What if Inception were a total mindbender?

My girlfriend and I watched it together. She liked it, I loved it, but we both came up with the same conclusion: Nolan compromised the intellectual integrity of the movie to appeal to a broader audience.

DiCaprio and Page weren't amazing in their roles, but they were safe popular choices that people would go to see.

20 minutes of gratuitous skiing action wasn't necessary, but hey, it's the climax, Hollywood movies, at some point, need to throw a bunch of money on the screen. The final area could've been something much more mystifying and cerebral.

Lastly, I think the dialogue does too much spoonfeeding. Instead of directly telling the viewer near the beginning that Cobb plans to plant a new idea instead of extract an idea, it could've been a major plot twist.

It's probably the most ambitious movie of all time. It could've been the greatest movie of all time had it not catered so much to 15-25 year old male audience.

And stuffing the film with mindbending plot twists would somehow not be catering to that particular audience?

No kidding.

Perhaps, though this doesn't especially feel like a movie that's all too concerned with characterisation. They function as pawns within the narrative and are developed only as far as it creates conflict and/or resolution. As a result, I don't object too strongly to their casting, at least not enough to think that someone else should have done the roles.

Yeah, but would it have made as much sense within the context of inception as explained in the film. The plots hinge on the target not realising that they are actually dreaming, hence why the environments try to look and feel realistic - if the target becomes aware that they are dreaming, then it complicates things immeasurably (as established when Cobb actually decides to pretend to be a dream character to bring Fischer into it). The film is definitely not dependent upon weirdness for weirdness's sake - it's a glorified heist film, so is there really much need to go above and beyond?

It could've been a major plot twist, but would it have been a good one? The film establishes that extraction is hard enough (through the scene inside Saito's dream at the start), but that's to drive home the idea that pulling off an inception will be even harder, firmly establishing the stakes at the outset. It's not like there aren't enough dangerous twists that happen once the mission actually starts, such as them being trapped inside the dream with the possibility of going insane in Limbo or the fact that Mal keeps appearing and threatening to undermine the whole operation. It's the goal of the heist and its difficulty is the main reason why he has to assemble such a crack team in the first place, so it's not like he really could've kept it hidden.

If that's how you feel, then I recommend Paprika.

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Honestly I never really thought of it this way, your totally right though. Nice thought man.

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No, it's not and no, it couldn't.

Who is this directed at?

Yeah, just because it's not part of a franchise and is able to pull off something more outwardly cerebral than your typical Hollywood mega-blockbuster does not make it the most ambitious film ever made. Besides, I'm not sure how much of it is deliberately catering to a young male audience instead of just being the exact kind of film that Nolan wanted to make.

No. Not stuffing. More so minimalizing. The movie was 2h28m. If it cut about 5 minutes of dialogue spoonfeeding and 10 minutes of gratuitous action, it would've been much more tighter.

I think you're basing your enjoyment for a movie to be way too lenient on figuring things out for yourself. Sometimes a film is just to sit back and enjoy.

I guess I was disappointed that Inception could've been in the same vein as Memento, but it decided to be an action blockbuster instead

Yeah, but when you brought up an example of the film doing "spoonfeeding" in one of your earlier posts, I at least managed to justify its existence. The film's certainly got to deliver a lot of exposition, so how do you determine the difference between what is necessary and what is excessive? The same goes for which ten minutes of action you would consider gratuitous in opposition to the rest (though you did mention the skiing so maybe that's it).

Sure, it could've been, but where's the fun in that?

Ew, no, that's compromising FOR THE SAKE of mindbending.

You got a better idea?