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Inception

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Inception
A man in a suit with is back turned and a gun in his right hand, against a cityscape with water coming up to his knees.
Theatrical poster
Directed byChristopher Nolan
Written byChristopher Nolan
Produced byChristopher Nolan
Emma Thomas
StarringLeonardo DiCaprio
Ken Watanabe
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Ellen Page
Tom Hardy
Marion Cotillard
Cillian Murphy
Dileep Rao
Tom Berenger
Michael Caine
CinematographyWally Pfister
Edited byLee Smith
Music byHans Zimmer[1]
Production
companies
Distributed byWarner Bros. Pictures
Release dates
London premiere:
July 13, 2010 (2010-07-13)
United States:
July 16, 2010 (2010-07-16)
Running time
147 minutes, 57 seconds[2]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$160 million[3]
Box office$477,732,000[4]

Inception is a 2010 American science fiction action film written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, and Cillian Murphy. The film is inspired by the experience of lucid dreaming and dream incubation.[5] The film, a variant on the heist genre, centers on Dom Cobb, an "extractor", who enters the dreams of others to obtain information that is otherwise inaccessible.[6] His abilities and questions about the death of his wife have cost him his family and his nationality, but he is promised a chance to regain his old life in exchange for planting an idea in a corporate target's mind.[7] This process of planting an idea, known as "inception", is less familiar and far more difficult than Cobb's usual job of "extraction".[7]

Development of Inception began roughly nine years before the film's actual release when Nolan wrote an 80-page treatment about dream-stealers.[8][9] After presenting the idea to Warner Bros. in 2001, he felt that he needed to have more experience with large scale films.[9] Therefore, Nolan opted to work on Batman Begins, The Prestige and The Dark Knight. He spent six months polishing up the film's script before Warner Bros. purchased it in February 2009.[9][10] Filming began in Tokyo on June 19, 2009 and finished in Canada in late November of the same year.[11][12]

Inception was officially budgeted at $160 million, a cost which was split between Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures.[3] Nolan's reputation and success with The Dark Knight helped secure the film $100 million in advertising expenditure.[3] Inception premiered in London on July 8, 2010 and was released in both conventional and IMAX theatres on July 16, 2010.[13][14] Released to critical acclaim, the film grossed over $21 million on its opening day, with an opening weekend gross of $62.7 million.[15]

Plot

Dominic Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) washes up on a beach and is brought by guards into the chamber of an elderly man. The scene then cuts to Cobb and Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) on an "extraction" mission, in which an individual's mind is infiltrated through dreams and information is stolen. Extractors and their victims sleep in close proximity to one another, connected by a device that administers a sedative and share a dream world built on their mental projections. In the dream world, pain is psychologically experienced as real but death results in awakening. Cobb carries a spinning top called a "totem" which either spins unceasingly or topples, to determine whether he is dreaming or awake, respectively. The mission is revealed to be an audition by a powerful businessman, Saito (Ken Watanabe), who hires Cobb and Arthur to perform the act of "inception"-using dreams to secretly implant an idea.

The target is Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), son of Saito's terminally ill corporate rival Maurice Fischer (Pete Postlethwaite). The objective is to convince Fischer to break up his father's empire, preventing it from becoming a monopoly and threatening Saito's company. Cobb recruits Eames (Tom Hardy), a forger who can change his appearance inside dreams; Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a chemist who develops sedatives; and new dream world architect Ariadne (Ellen Page). One night while Cobb is sound asleep to a machine, Ariadne enters Cobb's dream and discovers that a shade of his deceased wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) continually haunts him, sabotaging his missions. Cobb reveals to Ariadne that he and Mal shared dreams, spending many years in a limbo dream world forging their lives. After waking, Mal remained convinced that they were still dreaming and committed suicide, attempting to force Cobb to join her by incriminating him in her death. Cobb refused and was forced to flee the U.S. and leave his children to avoid murder charges. In return for completing the mission, Saito promises to use his influence to clear the charges and reunite Cobb with his children.

When the elder Fischer dies in Sydney, Saito and Cobb's team share the flight with Robert Fischer back to Los Angeles and drug him. They enter Yusuf's dream, a rainy downtown area, and kidnap young Fischer. However they come under attack by his mental defenses—manifesting as armed personnel—and Saito is badly injured in the ensuing gunfight. Once at their safehouse the team learns that the mission has become more dangerous than they anticipated. Fischer was trained to fend off potential extractors, thus his projections are militarily skilled. To make matters worse they learn that, due to the intensity of the sedatives they took, an in-dream death will not awaken them as normal but instead send them into Limbo, where their minds could remain trapped indefinitely. With few options and Fischer's mental defenses closing in, Cobb and his team continue on with the mission.

Moving forward, Eames changes into Peter Browning (Tom Berenger), Fischer's godfather, to extract information from him. They then escape from Fischer's mental defenses into a van and sleep into the next dream level, Arthur's dream, while Yusuf stays behind to protect the rest of the team. The second dream is a hotel where the team tricks Fischer into believing that the kidnapping on the first level was real and orchestrated by Browning. Cobb convinces Fischer to enter Browning's subconscious in order to find out his motives, but in fact the team enter into Eames' dream, with Arthur staying behind to protect the team. The third level is a snowy mountain fortress, which Fischer must break into to reveal the planted idea. Fischer is killed by Mal, causing him to go to Limbo. While Eames and a dying Saito stay behind to fend off Fischer's hostile projections, Ariadne and Cobb follow Fischer to a fourth level in an attempt to salvage the mission and confront Mal. The fourth level is Cobb's dystopia and there he and Ariadne confront Mal. Mal attempts to convince Cobb to stay in Limbo by making him question reality. Cobb reveals that he originally planted the idea in Mal's mind to wake up from their dream lives -- the act that proved inception was possible in the first place -- but that the belief persisted even after she woke, making him indirectly responsible for her suicide. She attacks him, but Ariadne shoots her. Fischer and Ariadne are able to return to the mountain fortress, where he comes to the intended conclusion that his father wanted him to be his own man and resolves to dissolve the company.

To wake the team from each dream, timed "kicks" are organized at each level: explosives to level the mountain fortress, a hotel elevator plunging down its shaft, and the van crashing into a river. A wounded Saito dies at the snow fortress and though the kicks are imminent, Cobb remains in Limbo to locate him. The film connects back to the opening scene, when Cobb speaks to the elderly man—revealed to be an aged Saito, who indeed spent 50 years in Limbo—to return them both to reality. Saito reaches for a gun and Cobb suddenly awakens to find everyone on the plane, including Saito, up and well. Saito honors their arrangement and Cobb enters the United States, reunited with his children at home. Cobb spins the totem to test reality, but is then distracted by his children. The top spins without fault for a long period of time. Then before the screen smash cuts to black, the totem begins to wobble, leaving the audience to determine whether Cobb is still in a dream or in reality.

Cast

The cast at a premiere for the film in July 2010. From left to right is Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Michael Caine, and Leonardo DiCaprio.
  • Leonardo DiCaprio as Dominic "Dom" Cobb, the Extractor, a professional thief who specializes in conning secrets from his victims by infiltrating their dreams. Cobb leads a team consisting of Arthur, Ariadne, Eames, Saito, and Yusuf, with the goal of influencing Fischer's actions via his dreams.[16]
  • Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Arthur, the Point Man, Cobb's partner and the man responsible for researching the team's targets.[17][18]
  • Ken Watanabe as Saito, the Tourist, a businessman who employs Cobb for the team's mission, and insists on being a member.[19]
  • Ellen Page as Ariadne, the Architect, a graduate student who is recruited to construct worlds in which the dreams take place. Ariadne alludes to the daughter of King Minos who aided Theseus by giving him a sword and a ball of string to help him navigate the labyrinth.[20]
  • Tom Hardy as Eames, the Forger, a sharp-tongued associate of Cobb's. Eames uses his ability to take the form of others in order to manipulate Fischer in Fischer's dreams.
  • Dileep Rao as Yusuf, the Chemist, who formulates the drugs needed to sustain the team members' dream states.
  • Marion Cotillard as Mallorie "Mal" Cobb, the Shade, Dom Cobb's deceased wife and a frequent, malevolent presence in Dom's dreams. Dom is unable to control these projections of her, challenging his abilities as an extractor.[16] She serves as the film's main antagonist.
  • Cillian Murphy as Robert Michael Fischer, the Mark, the heir to a business empire and the team's target.[21]
  • Tom Berenger as Peter Browning, Fischer's godfather and fellow executive at the Fischers' company.[1]
  • Pete Postlethwaite as Maurice Fischer, Robert's dying father.[22]
  • Lukas Haas as Nash, an architect in Cobb's employment who is replaced by Ariadne.[23]
  • Michael Caine as Miles, Cobb's mentor and father-in-law[24], and Ariadne's college professor who recommends her to the team.[18]

Development

Penrose stairs are incorporated into the film as an example of the impossible objects that can be created in lucid dream worlds

Inception was first developed by Christopher Nolan, based on the notion of "exploring the idea of people sharing a dream space — entering a dream space and sharing a dream. That gives you the ability to access somebody’s unconscious mind. What would that be used and abused for?"[8] Furthermore, he thought "being able to extract information from somebody’s brain would be the obvious use of that because obviously any other system where it’s computers or physical media, whatever — things that exist outside the mind — they can all be stolen ... up until this point, or up until this movie I should say, the idea that you could actually steal something from somebody’s head was impossible. So that, to me, seemed a fascinating abuse or misuse of that kind of technology."[8] Nolan drew inspiration from the works of Jorge Luis Borges when writing Inception.[25][26]

Nolan had thought about these ideas on and off since he was sixteen years old, intrigued by how he would wake up and then, while falling back into a lighter sleep, hold on to the awareness that he was dreaming, a lucid dream. He also became aware of the feeling that he could study the place and alter the events of the dream.[27] He said, "I tried to work that idea of manipulation and management of a conscious dream being a skill that these people have. Really the script is based on those common, very basic experiences and concepts, and where can those take you? And the only outlandish idea that the film presents, really, is the existence of a technology that allows you to enter and share the same dream as someone else."[27] Harvard University dream researcher Deirdre Barrett points out that Nolan did not get every detail accurate regarding dreams, but that films which really do that ... tend to have illogical, rambling, disjointed plots which wouldn’t make for a great thriller. "But he did get many aspects right," she said, citing the scene in which a sleeping DiCaprio is shoved into a full bath and water starts gushing into the windows of the building he is dreaming, waking him up. "That's very much how real stimuli get incorporated, and you very often wake up right after that intrusion."[28]

Initially, Nolan wrote an 80-page treatment about dream-stealers.[11] Originally, Nolan had envisioned Inception as a horror film,[11] but eventually wrote it as a heist film even though he found that "traditionally [they] are very deliberately superficial in emotional terms."[27] Upon revisiting his script, he decided that basing it in that genre did not work because the story "relies so heavily on the idea of the interior state, the idea of dream and memory. I realized I needed to raise the emotional stakes."[27] Nolan worked on the script for nine to ten years.[8] When he first started thinking about making the film, Nolan was influenced by "that era of movies where you had The Matrix, you had Dark City, you had The Thirteenth Floor and, to a certain extent, you had Memento, too. They were based in the principles that the world around you might not be real."[27]

Nolan was later accused by critics of 'ripping off' the classic French New Wave film L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad) but when asked about this by the New York Times he stated that he never got around to seeing it until after Inception was finished.[11]

Nolan first pitched the film to Warner Bros. in 2001, but then felt that he needed more experience making large-scale films, and embarked on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.[9] He soon realized that a film like Inception needed a large budget because "as soon as you’re talking about dreams, the potential of the human mind is infinite. And so the scale of the film has to feel infinite. It has to feel like you could go anywhere by the end of the film. And it has to work on a massive scale."[9] After making The Dark Knight, Nolan decided to make Inception and spent six months completing the script.[9] Nolan states that the key to completing the script was wondering what would happen if several people shared the same dream. "Once you remove the privacy, you’ve created an infinite number of alternative universes in which people can meaningfully interact, with validity, with weight, with dramatic consequences."[29]

Leonardo DiCaprio was the first actor to be cast in the film.[8] Nolan had been trying to work with the actor for years and met him several times, but was unable to convince him to appear in any of his films until Inception. DiCaprio finally agreed because he was "intrigued by this concept — this dream-heist notion and how this character's going to unlock his dreamworld and ultimately affect his real life."[30] He read the script and found it to be "very well written, comprehensive but you really had to have Chris in person, to try to articulate some of the things that have been swirling around his head for the last eight years."[9] DiCaprio and Nolan spent months talking about the screenplay. Nolan took a long time re-writing the script in order "to make sure that the emotional journey of his character was the driving force of the movie."[8]

Production

On February 11, 2009, it was announced that Warner Bros. purchased Inception, a spec script written by Nolan.[10] Principal photography began in Tokyo on June 19, 2009 for the scene where Saito first hires Cobb during a helicopter flight over the city.[11][31] The production moved to England and shot in Cardington, a converted airship hangar north of London.[32] It was there that a long hotel corridor was constructed by production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas, special effects supervisor Chris Corbould, and cinematographer Wally Pfister; this corridor was able to rotate a full 360 degrees to create the effect of alternate directions of gravity for scenes where dream-sector physics become chaotic. The filmmakers originally planned to make the hallway 40 ft (12 m) long but as the action sequence became more elaborate, the hallway's length grew to 100 ft (30 m). The corridor was suspended along eight large concentric rings that were spaced equidistantly outside its walls and powered by two massive electric motors.[32] Joseph Gordon-Levitt who plays Arthur, spent several weeks learning to fight in a corridor that spun like "a giant hamster wheel".[27] Nolan said of the device, "It was like some incredible torture device; we thrashed Joseph for weeks, but in the end we looked at the footage, and it looks unlike anything any of us has seen before. The rhythm of it is unique, and when you watch it, even if you know how it was done, it confuses your perceptions. It's unsettling in a wonderful way".[27] Gordon-Levitt remembered, "it was six-day weeks of just, like, coming home at night fuckin' battered ... The light fixtures on the ceiling are coming around on the floor, and you have to choose the right time to cross through them, and if you don't, you're going to fall.[33] On July 15, 2009, filming took place at University College London library. The signage of the library was changed to read "bibliothèque" (French for "library").[11]

Filming moved to France where they shot the pivotal scene between Ariadne and Cobb at a Paris bistro.[34] For the explosion that takes place during this scene, the local authorities would not allow the actual use of explosives. The production used high-pressure nitrogen to create the effect of a series of explosions. Pfister used six high-speed cameras to capture the sequence from different angles and make sure that they got the shot. The visual effects department enhanced the sequence, adding more destruction and flying debris.[34] The next location that the production traveled to was Tangiers which doubled for Mombasa, where Cobb hires Eames and Yusuf. A foot chase was shot in the streets and alleyways of the historic Grand Souk.[35] To capture this sequence, Pfister employed a mix of hand-held camera and Steadicam work.[36] Tangiers was also used to film an important riot scene during the initial foray into Saito's mind.

Filming moved to the Los Angeles, California, USA area where some sets were built on a Warner Bros. sound stage, including the interior rooms of Saito's Japanese-style castle. The dining room was inspired by the Nijo Castle built around 1603. These sets were inspired by a mix of Japanese architecture and Western influences.[36] The production also staged a multi-vehicle car chase on the streets of downtown L.A. and this also involved bringing a freight train down the middle of a street.[37] To do this, the filmmakers configured a train engine on the chassis of a tractor trailer. The replica was made from fiberglass molds taken from authentic train parts and then matched in terms of color and design.[38] Also, the car chase was supposed to be set in the midst of a downpour (to present an increased risk that the flying water might "kick" the participants out of the dream-within-a-dream), but the L.A. weather stayed typically sunny. The filmmakers were forced to set up elaborate effects (e.g., rooftop water cannons) to give the audience the impression that the weather was overcast and soggy. L.A. was also the site of the climactic scene where a Ford Econoline van flies off the Commodore Schuyler F. Heim Bridge in slow motion.[39] This sequence was filmed one day on and one day off for months with the van being shot out of a cannon according to actor Dileep Rao. Capturing the actors suspended within the van in slow motion took a whole day to film. Once the van landed in the water the challenge for the actors was not to panic. According to Cillian Murphy, "And when they ask you to act, it's a bit of an ask."[39] The actors had to hold their breath for four to five minutes while drawing air from scuba tanks.[39]

The final phase of principal photography took place near Calgary, Alberta, Canada in late November 2009. The location manager discovered a closed ski resort known as the Fortress Mountain Resort.[12] An elaborate set was assembled on top of a mountain, taking three months to build.[40] The production had to wait for a huge snowstorm, which eventually arrived.[11]

The film was shot primarily in the anamorphic format on 35 mm film, with key sequences filmed on 65 mm, and certain other sequences in VistaVision. Nolan did not shoot any footage with IMAX cameras as he had with The Dark Knight. "We didn’t feel that we were going to be able to shoot in IMAX because of the size of the cameras because this film given that it deals with a potentially surreal area, the nature of dreams and so forth, I wanted it to be as realistic as possible. Not be bound by the scale of those IMAX cameras, even though I love the format dearly".[8] Nolan also chose not to shoot any of the film in 3-D as he believes that shooting on digital video does not offer a high enough quality image.[8]

Nolan has said that the film "deals with levels of reality, and perceptions of reality which is something I'm very interested in. It's an action film set in a contemporary world, but with a slight science-fiction bent to it," while also describing it as "very much an ensemble film structured somewhat as a heist movie. It's an action adventure that spans the globe".[41]

Post-production

For dream sequences in Inception, Nolan kept the computer-generated effects to a minimum and preferred to use practical methods whenever possible. Nolan said, "It's always very important to me to do as much as possible in-camera, and then, if necessary, computer graphics are very useful to build on or enhance what you have achieved physically."[42] To this end, visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin built a miniature of the Fortress Mountain Resort set and then blew it up for the film. For the fight scene that takes place in zero-g, he used CG-based effects to "subtly bend elements like physics, space and time."[43] The most challenging effect was Limbo City at the end of the film because it continually developed during production. Franklin had artists build concepts while Nolan gave his ideal vision: "Something glacial, with clear modernist architecture, but with chunks of it breaking off into the sea like icebergs".[43] Franklin and his team ended up with "something that looked like an iceberg version of Gotham City with water running through it."[43] They created a basic model of a glacier and then designers created a program that added elements like roads, intersections and ravines until they had a complex, yet organic-looking, cityscape. For the Paris-folding sequence, Franklin had artists producing concept sketches and then they created rough computer animations to give them an idea of what the sequence looked like while in motion. Later during principal photography, Nolan was able to direct Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page based on this rough computer animation Franklin had created. Inception had close to 500 visual effects shots (in comparison, Batman Begins had approximately 620) which is considered minor in comparison to contemporary visual effects epics that can have around 1,500 or 2,000 VFX shots.[43]

Score

Untitled

Hans Zimmer scored the film, marking his third collaboration with Nolan following Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. According to Zimmer, it's "a very electronic score".[44] Nolan asked Zimmer to compose and finish the score as he was shooting the film. The composer said, "He wanted to unleash my imagination in the best possible way".[45] At one point, while composing the score, Zimmer incorporated a guitar sound reminiscent of Ennio Morricone and was interested in having Johnny Marr, former guitarist in the influential 80s rock band, The Smiths, play these parts. He asked Nolan, who agreed and then Zimmer approached Marr who accepted his offer. Marr spent four 12-hour days working on the score, playing notes written by Zimmer with a 12-string guitar.[46] For inspiration, Zimmer read Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter because it combined "the idea of playfulness in mathematics and playfulness in music".[45] Zimmer did not assemble a temp score but "every now and then they would call and say 'we need a little something here.' But that was OK because much of the music pieces aren't that scene specific. They fall into little categories".[45]

While writing the screenplay, Nolan wrote in Édith Piaf's "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" but almost took it out when he cast Marion Cotillard, who had just completed an Oscar-winning turn as Piaf in the 2007 film La Vie en rose. Zimmer convinced Nolan to keep it in the film and also integrated elements of the song into his score.[46]

Track listing

All tracks are written by Hans Zimmer[47]

Inception: Music from the Motion Picture
No.TitleLength
1."Half Remembered Dream"1:12
2."We Built Our Own World"1:55
3."Dream Is Collapsing"2:28
4."Radical Notion"3:43
5."Old Souls"7:44
6."528491"2:23
7."Mombasa"4:54
8."One Simple Idea"2:28
9."Dream Within a Dream"5:04
10."Waiting for a Train"9:30
11."Paradox"3:25
12."Time"4:35

The score used for the teaser trailer of the film was composed by Mike Zarin and performed by Sencit Music, whilst the scores from the final trailers were composed and performed by Zack Hemsey.

Marketing

Producer Emma Thomas and director Christopher Nolan at a panel for the film at WonderCon in April 2010

In the spring of 2010 a viral marketing campaign was started for the film. On June 2, 2010 a manual was sent out to various companies. The manual was filled with bizarre images and text all relating to Inception. As the month went on, more and more viral marketing began to surface, including posters, ads and strange websites all related to the film.[48][49] On June 7, 2010 a behind the scenes featurette on the film was released in HD on Yahoo! Movies.[50] Warner Bros. has spent $100 million marketing the film.[51]

Release

Inception was released in both conventional and IMAX theaters on July 16, 2010.[52][13] The film had its world premiere at Leicester Square in London, England on July 8, 2010.[53]

Reception

The film opened to highly positive reviews. Critics have praised the smart and innovative story, the cast, and the score.[54] Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes reports that 87% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 251 reviews, with an average score of 8/10. The website reported the critical consensus, "Smart, innovative, and thrilling, Inception is that rare summer blockbuster that succeeds viscerally as well as intellectually."[55] Review aggregator Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 74 based on 42 reviews from mainstream critics, considered to be "Generally favorable reviews".[56] As of 8 August 2010, IMDb ranked it 3rd of all times in its Top 250 movie list with an average rating from users of 9.0.[57]

Rolling Stone magazine's Peter Travers gave Inception its first positive notice, calling it a "wildly ingen­ious chess game", and added "the result is a knockout".[58] In his review for Variety, Justin Chang praised the film as "a conceptual tour de force" and wrote, "applying a vivid sense of procedural detail to a fiendishly intricate yarn set in the labyrinth of the subconscious, the writer-director has devised a heist thriller for surrealists, a Jungian's Rififi, that challenges viewers to sift through multiple layers of (un)reality".[59] Jim Vejvoda of IGN rated the film perfect, deeming it "a singular accomplishment from a filmmaker who has only gotten better with each film".[60] Relevant Magazine's David Roark called it Nolan's greatest accomplishment, saying, "Visually, intellectually and emotionally, Inception is a masterpiece."[61]

Empire magazine rated it five stars in the August 2010 issue and wrote, "it feels like Stanley Kubrick adapting the work of the great sci-fi author William Gibson ... Nolan delivers another true original: welcome to an undiscovered country".[62] Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B+ rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, "It's a rolling explosion of images as hypnotizing and sharply angled as any in a drawing by M.C. Escher or a state-of-the-biz videogame; the backwards splicing of Nolan's own Memento looks rudimentary by comparison".[63] The New York Post gave the film a four star rating and Lou Lumenick wrote, "DiCaprio, who has never been better as the tortured hero, draws you in with a love story that will appeal even to non-sci-fi fans".[64] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film a perfect four stars and wrote, "The movie is all about process, about fighting our way through enveloping sheets of reality and dream, reality within dreams, dreams without reality. It's a breathtaking juggling act".[65] Richard Roeper, also of The Chicago Sun-Times, gave Inception a perfect score of "A+" and noted that it is "one of the best movies of the [21st] century".[66] In his review for the Chicago Tribune, Michael Phillips gave the film 3 stars out of 4 and wrote, "I found myself wishing Inception were weirder, further out ... the film is Nolan's labyrinth all the way, and it's gratifying to experience a summer movie with large visual ambitions and with nothing more or less on its mind than (as Shakespeare said) a dream that hath no bottom".[67] Time magazine's Richard Corliss wrote, "Finally, its noble intent is to implant one man's vision in the mind of a vast audience ... The idea of moviegoing as communal dreaming is a century old. With Inception, viewers have a chance to see that notion get a state-of-the-art update".[68] In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan felt that Nolan was able to blend, "the best of traditional and modern filmmaking. If you're searching for smart and nervy popular entertainment, this is what it looks like".[69] USA Today gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and Claudia Puig felt that Nolan "regards his viewers as possibly smarter than they are—or at least as capable of rising to his inventive level. That's a tall order. But it's refreshing to find a director who makes us stretch, even occasionally struggle, to keep up".[70]

New York magazine's David Edelstein wrote, "I truly have no idea what so many people are raving about. It’s as if someone went into their heads while they were sleeping and planted the idea that Inception is a visionary masterpiece and—hold on ... Whoa! I think I get it. The movie is a metaphor for the power of delusional hype—a metaphor for itself".[71] In his review for The New York Observer, Rex Reed wrote, "It's pretty much what we've come to expect from summer movies in general and Christopher Nolan movies in particular ... [it] doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment to me".[72] In A.O. Scott's review for The New York Times, he wrote, "But though there is a lot to see in Inception, there is nothing that counts as genuine vision. Mr. Nolan’s idea of the mind is too literal, too logical, too rule-bound to allow the full measure of madness".[73]

Box office

Inception was released theatrically in approximately 3,500 conventional theaters and 195 IMAX theatres.[13] The film grossed $23.7 million during its opening day on July 16, 2010, with midnight screenings in 1,500 locations.[74] Overall the film made $62.7 million and debuted at #1 on its opening weekend.[75] Inception’s opening weekend gross made it the second highest-grossing debut for a stand-alone science fiction film, falling behind Avatar’s $77 million opening weekend gross in 2009.[75] In its second and third weekends the film held the top spot with drops of just 32% ($42.7 million) and 36% ($27.5 million), respectively.[76] In its fourth week of release, the film fell to the second spot to The Other Guys. Since its release, Inception has grossed more than $228 million in the United States, and an additional $250 million in the rest of the world. In total, the film has grossed nearly $480 million worldwide.[15]

References

  1. ^ a b George (2009-07-23). "Inception Cast and Crew Updates". Cinema Rewind. Retrieved 2009-08-31.
  2. ^ "Inception". BBFC. Retrieved 2010-08-08.
  3. ^ a b c Fritz, Ben (July 15, 2010). "Movie projector: 'Inception' headed for No. 1, 'Sorcerer's Apprentice' to open in third". Los Angeles Times. Tribune Company. Retrieved 2010-07-27. It's also one of the most expensive, at $160 million, a cost that was split by Warner and Legendary Pictures.
  4. ^ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=inception.htm
  5. ^ Sheila Marikar (July 16, 2010). "Inside 'Inception': Could Christopher Nolan's Dream World Exist in Real Life? Dream Experts Say 'Inception's' Conception of the Subconscious Isn't Far From Science". ABC News. The Walt Disney Company.
  6. ^ "Inception Synopsis". Fandango.com. Retrieved 2010-07-18.
  7. ^ a b Eisenberg, Mike (2010-05-05). "Updated 'Inception' Synopsis Reveals More". Screen Rant. Retrieved 2010-07-18. One last job could give him his life back but only if he can accomplish the impossible—inception.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h Weintraub, Steve (2010-03-25). "Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas Interview". Collider. Retrieved 2010-04-06.
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Bibliography

Further reading

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