Oscar Mudilo Dr. Edwardo Perez ENGL 1301 April 17, 2014 Inception Inception, which means beginning, is a movie about a professional thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets. With its characters, music, special effects, originality, and rating. Inception is able to capture its audience with its unique thrills, and to the fact that the story stays within the bounds of believability. In this paper I will examine the five categories for a Sci-fi thrillers film and rate Inception in what levels it falls in such as, mediocre, fair, good, and excellent. The following sections, explain what makes this an excellent film. The director, Christopher Nolan, also director the Batman Trilogy, does an excellent job with his selection of characters. Nolan now has enough power in Hollywood that he can bring together some of the best ensembles of any given year, but can he always handle them? First of all, I feel that in his previous movies he did a poor job of selecting actresses. His female characters range from uninteresting and almost unnecessary (Carrie-Anne Moss in Memento, Hilary Swank in Insomnia) to god-awful (Scarlett Johansson in Prestige, both Maggie Gyllenhaal and Katie Holmes in the Batman movies). But Inception, au contraire, provides us, finally, with a strong female character. Marion Cotillard gives a very strong performance as the film's femme fatale. The rest of the supporting cast is strong for the most part, but no one stands out like Tom Hardy's Eames. He's an actor who came out of nowhere to become this film's action hero. Cillian Murphy does a good job of supporting and Ken Watanabe and Dileep Rao are nothing much to write about. DiCaprio and Gordon-Levitt carry the weight in this movie and Ellen page does an excellent job balancing DiCaprio’s character, so not much room is left for anyone else in the cast. Based on the actor’s performance and the ability to become one with their character, I give this category excellent. The music score received a mostly positive reception. Regarding Zimmer's previous collaborations with Nolan, Archie Watt of MovieCues said: "it's very obvious to anybody who has heard his previous scores for the director that this score is built firmly on their foundations. The compositions are very simple ones, but here the familiar elements of those previous scores are pulled off in a more energetic and complex way. That’s what puts this score a good distance ahead of them"[Watt]. While praising several elements of the score, his review was largely negative, saying, "Despite the fact that certain music on this album is inarguably good, the majority of it is rather dull and mundane."[Watt]. However, the result only serve to strengthen his credibility. The music stirs a rich emotional response that matches the story line well with that being said I rated this section excellent. The special effects were spectacular, after so many 3-D movies with unnecessary and unrealistic computer graphics, it was refreshing to, finally, see a realistic two dimensional special effects movie. Most of the action that happens in Inception, takes place within the human mind, specifically, when people are dreaming. Using a machine called the PASIV Device, agents can invade a target's dream and steal, or even plant, ideas. To make these mind games a physical reality, a team led by special-effects supervisor, Chris Corbould, had to build unique rigs that would make actors appear as though they were walking on walls and otherwise defying the laws of physics. As a viewer I found the special effects extremely great, even though some were challenging to the human eye, they were very realistic and went well with the scenes. Inception, one of the most critically claimed films of the year, is under fire more frequently as time goes along because many are outspoken that it is not as original as everyone thinks. Many are saying that the picture because it is too similar to 1984's Dreamscape and 2006's anime Paprika. Legendary horror director John Landis is one of those people. Here's what Landis had to say: "Interestingly enough 'Inception,' which is wonderful, is not original. There have been a lot of movies like it; remember 'Dreamscape?' Oh that's bad special effects but almost the same movie. It's Dennis Quaid and Edward Albert is the president of the United States and they insert him into his dreams. Ya know, I think, don't misunderstand me I think Christopher Nolan is a wonderful director it's just I don't think he is yet to make a movie other than 'Memento' that I thought was really original, it’s just very stylish. He's a lucky guy, I'm glad for him; I love the fact that he can continue to make his movies. Whether he makes a couple of unsuccessful ones in a row, he'll be in the same situation as everybody else. More power to him I like smart filmmakers and I think he's great."[Landis] In spite that the plot of the movie wasn’t original, I still feel that he did an amazing job. Even is Dreamscape’s production had access to the same technology Inception would still have a better rating. I rate this section good. The rating of this film PG-13 is accurate. We see people kiss, and one character uses subterfuge to steal a kiss. A couple of women wear low-cut tops. Violence wise, Inception is tricky to tally. At times we see real men get hurt or killed. But much of the violence is perpetuated in dream worlds, where the people we see are not real, but manifestations of the subject's subconscious. As a result, the "real" body count is surprisingly low (at least for a film that wields this much intensity), while metaphysical fatalities run off the chart. We do hear a little profanity though, such as, characters abuse Jesus' name five or six times and God's a dozen pairing it with "Damn" another half-dozen. We also hear "A**hole", "Ass," "Hell," "Bastard", "bloody" and "piss off". A PG-13 movie could go "beyond the PG rating in theme, violence, nudity, sensuality, language, adult activities or other elements, but does not reach the restricted R category."[Murray]. Therefore this is why I gave this section excellent. Overall, I think viewers of this film will have great experiences with this movie, because it presents a lot of great qualities and situations that they could relate to. In general, I believe Nolan's theme of the film several characters digging deeper and deeper into a world of dreams, and the great success of it is that it pulls you along for the whole ride to the point where you start to forget how deep the characters really are and which world is supposed to be reality. Nolan's interesting characters and complex, detailed settings kept me very focused when I watched this movie. Nolan is an intelligent author and this was a very thoughtful film that he has put together. For these reasons, with my overall rating.

Work Cited Inception. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Perf. Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2010. DVD. Landis, John. “John Landis Calls Inception Unoriginal”. Getthebigpicture. 24 Apr. 2014. Web. 26 Oct 2010. Murray, Rebecca. "How Does a Movie Earn Its Rating?” About. 24 Apr. 2014. Web. n.p. Watt, Archie. "Hans Zimmer and Johnny Marr talk about the sad romance of Inception”. LA Times Mag. 24 Apr. 2014. Web. 20 Jul 2010.