Dear Reader: you can assume that this thread contains spoilers. If you haven't seen INCEPTION, slap yourself in the face and slink off in shame.
Anyway, I thought it was phenomenal.
As I said on Twitter, I don't think it achieves what we would call a perfect movie in the sense that it does not follow through on all the promises it makes or leverage all the ideas it introduces.
Most egregious, to me, is that Ellen Page is set up to be someone who can alter and warp the world of the dream at will, even mid-dream. Once the shit starts hitting the fan, that should have been happening constantly in her efforts to save them from Fischer's homicidal subconscious. Obviously having a character in unrestricted God Mode would be kind of lame, so you'd have to come up with ways to restrict her. Her alterations would have to have unintended consequences that ultimately made things worse. Any number of possibilities here.
On a related note, the dream world was surprisingly literal and consistent. Dreams are weird. That shit with Paris folding over itself? Stuff like that should be happening on its own, all the time, not just because Ellen Page is a kooky wunderkind. It should be the job of the architects to try and keep the world coherent against the wild imaginations of the dreamers' subconsciouses. More like ETERNAL SUNSHINE, less like THE MATRIX.
While on the subject, as a fight scene guy, the brawl in the rotating hotel was A-MAZ-ING. That's exactly the kind of shit I would have wanted to have in the alternate Matrix Reloaded I pitched, with Neo in the "haunted house." In fact, INCEPTION in many ways is what the MATRIX sequels should have been.
The time dilation was not used to its full potential, nor was it consistent. Probably half an hour of the movie takes place while the van is falling, which is only supposed to give JG-L ~3 minutes to do what he's got to do, and the guys on the snow level ~20.
There is no way JG-L did all that in three minutes, and I'm hard-pressed to believe the snow level took only twenty. But more than that, we were told they'd be in the respective dream states for 1 week, 6 months, and 10 years. They were only in each one for a couple hours, max. Think of the storytelling, and character, potential of having ten years to do the job; to get to know the mark, befriend him, manipulate him -- not to mention the characters' relationships with each other. Some of them might start to have second thoughts, alliances forged and broken, etc. Though this kind of story would probably need way more than a movie -- a miniseries, probably, if not a full-season TV run. Be a pretty thrilling season of TV though.
Last thing, the explicit statement "As we go deeper into [Fischer], we also go deeper into [Cobb]." I didn't see that, at all. Other than the incursion of the freight train, we don't get a lot of "Cobb's obsession is altering the dream uncontrollably." I mean, the second level down is a hotel. You have the characters diving deeper into the subconscious, into a hotel, and you don't have the fictitious hotel suddenly cross with the hotel where Mal killed herself? Come on. All we ever have is Cobb occasionally spotting his kids playing with their backs to him. Add more specific elements to the backstory and have those elements start to clash more and more with the mission. The train was a great start, but MOAR.
Having said all that, I loved the film. It's smart, the pacing is sharp, I never felt the length or like there was anything that could have been cut out -- if anything, like I've been saying, I wanted another hour at least! This is the only film so far this year I've wanted to see twice in theatres, and is easily the best film of the year. It's firing on all cylinders. Nolan is a strong director, and this movie is clearly the culmination of his career so far -- this movie brings his MEMENTO sensibilities and his BATMAN sensibilities together in a big way.
The missed opportunities, while not small nitpicks, don't destroy the movie for me by any means. It's awesome and thrilling and gorgeously done. They just prevent the movie from being a pants-shittingly perfect BEST MOVIE EVAR.
IMO. It's still fucking good. Especially for a "summer movie." Give me more "summer movies" like this, flaws and all, and I'll be satisfied for a good long while. Still certainly destined for classic-hood, and cements Nolan's name in the same place as Pixar: whatever it is, I'll see it just because his name's on it, and he'll have to fuck up real bad (i.e. make THE VILLAGE, LADY IN THE WATER, and THE HAPPENING back-to-back) to knock himself off that pedestal. He's now pretty high on my list of favorite directors.
Also, the FX were brilliant (I honestly don't know how they did the zero-G stuff -- if it's wires, it's the best wire work I think I've ever seen), the music did its Zimmer-y thing, and I haven't seen such an appropriate use of slow motion in a long time.
