By any measure, I think I ought to be excited about Inception. It's a Chris Nolan movie. It's got Ellen Page. It's an interesting twist on big summer blockbusters. It's got Joseph Gordon-Levitt. There's even Cillian Murphy, who is unsettlingly gorgeous. And rotating hallways. But I think this is why it leaves me a little cold. Hero Complex reports that:
"Inception" does have major computer effects: Several vivid sequences show a dream metropolis in churning calamity, a city skyline seems to fold in on itself as a dream begins to lose its shape and, unlike many Hollywood versions of dream surrealism, the scene has the look of a massive mechanical failure, not a morphing, liquid calamity. Nolan's dreams have the sharp edges of Escher, not the surreal syrup drips of Dalí. Architecture is a major influence on the culture of the film too with dreams that are more like blueprints than poems. That speaks to Nolan's longtime interest in architecture.I think whether a movie like this works or not depends a great deal on whether the vision of dreams resonates with the people watching it. This isn't what my dreams are like, crisp and overwhelming. They're more messy and realistic, and much more subtly unsettling, like the dreams the main characters have in the Buffy Season 4 finale, "Restless":
Of course, it's entirely possible Nolan dreams exactly like this, which is pretty cool, and pretty gorgeous. But I can't imagine seeing this in my dreams, and so I can't experience the terror of having them stolen from me.