How to Improve ‘Inception’: Some Enthusiastic Ideas From CC2K

Tony Lazlo:

Lance, I want to talk about two things: Sex and The Great Escape.

First, let’s talk about sex. During our emergency summit yesterday, you specifically mentioned the moment when JGL steals a smooch from Ellen Page. That beat rightfully drew a laugh in the IMAX theater where I saw the movie, and you’re quite right to criticize Nolan’s movies for being sexless. Heck, three of his leads – DiCaprio, JGL and Page – are all smooth, vaguely androgynous figures when presented in their default settings. Only a significant amount of roughing up – and an unwieldy subplot about his dead wife – manages to push DiCaprio more squarely into the male zone, while JGL and Page remain sexless and lifeless. (Tom Hardy, for his part, manages to exude some roughneck charm in his role, though oddly, the one scene that involves an actual seduction in Inception is when Hardy’s character shape-shifts into an eerie-looking bombshell in the hotel/level 2 dreamworld.)

Anyway, I’m trying to imagine an Inception that’s populated with characters who bristle with real sexual danger. Lance, I love your idea for a reimagined architect – someone less Patricia Bateman and more Run, Lola, Run – and I would think that the temptation of consequence-free sexual mania would provide an ongoing source of tension for our reimagined dream-raiders.

Furthermore, I’m all for your reimagined JGL, and the mind boggles at the prospect of the sexual chemistry between JGL’s dream-cowboy and Page’s tats-and-fishnet architect – especially when contrasted with the more wizened DiCaprio, who just wants to do the job and go home.

Side note: Lance, you mentioned The Matrix, and I just flashed on something I’d like to share. Remember Tank from the original Matrix movie? It was a small role, but the actor (Marcus Chong) made an impression. If you don’t remember him, he wakes up Neo on his first day of training with some memorable dialogue:

TANK
Morning. Did you sleep?

NEO
No.

TANK
You will tonight. I guarantee it. I’m Tank. I’ll be your operator.

NEO
You don’t have…

TANK
Any holes? Nope. Me and my brother Dozer, we are 100 percent pure, old fashioned, home-grown human. Born free. Right here in the real world. Genuine child of Zion.

NEO
Zion?

TANK
If the war were over today, Zion’s where the party would be. You’ll see it one day. Last human city. All we got left.

The Wachowskis sneak a lot of exposition into this scene by way of Tank’s earnest enthusiasm. This small scene, along with the now-classic training scene in the dojo, are both great examples of how The Matrix delivers its exposition with speed, style, economy and – most important – a spoonful of sugar. The Wachowskis wisely pepper their expository passages with jokes:

“Were you listening to me? Or were you looking at the woman in the red dress?”

Mind-bending (yet relevant) dialogue:

“Do you think my being faster has anything to do with my muscles in this place? Do you think that’s air you are breathing now?”

And the occasional stand-up-and-cheer moment:

“Morpheus is fighting Neo!”

By contrast, Inception fell into the trap of rolling exposition. Lance, you pointed out how Cobb never finished explaining the rules of the dreamworld to Page, not even by movie’s end. That’s a shame, because the best science-fiction (or fantasy) establishes its rules with economy and clarity, and then lets the audience enjoy the ride.

Earlier I said I wanted to talk about The Great Escape, but to be fair, I want to talk about The Great Escape as much as I want to talk about Ocean’s Eleven, Mission: Impossible and any of the other heist movies that Inception borrowed from – and this’ll lead right into my next suggestion for how to improve Inception:

3. More specialists!

One of the moments of pure joy I got while watching Inception came when I realized that Tom Hardy wasn’t there to forge documents but people. It felt like a great piece of world-building, but I was disappointed to see that there weren’t more specialists in this field. (Again, think back to The Great Escape, where everyone had a specific job to carry out.) So allow me to suggest some of my own, while also highlighting some of yours, Lance.

During our summit yesterday, I touched on the idea that in this world, there would be operatives who would specialize in tasks on both sides of the dream/reality divide. I cheekily suggested they be called “above the line” and “below the line” operatives, so let’s start above the line.

ABOVE THE LINE (REAL-WORLD) SPECIALISTS

THE ANTANNAE

Lance, I love all of your ideas for how to hack into a target’s brain remotely, and I suggest that one of our new specialists would the Antannae – an operative who gets close to the target and acts as a literal, physical relay for the rest of the team to beam into the target’s dreamworld. Because of the need to get close to the target while they’re asleep, this job would often call upon specialists with the sex appeal to pull off this kind of classic honey-pot role from the world of espionage.

THE DRAMATURGE

In theater, the dramaturge mostly handles research. In the Inception-verse, the Dramaturge would do the same, while also providing the team with a coherent narrative by which to dupe the target into a false sense of security in the real world, while also making suggestions for how to drive the dreamworld narrative in a direction that will let them accomplish their mission. Tom Hardy’s character handles most of these duties in the current movie – remember, he suggests that they turn Cillian Murphy against his father’s aide (Tom Berenger). In addition, the Dramaturge would look into the target’s background to find out if they’ve militarized their subconscious.

BELOW THE LINE (DREAMWORLD) SPECIALISTS

THE CONJUROR

Lance, you rightfully criticized one moment in Inception – when Tom Hardy says, “Don’t be afraid to dream bigger,” right before he pulls out a very large gun. We both like the idea that the dreamworld would allow for this kind of on-the-fly invention from the dream-raiders, but unfortunately, Nolan’s script relegated that idea to a one-line throwaway.

I submit that the dream-raiders would call upon the Conjuror – an operative with the skills to invent or otherwise conjure items in the dreamworld. I imagine that the Conjuror would come in handy in a gunfight, but they’d be even more useful after the architect’s construct started to break down. Who else could provide the firepower to fight off a leviathan that springs from the target’s slumbering id?

THE COUNTER

As in “counter-measure.” Also as in “sheep counter.”

Lance, you suggested that in this world, powerful executives would be ultra-paranoid about dream invasion, going so far as to employ physicians to monitor their lifesigns during sleeping hours. Pursuant to that idea, I submit that the dream-raiders would have to deploy a Counter to disable whatever measures the target had put in place to wake themselves up – a time-release stimulant, for example. In addition, the Counter would also work to subvert the efforts of the target’s monitors. A successful Counter would be able to – from the dreamworld – successfully trick the target’s mind into emitting the brainwave pattern of peaceful REM sleep. No small feat.

Lance, now I feel like I’m overwriting! And let me pause a moment to back up and heap praise on Nolan’s movie. Once again: I’m delighted that such a dense, heady movie has conquered the box office this weekend. It bodes well for original ideas that want to make it to the big screen, and it bodes well for moviemaking in general.

So I’ll throw it back to you, Lance. Do you have any final thoughts about Inception?

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