From the Guardian
"Speaking to the LA Times last month, Nolan described Inception as being in the same vein as late 1990s efforts such as The Matrix, Dark City, and The Thirteenth Floor, as well as his own Memento. All of the above share the sense that the reality which we see around us may not be entirely real. Where Inception also seems to differ is that its characters are fully aware of the nature of their surroundings: the film posits the idea that it is possible to enter a shared dream state with other human beings, a sort of virtual reality of the consciousness. Nolan specifically rejected the idea that his film might borrow "second-life" tropes from movies such as Avatar, Surrogates, Gamer, or the Tron movies, however. He said he was inspired to write the story, which took him a decade, by his own experiences with lucid dreaming during the moments in between sleep and wakefulness.
He told the Times:
You can look around and examine the details and pick up a handful of sand on the beach. I never particularly found a limit to that; that is to say, that while in that state your brain can fill in all that reality.
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.
On a technical level, Nolan told Collider he would be eschewing 3D in favour of the combination of Imax footage and high-definition film which made The Dark Knight such a bravura visual experience. CGI will be used for certain sequences (the latest trailer features a self-assembling building which must certainly be computer generated) but wherever possible the crew built real sets, which ought to give scenes where reality starts to break down into chaos a definite edge.
One of the most well-considered descriptions of what Nolan is trying to do with the movie comes from Page, who will play one of DiCaprio's two sidekicks in the film (the other is played by Tom Hardy).
"There's a tangible realism even when it gets crazy, and somehow that makes the jeopardy feel more real," she told the Times. "It's like reading a Haruki Murakami novel – it's fantasy, but instead of feeling like some strange surreal world it feels very honest. The emotional spine of the story is there too, which is the key to his movies. There's the big scale, but the sincerity isn't left behind. The story is complicated but never confusing."
Inception, then, is a sort of noirish existential thriller set within a reality which exists in our minds, which technology has allowed us to access: a sort of Alice in the Matrix, perhaps. I'll leave you with Nolan's own description of the thought processes which led him to develop the heist storyline.
What would that [technology] be used and abused for? That was the jumping off point," he told the Times. "And clearly 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."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog ... -inception
"Speaking to the LA Times last month, Nolan described Inception as being in the same vein as late 1990s efforts such as The Matrix, Dark City, and The Thirteenth Floor, as well as his own Memento. All of the above share the sense that the reality which we see around us may not be entirely real. Where Inception also seems to differ is that its characters are fully aware of the nature of their surroundings: the film posits the idea that it is possible to enter a shared dream state with other human beings, a sort of virtual reality of the consciousness. Nolan specifically rejected the idea that his film might borrow "second-life" tropes from movies such as Avatar, Surrogates, Gamer, or the Tron movies, however. He said he was inspired to write the story, which took him a decade, by his own experiences with lucid dreaming during the moments in between sleep and wakefulness.
He told the Times:
You can look around and examine the details and pick up a handful of sand on the beach. I never particularly found a limit to that; that is to say, that while in that state your brain can fill in all that reality.
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.
On a technical level, Nolan told Collider he would be eschewing 3D in favour of the combination of Imax footage and high-definition film which made The Dark Knight such a bravura visual experience. CGI will be used for certain sequences (the latest trailer features a self-assembling building which must certainly be computer generated) but wherever possible the crew built real sets, which ought to give scenes where reality starts to break down into chaos a definite edge.
One of the most well-considered descriptions of what Nolan is trying to do with the movie comes from Page, who will play one of DiCaprio's two sidekicks in the film (the other is played by Tom Hardy).
"There's a tangible realism even when it gets crazy, and somehow that makes the jeopardy feel more real," she told the Times. "It's like reading a Haruki Murakami novel – it's fantasy, but instead of feeling like some strange surreal world it feels very honest. The emotional spine of the story is there too, which is the key to his movies. There's the big scale, but the sincerity isn't left behind. The story is complicated but never confusing."
Inception, then, is a sort of noirish existential thriller set within a reality which exists in our minds, which technology has allowed us to access: a sort of Alice in the Matrix, perhaps. I'll leave you with Nolan's own description of the thought processes which led him to develop the heist storyline.
What would that [technology] be used and abused for? That was the jumping off point," he told the Times. "And clearly 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."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog ... -inception
