klenwell press

Saw Inception recently. First movie I’ve seen in months. My micro-review, originally posted on Hacker News:

The it’s-all-a-dream interpretation is the only one that makes sense from a science-fiction point-of-view, however unsatisfying it is from a critical perspective. The slightly wobbling top at the end points, rather overtly, to the real answer: it’s meant to be ambiguous.

That said: WTF? We’ve got to bring down a company on the verge of being The Most Powerful Corporation in the World. So let’s use this highly radical, unproven and improbable, voodoo-science inception approach. Oh, and by the way, we have to plant a mole within the highest ranks of the multinational beast within the next, say, two weeks, so we can get valuable information that is necessary to penetrate and manipulate the fragile psyche of our target.

Cut-scene: it’s done. This is logic that only makes sense within the context of a dream. The sort of dream Coleridge, or Rube Goldberg, would have.

Science generally favors the application of Occam’s Razor: buy the airline and crash the damn plane with the kid on it. Or just send in the ninjas. The ensuing infighting among the various executive factions vying for the top spot after junior is out of the picture will ensure that any plans Acme Energy Inc had for world domination are put off course indefinitely.

Inception was entertaining. But Memento was a more interesting film intellectually. That’s a film that truly merited this kind of philosophical scrutiny. Remember Sammy Jankis.

This was in support of the basic premise: Inception isn’t science fiction