Also, why do they synchronize the kicks? Because then the story has falling action without stalling to kick on each level.

I don't think so, I always got the impression that limbo was something different than just another dream, almost like the mind entering into a coma state completely detaching it from the dream levels around it. That's why people can build anything they want, no matter who's dreaming it (Mahl and Cobb when they both first got there). It's like a separate dimension inside the mind.

That was my impression of it.

Oh.

Kon's films and that show he did have a lot of weird mental stuff going on. The main character in Perfect Blue is an actress in a show about herself being a murderer and then people start getting murdered in reality and it messes her head all up to where she can't keep the acting and the reality straight in her head. Paranoia Agent deals with a number of mental / social stigma but mostly in subplots...  i think...  It's been a while since I saw it and it seems to do the same thing in the last couple episodes that Paprika did in the final act.

I didn't really like Paprika all that much. I should try watching it again, tho. I think I was pretty drunk the first time I saw it. From what I remember, tho, it seems to do the opposite of what inception does. In a dream, anything and everything can happen. That's a really cool way to do it, but there's a danger of pulling stuff out of your ass whenever you need it. I can't remember enough of Paprika to say if that happened at all, tho. It was definitely surreal.

I just had a thought about this movie. Why is "inception" so difficult? Advertising executives have been doing it to millions of people for decades now. People try and perform "inception" on you every time you watch TV, and a lot of the time they succeed.

Hadn't thought about that, but it is an odd thing structurally isn't it? It kind of ends up working, but you have to wonder if it wouldn't be better if you were actively rooting for Cillian Murphy to get incepted.

Like, Inception's closest cinematic comparison is probably The Sting, but in that you've got Robert Shaw as an iconic villain, with the characters having a deeply personal reason for going after him.

Bah, it's weird to me how well Inception works despite all these problems. Like, the concept doesn't really make sense, the team-members barely have any characterization, there's at least an hour of exposition (some of which barely matters because a bunch of the rules change as soon as they get into the heist), there's no villain. And yet through it's elaborate pacing and music and editing it's consistently fascinating and entertaining in the moment.

The more I rewatch it the less I like it, but if you only watch it once every couple years, it seems awesome and amazing again.