Slashdot Mirror
Behind the Special Effects of Inception
Lanxon writes "Wired has a behind the scenes look at how Inception's reality-distorting special effects sequences were shot, in an interview with Chris Corbould — the man 'prized for his ability to stage a real-life tank chase in St. Petersburg (GoldenEye), to flip a working juggernaut down a narrow Chicago street (The Dark Knight), and to build a working Batmobile that can do 30-metre jumps without the aid of a single post-production pixel.'" Hopefully most of you who intend to see Inception have already seen it by now, so you don't have to worry about spoilers. It's getting pretty much universal praise.
I assumed the gravity special effects were all CG, but it's great to know they were done physically!
Y'all're being way too literal - whether the top fell or it didn't, the point of the last shot isn't whether the reality Cobb is in is real or not, the point is that he walked away from the top as it was spinning. He stopped trying to get home because, as far as he was concerned, he was as home as he wanted to be.
Whether the reality we, as an audience, left him in was "real" or not is completely immaterial. Home != reality, necessarily; he ended up where he needed to be.
So many people, including my wife, said they just didn't get it. I must really be in the minority, because I thought that it had a similar "wow" factor as "The Matrix", only with plot instead of special effects. I remember watching "The Matrix", and at the scene where Neo got unplugged, I had this overwhelming feeling of "Oh, my, god! I get it! This is so absolutely innovatively cool!" I really had the same feeling when watching Inception. And maybe my delight with it has to do with the fact that I am able to have lucid dreams on occasion. I specifically remember one where I woke up from a dream, somehow realized that I was still dreaming, and then woke up from that. Having personally experienced that made the concept at least understandable.
Granted, it wasn't a perfect movie, and it was probably too long, but I really think it had an innovative depth that hasn't been seen in movies in a long time.
I also feel that though the SFX were cool, this is a movie you really don't need to see on the big screen. The plot carries it well. The wow-factor doesn't come from the SFX, it comes from the plot.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Ok, this might not be the place for this, but I'm pretty sure this is the real deal (spoilers, obviously):
When Cobb's wife killed herself, she was correct in thinking that they lived in a dream. She escaped into reality. When he didn't wake up, she went back in to rescue him. She's pulling a Mr. Charles, posing as part of his own unconscious. However, her attempts to get him to realize he was dreaming were always based on making his dream life worse, which as Cobb tells us, doesn't work. Positive feelings are stronger.
In the end, she creates an inception in him-- the idea of a friend coming into his dreams to rescue him, and the idea that escaping from the dream will allow him to be with his loved ones. The Inception works, but takes some time to grow-- so he doesn't snap out of things immediately, but the top spinning at the end is a sign that the process has worked.
The big question in my mind is, who in the dream is real? Is Mal pulling the Inception all by herself, or are some of the characters members of her team? My guess is that Ariadne and Saito are part of Mal's team, or else she's sometimes masquerading as them (the way the forger does).