The Writers Box - Inception

Another writer box for you today, this time on the mind bending sci-fi thriller Inception. For those of you that missed my last Writers Box, I basically choose a movie, video game, short film, music album, whatever, and talk about the piece from a writing perspective. This is not a movie review, nor will I be commenting on any theatrical elements from the films/games, such as production value or directing. Once again, The Writers Box is strictly critique and analysis from a writers point of view, about writing related topics. There will be spoilers ahead for the film Inception(2010) so just know, you have been warned! Now that you know the drill, let's dive in! Note: if you're already familiar with the movie, skip to paragraph 4.

I'll give a brief rundown of the premise of the move, because it is seven years old now and there may be a lot of you that haven't seen it. So, the story surrounds Dom Cobb, and Arthur, two mind heist specialists who extract valuable information from their targets through a shared dream world. While targeting Saito, a Japanese business man, they discover that Saito hired them himself in order to see if Dom and Arthur could pass his test. After the trial, which they ultimately pass, Saito hires them for another mission, one where the goal is to perform "Inception" on the son of the competitor to Saitos energy company, because his father has recently passed away. The Inception goal is to make Fischer, who is now in charge of the competitor energy company to Saito, split up the company, but to actually plant the idea into his brain through dreams, rather than extraction anything, so that Fischer believes that he came up the idea by himself. With me so far? in more simplified terms; Arthur and Dom are going to plant the idea of splitting up his fathers company into Fischers head, so that Saito doesn't have heavy competition, and so that Fischer thinks he came up with it himself. Okay, let's move on.

Let's talk about the characters of the movie: There's the protagonist, Dom Cobb, who deson't think Inception is possible, although, he says that he has performed the action before. That's huge to remember for his character, it's one of his driving factors. Dom is sorta a quiet leader for the most part, he knows what he is doing, and does it very well. But something always seems to be troubling him that he never truly speaks about until the center of the movie. His motivation? Well, the only reason he is doing this Inception job is because Saito will make sure that Dom can return to America without any criminal charges, and will finally return to his family. He's a mind thief, of course he's wanted by every major country in the world. Next would be Arthur, who is basically the perfect sidekick character. Not much to say about him, he's incredibly intelligent, and is a very close second to Dom when is comes to mind heist. he is motivated solely by his desire and will to not go to jail, and his interest and constant curiosity with the dream world. It is important to mention that he is younger than Cobb. Thirdly, we have Ariadne, who is an incredibly gifted architecture student, that is recruited by Dom to create the "mind mazes" more on that later. She is the youngest of the group, and is always a bit weary of this dream technology that they are using. She is never really sure who the good guys are, or whether she can trust her allies completely. Finally, we have Eames, who is literally the brawn of the group. From fighting, to running, to, well, anything physical Eames does, but he's not your typical brute character. He is intelligent himself, and that makes him a force to be reckoned with. There are a few other like Yusuf, the chemist who is going to make this whole heist possible by providing a heavy sedative to the victim and inceptors, and Saito also works through the dream, but is only there to make sure the team gets the job done. Okay, let's talk about theming in Inception.

The whole movie centers around this idea of trust. Ariadne doesn't know if she can fully trust Cobb, because he his constantly not telling he things, or giving incredibly vauge explanations. When she is creating the mind maze, or simply the map that each dream level is going to be on; what building will be there, what roads, is is a deasert, etc, Dom refuses to see the plans. Why? Well we don't actually find out into about the middle of the movie the true reason, although, it's teased in the very beginning. It's his deceased wife Mal Cobb. See, Mal still lives inside Dom's mind, and even though she is dead in the real world, she can come back to life, and alter the dream mission without any control from Dom, and she regularly does. Dom can't even trust himself! he know that she is going to come out of knowwhere on every mission, and even though she isn't real, to Dom, she never went away. Another major theme of the movie is love. And not in a gushy romantic comedy way, no, this movie shows us what people will do for love. And the answer is literally anything. Fischer's true motivation for going through the heist is that he just wasn't his father to be proud of him. He goes through all these trials, level after level of mind mazes, and what does he find? his father lying on his death bed, (this was the last time he saw his dad, so that is why this imagery is in his subconscious dream). he relives that moment when is father takes his last breath, hoping that he says something that will make him feel proud for his son. Nope, quite the opposite, Fischer's father simply says: "I'm disappointed that you tried to be like me." Heavy. Stuff. This, by the way, makes Fischer want to break up the company on his own accord, stating that he does not want to be like his father. If you watch this film, you will not see this coming, you expect something positive, but is only negative. Lastly, the reason Mal Cobb dies? It's complicated, but she lived for so long in a dream world with Dom, (we're talking 60 years in a dream) and then suddenly came to back eality, she was CONVINCED that reality and the dreams were switched, and she couldn't live in the real world anymore. So, how does she react? She kills herself , but frames it like Dom did it so that they can escape away together with nothing holding them back, like their real daughter. Her idea of love was so twisted that she literally kills herself to get everlasting love. She also thought that when she died she would simply wake in the real world, thinking this reality was a dream. There's a few other smaller themes, but for the most part, these are the major two. One thing modern movies do too much of is try and throw 50 diferent ideas at you in the span of two hours, and hope that you care about any of them. This film provides a few solid themes to work on through the course of the movie, and really nails them. That's the way to do it!

I could rave about this movie all day, I mean, it's got a killer plot, with twists and turns that you never see coming, it's a really interesting concept, the themes are beautifully driven home, and doesn't deviate from the main story of the plot. What I mean by that is never starts a side plot, everything that the characters are doing is solely motivated by that end result of the film, there's no need to distract you by adding some sort of side mission.

One other thing this movie does so well is the idea of foreshadowing, or revealing bits of information that the audience could decipher to reveal future plot points, without the movie actually coming out and saying "Yeah, in act three you find out so and so is her dad." Good writers are good at foreshadowing, and this comes across in several scenes of the movie, and it does this SO well, that you don;t even know that they are foreshadowing anything. The Mal/Dom love story, the idea of limbo, to my personal favorite, the spinning of the totem from scene to scene. The totem in this film is the device that Dom and others use after they leave a dream level/ wake up to see if they are still in a dream. Dom's Totem is a spinning top, that, if it topples like a normal top would do in real life because of gravity, then he is back in the real world. If the top continues to spin for an unlimited amount of time, he is still in a dream world somewhere. I'm sure you've all see the famous ending to this movie, without knowing what it means before, Right? Where Dom seemingly pulls off the Inception properly and reunited with his family, and spins the top of the kitchen table just to make sure. But, before he can see if the top topples over, he is distracted by his daughters voice, and runs over to her, leaving the top. the top, never falls, it weavers, but the film cuts to black before you can truly see what happens. Shit. This movie is beautiful, I might just watch it again now.

All in all, I recommend it to you. Yes, there are a few things wrong with is here and there, it is definitely not perfect by any means, but I'm willing to over look a lot of it's errors because of how methodical it was written, and how well shaped almost everything else is. I apologize about the length, I promise they won't be as long from here on at. Anyway, Inception is the movie, go check it out I think it's on Netflix. I promise you, you will not regret it! Thanks for sticking around, and I'll see you all back here for another blog topic, hope you enjoyed the read!