Finally got around to watching...

[major_clanger]

Inception. Gosh, that was good, and I'm glad I managed to very carefully avoid spoilering myself for it.

Also impressed by the sheer number of diagrams on the Interweb explaining what went on, although it wasn't actually too difficult to follow.

Comments

[davidwake.livejournal.com]

I just watched it last night... not at all convinced.

[gmh.livejournal.com]

clanwilliamburntcopper and I saw it in the cinema last July; burntcopper and I went 'fun as far as it goes', but clanwilliam really didn't like it.

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

I was discussing it tonight with L, after you left. He loved it.

I disliked it for the even-more-than-usual pasteded (sic) women in. I'd actually have liked it had they cut the cardboard cutouts that were pretending to be female - I hated the artificial, no character, level of one and the :look, we have a woman, they're not gay or weird!" reason for the other.

And what I hated most of all was that it was the sort of film I love but I spent so much time being told that I wasn't the audience it wanted that I wound up being very upset.

I'm still surprised I didn't walk out - the main reason was that you bought me the ticket and I don't like wasting money.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

It's a film Im glad I saw at the movies.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen it so am skimming to avoid spoilers...

But are the diagrams on the internet as complicated as the ones for Primer? (if you haven't seen Primer, you definitely should)

and I still only know of one film that resorts to the characters diagramming the plot of the movie *on a blackboard* in the middle of the film.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

It's a lot simpler that the Primer diagram, but then what wouldn't be. I don't think its particularly spoilery to say that Inception is about layers rather than convolutedness or recursion, and the diagrams are more about helping people to see small detail than understand the plot as a whole.

The blackboard scene - Back to the Future Part II?

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I loved it, but didn't seem to have the compulsion to see it again that swept a lot of people. have you heard the theory that the Ariadne character is actually his real-world daughter in some way manipulating Leo de Caprio?

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

Remember, the people those diagrams are written for *and possibly by do not have advanced degrees in engineering and/or law. Either of these includes complciated concepts that you get used to mapping in your head the relationships between them. Without that experience and training, this kind of thing can be hard to follow. I remember the tagline that the production company was putting out to TV stations for the Highlander TV series which described the main character as a time traveller. Apparently the promotion people at the production company couldn't understand the hoary old idea of the flashback (admittedly he was a [vulnerable] immortal and hence his flashbacks took him to places like revolutionary era France, but even so...).
I enjoyed Inception but my problem with it is somewhat the same as with Total Recall. In order to get the amibiguity of dream/not-dream across to the audience, they have to weight it so heavily in the "this might be a dream" (sorry, that should be "THIS MIGHT BE A DREAM, REALLY, IT MIGHT BE A DREAM, NO, NO, YOU MUST BELIEVE ME IT COULD REALLY BE A DREAM") that they remove any doubt in my mind, really.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I think the fact that, as SF fans, we're used to picking up clues to complicated backgrounds, and that we weren't going "gosh wow" at the very idea meant that we all had an easier time of it than mainstream critics and movie-goers not so used to complex SF.

It was good, though, wasn't it?