Inception Update

[ghostinthefog]

Delivering the goods as always! Thanks Mitzi! And of course CB for you!

[rukia888]

Thanks for the links, Mitzi! I'll have to watch them soon when I have time. I can't wait for the movie this weekend! Yay!

[ashleyrose09]

Me, my mom and my fiancee are going to catch a matinee on Saturday. I can't wait! ;D

[punctuator]

This is going to be one of my unloved specialties, the Devil's Advocate Post, so if you don't feel like reaching for the lighter fluid and matches, please step away now:

[And: SPOILER ALERT]

*****

Something is bothering me-- REALLY bothering me-- about the plot. So... Ken Watanabe tells Leonardo DiCaprio that he can "fix" things legally and/or passport-wise for exiled-from-the-States DiCaprio if DiCaprio will help Watanabe to screw over his business rival, Our Man Cillian.

My initial question is this: Why does Our Man Cillian deserve a screwing-over?

Sure, he's the head of a large company, and in this economically explosive day and age, we've been programmed to think that large companies are automatically, intrinsically, inescapably evil. But Watanabe is the head of a large company, too; we've not been told that Cillian's company is doing anything inherently awful (such as producing deadly drugs, say); and, as an employee, in the here and now, of a very large company, I will say that, if nothing else, such companies provide paychecks and benefits for thousands of people.

So why would DiCaprio want to take Cillian down...?

Why, to see his kids again, of course.

Answer this one, then: If Watanabe approached DiCaprio with a hammer and a rucksack full of live kittens and said, "If you squash all these kittens, Leo, you can see your kids again.", would that be okay?

Absolutely, emphatically not. (And please don't give me that line of guff about parents doing anything when it comes to their kids; I'll be over here with my fingers in my ears going "La la la la." Humans can choose to act morally, and they should, even where biological connections are involved.)

So, I guess my problem (where, oh where, do we start...?) is this: I'm having a hard time figuring out who the protagonist is supposed to be in the Inception scenario. It really sounds like Fischer is in for a mental working-over (or, frankly, a violation) he doesn't deserve. Why Cobb can't see that right out of the gate is really bugging me. To "get his life back," he intends to molest the mind of a complete stranger (that being Fischer) who has done no harm to Cobb or (as far as we know) to anyone else, possibly breaking up Fischer's business and endangering the livelihoods of many, many other complete strangers in the process-- and we're supposed to be cool with that. Ummm....

(Or-- if you've got the technology to invade people's dreams, Leo, but [oddly] not to expunge your legal record or cook up a convincing fake passport-- why not invade Ken Watanabe's dreams and see how he was planning to help you-- or double-cross you--?)

[Pisces]

Hmmmmmm...... funny that you should have tossed this out here because I've wondered the same thing, Punctuator.

I'm hoping that the script will take care of Cobb's seemingly sketchy motivation... though I tend to think that yes, he might indeed stomp a bag of kittens to see his family again. Does it make it right? Nope. Do people go to extraordinary lengths to retrieve lost loved ones, when offered a chance... even if it hurts someone collaterally? You betcha. Who's Fischer to him? Nobody, possibly? Then the odds go up that Cobb would do whatever it takes to right his own life, even if it's not so nice.

Then again....

What if Fischer has wronged Cobb in the past? Not sure at this point how he might have done so, but Cobb could have it in for Fischer in some way that would make stomping that bag of kittens more like killing two birds with one stone.

Just a thought.

[rukia888]

Thanks for the spoiler alert, Punctuator! I didn't want to be spoiled so... thanks.

Ashley, I'll be seeing it on Sunday! I can't wait either!

[littlelune2003]

Just read a review by Stephen Schaefer from the Boston Herald. I don't think he liked the film! Not a positive review at all but one redeeming feature of it was:

"Only Cillian Murphy, as one of the few recognizably human fictions in this dreary, never-ending nightmare, manages to suggest a real person"

Here is the link if you want to read it. It is short and possibly containing spoilers, depending on how isolated you have kept yourself from any of the media and hype surrounding this movie.
news.bostonherald.com/blogs/entertainment/hollywood_mine/?p=491

[ashleyrose09]

You know it seems to me that even if the critics don't have anything nice to say about some of the movies he's in they never have anything bad to say about Cillian. Like in this one they say he's the only good thing about it. I'll take that if nothing else!

[punctuator]

Jul 13, 2010 17:14:32 GMT -5 Pisces said:

Hmmmmmm...... funny that you should have tossed this out here because I've wondered the same thing, Punctuator.

I'm hoping that the script will take care of Cobb's seemingly sketchy motivation... though I tend to think that yes, he might indeed stomp a bag of kittens to see his family again. Does it make it right? Nope. Do people go to extraordinary lengths to retrieve lost loved ones, when offered a chance... even if it hurts someone collaterally? You betcha. Who's Fischer to him? Nobody, possibly? Then the odds go up that Cobb would do whatever it takes to right his own life, even if it's not so nice.

Then again....

What if Fischer has wronged Cobb in the past? Not sure at this point how he might have done so, but Cobb could have it in for Fischer in some way that would make stomping that bag of kittens more like killing two birds with one stone.

Just a thought.

See... I'm getting the sense, from the early reviews, that Nolan doesn't address Cobb's motivation regarding Fischer. Fischer is, indeed, just The Mark. He and Cobb don't have any negative history. I would feel better if they did.

As it stands-- hey, I'll toss this out, a most off-the-wall Red Eye-slant-Inception analogy-- right now it seems like Cillian is playing Lisa Reisert to Leo's Jackson Rippner. Only Cillian is up a creek without a hockey stick, so to say.

And as for bringing back lost loved ones, I'm probably in the minority here, but the kittens would always be safe in my corner. My dead mom, my dead dad, and my dead brother wouldn't forgive cruelty like that. I wouldn't forgive cruelty like that. And I wouldn't want to face the pain of (possibly, likely, potentially) losing them again within my lifetime. That Mitch Albion For One More Day stuff gives me the lizard-skin crawls....

Short form (unapt to make sense to anyone joining this thread midstream): if the kittens ain't safe, Inception is gonna be a hard, hard sell in the House of P. Curious to see how it all shakes out....

EDITED TO ADD: Since I seem unable to stop: A clarification: I've been trying, and I can't recall a single film heist that seemed so willing to target a sympathetic mark, or to have us cheering such a personal violation of a sympathetic mark. (We might root for the crew in The Asphalt Jungle, but they're crooks from the get-go, and we know it; the gang in The Bank Job is targeting just that: a faceless bank. Even Andy Garcia's character, the mark in the remake of Ocean's Eleven, though not an out-and-out crook, is a finagler and a very dangerous guy, and he's stolen George Clooney's girlfriend, to boot. The Brothers Bloom-- ah, that one just came to mind. A real thread of melancholy running through the whimsy in that one. Anyone care to comment...? Personally, I loved it. Even there, though, Adrien Brody is after Rachel Weisz's money: he's not out to violate her mind.) My filmgoer's gut instinct identifies Saito as the villain and Fischer as an unwitting and undeserving victim.

Or is this the new face of film villainy: Cillian Murphy, a harmless-looking Everyman labeled "Corporate America"? The sort of guy who'd look good burning in effigy outside a bank on Wall Street?

One more thing, and then I will shut the heck up: there's a third-and-a-half-act twist that would fix all this, but speculation would drift back toward SPOILER territory....

.... shush, now....

[ikklehen]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBAuMpOpSnA

Check this cartoon spoof out of Inception... It's hilarious! ;D

[bunnie24]

I already posted that one!! lol...it's hilarious.

[ikklehen]

Ahhh did ya? I have a habit of repeating stuff on here I cried wth laughter... Ellen Page was my favourite one hehe, needed more Cilly in it though! ;D

[Zombiekitten]

I 've seen that vid few months ago and loved it too, for it is so funny and original. ;D ;D ;D Love this spoof stuff (when it's made intelligent...)

[bunnie24]

yeah, but it DID kind of sum up what we were ALL kinda thinking, am I right?? lol