie was simply an allegory to dreams, imagination and film-making..etc (and didn't attempt to make any claim on the nature and difference between dream/reality) with the whole setting from start to finish being a dream, then of course there are no rules, and it's consistent and much more aesthetic.
 
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I agree with Jorge on the SciFi movies needing to have their science be plausible. It doesn't have to be 100% accurate, just enough so that we can be drawn into the story.

There are several questions that rise from the movie.
A very fundamental one is that of "the idea" being planted and being like a virus or something (again I need to see this movie again so don't kill me).
It goes to the question of reality and "cogito ergo sum" "Je pence donc je suis" "i think therefore I am." I have considered this from a forensics viewpoint in sleep disorder/crime cases.
Also, what about virtual reality and our growing second lives. Are those "dream worlds" real, almost real or more real and does it matter if people have different views. What if those views were to one day involve rights/laws/ethics.
 
SPOILER ALERT








Sorry if this is completely dumb, I went to a really late showing, with my girlfriend, so I might not have been completely focused.

What is this "trick" ending people are talking about? At the time it seemed obvious to me that the top was wobbling and would have ultimately fell if the scene continued, thus meaning he was in "real life" just as we had expected? Where is the trick? Sorry if I missed something lol
 
Jorje286 said:
I don't completely agree. The science in the science fiction movie needs to be "realistic" in the sense that given what we know in the sciences, it's realistic and possible to envision what the movie presents.
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I would like your take on Tron, the least plausible sci-fi movie ever to have a jillion dollars dropped on its sequel. 😉
 
I don't know, I drank the Tron kool aid. Of course those were different days.
 
I agree with BillyP.

The film is simply brilliant. Despite the implausibility of some details, the contrivances were totally justified for what they made possible narratively.

For me, the descent into deeper meta-layers of Nolan's labyrinth brought to mind the writings of Jorge Luis Borges. The psychedelic, maze-like architecture of the film's chronology (as opposed to the single-layer nonlinearity of Memento) is what makes Inception the best psychological thriller I've ever seen.
 
I think the realism of the science is all about who is watching it.

I had no clue that the science was weak or not plausible until people told me afterwords.

I just took it for face value (especially leo's face value....yummy) and thought the movie rocked.

Of course from a psychiatric perspective, I can't say because I haven't been to medical school much less be a psychiatrist full throttle. But still, it was a sweet flick.
 
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