STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT EXPOSITION!

This 2010 contemporary sci-fi actioner follows a subconscious security team around the globe and into the intimate and infinite world of dreams.
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Could've this film be made without the exposition? Yes. Could've this film still be a remarkable piece of work without it (or even better)? Probably. But this an action film at a surface level. A heist movie. This was never intended to be an artsy-schmartsy, wordless, surrealist motion picture. Nolan wanted to make an intelligent action movie. And in action/heist movies you by default require exposition to make any sense of what is happening. The story we experience is told objectively. There is no pretense of it being surrealistic gobbledygook. The real meat of the movie is underneath what we see or are told by the characters. It's all the little details and implications that are never explained. All of the surface level stuff, exposition, action, what have you, is there to inform and entertain us. It's not what makes this movie. It's what keeps this movie's premise together.

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I don't care at all about the exposition. I did find it odd when it sounded like things were "made up along the way" though. Not from Nolan's end, but just as an audience member watching. I get it though. I just wish they explained spawn points, haha. I think some people don't like that characters like Ariadne are simply there to be provided exposition for the audience.

One thing that would have really helped is if Nolan first made a film called Extraction, and then made Inception. That way, Extraction gets you the bare-bones of dream states (world-building, slowed time, kicks, original purpose of machine), subconsciousness (ideas/vaults, projections, totems), and Inception would have introduced some of the deeper stuff (inception itself and Mal's death explanation, dreams within dreams, Limbo, devices like Mr. Charles and forging, sedative alterations, senses from above affecting dream states). Looking back, if he had pre-planned that and Inception was that kick-ass sequel that's mostly what we got but with less exposition, people complaining about exposition would have lightened up quite a bit IMO.

I'm gonna watch that movie again this weekend. I love it.

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