Inception-Dreaming The Matrix

I’ve been waiting for someone to make another Matrix movie since 1999 and Inception is pretty close.  It’s a sci fi movie, sort of.  Sort of because there is no real science mentioned as to how the people in this universe share dreams.  This is not a problem, since we are never sure what reality really is and if there is a higher level where the real technology of Dreaming exists.

We are shown a number of realities, all of which have differences in how time passes, so that the 30 seconds it take a van to fall from a bridge translates into a few minutes in the next reality and twenty minutes in the reality after that, and something on the order of fifty years or so on the level after that.  Dream time, as anyone who has had a dream after hitting the snooze button can tell you, is not the same as real time.

As Morpheus said-What is reality?  In Inception our heroes are a band of Ocean Eleven type thieves hired to implant an idea in a gazillionaire’s mind.  We go through the usual rounding up the Old Gang to do the Big Job scenes with the group leader, Leo,  having lost his edge and possibly his mind somewhere along the line.  They take on an impossible job and the bulk of the film is split between the many dream levels, each of which has different versions of our heroes and the person they are planting the idea in.

The cast is brilliant and fun to watch, the special effects are both over the top and perfectly appropriate for the story, and the story itself is one designed to make you question the very nature of reality.  Inception deals with loss and madness and what happens when you have the power to change the shape of your personal universe.  In Inception, everyone is Neo, everyone can change the dream and make it their own-though it can be dangerous to do so.

I liked Inception and loved the little question as the film ends and cuts to the credits.  This was a fun movie, all the more so because it reminded me of the best that the original Matrix had to offer-I have always liked Virtual Reality stories.  Inception was a good film.

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