The Alchemist on 5/10/2011 at 06:21
You don't seem to understand.
Anywho, I'm rewaching Inception now and I have on damn critique. Why, in such an intelligent movie, are dreams, completely a function of the mind, shared by a little wire that connects to your wrist? I mean it's obviously high fantasy and no explanation is given so we're supposed to take it at face value, but, fuck, it could have at least been some stickies on your head...
nicked on 5/10/2011 at 06:33
Quote Posted by demagogue
It does make me notice that (AFAIK) there hasn't been a game that's played with this trope, and IMO it'd be perfect for an interactive setting. This would get into some of our discussions in GenGaming on a game with an LSD type of mechanic. I actually have a strong vision with this idea; I just can't do everything I have a vision about.
What about (
http://insideastarfilledsky.net/) Inside a Star Filled Sky It's a simplistic but procedural implementation of a level-within-a-level-recurring concept. I should really get it on Steam one of these days.
I remember coming up with a cool but massively impractical game idea in which each level becomes technologically more advanced. In the first level, you're wandering around a 2-colour ASCII world with PC beeps. When you complete it, you wake up in a 16-colour chiptune NES world and realise the first level was a dream. Complete that section and you wake up in an isometric late-2D world, then a blocky polygonal early 3D world, and then a world that makes the absolute most of current hardware and looks truly gorgeous. The ending could be some kind of point-at-the-player and imply that they've woken up from the game into the most realistic world of all, the real world. One for the impossible to actually get made pile...
Thirith on 5/10/2011 at 07:33
Quote Posted by Kuuso
Anyways, what I wanted to write here is that it's stupid to put Shutter Island against Inception. The movies have hardly anything in common aside from Dicaprio.
They are both about protagonists struggling to tell apart what is real and what isn't. Both protagonists are to some extent in denial about what has happened. Both films have a thriller setup with some sort of reveal towards the end. They both have an ending that is ambivalent: is it outright unhappy or do the characters choose to go for what in their mind is the lesser of two evils?
That's quite a lot on which to base a comparison, and I'm sure there's more on a formal level.
nicked on 5/10/2011 at 07:58
Yeah but you could say the same about Total Recall.
Thirith on 5/10/2011 at 08:02
So the two can be compared. Whether there's much coming out of the comparison depends on the individual films, but they're not apples and pears. We're not talking about Epic Movie vs. The Seventh Seal or Annie Hall vs. 2001: A Space Odyssey.
frozenman on 5/10/2011 at 11:25
Quote Posted by The Alchemist
Anywho, I'm rewaching Inception now and I have on damn critique.
Also what kind of name is Dom Cobb.
Just re-watched
Shutter Island. I originally caught it in a theater in Boston that Scorcese apparently used to screen a couple noir-ish detective movies to DiCaprio and Ruffalo while filming was taking place. One little bit I enjoyed was the fact that Daniels never once lights his own cigarette, he always bums one.
Sidenote though- I'm still eagerly awaiting his adaptation of
Silence, the novel by Shusaku Endo, about Portuguese Jesuit priests being persecuted in 16th century Japan...with Daniel Day Lewis and Benicio del Toro?? Yes please
Scots Taffer on 7/10/2011 at 07:03
Hey guys lets compare two totally different movies that try to do totally different things and only share an actor in common! :mad:
Okay, that's not really true. They share a theme in how the traumas of the past can inform the perception of the present, particularly where that trauma involved them or they were responsible for it. However, the world of dreams being informed by traumas past is inherently less meaingful than the reality of a person being manipulated by their past which is probably why I feel
Shutter Island fails more artistically as the core of its story is around exactly that. Instead of exploring issues of substance they rely more on smoke and mirrors as well as creating red herrings and diversions aplenty - oh, and buckets full of atmospheric dread, which was ace. By comparison,
Inception spends a fair bit of time on dealing with the trauma at its literal core (the subconscious) and manages to demonstate how a person can become so dragged down by a mistake that they allow themselves to keep repeating and repeating it.
Other than that though, they don't really talk much to one another. One is a mystery thriller and the other is really a high-minded actioner. One deals with a mystery/conspiracy plot and the other is effectively a heist scenario. One has a protagonist with a weakening mental state and flashbacks of traumas from his past, the other shows the imapcts of the past traumas on both the world around the protagonist and also in dealing with his character arc.
As has been said by others, Inception is more of a narrative mind fuck than a perceptual mind fuck - it's actually lack in that regard, considering that we're in the world of the dream, they do surprisingly little with that to challenge audiences. Instead, it's not really about that and it definitely does more with being a metaphor for film-making rather than about the world of dreams and how that all hangs together. The world of dreams and subconscious was just a stage for a story that didn't really focus on that.
As for why a movie like
Inception bought way more mind share than
Shutter Island, well, that's simple.
Inception created lasting iconic images and had a score that really drove that home, so in that sense it was inherently way more cinematic and ball-tingly than
Shutter Island. Comparing the two movies purely on the basis of their impact upon pop culture. I can think of a dozen
Inception meme jokes, I can't think of one from
Shutter Island.
One of the best feelings ever is when you experience a moment or a series of scenes that leave you sitting there with your mind reeling, the images create questions but before your mind can answer them you're being dragged along the cinematic current by images, music, motivations and more moments that do it all over again. I love that.
Inception had lots of moments like that, primarily driven the narrative structure, which creates a feeling of venturing into the cinematic unknown.
Shutter Island is a stark comparison to this, where many of the beats are incredibly familiar and the narrative incredibly conventional. We know something is off and we're just waiting to have it explained to us (or piece it together ourselves... which as it turns out, was incredibly easy to do).
The disdain and backlash to
Inception is interesting and definitely driven more by the fact that it was an incredibly successful blockbuster that allowed itself to challenge the audience with some narrative tricks (which it did completely overexplain via exposition, to get critical for a second) but gained a repuation for being a "mind fuck" or THE MOST AMBITIOUS MOVIE OF ALL TIME. People started getting all snooty and saying stupid shit like "it's no primer". Thank fuck it isn't. That's a particularly niche movie right there.
Quote Posted by Tocky
Then I recommend the latest Conan movie for you. It too is all flash bang CGI with no substance.
Yeesh. Gotta say these Conan references aren't doing you any favours, Tocky.
Kuuso on 7/10/2011 at 10:22
I think you're downplaying Shutter Island a bit due to it being more of a traditional movie. Inception being very meta doesn't take away from Shutter Island. The core difference between the films is the fact that Shutter Island is film adaptation of a book whereas Inception is a direct screenplay. That difference is present in every scene of the films, if you compare.
driver on 7/10/2011 at 12:49
I should probably make it clear that I wasn't saying that Inception is like Primer, just that the way some people seem to react to other people's opinions its as if they were comparing it to the most complex film ever. Yes it requires more attention to follow than The Fast and the Furious, but it certainly doesn't require a PhD to understand it.
Scots Taffer on 8/10/2011 at 00:18
If it's any consolation driver I wasn't having a go at you, I've seen that statement several times in relation to Inception.
