In a recent interview, John Landis was asked about Inception. Here's what he had to say.
"Interestingly enough Inception, which is wonderful, is not original. There have been a lot of movies like it; remember Dreamscape? Oh, that's bad special effects but almost the same movie. It's Dennis Quaid and Edward Albert is the president of the United States and they insert him into his dreams.
Don't misunderstand me, I think Christopher Nolan is a wonderful director it's just I don't think he is yet to make a movie other than Memento that I thought was really original. It's just very stylish."
He's right, there has been dozens of heist movies set entirely in multiple dream levels. Oh wait...
Originality means you mix different elements that have been done before into something completely new. It's not as if there weren't film noirs, amnesia movies, or backwards flowing stories before Memento. But when you combine all three elements into one, you get something really different.
It's the same with the batman movies. There were six feature films about batman before the Dark Knight, not to mention countless other superhero movies, but it was the first one to mix the genre with crime thrillers and themes of terrorism with a hyper serious tone.
For a film to be orignal, it doesn't necesarrily have to be a completely new concept - the idea of entering dreams has been done before, but the ideas of extraction and Inception, plus the different concepts within shared dreaming such as kicks and the difference of time - as well as presenting dream entry as a heist type film, is something that I've never really seen before.
tokkaandrahzar wrote:He's right, there has been dozens of heist movies set entirely in multiple dream levels. Oh wait...
Originality means you mix different elements that have been done before into something completely new. It's not as if there weren't film noirs, amnesia movies, or backwards flowing stories before Memento. But when you combine all three elements into one, you get something really different.
It's the same with the batman movies. There were six feature films about batman before the Dark Knight, not to mention countless other superhero movies, but it was the first one to mix the genre with crime thrillers and themes of terrorism with a hyper serious tone.
The idea of having a purely original film ever being made is a load of Bull.
As others have said, original films are ones with old ideas mixed into others. I also think it has to deal with concepts. I haven't seen Dreamscape, but a lot of people compared Inception to Scrooge McDuck; however, the latter didn't have anywhere near the complex themes that Inception had.
Inception was more long overdue than unoriginal. I'm sure the Sci-Fi community has been waiting for a movie like this for awhile. Nolan was just fortunate enough to be the first to introduce the idea of inception. No reason to hate.
