Inception (film)
Encyclopedia
Inception is a 2010 science fiction
action
heist film
written, co-produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan
. The film features an international ensemble cast
starring Leonardo DiCaprio
, Ken Watanabe
, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
, Marion Cotillard
, Ellen Page
, Tom Hardy
, Cillian Murphy
, Dileep Rao
, Tom Berenger
, and Michael Caine
. DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a specialized corporate spy and thief. His work consists of secretly extracting valuable commercial information from the unconscious mind
s of his targets while they are asleep and dreaming. Wanted for murder and unable to visit his children, Cobb is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the planting of an original idea into a target's subconscious.
Development began roughly nine years before Inception was released. In 2001, Nolan wrote an 80-page treatment
about dream-stealers, presenting the idea to Warner Bros.
The story was originally envisioned as a horror film
inspired by concepts of lucid dreaming
and dream incubation
. Feeling he needed to have more experience with large-scale films, Nolan opted to work on Batman Begins
(2005), The Prestige
(2006), and The Dark Knight
(2008). He spent six months polishing the script for Inception before Warner Bros. purchased it in February 2009. Filming spanned six countries and four continents, beginning in Tokyo on June 19, 2009, and finishing in Canada in late November of the same year.
Inception was officially budgeted at $160 million, a cost that was split between Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures
. Nolan's reputation and success with The Dark Knight helped secure the film's $100 million in advertising expenditure, with most of the publicity involving viral marketing
. Inception premiered in London on July 8, 2010, and was released in both conventional and IMAX
theaters on July 16, 2010. A box office success, Inception has grossed over $800 million worldwide and is currently one of the highest-grossing films of all time. The home video market also had strong results, with $68 million in DVD sales.
Inception received wide critical acclaim, with numerous critics praising it for its originality, cast, score, and visual effects. The film received eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score
and Best Art Direction and won the awards for Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Cinematography.
) and his business partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt
) perform illegal corporate espionage
by entering the subconscious minds
of their targets, using two-level "dream within a dream
" strategies to extract valuable information. Dreamers are awakened either by a sudden shock (a "kick
"), or by dying in the dream. Each of the extractors carries a totem
, a personalized small object whose behavior is unpredictable to anyone except its owner, to determine whether they are in another person's dream. Cobb's totem is a spinning top
which perpetually spins in the dream state. Cobb struggles with memories of his dead wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard
), who manifests within his dreams and tries to sabotage his efforts.
Cobb is approached by the wealthy Mr. Saito (Ken Watanabe
), Cobb's latest extraction target, asking him and his team to perform the act of "inception"; planting an idea within the person's subconscious mind. Saito wishes to break up the vast energy
conglomerate
of his competitor, the ailing Maurice Fischer (Pete Postlethwaite
), by planting this idea in his son, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy
), who will inherit the empire when his father dies. Should Cobb succeed, Saito promises to use his influence to clear Cobb of the murder charges for his wife's death, allowing Cobb to re-enter the United States and reunite with his children. Despite Arthur's insistence that inception is impossible, Cobb accepts the job and assembles his team: Eames (Tom Hardy
), an identity forger; Yusuf (Dileep Rao
), a chemist who concocts the powerful sedative
needed to stabilize the three-layered shared dream required for inception; and Ariadne (Ellen Page
), a young architecture student tasked with designing the labyrinth
of the dream landscapes. Saito insists on joining the team as an observer and to ensure the job is completed. While planning the inception, Ariadne learns of the guilt Cobb struggles with from Mal's suicide and his separation from his children when he fled the country as a fugitive.
The job is set in motion when Maurice Fischer dies and his son accompanies his father's body from Sydney to Los Angeles. During the flight, Cobb sedates Robert Fischer, and the team bring him into the shared dream. At each stage, the member of the team who is "creating" the dream remains to generate the "kick", while the other team members fall asleep within the dream to travel further down into Fischer's subconscious. The dreamers will then ride a synchronized series of "kicks" (the van plunging off a bridge, a fall between hotel rooms, and a collapsing building) back up the levels to wake up to reality. In the first level, Yusuf's dream of a rainy city, the team successfully abducts Fischer, but the team is attacked by projections of Fischer's 'militarized subconscious', which have been trained to hunt and kill extractors, and Saito is mortally wounded. Due to the strength of Yusuf's sedative, however, dying in the dream will send them into Limbo
, a deep subconscious level where they may lose their grip on reality and be trapped indefinitely.
Eames temporarily takes the appearance of Fischer's godfather Peter Browning (Tom Berenger
) to suggest that he reconsider his opinion of his father's will
. Yusuf remains on the first level driving a van through the streets, while the remaining team members enter Arthur's dream, taking place in a corporate hotel. Cobb turns Fischer against his projection of Browning and persuades him to join the team as Arthur runs point. They descend to the third dream level, Eames' dream, a snowy mountain fortress designed by Ariadne. Fischer is told that it represents Browning's subconscious, but the team is really accessing Fischer's subconscious. Yusuf's evasive driving on the first level manifests as distorted gravity effects on the second, forcing Arthur to improvise a kick using an elevator shaft, and an avalanche
on the third.
Saito succumbs to his wounds, and Cobb's projection of Mal sabotages the plan by shooting Fischer, killing him. Cobb and Ariadne enter Limbo to find Fischer and Saito. There, Cobb confronts his projection of Mal, who tries to convince him to stay with her and his children in Limbo. Cobb refuses and confesses that he feels he was responsible for Mal's suicide. Using inception to help her escape from Limbo during a shared dream experience, he inspired in her the idea that her world wasn't real. Once she had returned to reality, she became convinced that she was still dreaming and needed to die in order to wake up, writing a letter claiming that Cobb was threatening her to try and convince him to accept their dream state and commit suicide with her. Mal then stabs Cobb with a knife but Ariadne shoots her. Through his confession, Cobb attains catharsis
and chooses to remain in Limbo to search for Saito. Eames defibrillates
Fischer to bring him back up to the third-level mountain fortress, where he enters a safe room and discovers and accepts the idea to split up his father's business empire.
Leaving Cobb behind, the team members escape by riding the kicks back up the levels of the dream. Cobb eventually finds an elderly Saito who has been waiting in Limbo for decades in dream time (just a short time in real time), the two help each other to remember their arrangement, and the team awakens on the flight. Cobb passes through U.S. customs
, and reunites with his children at home. He uses his spinning top totem to test reality, but is distracted by his children before he can see the result.
about dream-stealers. Originally, Nolan had envisioned Inception as a horror film
, but eventually wrote it as a heist film
even though he found that "traditionally [they] are very deliberately superficial in emotional terms." Upon revisiting his script, he decided that basing it in that genre did not work because the story "relies so heavily on the idea of the interior state, the idea of dream and memory
. I realized I needed to raise the emotional stakes." Nolan worked on the script for nine to ten years. When he first started thinking about making the film, Nolan was influenced by "that era of movies where you had The Matrix
(1999), you had Dark City (1998), you had The Thirteenth Floor
(1999) and, to a certain extent, you had Memento (2000), too. They were based in the principles that the world around you might not be real."
Nolan first pitched the film to Warner Bros. in 2001, but then felt that he needed more experience making large-scale films, and embarked on Batman Begins
and The Dark Knight
. He soon realized that a film like Inception needed a large budget because "as soon as you're talking about dreams, the potential of the human mind is infinite. And so the scale of the film has to feel infinite. It has to feel like you could go anywhere by the end of the film. And it has to work on a massive scale." After making The Dark Knight, Nolan decided to make Inception and spent six months completing the script. Nolan states that the key to completing the script was wondering what would happen if several people shared the same dream. "Once you remove the privacy, you've created an infinite number of alternative universes in which people can meaningfully interact, with validity, with weight, with dramatic consequences."
Leonardo DiCaprio was the first actor to be cast in the film. Nolan had been trying to work with the actor for years and met him several times, but was unable to convince him to appear in any of his films until Inception. DiCaprio finally agreed because he was "intrigued by this concept – this dream-heist notion and how this character's going to unlock his dreamworld and ultimately affect his real life." He read the script and found it to be "very well written, comprehensive but you really had to have Chris in person, to try to articulate some of the things that have been swirling around his head for the last eight years." DiCaprio and Nolan spent months talking about the screenplay. Nolan took a long time re-writing the script in order "to make sure that the emotional journey of his character was the driving force of the movie." On February 11, 2009, it was announced that Warner Bros.
purchased Inception, a spec script
written by Nolan.
began in Tokyo on June 19, 2009, with the scene where Saito first hires Cobb during a helicopter flight over the city. The production moved to the United Kingdom and shot in Cardington
, a converted airship hangar in Bedfordshire, north of London. There, the hotel bar set which tilted 30 degrees was built. A hotel corridor was also constructed by Guy Hendrix Dyas
, the production designer, Chris Corbould
, the special effects supervisor, and Wally Pfister, the director of photography, it rotated a full 360 degrees to create the effect of alternate directions of gravity for scenes set during the second level of dreaming; where dream-sector physics become chaotic. The idea was inspired by a technique used in Stanley Kubrick
's 2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968). Nolan said, "I was interested in taking those ideas, techniques, and philosophies and applying them to an action scenario". The filmmakers originally planned to make the hallway 40 ft (12 m) long but as the action sequence became more elaborate, the hallway's length grew to 100 ft (30 m). The corridor was suspended along eight large concentric rings that were spaced equidistantly outside its walls and powered by two massive electric motors. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays Arthur, spent several weeks learning to fight in a corridor that spun like "a giant hamster wheel
". Nolan said of the device, "It was like some incredible torture device; we thrashed Joseph for weeks, but in the end we looked at the footage, and it looks unlike anything any of us has seen before. The rhythm of it is unique, and when you watch it, even if you know how it was done, it confuses your perceptions. It's unsettling in a wonderful way". Gordon-Levitt remembered, "it was six-day weeks of just, like, coming home at night battered ... The light fixtures on the ceiling are coming around on the floor, and you have to choose the right time to cross through them, and if you don't, you're going to fall." On July 15, 2009, filming took place at University College London
library. The signage of the library was changed to read "bibliothèque" (French for "library").
Filming moved to France where they shot the pivotal scene between Ariadne and Cobb in a Parisian bistro
. For the explosion that takes place during this scene, the local authorities would not allow the actual use of explosives. High-pressure nitrogen
was used to create the effect of a series of explosions. Pfister used six high-speed cameras to capture the sequence from different angles and make sure that they got the shot. The visual effects department then enhanced the sequence, adding more destruction and flying debris. For the "Paris folding" sequence and when Ariadne "creates" the bridges, green screen and CGI were used on location. Tangiers, Morocco, doubled as Mombasa
, where Cobb hires Eames and Yusuf. A foot chase was shot in the streets and alleyways of the historic Grand Souk
. To capture this sequence, Pfister employed a mix of hand-held camera
and steadicam
work. Tangiers was also used to film an important riot scene during the initial foray into Saito's mind.
Filming moved to the Los Angeles area, where some sets were built on a Warner Brothers sound stage
, including the interior rooms of Saito's Japanese castle (the exterior was done on a small set built in Malibu beach). The dining room was inspired by the Nijo Castle
built around 1603. These sets were inspired by a mix of Japanese architecture
and Western influences. The production also staged a multi-vehicle car chase
on the streets of downtown Los Angeles
, which involved a freight train crashing down the middle of a street. To do this, the filmmakers configured a train engine on the chassis of a tractor trailer. The replica was made from fiberglass
molds taken from authentic train parts and then matched in terms of color and design. Also, the car chase was supposed to be set in the midst of a downpour but the L.A. weather stayed typically sunny. The filmmakers were forced to set up elaborate effects (e.g., rooftop water cannon
s) to give the audience the impression that the weather was overcast and soggy. L.A. was also the site of the climactic scene where a Ford Econoline
van flies off the Schuyler Heim Bridge in slow motion. This sequence was filmed on and off for months with the van being shot out of a cannon, according to actor Dileep Rao. Capturing the actors suspended within the van in slow motion took a whole day to film. Once the van landed in the water, the challenge for the actors was not to panic. "And when they ask you to act, it's a bit of an ask," explained Cillian Murphy. The actors had to be underwater for four to five minutes while drawing air from scuba tanks
; underwater buddy breathing
is shown in this sequence. Cobb's house was in Pasadena. The hotel lobby was filmed at the CAA building in Culver City. Limbo was made on location in Los Angeles and Morocco with the beach scene filmed at Palos Verdes beach with CGI buildings. N Hope St. in Los Angeles was the primary filming location for Limbo, with green screen and CGI being used to create the dream landscape.
The final phase of principal photography took place in Alberta
in late November 2009. The location manager discovered a temporarily closed ski resort, Fortress Mountain. An elaborate set was assembled near the top station of the Canadian chairlift
, taking three months to build. The production had to wait for a huge snowstorm, which eventually arrived. The ski-chase sequence was inspired by Nolan's favorite James Bond
film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service
(1969): "What I liked about it that we've tried to emulate in this film is there's a tremendous balance in that movie of action and scale and romanticism and tragedy and emotion."
on 35 mm film
, with key sequences filmed on 65 mm
, and aerial sequences in VistaVision
. Nolan did not shoot any footage with IMAX
cameras as he had with The Dark Knight
. "We didn't feel that we were going to be able to shoot in IMAX because of the size of the cameras because this film given that it deals with a potentially surreal area, the nature of dreams and so forth, I wanted it to be as realistic as possible. Not be bound by the scale of those IMAX cameras, even though I love the format dearly". Nolan also chose not to shoot any of the film in 3D as he prefers shooting on film and using prime lenses
, which is not possible with 3D cameras. Nolan has also criticised the dim image that 3D projection produces, and disputes that traditional film does not allow realistic depth perception
, saying "I think it's a misnomer to call it 3D versus 2D. The whole point of cinematic imagery is it's three dimensional... You know 95% of our depth cues
come from occlusion
, resolution, color and so forth, so the idea of calling a 2D movie a '2D movie' is a little misleading." Nolan did test converting Inception into 3D in post production but decided that, while it was possible, he lacked the time to complete the conversion to a standard he was happy with. In February 2011 Jonathan Liebesman
suggested that Warner Bros were attempting a 3D conversion for Blu-ray
release.
Wally Pfister gave each location and dream level a distinctive look with the mountain fortress having a sterile, cool look, the hotel hallways had warm hues and the van scenes were neutral. This was done so that the audience would know immediately where they were during the heavily crosscut portion of the film.
Nolan has said that the film "deals with levels of reality, and perceptions of reality which is something I'm very interested in. It's an action film set in a contemporary world, but with a slight science-fiction bent to it," while also describing it as "very much an ensemble film structured somewhat as a heist movie. It's an action adventure that spans the globe".
, preferring practical effect
s whenever possible. Nolan said, "It's always very important to me to do as much as possible in-camera, and then, if necessary, computer graphics are very useful to build on or enhance what you have achieved physically." To this end, visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin built a miniature
of the mountain fortress set and then blew it up for the film. For the fight scene that takes place in zero gravity, he used CG-based effects to "subtly bend elements like physics, space and time."
The most challenging effect was the "limbo" city level at the end of the film because it continually developed during production. Franklin had artists build concepts while Nolan gave his ideal vision: "Something glacial, with clear modernist architecture, but with chunks of it breaking off into the sea like icebergs". Franklin and his team ended up with "something that looked like an iceberg version of Gotham City
with water running through it." They created a basic model of a glacier and then designers created a program that added elements like roads, intersections and ravines until they had a complex, yet organic-looking, cityscape. For the Paris-folding sequence, Franklin had artists producing concept sketches and then they created rough computer animations to give them an idea of what the sequence looked like while in motion. Later during principal photography, Nolan was able to direct Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page based on this rough computer animation Franklin had created. Inception had close to 500 visual effects shots (in comparison, Batman Begins
had approximately 620) which is considered minor in comparison to contemporary visual effects epics that can have around 1,500 or 2,000 special effects images.
, who described his work as "a very electronic, dense score", filled with "nostalgia and sadness" to match Cobb's feelings throughout the film. The music was written simultaneously to filming, and features a guitar sound reminiscent of Ennio Morricone
, played by Johnny Marr
, former guitarist of The Smiths
. Édith Piaf
's "Non, je ne regrette rien
" appears recurringly throughout the film, and Zimmer reworked pieces of the song into cues of the score. A soundtrack album
was released on July 11, 2010 by Reprise Records
. Hans Zimmer's music was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Original Score
category in 2011, losing to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of The Social Network
.
In Inception, Nolan wanted to explore "the idea of people sharing a dream space...That gives you the ability to access somebody's unconscious mind
. What would that be used and abused for?" The majority of the film's plot takes place in these interconnected dream worlds. This structure creates a framework where actions in the real or dream worlds ripple across others. The dream is always in a state of production, and shifts across the levels as the characters navigate it. By contrast, the world of The Matrix
(1999) is an authoritarian, computer-controlled one, alluding to theories of social control developed by Michel Foucault
and Jean Baudrillard
. Nolan's world has more in common with the works of Gilles Deleuze
and Félix Guattari
.
David Denby compared Nolan's cinematic treatment of dreams to Luis Buñuel
's in Belle de Jour
(1967) and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
(1972). He criticised Nolan's "literal-minded" action level sequencing compared to Buñuel, who "silently pushed us into reveries and left us alone to enjoy our wonderment, but Nolan is working on so many levels of representation at once that he has to lay in pages of dialogue just to explain what’s going on." The latter captures "the peculiar malign intensity of actual dreams."
Deirdre Barrett
, a dream researcher at Harvard University, said that Nolan did not get every detail accurate regarding dreams, but their illogical, rambling, disjointed plots would not make for a great thriller anyway. However, "he did get many aspects right," she said, citing the scene in which a sleeping Cobb is shoved into a full bath, and in the dream world water gushes into the windows of the building, waking him up. "That's very much how real stimuli get incorporated, and you very often wake up right after that intrusion.".
Nolan himself said, "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."
is highly active and the prefrontal cortex
, which deals with logic, deliberate analysis, and self awareness, is quiet. Paul argued that the experience of going to a picturehouse is itself a excercise in shared dreaming, particularly when viewing Inception: the film's sharp cutting between scenes forces the viewer to create larger narrative arcs to stitch the pieces together. This demand of production parallel to consumption of the images, on the part of the audience is analgous to dreaming itself. As in the film's story, in a cinema one enters into the space of another's dream, in this case Nolan's, as with any work of art, one's reading of it is ultimately influenced by one's own subjective desires and subconcious.
, heist film
, and film noir
.
Marion Cotillard
plays "Mal" Cobb, Dom Cobb's projection of his guilt over his deceased wife's suicide. As the film's main antagonist, she is a frequent, malevolent presence in his dreams. Dom is unable to control these projections of her, challenging his abilities as an extractor. Nolan described Mal as "the essence of the femme fatale,", the key noir reference in the film. As a "classic femme fatale" her relationship with Cobb is in his mind, a manifestation of Cobb's own neurosis and fear of how little he knows about the woman he loves. DiCaprio praised Cotillard's performance saying that "she can be strong and vulnerable and hopeful and heartbreaking all in the same moment, which was perfect for all the contradictions of her character".
Nolan began with the structure of a heist movie, since exposition
is an essential element of that genre, though adapted it to have a greater emotional narrative suited to the world of dreams and subconscious. Or, as Denby surmised, "the outer shell of the story is an elaborate caper". Kirstin Thompson argued that exposition was a major formal device in the film. While a traditional heist movie has a heavy dose of exposition at the beginning as the team assembles and the leader explains the plan, in Inception this becomes nearly continuous as the group progresses through the various levels of dreaming. Three-quarters of the film, until the van begins to fall from the bridge, are devoted to explaining its plot. In this way, exposition takes precedence over characterisation. Their relationships are created by their respective skills and roles. Ariadne, like her ancient namesake
, creates the maze and guides the others through it, but also helps Cobb navigate his own subconscious, and as the sole student of dream-sharing, helps the audience understand the conceit of the plot.
Nolan drew inspiration from the works of Jorge Luis Borges
,, the anime
film Paprika (2006) by the late Satoshi Kon
as an influence on the character "Ariadne", and Blade Runner
(1982) by Ridley Scott
.
from a shot of the top wobbling ambiguously, inviting speculation about whether the final sequence was reality or another dream. Nolan confirmed that the ambiguity was deliberate, saying "I've been asked the question more times than I've ever been asked any other question about any other film I've made... What's funny to me is that people really do expect me to answer it." The film's script concludes with "Behind him, on the table, the spinning top is STILL SPINNING. And we – FADE OUT" However, Christopher Nolan also said, "I put that cut there at the end, imposing an ambiguity from outside the film. That always felt the right ending to me – it always felt like the appropriate 'kick' to me… The real point of the scene – and this is what I tell people – is that Cobb isn't looking at the top. He's looking at his kids. He's left it behind. That's the emotional significance of the thing."
In September 2010, Michael Caine
, explained his interpretation of the ending, "If I'm there it's real, because I'm never in the dream. I'm the guy who invented the dream." Nolan himself noted that "I choose to believe that Cobb gets back to his kids, because I have young kids. People who have kids definitely read it differently than those who don't". He indicated that the top was not the most crucial element of the ending, saying "I've read plenty of very off-the-wall interpretations... The most important emotional thing about the top spinning at the end is that Cobb is not looking at it. He doesn't care."
A viral marketing
campaign was employed for the film. After the revelation of the first teaser trailer, in August 2009, the film's official website featured only an animation of Cobb's spinning top. On December, the top toppled over and the website opened the online game Mind Crime, which upon completion revealed Inceptions poster. The rest of the campaign unrolled after WonderCon
in April 2010, where Warner gave away promotional T-shirts featuring the PASIV briefcase used to create the dream space, and had a QR code
linking to an online manual of the device. Mind Crime also received a stage 2 with more resources, including a hidden trailer for the movie. More pieces of viral marketing began to surface before Inceptions release, such as a manual filled with bizarre images and text sent to Wired
magazine, and the online publication of posters, ads, phone applications, and strange websites all related to the film. Warner also released an online prequel comic, Inception: The Cobol Job.
The official trailer released on May 10, 2010 through Mind Game was extremely well received. It featured an original piece of music, "Mind Heist", by marketing composer Zack Hemsey
, rather than music from the score. The trailer quickly went viral with numerous mashups
copying its style, both by amateurs on sites like YouTube and by professionals on sites such as CollegeHumor
. On June 7, 2010, a behind-the-scenes featurette on the film was released in HD on Yahoo! Movies.
on December 3, 2010, in France, and the week after in the UK and USA (December 7, 2010). Warner Bros. also made available in the United States a limited Blu-ray edition packaged in a metal replica of the PASIV briefcase, which included extras such as a metal replica of the spinning top totem. With a production run of less than 2000, it sold out in one weekend.
Inception was released in both conventional and IMAX
theaters on July 16, 2010. The film had its world premiere at Leicester Square
in London, England on July 8, 2010. In the United States and Canada, Inception was released theatrically in 3,792 conventional theaters and 195 IMAX
theaters. The film grossed $21.8 million during its opening day on July 16, 2010, with midnight screenings in 1,500 locations. Overall the film made $62.7 million and debuted at No.1 on its opening weekend. Inceptions opening weekend gross made it the second-highest-grossing debut for a science-fiction film
that was not a sequel, remake or adaptation, behind Avatar $77 million opening weekend gross in 2009. The film held the top spot of the box office rankings in its second and third weekends, with drops of just 32% ($42.7 million) and 36% ($27.5 million) respectively, before dropping to second place in its fourth week, behind The Other Guys
.
Inception grossed $292 million in the United States and Canada and $531 million overseas. In total, the film has grossed $823 million worldwide. Its five highest-grossing markets after the U.S.A. and Canada were China ($68 million), the United Kingdom, Ireland and Malta
($56 million), France and the Maghreb
region ($43 million), Japan ($40 million) and South Korea
($38 million). It was the sixth-highest grossing film of 2010 in North America, and the fourth-highest internationally, behind Toy Story 3
, Alice in Wonderland
and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1. The film currently stands as the 29th highest-grossing of all time. Inception is the second most lucrative production in the careers of both Christopher Nolan
– behind The Dark Knight
- and Leonardo DiCaprio
– behind Titanic
.
The film opened to strongly positive reviews. Rotten Tomatoes
reports that 86% of 274 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average score of 8/10. The website reported the critical consensus as "smart, innovative, and thrilling," and lauded the film as "that rare summer blockbuster that succeeds viscerally as well as intellectually." Metacritic
, another review aggregator, assigned the film a weighted average score of 74 (out of 100) based on 42 reviews from mainstream critics, considered to be "generally favorable reviews." In polls conducted by CinemaScore
during the opening weekend cinemagoers gave Inception and average "B+" on an A+ to F scale.
While some critics have tended to view the film as perfectly straightforward, and even criticize its overarching themes as "the stuff of torpid platitudes," online discussion has been much more positive. Heated debate has centered on the ambiguity of the ending, with many critics like Davin Faraci making the case that the film is self-referential and tongue-in-cheek, both a film about film-making and a dream about dreams. Other critics read Inception as Christian allegory and focus on the film's use of religious and water symbolism. Yet other critics, such as Kirsten Thompson, see less value in the ambiguous ending of the film and more in its structure and novel method of storytelling, highlighting Inception as a new form of narrative that revels in "continuous exposition".
Whatever its meaning, the film has had excellent reviews in general. Perhaps playing off the film's game imagery, Rolling Stone
magazine's Peter Travers
called Inception a "wildly ingenious chess game," and concluded "the result is a knockout."
In Variety
, Justin Chang praised the film as "a conceptual tour de force" and wrote, "applying a vivid sense of procedural detail to a fiendishly intricate yarn set in the labyrinth
of the unconscious mind
, the writer-director has devised a heist thriller for surrealists, a Jung
ian's Rififi
, that challenges viewers to sift through multiple layers of (un)reality." Jim Vejvoda of IGN
rated the film as perfect, deeming it "a singular accomplishment from a filmmaker who has only gotten better with each film." Relevant Magazine
s David Roark called it Nolan's greatest accomplishment, saying, "Visually, intellectually and emotionally, Inception is a masterpiece."
Empire
magazine rated it five stars in the August 2010 issue and wrote, "it feels like Stanley Kubrick
adapting the work of the great sci-fi author William Gibson
... Nolan delivers another true original: welcome to an undiscovered country." Entertainment Weekly
gave the film a B+ rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, "It's a rolling explosion of images as hypnotizing and sharply angled as any in a drawing by M.C. Escher or a state-of-the-biz videogame; the backwards splicing of Nolan's own Memento looks rudimentary by comparison." The New York Post
gave the film a four star rating and Lou Lumenick
wrote, "DiCaprio, who has never been better as the tortured hero, draws you in with a love story that will appeal even to non-sci-fi fans." Roger Ebert
of the Chicago Sun-Times
awarded the film a full four stars and said that Inception "is all about process, about fighting our way through enveloping sheets of reality and dream, reality within dreams, dreams without reality. It's a breathtaking juggling act." Richard Roeper
, also of the Sun-Times, gave Inception a perfect score of "A+" and called it "one of the best movies of the [21st] century."
BBC Radio 5 Live
's Mark Kermode
named Inception as the best film of 2010, stating "Inception is proof that people are not stupid, that cinema is not trash, and that it is possible for blockbusters and art to be the same thing."
In his review for the Chicago Tribune
, Michael Phillips
gave the film 3 stars out of 4 and wrote, "I found myself wishing Inception were weirder, further out ... the film is Nolan's labyrinth all the way, and it's gratifying to experience a summer movie with large visual ambitions and with nothing more or less on its mind than (as Shakespeare said) a dream that hath no bottom." TIME magazine's Richard Corliss wrote the film's "noble intent is to implant one man's vision in the mind of a vast audience ... The idea of moviegoing as communal dreaming is a century old. With Inception, viewers have a chance to see that notion get a state-of-the-art update." Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
felt that Nolan was able to blend "the best of traditional and modern filmmaking. If you're searching for smart and nervy popular entertainment, this is what it looks like."
USA Today
rated the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and Claudia Puig felt that Nolan "regards his viewers as possibly smarter than they are—or at least as capable of rising to his inventive level. That's a tall order. But it's refreshing to find a director who makes us stretch, even occasionally struggle, to keep up."
Not all reviewers, however, gave the film positive reviews. New York
magazine's David Edelstein
claimed in his review to "have no idea what so many people are raving about. It's as if someone went into their heads while they were sleeping and planted the idea that Inception is a visionary masterpiece and—hold on ... Whoa! I think I get it. The movie is a metaphor for the power of delusional hype—a metaphor for itself." Rex Reed
of The New York Observer explained the film's development as "pretty much what we've come to expect from summer movies in general and Christopher Nolan movies in particular ... [it] doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment to me." A. O. Scott
of The New York Times
commented "there is a lot to see in Inception, there is nothing that counts as genuine vision. Mr. Nolan's idea of the mind is too literal, too logical, too rule-bound to allow the full measure of madness." David Denby
, writing in The New Yorker
, considered the film not nearly as much fun as Nolan imagined it to be, concluding "Inception is a stunning-looking film that gets lost in fabulous intricacies, a movie devoted to its own workings and to little else."
.
The film won many awards in technical categories, such as Academy Awards for Best Cinematography
, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects, and the British Academy Film Awards
for Best Production Design
, Best Special Visual Effects
and Best Sound
. In most of its artistic nominations, such as Film, Director and Screenplay at the Oscars, BAFTAs and Golden Globes, the film was defeated by The Social Network
and The King's Speech. However, the film did win the two highest honors for a science fiction or fantasy film: the 2011 Bradbury Award
for best dramatic production and the 2011 Hugo Award
for best dramatic presentation, long form.
Science fiction film
Science fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that are not necessarily accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception, and time travel, often along with futuristic...
action
Action film
Action film is a film genre where one or more heroes is thrust into a series of challenges that require physical feats, extended fights and frenetic chases...
heist film
Heist film
A heist film is a film that has an intricate plot woven around a group of people trying to steal something. Versions with dominant or prominent comic elements are often called caper movies. They could be described as the analogues of caper stories in film history...
written, co-produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan
Christopher Nolan
Christopher Jonathan James Nolan is a British-American film director, screenwriter and producer.He received serious notice after his second feature Memento , which he wrote and directed based on a story idea by his brother, Jonathan Nolan. Jonathan went to co-write later scripts with him,...
. The film features an international ensemble cast
Ensemble cast
An ensemble cast is made up of cast members in which the principal actors and performers are assigned roughly equal amounts of importance and screen time in a dramatic production. This kind of casting became more popular in television series because it allows flexibility for writers to focus on...
starring Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio is an American actor and film producer. He has received many awards, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Aviator , and has been nominated by the Academy Awards, Screen Actors Guild and the British Academy of Film and Television...
, Ken Watanabe
Ken Watanabe
is a Japanese stage, film, and television actor. To English-speaking audiences he is known for playing tragic hero characters, such as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi in Letters from Iwo Jima and Lord Katsumoto Moritsugu in The Last Samurai, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best...
, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt is an American actor whose career as both a child and adult has included television series and theatrical films....
, Marion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard is a French actress and singer. She garnered critical acclaim for her roles in films such as La Vie en Rose, My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument, Taxi, Furia and Jeux d'enfants...
, Ellen Page
Ellen Page
Ellen Philpotts-Page , known professionally as Ellen Page, is a Canadian actress. Page received both Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for Best Actress for her role as the title character in the film Juno...
, Tom Hardy
Tom Hardy
Edward Thomas "Tom" Hardy is an English actor. He is best known for playing the title character in the 2008 British film Bronson, the character of Eames in Inception, and the villain Praetor Shinzon in Star Trek Nemesis...
, Cillian Murphy
Cillian Murphy
Cillian Murphy is an Irish film and theatre actor. He is often noted by critics for his chameleonic performances in diverse roles and distinctive blue eyes and general sex appeal....
, Dileep Rao
Dileep Rao
Dileep A. Rao is an American actor who has appeared in feature films and television series. He starred in Sam Raimi's horror film Drag Me to Hell , James Cameron's science fiction film Avatar , and Christopher Nolan's thriller Inception .-Life and career:Rao was born in Los Angeles, California to...
, Tom Berenger
Tom Berenger
Tom Berenger is an American actor known mainly for his roles in action films.-Early life:Berenger was born as Thomas Michael Moore in Chicago to an Irish Catholic family. Berenger's father was a printer for the Chicago Sun-Times. Berenger has a sister, Susan...
, and Michael Caine
Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine, CBE is an English actor. He won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in both Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules ....
. DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a specialized corporate spy and thief. His work consists of secretly extracting valuable commercial information from the unconscious mind
Unconscious mind
The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...
s of his targets while they are asleep and dreaming. Wanted for murder and unable to visit his children, Cobb is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the planting of an original idea into a target's subconscious.
Development began roughly nine years before Inception was released. In 2001, Nolan wrote an 80-page treatment
Film treatment
A film treatment is a piece of prose, typically the step between scene cards and the first draft of a screenplay for a motion picture, television program, or radio play. It is generally longer and more detailed than an outline , and it may include details of directorial style that an outline omits...
about dream-stealers, presenting the idea to Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
The story was originally envisioned as a horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
inspired by concepts of lucid dreaming
Lucid dreaming
A lucid dream is a dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming. The term was coined by the Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik van Eeden . In a lucid dream, the dreamer can actively participate in and manipulate imaginary experiences in the dream environment. Lucid dreams can seem real and...
and dream incubation
Dream incubation
Dream incubation is a practiced technique of learning to "plant a seed" in the mind, in order for a specific dream topic to occur, either for recreation or to attempt to solve a problem. For example, a person might go to bed repeating to themselves that they will dream about a presentation they...
. Feeling he needed to have more experience with large-scale films, Nolan opted to work on Batman Begins
Batman Begins
Batman Begins is a 2005 American superhero action film based on the fictional DC Comics character Batman, directed by Christopher Nolan. It stars Christian Bale as Batman, along with Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman, Ken Watanabe, Tom Wilkinson,...
(2005), The Prestige
The Prestige (film)
The Prestige is a 2006 mystery thriller film written, directed and co-produced by Christopher Nolan, with a screenplay adapted from Christopher Priest's 1995 novel of the same name. The story follows Robert Angier and Alfred Borden, rival stage magicians in London at the end of the 19th century...
(2006), and The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight (film)
The Dark Knight is a 2008 superhero film directed, produced and co-written by Christopher Nolan. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, the film is part of Nolan's Batman film series and a sequel to 2005's Batman Begins...
(2008). He spent six months polishing the script for Inception before Warner Bros. purchased it in February 2009. Filming spanned six countries and four continents, beginning in Tokyo on June 19, 2009, and finishing in Canada in late November of the same year.
Inception was officially budgeted at $160 million, a cost that was split between Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures
Legendary Pictures
Legendary Pictures is an American film production company, whose parent company, Legendary Entertainment, is based in Burbank, California and was founded by Thomas Tull in 2004...
. Nolan's reputation and success with The Dark Knight helped secure the film's $100 million in advertising expenditure, with most of the publicity involving viral marketing
Viral marketing
Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses...
. Inception premiered in London on July 8, 2010, and was released in both conventional and IMAX
IMAX
IMAX is a motion picture film format and a set of proprietary cinema projection standards created by the Canadian company IMAX Corporation. IMAX has the capacity to record and display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film systems...
theaters on July 16, 2010. A box office success, Inception has grossed over $800 million worldwide and is currently one of the highest-grossing films of all time. The home video market also had strong results, with $68 million in DVD sales.
Inception received wide critical acclaim, with numerous critics praising it for its originality, cast, score, and visual effects. The film received eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score
Academy Award for Best Original Score
The Academy Award for Original Score is presented to the best substantial body of music in the form of dramatic underscoring written specifically for the film by the submitting composer.-Superlatives:...
and Best Art Direction and won the awards for Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Cinematography.
Plot
Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprioLeonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio is an American actor and film producer. He has received many awards, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Aviator , and has been nominated by the Academy Awards, Screen Actors Guild and the British Academy of Film and Television...
) and his business partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt is an American actor whose career as both a child and adult has included television series and theatrical films....
) perform illegal corporate espionage
Industrial espionage
Industrial espionage, economic espionage or corporate espionage is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security purposes...
by entering the subconscious minds
Unconscious mind
The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...
of their targets, using two-level "dream within a dream
False awakening
A false awakening is a vivid and convincing dream about awakening from sleep, while the dreamer in reality continues to sleep. After a false awakening, subjects often dream they are performing daily morning rituals such as cooking, cleaning and eating...
" strategies to extract valuable information. Dreamers are awakened either by a sudden shock (a "kick
Hypnic jerk
A hypnic jerk, hypnagogic jerk, sleep start, or night start, is an involuntary myoclonic twitch which occurs during hypnagogia, just as a person is beginning to fall asleep, often causing them to awaken suddenly. Physically, hypnic jerks resemble the "jump" experienced by a person when...
"), or by dying in the dream. Each of the extractors carries a totem
Totem
A totem is a stipulated ancestor of a group of people, such as a family, clan, group, lineage, or tribe.Totems support larger groups than the individual person. In kinship and descent, if the apical ancestor of a clan is nonhuman, it is called a totem...
, a personalized small object whose behavior is unpredictable to anyone except its owner, to determine whether they are in another person's dream. Cobb's totem is a spinning top
Top
A top is a toy that can be spun on an axis, balancing on a point. This motion is produced in the most simple forms of top by twirling the stem using the fingers. More sophisticated tops are spun by by holding the axis firmly while pulling a string or twisting a stick or pushing an auger as shown...
which perpetually spins in the dream state. Cobb struggles with memories of his dead wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard is a French actress and singer. She garnered critical acclaim for her roles in films such as La Vie en Rose, My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument, Taxi, Furia and Jeux d'enfants...
), who manifests within his dreams and tries to sabotage his efforts.
Cobb is approached by the wealthy Mr. Saito (Ken Watanabe
Ken Watanabe
is a Japanese stage, film, and television actor. To English-speaking audiences he is known for playing tragic hero characters, such as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi in Letters from Iwo Jima and Lord Katsumoto Moritsugu in The Last Samurai, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best...
), Cobb's latest extraction target, asking him and his team to perform the act of "inception"; planting an idea within the person's subconscious mind. Saito wishes to break up the vast energy
Energy industry
The energy industry is the totality of all of the industries involved in the production and sale of energy, including fuel extraction, manufacturing, refining and distribution...
conglomerate
Conglomerate (company)
A conglomerate is a combination of two or more corporations engaged in entirely different businesses that fall under one corporate structure , usually involving a parent company and several subsidiaries. Often, a conglomerate is a multi-industry company...
of his competitor, the ailing Maurice Fischer (Pete Postlethwaite
Pete Postlethwaite
Peter William "Pete" Postlethwaite, OBE, was an English stage, film and television actor.After minor television appearances including in The Professionals, Postlethwaite's first success came with the film Distant Voices, Still Lives in 1988. He played a mysterious lawyer, Mr...
), by planting this idea in his son, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy
Cillian Murphy
Cillian Murphy is an Irish film and theatre actor. He is often noted by critics for his chameleonic performances in diverse roles and distinctive blue eyes and general sex appeal....
), who will inherit the empire when his father dies. Should Cobb succeed, Saito promises to use his influence to clear Cobb of the murder charges for his wife's death, allowing Cobb to re-enter the United States and reunite with his children. Despite Arthur's insistence that inception is impossible, Cobb accepts the job and assembles his team: Eames (Tom Hardy
Tom Hardy
Edward Thomas "Tom" Hardy is an English actor. He is best known for playing the title character in the 2008 British film Bronson, the character of Eames in Inception, and the villain Praetor Shinzon in Star Trek Nemesis...
), an identity forger; Yusuf (Dileep Rao
Dileep Rao
Dileep A. Rao is an American actor who has appeared in feature films and television series. He starred in Sam Raimi's horror film Drag Me to Hell , James Cameron's science fiction film Avatar , and Christopher Nolan's thriller Inception .-Life and career:Rao was born in Los Angeles, California to...
), a chemist who concocts the powerful sedative
Sedative
A sedative or tranquilizer is a substance that induces sedation by reducing irritability or excitement....
needed to stabilize the three-layered shared dream required for inception; and Ariadne (Ellen Page
Ellen Page
Ellen Philpotts-Page , known professionally as Ellen Page, is a Canadian actress. Page received both Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for Best Actress for her role as the title character in the film Juno...
), a young architecture student tasked with designing the labyrinth
Labyrinth
In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was an elaborate structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos...
of the dream landscapes. Saito insists on joining the team as an observer and to ensure the job is completed. While planning the inception, Ariadne learns of the guilt Cobb struggles with from Mal's suicide and his separation from his children when he fled the country as a fugitive.
The job is set in motion when Maurice Fischer dies and his son accompanies his father's body from Sydney to Los Angeles. During the flight, Cobb sedates Robert Fischer, and the team bring him into the shared dream. At each stage, the member of the team who is "creating" the dream remains to generate the "kick", while the other team members fall asleep within the dream to travel further down into Fischer's subconscious. The dreamers will then ride a synchronized series of "kicks" (the van plunging off a bridge, a fall between hotel rooms, and a collapsing building) back up the levels to wake up to reality. In the first level, Yusuf's dream of a rainy city, the team successfully abducts Fischer, but the team is attacked by projections of Fischer's 'militarized subconscious', which have been trained to hunt and kill extractors, and Saito is mortally wounded. Due to the strength of Yusuf's sedative, however, dying in the dream will send them into Limbo
Limbo
In the theology of the Catholic Church, Limbo is a speculative idea about the afterlife condition of those who die in original sin without being assigned to the Hell of the damned. Limbo is not an official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church or any other...
, a deep subconscious level where they may lose their grip on reality and be trapped indefinitely.
Eames temporarily takes the appearance of Fischer's godfather Peter Browning (Tom Berenger
Tom Berenger
Tom Berenger is an American actor known mainly for his roles in action films.-Early life:Berenger was born as Thomas Michael Moore in Chicago to an Irish Catholic family. Berenger's father was a printer for the Chicago Sun-Times. Berenger has a sister, Susan...
) to suggest that he reconsider his opinion of his father's will
Will (law)
A will or testament is a legal declaration by which a person, the testator, names one or more persons to manage his/her estate and provides for the transfer of his/her property at death...
. Yusuf remains on the first level driving a van through the streets, while the remaining team members enter Arthur's dream, taking place in a corporate hotel. Cobb turns Fischer against his projection of Browning and persuades him to join the team as Arthur runs point. They descend to the third dream level, Eames' dream, a snowy mountain fortress designed by Ariadne. Fischer is told that it represents Browning's subconscious, but the team is really accessing Fischer's subconscious. Yusuf's evasive driving on the first level manifests as distorted gravity effects on the second, forcing Arthur to improvise a kick using an elevator shaft, and an avalanche
Avalanche
An avalanche is a sudden rapid flow of snow down a slope, occurring when either natural triggers or human activity causes a critical escalating transition from the slow equilibrium evolution of the snow pack. Typically occurring in mountainous terrain, an avalanche can mix air and water with the...
on the third.
Saito succumbs to his wounds, and Cobb's projection of Mal sabotages the plan by shooting Fischer, killing him. Cobb and Ariadne enter Limbo to find Fischer and Saito. There, Cobb confronts his projection of Mal, who tries to convince him to stay with her and his children in Limbo. Cobb refuses and confesses that he feels he was responsible for Mal's suicide. Using inception to help her escape from Limbo during a shared dream experience, he inspired in her the idea that her world wasn't real. Once she had returned to reality, she became convinced that she was still dreaming and needed to die in order to wake up, writing a letter claiming that Cobb was threatening her to try and convince him to accept their dream state and commit suicide with her. Mal then stabs Cobb with a knife but Ariadne shoots her. Through his confession, Cobb attains catharsis
Catharsis
Catharsis or katharsis is a Greek word meaning "cleansing" or "purging". It is derived from the verb καθαίρειν, kathairein, "to purify, purge," and it is related to the adjective καθαρός, katharos, "pure or clean."-Dramatic uses:...
and chooses to remain in Limbo to search for Saito. Eames defibrillates
Defibrillation
Defibrillation is a common treatment for life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias, ventricular fibrillation and pulseless ventricular tachycardia. Defibrillation consists of delivering a therapeutic dose of electrical energy to the affected heart with a device called a defibrillator...
Fischer to bring him back up to the third-level mountain fortress, where he enters a safe room and discovers and accepts the idea to split up his father's business empire.
Leaving Cobb behind, the team members escape by riding the kicks back up the levels of the dream. Cobb eventually finds an elderly Saito who has been waiting in Limbo for decades in dream time (just a short time in real time), the two help each other to remember their arrangement, and the team awakens on the flight. Cobb passes through U.S. customs
U.S. Customs and Border Protection
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is a federal law enforcement agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security charged with regulating and facilitating international trade, collecting import duties, and enforcing U.S. regulations, including trade, customs and immigration. CBP is the...
, and reunites with his children at home. He uses his spinning top totem to test reality, but is distracted by his children before he can see the result.
Cast
- Leonardo DiCaprioLeonardo DiCaprioLeonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio is an American actor and film producer. He has received many awards, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Aviator , and has been nominated by the Academy Awards, Screen Actors Guild and the British Academy of Film and Television...
as Dominic "Dom" Cobb, a professional thief who specializes in conning secrets from his victims by infiltrating their dreams. DiCaprio was the first actor to be cast in the film. Nolan had been trying to work with the actor for years and met him several times, but was unable to convince him to appear in any of his films until Inception. According to Hollywood Reporter, both Brad PittBrad PittWilliam Bradley "Brad" Pitt is an American actor and film producer. Pitt has received two Academy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations, winning one...
and Will SmithWill SmithWillard Christopher "Will" Smith, Jr. , also known by his stage name The Fresh Prince, is an American actor, producer, and rapper. He has enjoyed success in television, film and music. In April 2007, Newsweek called him the most powerful actor in Hollywood...
were offered the role. - Joseph Gordon-LevittJoseph Gordon-LevittJoseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt is an American actor whose career as both a child and adult has included television series and theatrical films....
as Arthur, Cobb's partner who manages and researches the missions. Gordon-Levitt compared Arthur to the producer of Cobb's art, "the one saying, 'Okay, you have your vision; now I'm going to figure out how to make all the nuts and bolts work so you can do your thing'". The actor did all of his stunts but one scene and said the preparation "was a challenge and it would have to be for it to look real". - Ellen PageEllen PageEllen Philpotts-Page , known professionally as Ellen Page, is a Canadian actress. Page received both Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for Best Actress for her role as the title character in the film Juno...
as Ariadne, a graduate student of architecture who is recruited to construct the various dreamscapes, which are described as mazes. The name AriadneAriadneAriadne , in Greek mythology, was the daughter of King Minos of Crete, and his queen Pasiphaë, daughter of Helios, the Sun-titan. She aided Theseus in overcoming the Minotaur and was the bride of the god Dionysus.-Minos and Theseus:...
alludes to a princess of Greek mythGreek mythologyGreek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
, daughter of King MinosMinosIn Greek mythology, Minos was a king of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa. Every year he made King Aegeus pick seven men and seven women to go to Daedalus' creation, the labyrinth, to be eaten by The Minotaur. After his death, Minos became a judge of the dead in Hades. The Minoan civilization of Crete...
, who aided the hero TheseusTheseusFor other uses, see Theseus Theseus was the mythical founder-king of Athens, son of Aethra, and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, both of whom Aethra had slept with in one night. Theseus was a founder-hero, like Perseus, Cadmus, or Heracles, all of whom battled and overcame foes that were...
by giving him a sword and a ball of string to help him navigate the labyrinth which was the prison of the MinotaurMinotaurIn Greek mythology, the Minotaur , as the Greeks imagined him, was a creature with the head of a bull on the body of a man or, as described by Roman poet Ovid, "part man and part bull"...
. Nolan said that Page was chosen for being a "perfect combination of freshness and savvy and maturity beyond her years". Page said her character acts as a proxy to the audience, as "she's just learning about these ideas and, in essence, assists the audience in learning about dream sharing". - Tom HardyTom HardyEdward Thomas "Tom" Hardy is an English actor. He is best known for playing the title character in the 2008 British film Bronson, the character of Eames in Inception, and the villain Praetor Shinzon in Star Trek Nemesis...
as Eames, a sharp-tongued associate of Cobb's. Eames uses his ability to impersonate others inside the dream world in order to manipulate Fischer. Hardy described his character as "an old, Graham GreeneGraham GreeneHenry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
-type diplomat; sort of faded, shabby, grandeur - the old Shakespeare lovey mixed with somebody from her Majesty's Special ForcesUnited Kingdom Special ForcesThe United Kingdom Special Forces is a UK Ministry of Defence Directorate which also has the capability to provide a Joint Special Operations Task Force Headquarters...
", who wears "campy, old money" costumes. - Ken WatanabeKen Watanabeis a Japanese stage, film, and television actor. To English-speaking audiences he is known for playing tragic hero characters, such as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi in Letters from Iwo Jima and Lord Katsumoto Moritsugu in The Last Samurai, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best...
as Mr. Saito, a businessman who employs Cobb for the team's mission. Nolan wrote the role with Watanabe in mind, as he wanted to work with him again after Batman BeginsBatman BeginsBatman Begins is a 2005 American superhero action film based on the fictional DC Comics character Batman, directed by Christopher Nolan. It stars Christian Bale as Batman, along with Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman, Ken Watanabe, Tom Wilkinson,...
. Inception is Watanabe's first work in a contemporary setting where his primary language is English. Watanabe tried to emphasize a different characteristic of Saito in every dream level – "First chapter in my castle, I pick up some hidden feelings of the cycle. It's magical, powerful and then the first dream. And back to the second chapter, in the old hotel, I pick up [being] sharp and more calm and smart and it's a little bit [of a] different process to make up the character of any movie". - Dileep RaoDileep RaoDileep A. Rao is an American actor who has appeared in feature films and television series. He starred in Sam Raimi's horror film Drag Me to Hell , James Cameron's science fiction film Avatar , and Christopher Nolan's thriller Inception .-Life and career:Rao was born in Los Angeles, California to...
as Yusuf, the team's chemist. Rao describes Yusuf as "an avant-garde pharmacologist, who is a resource for people, like Cobb, who want to do this work unsupervised, unregistered and unapproved of by anyone". Co-producer Jordan Goldberg said the role of the chemist was "particularly tough because you don't want him to seem like some kind of drug dealer", and that Rao was cast for being "funny, interesting and obviously smart". - Cillian MurphyCillian MurphyCillian Murphy is an Irish film and theatre actor. He is often noted by critics for his chameleonic performances in diverse roles and distinctive blue eyes and general sex appeal....
as Robert Michael Fischer, the heir to a business empire and the team's target. Murphy said Fischer was portrayed as "a petulant child who's in need of a lot of attention from his father, he has everything he could ever want materially, but he's deeply lacking emotionally". The actor also researched the sons of Rupert MurdochRupert MurdochKeith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
, "to add to that the idea of living in the shadow of someone so immensely powerful". - Tom BerengerTom BerengerTom Berenger is an American actor known mainly for his roles in action films.-Early life:Berenger was born as Thomas Michael Moore in Chicago to an Irish Catholic family. Berenger's father was a printer for the Chicago Sun-Times. Berenger has a sister, Susan...
as Peter Browning, Robert Fischer's godfatherGodparentA godparent, in many denominations of Christianity, is someone who sponsors a child's baptism. A male godparent is a godfather, and a female godparent is a godmother...
and fellow executive at the Fischers' company. Berenger said Browning acts as a "surrogate father" to Robert, who calls the character "Uncle Peter", and emphasized that "Browning has been with [Robert] his whole life and has probably spent more quality time with him than his own father". - Marion CotillardMarion CotillardMarion Cotillard is a French actress and singer. She garnered critical acclaim for her roles in films such as La Vie en Rose, My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument, Taxi, Furia and Jeux d'enfants...
as Mallorie "Mal" Cobb. As the film's main antagonist, she is a manifestation of Dom's guilt about the real Mal's suicide. He is unable to control these projections of her, challenging his abilities as an extractor. Nolan described Mal as "the essence of the femme fatale," and DiCaprio praised Cotillard's performance saying that "she can be strong and vulnerable and hopeful and heartbreaking all in the same moment, which was perfect for all the contradictions of her character".
Development
Initially, Nolan wrote an 80-page treatmentFilm treatment
A film treatment is a piece of prose, typically the step between scene cards and the first draft of a screenplay for a motion picture, television program, or radio play. It is generally longer and more detailed than an outline , and it may include details of directorial style that an outline omits...
about dream-stealers. Originally, Nolan had envisioned Inception as a horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
, but eventually wrote it as a heist film
Heist film
A heist film is a film that has an intricate plot woven around a group of people trying to steal something. Versions with dominant or prominent comic elements are often called caper movies. They could be described as the analogues of caper stories in film history...
even though he found that "traditionally [they] are very deliberately superficial in emotional terms." Upon revisiting his script, he decided that basing it in that genre did not work because the story "relies so heavily on the idea of the interior state, the idea of dream and memory
Memory
In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....
. I realized I needed to raise the emotional stakes." Nolan worked on the script for nine to ten years. When he first started thinking about making the film, Nolan was influenced by "that era of movies where you had The Matrix
The Matrix
The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction-action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving...
(1999), you had Dark City (1998), you had The Thirteenth Floor
The Thirteenth Floor
The Thirteenth Floor is a 1999 science fiction film directed by Josef Rusnak and loosely based upon Simulacron-3 , a novel by Daniel F. Galouye...
(1999) and, to a certain extent, you had Memento (2000), too. They were based in the principles that the world around you might not be real."
Nolan first pitched the film to Warner Bros. in 2001, but then felt that he needed more experience making large-scale films, and embarked on Batman Begins
Batman Begins
Batman Begins is a 2005 American superhero action film based on the fictional DC Comics character Batman, directed by Christopher Nolan. It stars Christian Bale as Batman, along with Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman, Ken Watanabe, Tom Wilkinson,...
and The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight (film)
The Dark Knight is a 2008 superhero film directed, produced and co-written by Christopher Nolan. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, the film is part of Nolan's Batman film series and a sequel to 2005's Batman Begins...
. He soon realized that a film like Inception needed a large budget because "as soon as you're talking about dreams, the potential of the human mind is infinite. And so the scale of the film has to feel infinite. It has to feel like you could go anywhere by the end of the film. And it has to work on a massive scale." After making The Dark Knight, Nolan decided to make Inception and spent six months completing the script. Nolan states that the key to completing the script was wondering what would happen if several people shared the same dream. "Once you remove the privacy, you've created an infinite number of alternative universes in which people can meaningfully interact, with validity, with weight, with dramatic consequences."
Leonardo DiCaprio was the first actor to be cast in the film. Nolan had been trying to work with the actor for years and met him several times, but was unable to convince him to appear in any of his films until Inception. DiCaprio finally agreed because he was "intrigued by this concept – this dream-heist notion and how this character's going to unlock his dreamworld and ultimately affect his real life." He read the script and found it to be "very well written, comprehensive but you really had to have Chris in person, to try to articulate some of the things that have been swirling around his head for the last eight years." DiCaprio and Nolan spent months talking about the screenplay. Nolan took a long time re-writing the script in order "to make sure that the emotional journey of his character was the driving force of the movie." On February 11, 2009, it was announced that Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
purchased Inception, a spec script
Spec script
A spec script, also known as a speculative screenplay, is a non-commissioned unsolicited screenplay. It is usually written by a screenwriter who hopes to have the script optioned and eventually purchased by a producer, production company, or studio....
written by Nolan.
Locations and sets
Principal photographyPrincipal photography
thumb|300px|Film production on location in [[Newark, New Jersey]].Principal photography is the phase of film production in which the movie is filmed, with actors on set and cameras rolling, as distinct from pre-production and post-production....
began in Tokyo on June 19, 2009, with the scene where Saito first hires Cobb during a helicopter flight over the city. The production moved to the United Kingdom and shot in Cardington
Cardington, Bedfordshire
Cardington is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Bedford in Bedfordshire, EnglandPart of the ancient hundred of Wixamtree, the settlement is best known in connection with the Cardington airship works founded by Short Brothers during World War I, which later became an RAF training station...
, a converted airship hangar in Bedfordshire, north of London. There, the hotel bar set which tilted 30 degrees was built. A hotel corridor was also constructed by Guy Hendrix Dyas
Guy Hendrix Dyas
Guy Hendrix Dyas, Production Designer, most recently collaborated with Christopher Nolan on his ambitious science fiction thriller “Inception” which earned him an Academy Award Nomination®™ as well as a BAFTA award for best Production Design...
, the production designer, Chris Corbould
Chris Corbould
Christopher "Chris" Corbould is a British special effects coordinator best known for his work on major blockbuster films and the action scenes on some 11 James Bond films since the early 1980s. He has also worked extensively on the Superman and Batman film series on digital effects and stunts...
, the special effects supervisor, and Wally Pfister, the director of photography, it rotated a full 360 degrees to create the effect of alternate directions of gravity for scenes set during the second level of dreaming; where dream-sector physics become chaotic. The idea was inspired by a technique used in Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
's 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...
(1968). Nolan said, "I was interested in taking those ideas, techniques, and philosophies and applying them to an action scenario". The filmmakers originally planned to make the hallway 40 ft (12 m) long but as the action sequence became more elaborate, the hallway's length grew to 100 ft (30 m). The corridor was suspended along eight large concentric rings that were spaced equidistantly outside its walls and powered by two massive electric motors. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays Arthur, spent several weeks learning to fight in a corridor that spun like "a giant hamster wheel
Hamster wheel
Most wheels are constructed of steel or plastic, both with advantages and problems. Solid plastic wheels are safer for some types of pets, such as hamsters and hedgehogs, because the space between rungs is solid and the animal's feet or legs cannot get stuck between rungs, an injury risk in steel...
". Nolan said of the device, "It was like some incredible torture device; we thrashed Joseph for weeks, but in the end we looked at the footage, and it looks unlike anything any of us has seen before. The rhythm of it is unique, and when you watch it, even if you know how it was done, it confuses your perceptions. It's unsettling in a wonderful way". Gordon-Levitt remembered, "it was six-day weeks of just, like, coming home at night battered ... The light fixtures on the ceiling are coming around on the floor, and you have to choose the right time to cross through them, and if you don't, you're going to fall." On July 15, 2009, filming took place at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
library. The signage of the library was changed to read "bibliothèque" (French for "library").
Filming moved to France where they shot the pivotal scene between Ariadne and Cobb in a Parisian bistro
Bistro
A bistro, sometimes spelled bistrot, is, in its original Parisian incarnation, a small restaurant serving moderately priced simple meals in a modest setting. Bistros are defined mostly by the foods they serve. Home cooking with robust earthy dishes, and slow-cooked foods like cassoulet are typical...
. For the explosion that takes place during this scene, the local authorities would not allow the actual use of explosives. High-pressure nitrogen
Nitrogen
Nitrogen is a chemical element that has the symbol N, atomic number of 7 and atomic mass 14.00674 u. Elemental nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78.08% by volume of Earth's atmosphere...
was used to create the effect of a series of explosions. Pfister used six high-speed cameras to capture the sequence from different angles and make sure that they got the shot. The visual effects department then enhanced the sequence, adding more destruction and flying debris. For the "Paris folding" sequence and when Ariadne "creates" the bridges, green screen and CGI were used on location. Tangiers, Morocco, doubled as Mombasa
Mombasa
Mombasa is the second-largest city in Kenya. Lying next to the Indian Ocean, it has a major port and an international airport. The city also serves as the centre of the coastal tourism industry....
, where Cobb hires Eames and Yusuf. A foot chase was shot in the streets and alleyways of the historic Grand Souk
Grand Socco
Grand Socco is a square in the medina area of central Tangier, Morocco and the larger of the Petit Socco which make up the medina of the city. The Grand Socco divides the medina from the Ville Nouvelle area of Tangier...
. To capture this sequence, Pfister employed a mix of hand-held camera
Hand-held camera
Hand-held camera or hand-held shooting is a filmmaking and video production technique in which a camera is held in the camera operator's hands as opposed to being mounted on a tripod or other base. Hand-held cameras are used because they are conveniently sized for travel and because they allow...
and steadicam
Steadicam
A Steadicam is a stabilizing mount for a motion picture camera that mechanically isolates it from the operator's movement, allowing a smooth shot even when moving quickly over an uneven surface...
work. Tangiers was also used to film an important riot scene during the initial foray into Saito's mind.
Filming moved to the Los Angeles area, where some sets were built on a Warner Brothers sound stage
Sound stage
In common usage, a sound stage is a soundproof, hangar-like structure, building, or room, used for the production of theatrical filmmaking and television production, usually located on a secure movie studio property.-Overview:...
, including the interior rooms of Saito's Japanese castle (the exterior was done on a small set built in Malibu beach). The dining room was inspired by the Nijo Castle
Nijo Castle
is a flatland castle located in Kyoto, Japan. The castle consists of two concentric rings of fortifications, the Ninomaru Palace, the ruins of the Honmaru Palace, various support buildings and several gardens...
built around 1603. These sets were inspired by a mix of Japanese architecture
Japanese architecture
' originated in prehistoric times with simple pit-houses and stores that were adapted to a hunter-gatherer population. Influence from Han Dynasty China via Korea saw the introduction of more complex grain stores and ceremonial burial chambers....
and Western influences. The production also staged a multi-vehicle car chase
Car chase
A car chase is the vehicular pursuit of a suspect by law enforcement officers. Car chases are often captured on film and broadcast due to the availability of video footage recorded by police cars and police and media helicopters participating in the chase...
on the streets of downtown Los Angeles
Downtown Los Angeles
Downtown Los Angeles is the central business district of Los Angeles, California, United States, located close to the geographic center of the metropolitan area...
, which involved a freight train crashing down the middle of a street. To do this, the filmmakers configured a train engine on the chassis of a tractor trailer. The replica was made from fiberglass
Fiberglass
Glass fiber is a material consisting of numerous extremely fine fibers of glass.Glassmakers throughout history have experimented with glass fibers, but mass manufacture of glass fiber was only made possible with the invention of finer machine tooling...
molds taken from authentic train parts and then matched in terms of color and design. Also, the car chase was supposed to be set in the midst of a downpour but the L.A. weather stayed typically sunny. The filmmakers were forced to set up elaborate effects (e.g., rooftop water cannon
Water cannon
A water cannon is a device that shoots a high-pressure stream of water. Typically, a water cannon can deliver a large volume of water, often over dozens of metres / hundreds of feet. They are used in firefighting and riot control. Most water cannon fall under the category of a fire...
s) to give the audience the impression that the weather was overcast and soggy. L.A. was also the site of the climactic scene where a Ford Econoline
Ford E-Series
The Ford E-Series, formerly known as the Econoline or Club Wagon, is a line of full-size vans and truck chassis from the Ford Motor Company. The E-Series is related to the Ford F-Series line of pickup trucks. The line was introduced in 1961 as a compact van and its descendants are still produced...
van flies off the Schuyler Heim Bridge in slow motion. This sequence was filmed on and off for months with the van being shot out of a cannon, according to actor Dileep Rao. Capturing the actors suspended within the van in slow motion took a whole day to film. Once the van landed in the water, the challenge for the actors was not to panic. "And when they ask you to act, it's a bit of an ask," explained Cillian Murphy. The actors had to be underwater for four to five minutes while drawing air from scuba tanks
Diving cylinder
A diving cylinder, scuba tank or diving tank is a gas cylinder used to store and transport high pressure breathing gas as a component of a scuba set. It provides gas to the scuba diver through the demand valve of a diving regulator....
; underwater buddy breathing
Buddy breathing
Buddy breathing is a rescue technique used in scuba diving "out of gas" emergencies, when two divers share one demand valve, alternately breathing from it...
is shown in this sequence. Cobb's house was in Pasadena. The hotel lobby was filmed at the CAA building in Culver City. Limbo was made on location in Los Angeles and Morocco with the beach scene filmed at Palos Verdes beach with CGI buildings. N Hope St. in Los Angeles was the primary filming location for Limbo, with green screen and CGI being used to create the dream landscape.
The final phase of principal photography took place in Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
in late November 2009. The location manager discovered a temporarily closed ski resort, Fortress Mountain. An elaborate set was assembled near the top station of the Canadian chairlift
Chairlift
An elevated passenger ropeway, or chairlift, is a type of aerial lift, which consists of a continuously circulating steel cable loop strung between two end terminals and usually over intermediate towers, carrying a series of chairs...
, taking three months to build. The production had to wait for a huge snowstorm, which eventually arrived. The ski-chase sequence was inspired by Nolan's favorite James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (film)
On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the sixth spy film in the James Bond series, based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Ian Fleming. Following the decision of Sean Connery to retire from the role after You Only Live Twice, Eon Productions selected an unknown actor and model, George Lazenby...
(1969): "What I liked about it that we've tried to emulate in this film is there's a tremendous balance in that movie of action and scale and romanticism and tragedy and emotion."
Cinematography
The film was shot primarily in the anamorphic formatAnamorphic format
Anamorphic format is a term that can be used either for: the cinematography technique of capturing a widescreen picture on standard 35 mm film, or other visual recording media, with a non-widescreen native aspect ratio; or a photographic projection format in which the original image requires an...
on 35 mm film
35 mm film
35 mm film is the film gauge most commonly used for chemical still photography and motion pictures. The name of the gauge refers to the width of the photographic film, which consists of strips 35 millimeters in width...
, with key sequences filmed on 65 mm
70 mm film
70mm film is a wide high-resolution film gauge, with higher resolution than standard 35mm motion picture film format. As used in camera, the film is wide. For projection, the original 65mm film is printed on film. The additional 5mm are for magnetic strips holding four of the six tracks of sound...
, and aerial sequences in VistaVision
VistaVision
VistaVision is a higher resolution, widescreen variant of the 35mm motion picture film format which was created by engineers at Paramount Pictures in 1954....
. Nolan did not shoot any footage with IMAX
IMAX
IMAX is a motion picture film format and a set of proprietary cinema projection standards created by the Canadian company IMAX Corporation. IMAX has the capacity to record and display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film systems...
cameras as he had with The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight (film)
The Dark Knight is a 2008 superhero film directed, produced and co-written by Christopher Nolan. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, the film is part of Nolan's Batman film series and a sequel to 2005's Batman Begins...
. "We didn't feel that we were going to be able to shoot in IMAX because of the size of the cameras because this film given that it deals with a potentially surreal area, the nature of dreams and so forth, I wanted it to be as realistic as possible. Not be bound by the scale of those IMAX cameras, even though I love the format dearly". Nolan also chose not to shoot any of the film in 3D as he prefers shooting on film and using prime lenses
Prime lens
In film and photography, a prime lens is either a photographic lens whose focal length is fixed, as opposed to a zoom lens, or it is the primary lens in a combination lens system....
, which is not possible with 3D cameras. Nolan has also criticised the dim image that 3D projection produces, and disputes that traditional film does not allow realistic depth perception
Depth perception
Depth perception is the visual ability to perceive the world in three dimensions and the distance of an object. Depth sensation is the ability to move accurately, or to respond consistently, based on the distances of objects in an environment....
, saying "I think it's a misnomer to call it 3D versus 2D. The whole point of cinematic imagery is it's three dimensional... You know 95% of our depth cues
Depth perception
Depth perception is the visual ability to perceive the world in three dimensions and the distance of an object. Depth sensation is the ability to move accurately, or to respond consistently, based on the distances of objects in an environment....
come from occlusion
Occlusion
Occlusion may refer to:* Occlusion , the manner in which the upper and lower teeth come together when the mouth is closed* Occlusion effect, an audio phenomenon that occurs when one closes the opening into the ear canal and the loudness of low pitched sounds increases* Occlusion miliaria, a skin...
, resolution, color and so forth, so the idea of calling a 2D movie a '2D movie' is a little misleading." Nolan did test converting Inception into 3D in post production but decided that, while it was possible, he lacked the time to complete the conversion to a standard he was happy with. In February 2011 Jonathan Liebesman
Jonathan Liebesman
Jonathan Liebesman is a South African film director.-Personal life:Liebesman was born in Johannesburg, South Africa...
suggested that Warner Bros were attempting a 3D conversion for Blu-ray
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
release.
Wally Pfister gave each location and dream level a distinctive look with the mountain fortress having a sterile, cool look, the hotel hallways had warm hues and the van scenes were neutral. This was done so that the audience would know immediately where they were during the heavily crosscut portion of the film.
Nolan has said that the film "deals with levels of reality, and perceptions of reality which is something I'm very interested in. It's an action film set in a contemporary world, but with a slight science-fiction bent to it," while also describing it as "very much an ensemble film structured somewhat as a heist movie. It's an action adventure that spans the globe".
Visual effects
For dream sequences in Inception, Nolan used little computer-generated imageryComputer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
, preferring practical effect
Practical effect
A practical effect is a special effect in which a prop appears to work in a situation where it obviously could not in real life . They do not use trick photography or post-production artifice. This type of effect is normally found in live theatre.In film, practical effect denotes an effect produced...
s whenever possible. Nolan said, "It's always very important to me to do as much as possible in-camera, and then, if necessary, computer graphics are very useful to build on or enhance what you have achieved physically." To this end, visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin built a miniature
Miniature effect
A miniature effect is a special effect created for motion pictures and television programs using scale models. Scale models are often combined with high speed photography or matte shots to make gravitational and other effects appear convicing to the viewer...
of the mountain fortress set and then blew it up for the film. For the fight scene that takes place in zero gravity, he used CG-based effects to "subtly bend elements like physics, space and time."
The most challenging effect was the "limbo" city level at the end of the film because it continually developed during production. Franklin had artists build concepts while Nolan gave his ideal vision: "Something glacial, with clear modernist architecture, but with chunks of it breaking off into the sea like icebergs". Franklin and his team ended up with "something that looked like an iceberg version of Gotham City
Gotham City
Gotham City is a fictional U.S. city appearing in DC Comics, best known as the home of Batman. Batman's place of residence was first identified as Gotham City in Batman #4 . Gotham City is strongly inspired by Trenton, Ontario's history, location, atmosphere, and various architectural styles...
with water running through it." They created a basic model of a glacier and then designers created a program that added elements like roads, intersections and ravines until they had a complex, yet organic-looking, cityscape. For the Paris-folding sequence, Franklin had artists producing concept sketches and then they created rough computer animations to give them an idea of what the sequence looked like while in motion. Later during principal photography, Nolan was able to direct Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page based on this rough computer animation Franklin had created. Inception had close to 500 visual effects shots (in comparison, Batman Begins
Batman Begins
Batman Begins is a 2005 American superhero action film based on the fictional DC Comics character Batman, directed by Christopher Nolan. It stars Christian Bale as Batman, along with Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman, Ken Watanabe, Tom Wilkinson,...
had approximately 620) which is considered minor in comparison to contemporary visual effects epics that can have around 1,500 or 2,000 special effects images.
Music
The score for Inception was written by Hans ZimmerHans Zimmer
Hans Florian Zimmer is a German film composer and music producer. He has composed music for over 100 films, including critically acclaimed film scores for The Lion King , Crimson Tide , The Thin Red Line , Gladiator , The Dark Knight and Inception .Zimmer spent the early part of his career in the...
, who described his work as "a very electronic, dense score", filled with "nostalgia and sadness" to match Cobb's feelings throughout the film. The music was written simultaneously to filming, and features a guitar sound reminiscent of Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone, Grand Officer OMRI, , is an Italian composer and conductor, who wrote music to more than 500 motion pictures and television series, in a career lasting over 50 years. His scores have been included in over 20 award-winning films as well as several symphonic and choral pieces...
, played by Johnny Marr
Johnny Marr
Johnny Marr is an English musician and songwriter. Marr rose to fame in the 1980s as the guitarist in The Smiths, with whom he formed a prolific songwriting partnership with Morrissey. Marr has been a member of Electronic, The The, and Modest Mouse...
, former guitarist of The Smiths
The Smiths
The Smiths were an English alternative rock band, formed in Manchester in 1982. Based on the song writing partnership of Morrissey and Johnny Marr , the band also included Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce...
. Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...
's "Non, je ne regrette rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
"Non, je ne regrette rien" , meaning "No, I'm not sorry for anything", is a French song composed by Charles Dumont, with lyrics by Michel Vaucaire. It was written in 1956, and is best known through its 1960 recording by Édith Piaf....
" appears recurringly throughout the film, and Zimmer reworked pieces of the song into cues of the score. A soundtrack album
Inception: Music from the Motion Picture
Inception: Music from the Motion Picture is a soundtrack to the Christopher Nolan film Inception, released on July 13, 2010 by Reprise Records. Hans Zimmer scored the film, marking his third collaboration with Nolan following Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.-Production:According to Zimmer, it is...
was released on July 11, 2010 by Reprise Records
Reprise Records
Reprise Records is an American record label, founded in 1960 by Frank Sinatra. It is owned by Warner Music Group, and operated through Warner Bros. Records.-Beginnings:...
. Hans Zimmer's music was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Original Score
Academy Award for Best Original Score
The Academy Award for Original Score is presented to the best substantial body of music in the form of dramatic underscoring written specifically for the film by the submitting composer.-Superlatives:...
category in 2011, losing to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of The Social Network
The Social Network
The Social Network is a 2010 American drama film directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin. Adapted from Ben Mezrich's 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires, the film portrays the founding of social networking website Facebook and the resulting lawsuits...
.
Reality and dreams
Unconscious mind
The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...
. What would that be used and abused for?" The majority of the film's plot takes place in these interconnected dream worlds. This structure creates a framework where actions in the real or dream worlds ripple across others. The dream is always in a state of production, and shifts across the levels as the characters navigate it. By contrast, the world of The Matrix
The Matrix
The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction-action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving...
(1999) is an authoritarian, computer-controlled one, alluding to theories of social control developed by Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
and Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism.-Life:...
. Nolan's world has more in common with the works of Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
and Félix Guattari
Félix Guattari
Pierre-Félix Guattari was a French militant, an institutional psychotherapist, philosopher, and semiotician; he founded both schizoanalysis and ecosophy...
.
David Denby compared Nolan's cinematic treatment of dreams to Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
's in Belle de Jour
Belle de jour
Belle de Jour is a 1967 French film directed by Luis Buñuel. The film stars Catherine Deneuve as a woman who decides to spend her days as a prostitute while her husband is at work....
(1967) and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
-External links:* at Rotten Tomatoes* * Roger Ebert's review of *...
(1972). He criticised Nolan's "literal-minded" action level sequencing compared to Buñuel, who "silently pushed us into reveries and left us alone to enjoy our wonderment, but Nolan is working on so many levels of representation at once that he has to lay in pages of dialogue just to explain what’s going on." The latter captures "the peculiar malign intensity of actual dreams."
Deirdre Barrett
Deirdre Barrett
Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D. is an author and psychologist who teaches at Harvard Medical School. She is known for her research on dreams, hypnosis, and imagery and has written on evolutionary psychology. Barrett is a Past President of The International Association for the Study of Dreams and of the...
, a dream researcher at Harvard University, said that Nolan did not get every detail accurate regarding dreams, but their illogical, rambling, disjointed plots would not make for a great thriller anyway. However, "he did get many aspects right," she said, citing the scene in which a sleeping Cobb is shoved into a full bath, and in the dream world water gushes into the windows of the building, waking him up. "That's very much how real stimuli get incorporated, and you very often wake up right after that intrusion.".
Nolan himself said, "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."
Dreams and cinema
Others have argued that the film is itself a metaphor for film-making, and that the filmgoing experience itself, images flashing before one's eyes in a darkened room, is akin to a dream. Writing in Wired, Jonah Lehrer supported this interpretation and presented neurological evidence that brain activity is strikingly similar during film-watching and sleeping. In both, the visual cortexVisual cortex
The visual cortex of the brain is the part of the cerebral cortex responsible for processing visual information. It is located in the occipital lobe, in the back of the brain....
is highly active and the prefrontal cortex
Prefrontal cortex
The prefrontal cortex is the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain, lying in front of the motor and premotor areas.This brain region has been implicated in planning complex cognitive behaviors, personality expression, decision making and moderating correct social behavior...
, which deals with logic, deliberate analysis, and self awareness, is quiet. Paul argued that the experience of going to a picturehouse is itself a excercise in shared dreaming, particularly when viewing Inception: the film's sharp cutting between scenes forces the viewer to create larger narrative arcs to stitch the pieces together. This demand of production parallel to consumption of the images, on the part of the audience is analgous to dreaming itself. As in the film's story, in a cinema one enters into the space of another's dream, in this case Nolan's, as with any work of art, one's reading of it is ultimately influenced by one's own subjective desires and subconcious.
Genre
Nolan combined elements from several different film genres into Inception, notably science fictionScience fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
, heist film
Heist film
A heist film is a film that has an intricate plot woven around a group of people trying to steal something. Versions with dominant or prominent comic elements are often called caper movies. They could be described as the analogues of caper stories in film history...
, and film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
.
Marion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard is a French actress and singer. She garnered critical acclaim for her roles in films such as La Vie en Rose, My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument, Taxi, Furia and Jeux d'enfants...
plays "Mal" Cobb, Dom Cobb's projection of his guilt over his deceased wife's suicide. As the film's main antagonist, she is a frequent, malevolent presence in his dreams. Dom is unable to control these projections of her, challenging his abilities as an extractor. Nolan described Mal as "the essence of the femme fatale,", the key noir reference in the film. As a "classic femme fatale" her relationship with Cobb is in his mind, a manifestation of Cobb's own neurosis and fear of how little he knows about the woman he loves. DiCaprio praised Cotillard's performance saying that "she can be strong and vulnerable and hopeful and heartbreaking all in the same moment, which was perfect for all the contradictions of her character".
Nolan began with the structure of a heist movie, since exposition
Exposition (literary technique)
At the beginning of a narrative, the exposition is the author's providing of some background information to the audience about the plot, characters' histories, setting, and theme. Exposition is considered one of four rhetorical modes of discourse, along with argumentation, description, and narration...
is an essential element of that genre, though adapted it to have a greater emotional narrative suited to the world of dreams and subconscious. Or, as Denby surmised, "the outer shell of the story is an elaborate caper". Kirstin Thompson argued that exposition was a major formal device in the film. While a traditional heist movie has a heavy dose of exposition at the beginning as the team assembles and the leader explains the plan, in Inception this becomes nearly continuous as the group progresses through the various levels of dreaming. Three-quarters of the film, until the van begins to fall from the bridge, are devoted to explaining its plot. In this way, exposition takes precedence over characterisation. Their relationships are created by their respective skills and roles. Ariadne, like her ancient namesake
Ariadne
Ariadne , in Greek mythology, was the daughter of King Minos of Crete, and his queen Pasiphaë, daughter of Helios, the Sun-titan. She aided Theseus in overcoming the Minotaur and was the bride of the god Dionysus.-Minos and Theseus:...
, creates the maze and guides the others through it, but also helps Cobb navigate his own subconscious, and as the sole student of dream-sharing, helps the audience understand the conceit of the plot.
Nolan drew inspiration from the works of Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
,, the anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
film Paprika (2006) by the late Satoshi Kon
Satoshi Kon
was a Japanese anime director and manga artist from Kushiro, Hokkaidō and a member of the Japanese Animation Creators Association . He was a graduate of the Graphic Design department of the Musashino Art University. He is sometimes credited as in the credits of Paranoia Agent...
as an influence on the character "Ariadne", and Blade Runner
Blade Runner
Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K...
(1982) by Ridley Scott
Ridley Scott
Sir Ridley Scott is an English film director and producer. His most famous films include The Duellists , Alien , Blade Runner , Legend , Thelma & Louise , G. I...
.
Ending
The film cuts to the closing creditsClosing credits
Closing credits or end credits are added at the end of a motion picture, television program, or video game to list the cast and crew involved in the production. They usually appear as a list of names in small type, which either flip very quickly from page to page, or move smoothly across the...
from a shot of the top wobbling ambiguously, inviting speculation about whether the final sequence was reality or another dream. Nolan confirmed that the ambiguity was deliberate, saying "I've been asked the question more times than I've ever been asked any other question about any other film I've made... What's funny to me is that people really do expect me to answer it." The film's script concludes with "Behind him, on the table, the spinning top is STILL SPINNING. And we – FADE OUT" However, Christopher Nolan also said, "I put that cut there at the end, imposing an ambiguity from outside the film. That always felt the right ending to me – it always felt like the appropriate 'kick' to me… The real point of the scene – and this is what I tell people – is that Cobb isn't looking at the top. He's looking at his kids. He's left it behind. That's the emotional significance of the thing."
In September 2010, Michael Caine
Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine, CBE is an English actor. He won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in both Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules ....
, explained his interpretation of the ending, "If I'm there it's real, because I'm never in the dream. I'm the guy who invented the dream." Nolan himself noted that "I choose to believe that Cobb gets back to his kids, because I have young kids. People who have kids definitely read it differently than those who don't". He indicated that the top was not the most crucial element of the ending, saying "I've read plenty of very off-the-wall interpretations... The most important emotional thing about the top spinning at the end is that Cobb is not looking at it. He doesn't care."
Marketing
Warner Bros. spent $100 million marketing the film. Unlike most tent-pole films, which are adaptations or sequels, Inception was a totally original property, but Sue Kroll, president of Warner's worldwide marketing, said the company believed it could gain awareness due to the strength of "Christopher Nolan as a brand". Knoll declared that "We don't have the brand equity that usually drives a big summer opening, but we have a great cast and a fresh idea from a filmmaker with a track record of making incredible movies. If you can't make those elements work, it's a sad day." The studio also tried to maintain a campaign of secrecy – as reported by the Senior VP of Interactive Marketing, Michael Tritter, "You have this movie which is going to have a pretty big built in fanbase... but you also have a movie that you are trying to keep very secret. Chris [Nolan] really likes people to see his movies in a theater and not see it all beforehand so everything that you do to market that – at least early on – is with an eye to feeding the interest of fans."A viral marketing
Viral marketing
Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses...
campaign was employed for the film. After the revelation of the first teaser trailer, in August 2009, the film's official website featured only an animation of Cobb's spinning top. On December, the top toppled over and the website opened the online game Mind Crime, which upon completion revealed Inceptions poster. The rest of the campaign unrolled after WonderCon
WonderCon
WonderCon is an annual comic book, science fiction, and motion picture convention, held in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1987.The convention was conceived by retailer John Barrett and originally held in the Oakland Convention Center, where it remained until 2003, when it moved to San...
in April 2010, where Warner gave away promotional T-shirts featuring the PASIV briefcase used to create the dream space, and had a QR code
QR code
A QR code is a type of matrix barcode first designed for the automotive industry. More recently, the system has become popular outside of the industry due to its fast readability and comparatively large storage capacity. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white...
linking to an online manual of the device. Mind Crime also received a stage 2 with more resources, including a hidden trailer for the movie. More pieces of viral marketing began to surface before Inceptions release, such as a manual filled with bizarre images and text sent to Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
magazine, and the online publication of posters, ads, phone applications, and strange websites all related to the film. Warner also released an online prequel comic, Inception: The Cobol Job.
The official trailer released on May 10, 2010 through Mind Game was extremely well received. It featured an original piece of music, "Mind Heist", by marketing composer Zack Hemsey
Zack Hemsey
Zack Hemsey is an American composer and recording artist, best known for the use of his music in film trailers. A notable example was "Trailer 3" of the 2010 movie Inception which included his composed piece "Mind Heist"; it is a common misconception that the piece for this trailer was composed by...
, rather than music from the score. The trailer quickly went viral with numerous mashups
Mashup (video)
A video mashup is the combination of multiple sources of video—which usually have no relation with each other—into a derivative work, often lampooning its component sources or another text. Many mashup videos are humorous movie trailer parodies, a later genre of mashups gaining much popularity...
copying its style, both by amateurs on sites like YouTube and by professionals on sites such as CollegeHumor
CollegeHumor
CollegeHumor is a comedy website owned by InterActiveCorp and based in New York City. The site features daily original comedy videos and articles created by its in-house writing and production team, in addition to user-submitted videos, pictures, articles and links. In early 2009, CollegeHumor's...
. On June 7, 2010, a behind-the-scenes featurette on the film was released in HD on Yahoo! Movies.
Home media
Inception was released on DVD and Blu-rayBlu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
on December 3, 2010, in France, and the week after in the UK and USA (December 7, 2010). Warner Bros. also made available in the United States a limited Blu-ray edition packaged in a metal replica of the PASIV briefcase, which included extras such as a metal replica of the spinning top totem. With a production run of less than 2000, it sold out in one weekend.
Putative video game
In a November 2010 interview, Nolan expressed his intention to develop a video game set in the Inception world, working with a team of collaborators. He described it as "a longer-term proposition", referring to the medium of video games as "something I've wanted to explore".Box office earnings
| Film | Release date | Box office revenue | Box office ranking | Budget | Reference | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | United States | International | Worldwide | All time United States | All time worldwide | |||
| Inception | July 2010 | $292,576,195 | $532,956,569 | $825,532,764 | #43 | #29 | $160,000,000 | |
Inception was released in both conventional and IMAX
IMAX
IMAX is a motion picture film format and a set of proprietary cinema projection standards created by the Canadian company IMAX Corporation. IMAX has the capacity to record and display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film systems...
theaters on July 16, 2010. The film had its world premiere at Leicester Square
Leicester Square
Leicester Square is a pedestrianised square in the West End of London, England. The Square lies within an area bound by Lisle Street, to the north; Charing Cross Road, to the east; Orange Street, to the south; and Whitcomb Street, to the west...
in London, England on July 8, 2010. In the United States and Canada, Inception was released theatrically in 3,792 conventional theaters and 195 IMAX
IMAX
IMAX is a motion picture film format and a set of proprietary cinema projection standards created by the Canadian company IMAX Corporation. IMAX has the capacity to record and display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film systems...
theaters. The film grossed $21.8 million during its opening day on July 16, 2010, with midnight screenings in 1,500 locations. Overall the film made $62.7 million and debuted at No.1 on its opening weekend. Inceptions opening weekend gross made it the second-highest-grossing debut for a science-fiction film
Science fiction film
Science fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that are not necessarily accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception, and time travel, often along with futuristic...
that was not a sequel, remake or adaptation, behind Avatar $77 million opening weekend gross in 2009. The film held the top spot of the box office rankings in its second and third weekends, with drops of just 32% ($42.7 million) and 36% ($27.5 million) respectively, before dropping to second place in its fourth week, behind The Other Guys
The Other Guys
The Other Guys is a 2010 American action comedy film directed and co-written by Adam McKay, starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, and featuring Dwayne Johnson, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton, Eva Mendes, Steve Coogan, and Ray Stevenson...
.
Inception grossed $292 million in the United States and Canada and $531 million overseas. In total, the film has grossed $823 million worldwide. Its five highest-grossing markets after the U.S.A. and Canada were China ($68 million), the United Kingdom, Ireland and Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
($56 million), France and the Maghreb
Maghreb
The Maghreb is the region of Northwest Africa, west of Egypt. It includes five countries: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania and the disputed territory of Western Sahara...
region ($43 million), Japan ($40 million) and South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
($38 million). It was the sixth-highest grossing film of 2010 in North America, and the fourth-highest internationally, behind Toy Story 3
Toy Story 3
Toy Story 3 is a 2010 American 3D computer-animated comedy-adventure film, and the third installment in the Toy Story series. It was produced by Pixar and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It was directed by Lee Unkrich. The film was released worldwide from June through October in Disney Digital...
, Alice in Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland (2010 film)
Alice in Wonderland is a 2010 American computer-animated/live action fantasy adventure film directed by Tim Burton, written by Linda Woolverton, and released by Walt Disney Pictures...
and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1. The film currently stands as the 29th highest-grossing of all time. Inception is the second most lucrative production in the careers of both Christopher Nolan
Christopher Nolan
Christopher Jonathan James Nolan is a British-American film director, screenwriter and producer.He received serious notice after his second feature Memento , which he wrote and directed based on a story idea by his brother, Jonathan Nolan. Jonathan went to co-write later scripts with him,...
– behind The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight (film)
The Dark Knight is a 2008 superhero film directed, produced and co-written by Christopher Nolan. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, the film is part of Nolan's Batman film series and a sequel to 2005's Batman Begins...
- and Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio is an American actor and film producer. He has received many awards, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Aviator , and has been nominated by the Academy Awards, Screen Actors Guild and the British Academy of Film and Television...
– behind Titanic
Titanic (1997 film)
Titanic is a 1997 American epic romance and disaster film directed, written, co-produced, and co-edited by James Cameron. A fictionalized account of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, it stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson, Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater and Billy Zane as Rose's fiancé, Cal...
.
Critical reception
| Film | Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance... |
Metacritic Metacritic Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,... |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| All critics | Top critics | ||
| Inception | 86% (278 reviews) | 80% (41 reviews) | 74/100 (42 reviews) |
The film opened to strongly positive reviews. Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
reports that 86% of 274 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average score of 8/10. The website reported the critical consensus as "smart, innovative, and thrilling," and lauded the film as "that rare summer blockbuster that succeeds viscerally as well as intellectually." Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, another review aggregator, assigned the film a weighted average score of 74 (out of 100) based on 42 reviews from mainstream critics, considered to be "generally favorable reviews." In polls conducted by CinemaScore
CinemaScore
CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data.-Background:...
during the opening weekend cinemagoers gave Inception and average "B+" on an A+ to F scale.
While some critics have tended to view the film as perfectly straightforward, and even criticize its overarching themes as "the stuff of torpid platitudes," online discussion has been much more positive. Heated debate has centered on the ambiguity of the ending, with many critics like Davin Faraci making the case that the film is self-referential and tongue-in-cheek, both a film about film-making and a dream about dreams. Other critics read Inception as Christian allegory and focus on the film's use of religious and water symbolism. Yet other critics, such as Kirsten Thompson, see less value in the ambiguous ending of the film and more in its structure and novel method of storytelling, highlighting Inception as a new form of narrative that revels in "continuous exposition".
Whatever its meaning, the film has had excellent reviews in general. Perhaps playing off the film's game imagery, Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
magazine's Peter Travers
Peter Travers
Peter Travers is an American film critic, who has written for, in turn, People and Rolling Stone. Travers also hosts a celebrity interview show called Popcorn on ABC News Now and ABCNews.com.-Career:...
called Inception a "wildly ingenious chess game," and concluded "the result is a knockout."
In Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
, Justin Chang praised the film as "a conceptual tour de force" and wrote, "applying a vivid sense of procedural detail to a fiendishly intricate yarn set in the labyrinth
Labyrinth
In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was an elaborate structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos...
of the unconscious mind
Unconscious mind
The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...
, the writer-director has devised a heist thriller for surrealists, a Jung
Jung
Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of analytical psychology.Jung may also refer to:* Jung * JUNG, Java Universal Network/Graph Framework-See also:...
ian's Rififi
Rififi
Rififi is a 1955 French crime film adaptation of Auguste le Breton's novel of the same name. Directed by American filmmaker Jules Dassin, the film stars Jean Servais as the aging gangster Tony le Stéphanois, Carl Möhner as Jo le Suédois, Robert Manuel as Mario Farrati, and Jules Dassin as César le...
, that challenges viewers to sift through multiple layers of (un)reality." Jim Vejvoda of IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
rated the film as perfect, deeming it "a singular accomplishment from a filmmaker who has only gotten better with each film." Relevant Magazine
Relevant Magazine
RELEVANT Magazine is a bimonthly magazine providing content on “God, life, and progressive culture”. It is published by RELEVANT Media Group and a circulation of 56,667. Its companion web presence, RELEVANTmagazine.com, launched in 2002 with the email newsletter, 850 Words of RELEVANT...
s David Roark called it Nolan's greatest accomplishment, saying, "Visually, intellectually and emotionally, Inception is a masterpiece."
Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
magazine rated it five stars in the August 2010 issue and wrote, "it feels like Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
adapting the work of the great sci-fi author William Gibson
William Gibson
William Gibson is an American-Canadian science fiction author.William Gibson may also refer to:-Association football:*Will Gibson , Scottish footballer...
... Nolan delivers another true original: welcome to an undiscovered country." Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
gave the film a B+ rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, "It's a rolling explosion of images as hypnotizing and sharply angled as any in a drawing by M.C. Escher or a state-of-the-biz videogame; the backwards splicing of Nolan's own Memento looks rudimentary by comparison." The New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
gave the film a four star rating and Lou Lumenick
Lou Lumenick
Louis J. "Lou" Lumenick is an American film critic. He is the chief film critic and a blogger for the New York Post and has reviewed films there since 1999.-Life and career:Lumenick was born and raised in Astoria, Queens...
wrote, "DiCaprio, who has never been better as the tortured hero, draws you in with a love story that will appeal even to non-sci-fi fans." Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
of the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
awarded the film a full four stars and said that Inception "is all about process, about fighting our way through enveloping sheets of reality and dream, reality within dreams, dreams without reality. It's a breathtaking juggling act." Richard Roeper
Richard Roeper
Richard E. Roeper is an American columnist and film critic for The Chicago Sun-Times and now a co-host on The Roe Conn Show on WLS-AM...
, also of the Sun-Times, gave Inception a perfect score of "A+" and called it "one of the best movies of the [21st] century."
BBC Radio 5 Live
BBC Radio 5 Live
BBC Radio 5 Live is the BBC's national radio service that specialises in live BBC News, phone-ins, and sports commentaries...
's Mark Kermode
Mark Kermode
Mark Kermode is an English film critic, musician and a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He contributes to Sight and Sound magazine, The Observer newspaper and BBC Radio 5 Live, where he presents Kermode and Mayo's Film Reviews with Simon Mayo on Friday afternoons...
named Inception as the best film of 2010, stating "Inception is proof that people are not stupid, that cinema is not trash, and that it is possible for blockbusters and art to be the same thing."
In his review for the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
, Michael Phillips
Michael Phillips (critic)
Michael Phillips is a film critic for the Chicago Tribune newspaper. Previously he was the drama critic of the Tribune; the Los Angeles Times; the St. Paul Pioneer Press; the San Diego Union-Tribune; and the Dallas Times Herald....
gave the film 3 stars out of 4 and wrote, "I found myself wishing Inception were weirder, further out ... the film is Nolan's labyrinth all the way, and it's gratifying to experience a summer movie with large visual ambitions and with nothing more or less on its mind than (as Shakespeare said) a dream that hath no bottom." TIME magazine's Richard Corliss wrote the film's "noble intent is to implant one man's vision in the mind of a vast audience ... The idea of moviegoing as communal dreaming is a century old. With Inception, viewers have a chance to see that notion get a state-of-the-art update." Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
Kenneth Turan
Kenneth Turan
Kenneth Turan is an American film critic and Lecturer in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California.-Background:...
felt that Nolan was able to blend "the best of traditional and modern filmmaking. If you're searching for smart and nervy popular entertainment, this is what it looks like."
USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
rated the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and Claudia Puig felt that Nolan "regards his viewers as possibly smarter than they are—or at least as capable of rising to his inventive level. That's a tall order. But it's refreshing to find a director who makes us stretch, even occasionally struggle, to keep up."
Not all reviewers, however, gave the film positive reviews. New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
magazine's David Edelstein
David Edelstein
David Edelstein is the chief film critic for New York Magazine, as well as the film critic for NPR's Fresh Air and CBS Sunday Morning. He lives in Brooklyn, New York....
claimed in his review to "have no idea what so many people are raving about. It's as if someone went into their heads while they were sleeping and planted the idea that Inception is a visionary masterpiece and—hold on ... Whoa! I think I get it. The movie is a metaphor for the power of delusional hype—a metaphor for itself." Rex Reed
Rex Reed
Rex Taylor Reed is an American film critic and former co-host of the syndicated television show At the Movies. He currently writes the column "On the Town with Rex Reed" for The New York Observer.-Life and career:...
of The New York Observer explained the film's development as "pretty much what we've come to expect from summer movies in general and Christopher Nolan movies in particular ... [it] doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment to me." A. O. Scott
A. O. Scott
Anthony Oliver Scott, known as A. O. Scott , is an American journalist and critic. He is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with Manohla Dargis.-Background and education:...
of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
commented "there is a lot to see in Inception, there is nothing that counts as genuine vision. Mr. Nolan's idea of the mind is too literal, too logical, too rule-bound to allow the full measure of madness." David Denby
David Denby (film critic)
David Denby is an American journalist, best known as a film critic for The New Yorker magazine.-Background and education:Denby grew up in New York City. He received a B.A...
, writing in The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, considered the film not nearly as much fun as Nolan imagined it to be, concluding "Inception is a stunning-looking film that gets lost in fabulous intricacies, a movie devoted to its own workings and to little else."
Accolades
Inception appeared on over 273 critics' lists of the top ten films of 2010, being picked as No.1 on 55 of those lists. It was the second most mentioned film behind The Social NetworkThe Social Network
The Social Network is a 2010 American drama film directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin. Adapted from Ben Mezrich's 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires, the film portrays the founding of social networking website Facebook and the resulting lawsuits...
.
The film won many awards in technical categories, such as Academy Awards for Best Cinematography
Academy Award for Best Cinematography
The Academy Award for Best Cinematography is an Academy Award awarded each year to a cinematographer for work in one particular motion picture.-History:...
, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects, and the British Academy Film Awards
British Academy Film Awards
The British Academy Film Awards are presented in an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts . It is the British counterpart of the Oscars. As of 2008, it has taken place in the Royal Opera House, having taken over from the flagship Odeon cinema on Leicester Square...
for Best Production Design
BAFTA Award for Best Production Design
List of winners of the BAFTA Awards from 1964 to the present in the category "Best Production Design".-1960s:Best British Production Design - Black and White1964: Dr...
, Best Special Visual Effects
BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects
*2010 - Inception - Chris Corbould, Paul Franklin, Andrew Lockley and Peter Bebb**Alice in Wonderland - Ken Ralston, David Schaub, Sean Phillips and Carey Villegas**Black Swan - Dan Schrecker...
and Best Sound
BAFTA Award for Best Sound
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award for Best Sound has been presented to its winners since 1968 and sound designers of all nationalities are eligible to receive the award.-Winners 1968-present:...
. In most of its artistic nominations, such as Film, Director and Screenplay at the Oscars, BAFTAs and Golden Globes, the film was defeated by The Social Network
The Social Network
The Social Network is a 2010 American drama film directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin. Adapted from Ben Mezrich's 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires, the film portrays the founding of social networking website Facebook and the resulting lawsuits...
and The King's Speech. However, the film did win the two highest honors for a science fiction or fantasy film: the 2011 Bradbury Award
Bradbury Award
The Ray Bradbury Award is presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America to recognize excellence in screenwriting...
for best dramatic production and the 2011 Hugo Award
Hugo Award
The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...
for best dramatic presentation, long form.