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The Rewatchables ·

Inception

year 2010decade 10sdirector Christopher Nolangenre Drama
host Jason Concepcionhost Mallory Rubinhost Sean Fennesseyhost Andrew Gruttadaro
All 11 categories

Most Rewatchable Scene · 13:29

The snow fortress heist

The pick is hard because the set pieces are interthreaded in a dreamlike way; the candidates laid out are the ski heist three dreams down, the hotel heist two down, the Los Angeles rain heist, the training scenes with Ariadne that explain the movie, and the heartbreaking Dom and Mal scenes in limbo.

Mallory Rubin: The Cobb and Mal scenes, whether the elevator memories or the limbo train reveal, are the most emotionally gripping, but for sheer captivating rewatchability it is the snow scene where every single thing is white, with the good guys distinguished from the bad only by a light dusting of gray on their outfits and even the guns wrapped in gauze or painted white.

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie · 58:05

"Eames, you mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling"

Eames's 'you mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling' gets an immediate ding-ding-ding and a suggestion the rest need not be read; one host dislikes the quote despite the great line reading and the grenade launcher, because it is confusing about who controls the rules when it is not his dream level and he is not the architect, and the film never gives clarity on how his forgery works.

The film

Inception (2010)

Directed by Christopher Nolan · Drama

148 minutes

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Cast

Selected cast credits · Film reference

Cast credits have not been imported yet.

Everything from the episode

In the order the hosts got to it. Open a row for the discussion.

5:50

Casting What-Ifs

Kate Winslet was approached for Mal before Marion Cotillard; Evan Rachel Wood, Emily Blunt, Rachel McAdams, Emma Robe...

Kate Winslet was approached for Mal before Marion Cotillard; Evan Rachel Wood, Emily Blunt, Rachel McAdams, Emma Roberts, Jesse Schramm (as transcribed), Taylor Swift and Terry Mulligan (as transcribed) were considered for Ariadne; James Franco was offered Arthur; Don Johnson was considered for Peter Browning

In the discussion (5)
Approx. transcript time · 00:05:50Read transcript
  • Kate Winslet was approached for Mal before the part went to Marion Cotillard; the hosts think Cotillard, who often plays a stormy femme fatale, is a very different actress, and that a French rather than English woman is what the crazed dream wife needed, since Winslet would not have been as frightening.
  • Nolan's films are said to keep returning to a dead woman who lets the leading man discover his emotional vulnerability; the casting is seen as letting him pretend something more complex was going on with the character, and a joke in a producer voice notes that Kate with Leo would have added twenty million.
  • For Ariadne the considered names were Evan Rachel Wood, Emily Blunt, Rachel McAdams, Emma Roberts, Jesse Schramm (as transcribed), Taylor Swift and Terry Mulligan (as transcribed), to disbelief around the table; Ellen Page is judged perfect for combining intense intelligence with wide-eyed vulnerability, something clinical and nurse-like, where Evan Rachel Wood would be too tall, beautiful and imperious.
  • Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Arthur was also offered to James Franco, who turned it down over scheduling; JGL's blankness and deadpan are liked for the part.
  • Don Johnson was considered for Peter Browning, the part Tom Berenger took; Johnson's ruined-man quality might have worked, Berenger was a shock to recognize, and Browning is not an essential character so Johnson would have been fine.
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24:00

Half-Assed Internet Research

Nolan pitched the film in 2001 after Memento and made the Batman films first; his treatment ran 80 pages; it is one o...

Nolan pitched the film in 2001 after Memento and made the Batman films first; his treatment ran 80 pages; it is one of two original stories he has told; it was influenced by The Matrix, Dark City and The 13th Floor; the hotel hallway was a rotating 100-foot corridor on eight rings driven by two motors; Pete Postlethwaite was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2009 and died six months after release

In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 00:24:00Read transcript
  • Nolan first pitched the film in 2001 right after Memento but felt he lacked the experience for a production this complex, so he made the Batman movies first and honed the script; his original treatment was eighty pages, around script length.
  • An eighty-page treatment would be an eighty-minute movie, which makes sense for a convoluted story that needs explaining to producers who must price it; Nolan is also in love with his own ideas and this is one of only two original stories he has told, the rest being comics, novels or, with Dunkirk, real life. — Sean Fennessey
  • A treatment is explained as a long synopsis of stage direction and plot summary, with highlighted set pieces, used to get a production company to sign on; the hosts wonder whether the pitch already included the scene where Cobb, the director figure, yells at Arthur, the producer figure, over the armed projections, a self-reflexive streak that makes one host like the film less.
  • Because of when the script was written the film was influenced by late-nineties and early-aughts mindbenders like The Matrix, Dark City and The 13th Floor; for the hotel scenes the filmmakers built a fully rotatable hallway that grew from forty to a hundred feet, suspended on eight concentric rings and driven by two electric motors.
  • Pete Postlewaite (as transcribed), who played the elder Fisher, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2009 and died six months after the film's release while playing a character dying of cancer, which is eerie to watch later.
  • Flagged early for this segment: Nolan spent almost ten years on the script after realizing the character's emotional motivations had to be central.
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45:52

Probably Unanswerable Questions

Is Dom dreaming, and is the whole film his dream? Was Ariadne sent by his father-in-law to find out whether he killed...

Is Dom dreaming, and is the whole film his dream? Was Ariadne sent by his father-in-law to find out whether he killed Mal? How can Saito erase a murder charge with one phone call? Why does Mal have a French accent when her father is Michael Caine? Why can't Cobb see his children's faces?

In the discussion (17)
Approx. transcript time · 00:45:52Read transcript
  • The opening question is the entire movie: is Dom dreaming, what part is real, and is he dreaming at the end; the hosts decide to do theories as well.
  • A theory from Christopher Ryan's piece on TheRinger.com: beyond the broader idea that the whole film is Cobb's dream, Ellen Page's character was sent by his father-in-law, Michael Caine, posing as a student, to enter Cobb's subconscious and get him to admit he murdered Mal, which is why she asks questions incessantly, as an interrogator rather than only an audience surrogate.
  • Michael Caine having a completely different accent from his daughter is called a Christopher and Jonathan Nolan issue with no reason behind it; they should have cast a French actor.
  • One response is that she is still the audience surrogate; another is that Nolan keeps killing wives in movies without knowing why and may have written a character to find out; the theory is called poppycock and more interesting than the movie, but the film was consciously designed to let such theories propagate.
  • The ending is recounted: Cobb returns home, spins his totem, hears his children, goes to them, and the camera stays on the wobbling totem before cutting to credits; this made one host angry and still does, because it does not matter should never be the message of a movie, and the better ending would follow Cobb to his kids without ever showing the totem wobble.
  • A totally different read, noted as a rare disagreement between the two: it is not only okay but the point if the takeaway is that it does not matter, since a reality so unclear or painful that your existence becomes about combating or warping it is compelling; the Harry Potter line in which Dumbledore tells Harry that something happening inside his head does not mean it is not real is cited as the coolest idea in stories, mentioned with an apology to Sean, who is said not to like Harry Potter.
  • The defender of the angry view says it is specifically the wobble that bothers them, a filmmaker's aha like retweeting someone with boom written on top; the reply is that it is a heavy-handed but effective prompt asking what reality is, and that the hosts all talking about it, like The Sopranos ending, is why it is rewatchable and regenerative.
  • Asked if they like the ending, one host respects it as a good troll that keeps people talking, with Nolan refusing to come down either way, and so does not really like it but has to respect the hustle.
  • A material question: Saito, played by Ken Watanabe, hires Cobb to make Fisher break up his company and promises to clear his murder charge; after the job he makes one call before landing and customs welcomes Cobb back, which the hosts find absurd, with a side complaint that customs does not look like that and the familiar point that he could have flown the kids to France.
  • The film never clarifies whether Mal's mother believes Cobb killed her daughter, though she begrudgingly puts the kids on the phone and seems disgruntled with him.
  • Polled directly, two voices think Dom is dreaming at the end; another says it does not matter.
  • Whether Dom is dreaming does not matter to this host. — Sean Fennessey
  • That different viewers can process the film differently is called a good thing: you can take it as an adventure story where the plan worked and Cobb went home, even though Saito's phone-call power implies he could have beaten his rival on his own, or believe Cobb is forever lost in limbo by choice or by going too deep.
  • The meta reading is enjoyed: Nolan making a movie about a man who looks like Nolan and gets so lost in his own stories that he cannot see his kids or tell what is real; pure creation is a quote from the film, and devoting your life to movies is likened to choosing to stop living in reality, unless you are a documentarian.
  • Raised during unintentional comedy: nobody understands why Cobb cannot see his kids' faces; it is called movie bullshit that exists only to set up the final reveal, within a broader argument that movies are nonsense you appreciate more by accepting them on their face.
  • A charitable explanation nobody fully believes: viewers must accept a difference between a projection like Mal, a piece of Cobb's subconscious trying to tear him down, and a memory; the children not turning is the last real moment of his former life, when he fled before they could look at him, replayed on a loop to torture himself, so they behave freely because they are not fragments of his mind.
  • The rebuttal is a joke that the explanation is acceptable only if in real life Mal looks like Artie Lang (as transcribed) rather than Marion Cotillard.
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