What’s Aged the Best?
Tom Hardy without a mask and with a normal voice; Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a suit; the zero-gravity set pieces; that there is a $150 million movie about dreams
In the discussion (7)
Approx. transcript time · 00:18:35Read transcript
- The category is awkward for a movie only seven years old; one answer is Tom Hardy not wearing a mask and speaking with a normal human voice, plus JGL in a suit, which the host would like to see more of.
- It is doubtful a studio would pony up for a $150 million movie about dreams now; the counterargument is that at its core it is a fantasy story, a genre with more money than ever, just packaged differently, prompting jokes about a YA label, aged-down stars, Taylor Swift and magic wolves.
- The film is sequel-ready, but a sequel would undo the power of the ending, if you think the ending has power, which two of the hosts doubt.
- The set pieces, as already said, are the answer: the gravity scene is incredible, and the bedroom fight where JGL grabs the gun at the last second is stunning in how abruptly the man falls and how the gun keeps sliding toward them across the room. — Andrew Gruttadaro
- The hallway rotation is questioned: the van flipping on level one should itself count as a kick that wakes everyone, which one host finds a distracting logic flaw; the kick is defined as the sensation of falling that pulls dreamers up a level, as when Arthur tips Ariadne's chair.
- The defense offered is that the team is heavily sedated and several levels down and needed synchronized kicks; the objection is that the film never establishes synchronization is required to wake, only that it is a timing problem, and that close-ups of the sleepers swaying should by the film's own rules have served as a kick.
- The hosts wonder how many of the cast understood the movie, and whether a Freudian psychotherapist was on set the way an astrophysicist was for Interstellar, since the science is high-level and bunk at once.