Saturday 4 April 2015

Film Review: Inception, Part 4

If you're visiting through the A to Z Challenge and want to read today's challenge post, click here.

I’m a glutton for punishment and yes, I am still continuing with my regular blogging schedule alongside my A to Z Challenge posts. Hi, if you’re looking for those. I’m a bit of a blogging addict.

This is the fourth part of Inception; last week Saito bought an airline to enable the gang to spend ten hours in Fischer’s brain undisturbed. Now we’re inside the first (of several) Dream Worlds, which we’ll visit in this part.


89. Ariadne is still berating Cobb for not sharing the whole Mal situation with the rest of the team. Turns out Cobb and Mal kept pushing the boundaries, went as deep as they could and spent years building their own world. For somewhere in the region of fifty years. Cobb realised that it was all fantasy; for Mal, not so much. She didn’t adapt to being brought back to the real world; she thought she was still in a dream. Basically, Mal was obsessed with committing suicide to leave the dream.

90. Hence the hotel room on their anniversary, designed to look like they’d had a fight or something. If I was Cobb I’d tell Mal I was going to go over to join her in her room, but would actually phone the police and tell them my wife was about to jump out the window. Cobb is not very good at negotiating.


91. Mal’s got this all set up though, telling everyone that Cobb was going to kill her, to make sure he’d kill himself at the same time. No wonder his subconscious version of her is so mean. He’s obviously got a lot of bitter feelings about what happened.

92. And Cobb had no choice but to go. Ariadne gives him some words of advice and a stern talking to, all at once.

93. Fischer’s told to give them the first six numbers that come to his head. So he does (528491). Time for more knockout juice as they take him for another ride in preparation for their trip to Dream World Two.

94. It’s time for a little bit more gun fighting because action film, remember? I don’t know guns, but Eames is critical of his Arthur’s gun; Eames has a rocket launcher or something.


95. For those of you struggling to keep track of the current plan: The team have to make Fischer think that his godfather, good old Uncle Peter, is actually the good guy and that his father really loved him all along. This will be difficult because Robert and Maurice did not like each other very much. Got it?

96. The problem is, in Dream World Two Fischer’s subconscious will be even more aware of the guys and even more determined to get rid of them. This calls for someone by the name of Mr Charles, which didn’t go too well the last time he was used. Mr Charles is of course going to be Cobb doing his Extractor gambit.

97. Eames is playing a woman now, leaving her ‘phone number’ which is conveniently the same six numbers Fischer said earlier.

98. Arthur also explains that the Mr Charles trick means telling Fischer he’s dreaming which is bad because it means Fischer knows he’s dreaming.

99. At least Saito looks a little more healthy in Dream World Two.


100. Fischer’s heard of Extraction. There’s a brief moment where Cobb sees his kids and a broken glass like the ones in the hotel room, but he reigns himself in.

101. Arthur uses the fact that attention is being drawn to himself and Ariadne as an excuse to kiss her. It doesn’t work to divert the attention, but it does score him a kiss.

102. In Dream World One Yusef is doing some crazy driving and it’s affecting things like the weather and gravity in the dream. Fischer is kind of panicking, so the ruse is apparently working. Cobb’s got him convinced that someone is trying to steal ideas from him.

103. There’s a tense moment when Fischer threatens to kill himself in order to wake up. The threat of Limbo is enough to dissuade him. He’s better at talking Fischer out of suicide than he was with Mal.

104. Cobb’s still trying to get Fischer to remember why he was kidnapped. The numbers start to crop up again. This is a little bit like Lost now.

105. Arthur starts explaining about how he’s setting up explosive devices in order to give them a kick to wake them up out of this level of the dream world.


106. And then the projection of Browning shows up. Allowing Fischer to start turning against his godfather. Fischer’s subconscious Browning tells him that he didn’t want Fischer to break up the company. So now they have to go into Dream World Three, to figure out what Fischer thinks Browning was trying to hide from him.

107. I’m starting to see why people find this complicated. I’ve never thought about it in this much depth before.

108. Dream World Three is all cold and snowy. Up on Dream World One Yusef is under heavy fire and back in Dream World Two Arthur is wandering around the hotel having a fight with the projections.

109. I love this bit where the van tilts and rolls so the hotel corridors do the same thing. It looks cool, but it’s also a really neat way of showing that what goes on in the next level up influences what happens in the level below it.


110. I love Yusef’s dorky little ‘did you see that?’ to the van full of unconscious passengers after they all survived the rolling van.

111. Back in Dream World Three, the team are dividing up to head into the building which is playing the part of ‘Browning’s Mind’. Fischer has to break in there alone because it’s all symbolic and stuff.

112. Dream World One: Yusef’s got the van on the bridge. He’s not safe from the projections though, there’s some on there and they’re firing at them. He’s got no choice but to start waking them up.

113. Dream World Two: Arthur hears La Vie En Rose, but it’s too soon.

114. Down in Dream World Three they’re saying as much. Cobb’s doing some quick mental maths to work out how long they’ve got. Answer: Not very long!

115. In order to emphasize the dramaticness of of the situation Eames has a high speed ski-chase down a snowy mountainside.


116. Meanwhile, Cobb bullies Ariadne into telling him about the air duct system they can use to get to the centre of the maze. Surely she could have told him that there was a way to the centre, without letting on exactly what it is, seeing as she just tells Saito via radio anyway.

117. Up on Dream World One, Yusef’s driven the van off the edge of the bridge. That’s the kick, with gives Arthur a jolt on Dream World Two and sets off an avalanche on Dream World Three. They’ve missed it.

118. Luckily there’s another one. The van will hit the water soon. That’ll be the second one.

119. It is posing a problem for Arthur, since the falling van in Dream World One is causing a sudden case of weightlessness in Dream World Two, so he has to figure out how to give the Dream World Two occupants a kick in the absence of gravity.

120. Dream World Three have about twenty minutes left to before the kick hits them and the projections seem to know that something is up. Even the music is ramping up now, just in case we’d missed how tense this all is!

121. And Arthur’s having yet another fight in the hotel corridors in Dream World Two, this time it’s a weightless one, instead of a spinning around one.

That seems like a good place to stop. It was a little confusing to write, I kept muddling up my Dream Worlds, so hopefully I got them all straight and kept things from becoming too confusing.


Next week will see our fifth and final post in this series of Inception reviews. It’s a suitably climactic resolution for a Hollywood blockbuster.

4 comments:

  1. I have to see this movie sometime, the review itself sounds intense!
    Cat

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    1. Definitely watch the movie. It's quite action packed but it takes some thinking about as well. :-)

      My husband says now he's read these posts he wants to watch it again so I suspect we'll be having another viewing of it shortly.

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  2. Now that I have Netflix, I'm gonna have to look this movie up and finally watch it.

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    Replies
    1. Ooh yes, you should. You'll have to let me know what you think of it. :-)

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Let me know what you think. :-)