Baseball as the one constant in the James Earl Jones speech; the slow first twenty minutes; the Christmas-sweater time jump; Costner drinking from a coffee mug while driving; no concussion protocol for Karen; the cover of Newsweek as proof of relevance
Baseball itself: the speech's premise that the country ebbs and flows while baseball is the one constant no longer holds, with an apology to Mal; the picker clarifies they are not saying baseball aged badly, only that the 1989 point, once totally true, has been undone by everything that has happened in baseball.
Counter: the country is in turmoil now as in the late 60s, sports are a rhetorical minefield yet still elementally loved and shared, what the Red Sox did for one host the Cubs, Eagles and Ravens did for others; a shout out to 'maize' (as transcribed), who would have been on if he hadn't quit four years ago.
Most time with baseball now is spent on what's wrong with it and how to fix it, with a counter-struggle of still liking it; in 1989 there was no struggle; the Field of Dreams way of thinking peaked with Sosa and Maguire (as transcribed) and was destroyed when that proved horseshit; Lupica's Summer of 98 book is now a comedy; the conversation is largely numbers.
Reply: the message is not the purity of the game but how the game unlocks something in your life; it's a part of our past is still true; investing in something as a portal to something else is eternal; both sides agree they are both right.
The 80s already had gross Astrodome stadiums, Pete Rose and cocaine, and Terrence Mann wouldn't have been allowed to play in the majors, a stain the film doesn't acknowledge; yet baseball's space, a rural game held in cities, never changes, which is why the Iowa cornfield setting is so inspired; the cinematography, the smell of a glove and the feel of grass have aged well.
The first twenty minutes are a little slow and could lose three minutes; the Christmas sweater time jump always gets a laugh, and what about field maintenance after winter; Costner driving while drinking from a coffee mug seems old, though a thermos is classic.
Two small ones: no concussion protocol when Karen falls from the top of the bleachers, nobody checks her head and neck, and a six-year-old would cry for ten minutes rather than recover instantly; and citing the cover of Newsweek as definitive proof of relevance makes members of the media a little sad.
"Eames, you mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling"; "an idea is like a virus, resilient, highly contagious, and even the smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define or destroy you"; "you're waiting for a train, a train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you don't know for sure"; "don't think about elephants. What are you thinking about?"
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 logic objection is called the concern of a serious fantasy consumer; another host was more bothered by how customs works than by the grenade launcher, but concedes that if any participant can change a dream at will it contradicts the idea that Cobb corrupting the dream world is a fundamental flaw that keeps him from building.
Much in the film happens because the film says it can, deus ex machina after deus ex machina, like suddenly clarifying that you can make a new gun; the hosts ask why stop at a grenade launcher rather than a laser gun, and feel the dreams could be more creative.
Cobb's opening line that an idea is like a virus is liked a lot, though one host holds that an opening line can never be a movie's best because screenwriters always try for a grabber; it is noted the dialogue around it mentions intestinal worms, and it states the point of the film right away, which is both lame and compelling.
Cobb and Mal's 'you're waiting for a train' riddle is called a good one and evidence of very good dialogue; one host asks whether Mal's 'don't know for sure' to Ariadne versus Cobb's 'can't know for sure' in limbo was intentional.
The reading offered: the change is intentional because Mal is the projection of his guilt and regret, the regret named in Saito's leap-of-faith speech, so Cobb rationally says can't while his guilt says don't, maybe you should have known; a side note insists we all die alone despite Saito.
Another liked line is 'don't think about elephants', with the note that it references a psychological book of that name, so Nolan is ripping someone off once again.
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?
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.
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.
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. — Mallory Rubin
The avalanche and the rope trick are extremely fun, and although the snow heist lacks the emotional weight of other scenes it feels like a relief at that point in a movie that asks you to track so much; the color choices are tied to Nolan being colorblind, with little red or green and everything slate, night or pure white.
The snow heist has some of the film's only humor: after the missed first kick there is Cillian Murphy's line about dreaming up a beach next time, and Tom Hardy gives a thumbs-up after throwing an explosive onto a truck; the same scene also has the most moments that make no sense, like staring at the explosive for forty-five seconds, while Leo's perfect sniping is excused because it is a dream.
The training scene in Paris, or dream Paris, in the cafe is pretty incredible. — Andrew Gruttadaro
Watching the cafe scene again, the moment when Cobb's question of how they got there arrives still lands because the viewer realizes they do not know either, which is called a masterful thing to do, as is his explanation of how the dreams operate.
The zero-gravity fight scenes hold up really well; A.O. Scott's review compared the film to The Dark Knight and was dubious of Nolan, as this host is, but Nolan has built a career on being arguably the best at set pieces that make you say oh shit, like the truck flip in The Dark Knight, and there is no sense of how he pulled off Joseph Gordon-Levitt sliding up the ceiling like a spider. — Sean Fennessey
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.
The assigned Van Lathan escape-scenario flex imagines Nick defending his relationship with Catherine as support for a female writer and blaming criticism on insecurity. — Bill Simmons
Mallory recalls a gifable-moment idea for Ray filming the pool, then explicitly selects the modern-technology flex: texts, location data, searches and forensics collapse the conspiracy. — Mallory Rubin
The Mallory Rubin flex does not establish an existing parody; Before Cumset and Before Cumshot are proposed, with Before Cumrise recalled for the earlier film. — Mallory Rubin
