House of R - 'Inception' Turns 15 | Hot Nolan Summer

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

Hot Nolan Summer continues! Mal and Jo are back to revisit Christopher Nolan’s 2010 movie, ‘Inception.’ They discuss how the movie holds up 15 years after its release, and give out some superlatives. They break down everything from the most baffling accent to the sickest set piece, and more! (00:00) Intro (10:38) Opening Snapshot (18:04) Hot Nolan Summer: 'Inception' (01:12:54) Funniest Moment (01:17:36) Sickest Set Piece (01:22:51) Who Is the REAL Villain of This Movie? (01:30:47) Most Exquisitely Gorgeous Shot (01:37:58) The Scene You Think About the Most (01:48:34) Where Would You Put the One F-bomb? (01:50:28) Most Baffling Accent (01:54:50) Best Use of a Nolan-verse Regular (01:59:22) Best Stunt(02:04:54) Stealth MVP (02:09:32) Best Dead Wife Moment (02:11:31) Clearest “Great Man” Moment (02:14:16) Regrettable Miscasting (02:17:32) Most Satisfying Twist (02:22:54) The Horniest Moment of This Film (02:25:28) The Line that Hits the Hardest (02:27:57) Most Devastating Moment (02:31:28) Most Unforgettable Zimmerism (02:32:54) Never Returned to the Nolan-verse But Should Have (02:34:28) The Most Nolan Thing About This Movie (02:35:25) What About ‘The Odyssey’ Are You Most Hyped For? Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Producers: Carlos Chiriboga and John Richter Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. Welcome back to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson, and it is not a dream. Joining me today,

the only person I would let down to the Snow Fortress level of my mind. It's a Mallory Rubin. Joanna, I can't imagine you with all your complexity, all your perfection, all your imperfection. Um, wow, what a dream. We're going to come back to that line. I can't, I, I'm so excited you pull it out. Hello. Hello, my darling. Part two of Hot Nolan Summer. We're here to talk to you about Inception 15 years later. Oh, brum. Um, hello, uh, I am so excited to be back on the pod. Thank you so much to all of all the, uh, fine folks who filled in for me while I was gone. I thought the episode that you did with Sean Van on Superman was absolutely.

incredible stuff. We're so lucky to have that podcast. They're the best. Thank you. Thank you all so much for doing that. It's a great time. We are going to cover Inception today. We're recording this on Tuesday. And soon thereafter, you and I are headed down to San Diego, California. Mali Rubin, what are you doing in San Diego, California? We're going to fucking Comic-Con, Joanna, and we're going to be there for a few days It's going to be a blast. We'll be attending a lot of fun things. And the Ring of Versus crew is hosting a panel.

We will have a panel on Thursday evening at 6 p.m. The Marriott Marquis, San Diego Marina, Grand 10 and 11. You need a badge, Comic-Com badge, to come to that. So if you have a badge, if you are attending the convention, please come to our panel. Come to the Ring orverse panel. We don't want the room to be empty and embarrassing. Please come see us. Please come see it.

Here's the even better news. If you were like, hey, maybe I was going to go see Fantastic Four that time, we'll reenact Fantastic Four for you. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Who will you be portraying? Oh, obviously I am going to be John Malkovich cut from the movie, but I'll be there anyway. Tough one for John.

Tough one for John. Here's the other bit of news for the bad babies, for the midnight. riders for the junior mince for everyone. If you're like, fuck, I'm not going to Comic-Con. Can't believe you guys are going to be down in San Diego in my city or perhaps just regionally proximate to where I live. And I don't get to see you. You still can. Because the Ringervverse crew is also doing a meet-and-grate, a little Ringervverse meetup after the paddle. That's going to be at 8.30 at Whiskey Girl. All of this information that details, the times, the locations. You can find this on our Instagrams,

on the ringer versus Instagram and Twitter, et cetera. So you don't need a Comic-Con badge. You don't need to be attending Comic-Con to come to the meet-up. So come to the panel and come to the meet-up or just come to the meet-up. Have you done any research into Whiskey Girl as a venue? I googled it once. Yeah. And other than that, I just put all my trust in our wonderful events team.

Our event's team is crushing. Whiskey Girl is a great name, I got to say. It is a very special place in San Diego, and I'm really excited to go there. and I'm excited for all of bad babies to experience Whissy Girl with us. The vibes there are unique, and I'm excited for us all to experience it together. I think this is going to be really fun.

And I really hope that folks come to the panel, and I really hope they come to the meet and greet. I've already heard from a bunch of people who are coming to both, so I am really excited for that. Yeah, and we're going to be running around, going to a lot of different panels. Van texted me this morning

an incredible entertainment weekly article featuring a very shirtless Sam Reed is Listat season three. As you know, I am very, excited for the interview of the vampire panel. But perhaps even more exciting for me personally is that our fine friends at FX have asked me to host the Alien Earth H. Panel. Yes. And which means I will be in with a knock on all the wood that nothing happens between now and then to any person involved. I will be in close proximity to Cobb Vant himself, Timothy

Yolifon who will be on that panel as well as our guy Alex Lothar, et cetera, et cetera. I'm absolutely thrilled. We've got some stuff planned with Alex and some other folks around Alien Earth at Comic Con. But yeah, I will be hosting the Hall-A-H panels if you're an Hall-A-H for the alien Earth panel. You know, give me a woo from the audience. I'll be excited to see you there. Should I paint my face and make like a custom shirt? What color would you paint it?

What are you going to do? It would be for you. So what color would you want it to be? A green apple face. I'll have to think about that one. Yeah, think about it. Think about how much you care about me. Okay.

So we'll be doing a pod from Comic-Con. We'll be talking about all the panels, all the news that we hear, everything that we enjoy. We're going to be checking out the cosplayers. We're going to be really doing it. Really excited for that. Really excited to hang out with all the Midnight Boys as well who will be there. We're also doing, of course, a fantastic four pod after that movie drops, which we're really, really excited. If Mallory saw it last night.

I can't wait to pot about the movie. I had a blast. I was stuck in travel hell, but Mallory saw the movie last night, and she is giving me good reviews. So I'm really, really excited to check it out myself. And also, we have a Best of the Quarter Century Pod still coming up, our villains. We had to shuffle some pods around because of travel and other things. Yeah. Stranger Things Season 2. Stranger Things Season 2.

Loat and very, very exciting. So there's a lot coming up. We're about to start Buffy. Are you excited? a couple weeks. Yeah, can't wait. Carlos, our producer, Carlos Jerboga, just texted me. He just got to Buffy season two.

Oh, he's flying. Season two is like leaps and bounds better than season one. And he like just means like, he's like, oh, you're right. Season two is like really, really good. So I'm excited for all of us to get there. Season one is also extremely special, though. That's a lot to keep track of. We're bouncing all over the place.

We're Calvin all is like great stuff. Nerd culture is flourishing here at the end of the summer. How can folks keep track of all this stuff, Mallory, I'm going to keep it simple. Yeah. Follow the pod. Why not? Follow House of R on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.

You can watch full video episodes of House of Our and The Midnight Boys. Pew Poo! On Spotify. And of course on the Ringerverse YouTube channel. So subscribe to that as well. And then follow the Ringervverse on the social media platform of your choosing. That's a great place for updates, for clips from the pod. for anything and everything. Memes.

Jomey loves a meme. Follow along for the memes. And of course, send us your emails because the inbox is always open. Hobbits and Dragons at gmail.com. If you have thoughts on Fantastic Four, if you have thoughts on Stranger Things Season 2, Buffy Season 1, Alien Earth, the best villains of the quarter century so far in film and TV, anything, everything. We'd love to hear from you. Christopher Nolan.

The greater works of Christopher Nolan, why not? There you go. Spoiler warning. Yeah. It's a dream. It's all a dream. It's a dream within a dream. It's inception.

If you haven't seen deception, what a delight. Oh, wow. Like, press pause on this pod and go watch it. What a thrill. You have a two and a half hours of delightful, uh, timey, whimy, dreaminess waiting for you. A heist? A dream heist.

Dream heist. Dream heist. Love a, love a heist. Love a heist. So all everything, anything ever, inception is on the table today. So that is what we were talking about today. And why are we doing this? Of course, this is the 15th anniversary of inception.

Was a little while a couple days ago. We were supposed to do this a little while ago. But that's okay. July 16th, 2010 is when inception came out. Wow. And then next month, August, we're doing the prestige just because we love the prestige. And we have been hearing from the bad babies that they want us to keep this train rolling.

What do you think, Mall? You're waiting for a train. I don't think there's any stopping. We'll be pottling together. It doesn't matter where we're going. We'll be potting together. Exactly. Our hands will start as young hands

and then we will realize that they're old wrinkly hands and clasping each other. I think that's the sun damage I got in Hawaii that's making my hands quite papery. So, yeah, yeah. Listen, you look beautiful. You look sun-kissed, sun-dapled, and ready to tackle four to five days in a convention hall. So it's great. Listen, hot Nolan summer, you know, we started with the 20th anniversary of Batman Begins. Last month, we had a blast. We're so excited for this pot today. We can't wait to do the prestige. Why stop there? Why not continue the march until the Odyssey? I mean, the trailer's out. We've got a poster.

Who knows? We're not committing to anything. But is it at least possible that hot Nolan's summer could turn into... Hot Nolan Odyssey? Yeah. Us tossed about on the wind, dark seas of the Aegean until we reached the rocky shores of the IMAX theater. So many wonderful films to discuss. I believe I had said brisk Nolan fall on the last pot and a bad baby,

helpfully suggested, crisp would be, you know, more apt in our... Crisp for Nolan, yeah. Yeah, also in our very Apple-centric universe, I think, like a crisp apple, crisper Nolan, all of it. Right into the winter and then into the spring. Cozy Nolan winter? Why not? Something to at least consider.

Something to at least consider. Somebody I think about. Ten and five-year anniversary. Still on offer. We'll be back. to the honesty at the end of this pot as we wrapped up our Batman pot as well

we are going to do what we did last time which is like talk about we do some general discussion and then we're going to get to sort of like our superlatives, our rewards, our Nolan categories eventually. Let's talk about some

details, some creative specifics of this particular movie inception. Directed by Christopher Nolan. I've ever heard of him. Yeah. Have you heard of a lot? lots.

Screenplay by Chris for Nolan. From an idea he had banging around basically since college. Did you come across this anecdote when you were doing any of your inception research is like breakfast anecdote that he likes to talk about in inception interviews? This is one of my favorite, deeply aspirational. Don't give up on the thing you've wanted to do since you were just like a young, precocious, intellectual thinking your whole life was ahead of you. And in the moments where you feel like maybe it isn't anymore, you know, your mind feels sluggish.

You're like, I never get any sleep. How can I function? What do I do? Sometimes an idea that you had in college might turn into one of the best movies ever made. It's entirely possible. Chris Nolan, I think, was like, was about, I think, 40 when he made this movie. And so Malay Ruman, this year, your inception years is still ahead of you. There you go. As I mentioned, this opened July 16th, the U.S. Open July 8th, 2010 in the Odeon in Lenin. I just want to mention that because The Odeon is one of the best movie theaters in the world. So what a dream. When you make your opus that has been banging around your head since college, I hope it opens at the Odeon in London. Same. I hope most of my future life unfolds in London.

If you have not heard this anecdote that Chris Nolan loves to tell about, in front of, I've seen him tell it in a bunch of different interviews, but it's also in my copy of the Inception screenplay, which was. actually said to us by one of our babies. Incredible. What a treat. There's a little interview between Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan at the front. And Chris Nolan is talking about how in college, if you woke up and got to the dining hall before 9 a.m., you got free breakfast. Or that was like part of your meal plan or whatever.

And Jonathan Nolan's like, oh, yeah, and that would have been particularly important to you. Which is like a fun little brotherly dig about Chris Nolan's adjutant. to towards breakfast. Anyway, he was like, he would go get breakfast before 9 a.m. And then he would come back to his dorm and sleep for a couple more hours. And during those couple hours of like sort of fitful post-breakfast sleep, he would run these like dream experiments on himself where he would try to like control his dreams because he wasn't in like deep REM sleep. So he was in this sort of like light superficial sleep. So he's like, how much control do I have over my sleeping self? And so that's when sort of this idea of like how do we control our dreams,

what is our perception, what is our dream perception like, what is our dream experience life versus our real world perception and all that sort of stuff like that. So it took many different forms. There was a time when he wanted to do sort of like a much more sort of superficial, you know, zippy little like sci-fi heist movie and then became something much more profound and emotional and puzzle boxy in the form of inception as he refined it and refined it and refined it. But it all goes back to college breakfast. Okay.

Nice to not have 8 a.m. lectures, got to say. Some people are masters of the of the schedule. You know what I mean? Got there eventually.

Hard to avoid in the in freshman year. In the freshman year SI Newhouse School of Public Communications curriculum. Got to say. Some early 8 at 8.30 a.m.

journalism classes in the early days at the Q's. Not ideal. Not ideal. Not ideal when the snow and sleet are sideways, you know? And you're walking through the carrier don't wind tunnel.

I have to say, I loved it there. It was great. Genuinely. I obviously never had come snow or sleet or, you know, inclement weather standing between myself and class. California kid. I did take summer session at UC Davis, though, and that's when it's like bone-meltingly hot outside.

So that's its own very special obstacle. Budget for this movie is $160 million. And guess what? It made $839.4 million worldwide in the box. This is a smashola hit. Eight Oscar nominations and four wins, cinematography, sound mixing, sound editing, visual effects. So this is one of those, like, we'll give it to you for the technicals, sort of Mad Max Fury Road kind of things. Nolan's first ever best picture nomination, though.

So this is like a real moment for him to be like, this, I think is Christopher Nolan's most important movie for cementing who Christopher Nolan is. Yes. Because he makes these smaller great. We love Memento, people, some people love insomnia, you know, great smaller movies. He gets the Batman ticket. We talked about what that meant for him when we did our Batman Begins episode. He does The Dark Night.

And then he uses that to make this original concept film that still makes almost a billion dollars worldwide. Right. And so then he's like, yeah, I can do it. Still a blockbuster event. I cannot just succeed wildly within the world of IP. I can do this with my own ideas. And he will continue to do that, you know, with Dunkirk making way more money than you

would expect a Dunkirk to make with Oppenheimer making way more money than you would expect an Oppenheimer make, just in our sort of like IP-obsessed sequel-obsessed world. But yeah, he gets his first best. Best Picture nomination for this movie. He had a screenplay nomination before, but this is like, you're a filmmaker now. Best Picture nomination. No acting nominations for Inception. I think that's interesting, and that's something I kind of want to come back to in terms of like.

Yeah. One of the critiques of Christopher Nolan's films is that they're a little colder, a little less emotional. And he's talked about, and we'll talk about this in a second, the work he made story-wise to ensure that Inception was a more emotional, less cerebral. It is still quite cerebral, but a cerebral and emotional film. But I would say his best and most emotional work is done with a Jonathan Nolan script. I have always felt this way. So like Memento, prestige, and interstellar, and some of the Batman movies, those are Jonathan

Nolan scripts. And I think if you think about like McConaughey crying his little eyes out, Interstellar, or everything that happens in the prestige of Memento, that's a Nolan, that's a different Nolan adding a different spice to the goulash. This goulash, this Inception goulash is delicious. But for me, I like the even spicier, more tear-soaked blend that comes with a Jonathan Nolan script. Anything else you want to say about these sort of specs in particular just before we get into our general discussion of this film? I'm surprised by the lack of acting nominations because I think the performances are universally quite strong in the film.

But like you said, we'll come back to that. We have some performance-specific categories across the pod today. So we can return to that as we go. Let's do that. All right. Let's go into our general discussion section of this film, starting with Blast from the Pass. Mallory Rubin, where were you in 2010? where was I in 2010?

I was in, I was a couple years out of college, and I was living in New York City. New York City. Working at Sports Illustrated, living the dream. And I have pretty vivid memories of seeing the trailers for this movie of my excitement for the film

because I already loved Christopher Nolan's movies at this point, And obviously, like, this is only two years after Dark Night, half a decade after Batman begins, the prestigious movie that we both adore us, is now House of Arcannon and will really become the House of Our Canon in mere weeks when we get to talk about it at length together. I love Memento. So the trailer was so specific and evocative in its visuals and in the way it was able to present a concept to you that I was like, I got, this is like a day one for me.

I can't wait to see this movie in a theater, right? And I saw it in the theater in New York and loved it and have never stopped loving it. It's my favorite Nolan movie. I mean, you know, I think I said on the last pod that my, and maybe this will change as we dive deeper into his filmography. And I think in general, as we talk about a lot, my personal power rankings for any given cinematic universe or performer or director or writer or whatever can change over time. But, you know. As I think it should. Yeah, exactly.

You bring something different to it every time you go, right? Where are you in your life? How does that impact what you're perceiving and receiving in a story? But Inception, Dark Night prestige, my top three in some order. My deep and abiding affection for Dark Night Rises, you know. For Bain. For Bain. My beloved Bain.

Did you feel like you got approximate Bain hit with the Tom Hardy presence in this movie? I don't mind spoiling for you that I will be talking about Eames many times in our categories. As you should. As you should. So I just love this movie. It's my favorite Nolan movie still to this day. I love talking about it. I love thinking about it. I love revisiting it. And it is such a rewarding rewatch because it's a puzzle. It's a mystery. The layers are actually core text, of course, but there's also so much sub-examined. text and there's so much that we can we can parse and noodle on debate, theorize, speculate. It's a film that, like, I think really lends itself to the internet era of theory fodder and discussion. Obviously, the ending in particular is I think we will discuss a few times today. And also kind of like in a great way, I think a movie where even when the cast or the filmmaking

team like talk about the interpretation, there's so much that is left open for the audience to process and explore as make sense to each person, which then feels, I think, very deeply entwined to the thrust of the story. Like, what is real to you? What are you seeking when you are mining somebody else's subconscious, your own, etc.? Like, thinking about just perception and the nature of reality is like so, I think, intellectually stimulating and portrayed in this film with such a. a vivid and inventive artistry.

I just love the movie. How about you? I do think it's one of the most enjoyable, like, visual experiences inside of a Nolan movie, which, like, you know, is a high bar to clear because, you know, but in terms of the playfulness of the visuals inside of this movie versus, you know, him trying to make a Gotham that feels anchored in reality. Here, the cities are literally bending and all this other stuff.

That's really incredible. 2010, I went down a real rabbit hole thinking about where I was in 2010 because, you know, you have this very like, you went to J-school, you worked at S-I, you're, you went to Grandland, you went to the room, you have this like very like clean trajectory of, of your life and your career. Mine has been so all over the map. And 2010 was a really spicy special year for me in terms of the fact that like, you know, I had left college, worked in bookstores,

city arts and lectures, worked at author events, quit a job, moved to Hawaii for half the year, came back, didn't have a job, got hired to, like, assistant direct a summer camp that I worked at. Like, I came back in the summer, and I got hired to be like the assistant director of a summer camp I worked with as a teenager.

So I was an arts and crafts counselor as a teenager. And then I was like helping running the camp. So that whole summer, I was in my like late 20s, but I was really having like a very, I don't know what I'm doing myself, teenage summer. And so I definitely went to go see inception midnight release. My friend and I went to go see. And that's one of the first midnight releases I ever remember going to. My friend and I went to his house, watched Memento.

at like nine and then like I think went and got like a bunch of red bulls and then just like watched inception at the big theater in Corridanara which is now derelict but was an incredible theater um and then I do remember watching it later that I watched it several times in that theater and one time I went uh with a much younger guy that I was dating with some California legal substances and definitely got yelled at by an adult in, and I was an adult at the time, but not acting like one in that theater for... For being like too rowdy? Yeah, just, yeah, just not, I think, what they wanted in that theater at that moment.

Something more than being too rowdy? Was it all my best behavior? We can tell on the blanks, yeah. So that's my strong memory of inception. And I should say, I was thinking about that, I was like, wow, you were just like really behaving uncharacteristically that summer. By that fall, or by the end of that year,

I got my first professional writing gig writing about pop culture, and three years later I was working in Vanity Fair, and then it sort of went from there. So that was just like this really interesting, I don't know what I'm doing with myself, time in my life. And just when people ask me, if people ask me sometimes, like,

how can I do what you do? or what should I do or whatever. I'm just like, man, my journey was very erratic. So, you know, if you feel yourself fumbling around and trying to figure it out, you never know what's going to be your last summer getting yelled at in a movie theater for bad behavior. And then get right on your career path just a couple months later. Incredible. What an anecdote.

I love this. You never know when someone will say to you, you have two minutes to design a maze or a podcast or a blog post that it takes one minute to solve. It could happen at any point. It really could. Really could. So 2010 was very special here for me. Inception. I love knowing this. Inception, a really, truly special foundational experience for me. Sounds like it. When this movie came out in 2010, but it is, it is deeply influenced by the films of the late 90s. He cites The Matrix and Dark City and the 13th floor and his own film Memento and, you know, also heat and also 2001.

and a bunch of other stuff is in the mix there. But he's taking this era of sci-fi films in the late 90s that we're all about sort of questioning the nature of your reality and revisiting it in the, I've had 10 years to think about this. I have learned some tricks of the trade and I'm going to put my own glossy take on it. And that is where we are here today. Also, of course, James Bond is ever influential.

on Christopher Nolan. So, yeah. It's so fun to think about, I always love, like, thinking about the, the sprawling coaching trees of cinematic influence and, like, what were those seminal texts that helped cement what Christopher Nolan wanted to do in his work? But then what does Inception become for other people, you know? And it's, like, obviously, when we and our colleagues cover so much of the genre, genres in many forms, genre storytelling that has, that has come in the world.

wake of inception. It's such a frequent, it is like a totem in its own right now, right? It is such a frequent touchpoint to kind of like anchor us in some sea of influence and like something that really feels like not only influential on other creators, but on the audience. You know, it can come in in so many different respects. Like, I don't know, something like Black Mirror is obviously not directly influenced by Inception, but. But if you're watching an episode like White Christmas, I think it's difficult to not think about time dilation, right? And just the way that Inception is kind of seeped into our minds and the way that we process

other stories has been really cool. It genuinely does feel like one of the defining films of our generation and of the century so far. Like we're talking about it as part of Hot Nolan Summer, not as part of our best of the century project, at least not today, but it's a fixture. Eventually. For us, many of those lists on the internet, as it should be. Yeah, it's interesting.

I was just thinking about this the other day about, like, the concepts that come from film and television that usually I'm pretty good at sourcing, if I lived through it, sourcing where it came from, but sometimes things become so pervasive that you're, so there was a category. Do you ever play the New York Times Connections game? I don't. Seems fun. Right.

So there was a category a couple days ago. Never done a wordle once in my life, not once. Oh, you would crush Whartle. You'd be really good at it. I just, I haven't welcomed it into my life, and now it feels like too late. Let's do it together. It's in Diego this weekend. Okay.

But one of the New York Times connections categories from a couple days ago was concepts introduced in Seinfeld. And, um, and like some of them were really easy. Like Festivist was in there. That's easy. That's easy. Yada yada was in there. That's easy or whatever. But re-gifting.

was the fourth one and I guessed it because it was the only other one that made sense but I was just like I did not remember that the idea of re-gifting originated in Seinfeld. So like there's so much that's sticky about inception to your point that is just

sort of bled into everything else that is one of those things where if you like tried to track it I don't have a what did this movie influence category like I did for Batman Begins because it was just too big.

It's too big. Yeah. You can't even see it from space. Okay. One thing I thought was really interesting, I was reading a deadline article from 2011, so from the Oscar season that year. And Mike Fleming of Deadline was really hammering this idea that Inception was welcomed as this sort of innovative and freshly original concept in a sea of IP.

It was like, oh, in this year driven by IP. just like, wow, 2010, Mike Flemmy did not know what was coming for him. But looking at, like, the top films of that year, it's Avatar, which was, you know, a brand new creation from James Cameron that year. Toy Story 3, admittedly, a threequel. Okay. That movie rules. It does. It does.

Alice in Wonderland, one of the biggest abominations, I think, that has ever existed on cinema. And I remember when I was in Hawaii when that came out. I remember when that came out. I was so mad about it. Iron Man 2. Not the best Iron Man movie, but not. I think the worst Marvel movie. The Twilight Taga Eclipse.

Wow. This was a big IP run. And then number six inception, number seven, Harry Potter, Deathly Hallows, Dispiguel. Me, Shrek Forever After, and How to Train Your Dragon. How to Train Your Dragon. I saw How to Train Your Dragon in Hawaii with my cousin, creator, my Uncle Mark. So I remember that experience. Toothless.

Toothless the legend. What a delight. that first Saturday Dragon movie was like out of... I love that movie. Based on a great series of books but like kind of came on a know where it was really fantastic.

Anyway, Inception is sitting sort of in the middle of this IP-washed year and Flaming wrote when Inception was released back on July 16th the strikingly original film shook up a summer marketplace

filled with derivative sequels and unfortunate remakes that had critics decrying the creative baron of studio films which is why writer-director to learn Garland respect from Hollywood for using his clout from Batman Begins in the Dark Night to film his own long-gestating spec script from an idea that had rattled around his head for a decade. I think it's really interesting to see Inception perform so well among all of these other projects. And something that Nolan himself in that interview talks about is his approach, which I think is true across the board. You could apply this to Oppenheimer. You could apply it to Dunkirk. You could play it maybe didn't quite hit the mark with Tenet, but we.

You can talk about that eventually and perhaps Chris Nolan Fall. But he talks about trying to make his films intellectually stimulating yet broadly accessible, right? There really is a delicate balance, he says, between presenting people with elements that are unfamiliar, but still giving them an entertaining experience for their willingness to come on that ride with you and accept a certain degree of confusion. That's the most difficult thing, but it's also a challenge I've very much enjoyed over the last few films. So don't treat your audience like idiots, but also hold the door open for them. And so even if you can't follow every single dream logic twist and turn of inception to first time through, you will be propelled by the emotional stakes of one last job so that Cobb can get back to his kids, or being haunted by the specter of your dead wife will come back to that,

or just the delight and enjoyment, the various chases and gunfights and all the other things that happen inside of this movie. Incredible action movie. All of that is in the mix. of this thing where he's like studying the science of sleep and all the other things that come with it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that that is one of the reasons that the film is so indelible and that its impact is so lasting is like you can bring a lot to it and you can receive it in different ways. And like the genre blend, you know, the fact that it is a heist movie, it is this great, genuinely great action thriller. I mean, we're going to talk about some of those stuff, the truly, truly iconic stunt work. and set pieces. The editing, as is often the case in a NOLA movie, of course, the layering in many respects of this, the layering, the sequencing, the blending, the melding.

It is a deeply sci-fi story. It is a love story. It is a story of lost love. It is a deeply, like, philosophical, downright existential story. And so it invites and welcomes certainly a love. level of intellectual rigor and assessment and analysis. But I think more crucially, even than that, and it welcomes curiosity, right? It is a movie that opens its doors for your imagination because it is rooted in the idea of imagination, right? Genuine inspiration, that moment when Cobb is

describing and explaining what the architect does in the dream world to Ariadne for the first time, genuine inspiration. And like, that as the core germ of the thing that the characters are interested in, then it also becomes that incepts us as viewers and becomes the core thing for us. And you can take that in so many different ways. So can you debate and think about and study at a scholarly level inception for now 15 years? Absolutely. Can you watch it once and be like, that was pretty fucking cool and like, I don't need to really like think about it beyond that? Yeah. And that's all valid, and so are many different permutations in between. And that's just like, I think really fun to create something that people can immerse themselves in that fully, but that doesn't necessarily require that level of diligence.

But like, yeah, the treating of the audience member as somebody who is a participant in the story, somebody who is being welcomed in as a plug-in in to the dream kit, welcomed in as a member of the team is, I think really, really crucial. to like why it is such a gripping and rewarding viewing experience for people? I think something that gets in the way of Inception being my favorite Christopher Nolan movie is I think this film is so successful in that regard. And then also you can see the seams on it a little bit via the Ariadne character who is brought in as the new member of the team who has brought into almost exclusively ask questions. Yes.

That is almost exclusively what her character does. And so it's like a little thinly drawn and quite exposition heavy, explanation exposition heavy as it goes. But it's never boring as it goes, you know, through all of that. But there is like the best case exposition, you're getting like a spoonful of sugar in it and you don't even notice that you're guzzling down exposition. That's not quite what Inception is able to achieve. but I still have a good time with it.

I think it's more the exposition and explanation sequences are more successful, I think, either when the entire team has been assembled and is actually trying to craft a strategy for how to intercept Robert Fisher, like what will work, what is our simple idea that we need to take root, kind of going back and forth and brainstorming and collaborating and in the process of doing that, also explaining how this will all unfold. us or even something like when Cobb seeks out Eames for the first time. Again, a sequence I will be returning to more than once today. It's just great shit. Great shit. And Cobb asks Eames about inception. We are learning more about inception about what has gone wrong and not worked

in the past about what is necessary to pursue it in the future through a very authentic Cobb doesn't need someone to explain that. And I'm new to this world. What is this? how does this work fashion? Right. But Cobb is like, when I did that, it was by mistake. Have you tried this on purpose? Right. Like, what was it like when you did this intentionally?

And that level of deftness and a slight tweak in how the exposition comes to us, I find riveting. I definitely agree when we're in pure, like, let's go through all of the specifics of how this works. You are feeling the mechanics of what is happening there. But obviously, also, you do need that level of clarity. to be able to follow. Though, as you're about to explain,

we have some other helpful parameters along the way as well to eat us and guide us. Before I had led the parameters, I want to say the hearty flavored spoonful of sugar that comes in some of the moments of exposition is definitely the best. Like, when we're first understanding the idea of the kick and he kicks out Arthur's chair. Great stuff. You know, or to your point, when he is, when they're talking about what emotion in Robert Fisher do we exploit? And Eames is explaining, no, positive emotions are stickier and all these other stuff like that. Like, again, there's just something about either the flare of the performance from Hardy or the way, you know, the playful way in which Eames is written that makes those moments just feel like pure entertainment and not I'm being lectured to in any kind of way.

In terms of the visual parameters, this is something Nolan intentionally did in order. You mentioned the editing of this film. The editing of this film is so crucial to the clarity of the final moments when we're dealing not with really three levels, but four because we go down into limbo as well, of course. But the van falling, the zero gravity hotel, the snow fortress and the limbo and all and the very speeds at which, I don't regretter Rien is like playing at those various levels Wow, I will not be able to match that pronunciation today So I'm just going to leave that one to you

You nailed it All of all of that Nolan was like, okay And the top level in Yusuf's stream It will be pissing down rain Because he forgot to empty his bladder Too much free champagne Too much free champagne

So it's pissing down rain So we can always in a close-up Know when we are in Yusuf's level of the dream because we've got the rain, right? And then we've got one of them. It's a nighttime interior inside of the hotel. And then you've got the snow. And so Nolan's like, I made these landscapes so distinct and these environs so distinct so that even in a, you know, like, if someone's wearing a snowsuit, you don't have to think for a second where we are, you know, you know where we are. If Joseph Gordon-Leavened is floating down a hallway, you know where we are. And so you can cut back in there.

Absolutely. So you can cut back in front. without having to give kairons or even like really dramatic lighting differences or something like that clues in order to orient the audiences to where they are. And that is just like just such a thoughtful way for him to save himself a lot of work inside of the movie. I mean, it takes work to creative, but it saves many steps on the back end in terms of the clarity of the editing process. Yeah, and I think it really, it is,

that those visual cues and clues are shorthand and moorings for us, but I think it heightens that sense of like we are being trusted to follow along that it isn't so blatant and explicit flashing on the screen constantly, this is where you are. Yeah. Which is great.

And like, yeah, I, I actually don't, you know, sometimes directors say things, you're like, okay, yeah, sure. but I actually can't think of a moment in the movie where it is not readily apparent where you are. This is actually true. That's true, except for the couple moments when they're like trying to fool you

about whether or not you're in a dream, which happens twice, you know, in the movie, and that's intentional. Right. Just sort of be like, actually, you're dreaming right now. Yes. Also, something that helps Inception age like fine wine, not stale milk,

is that though there are incredible visual effects this movie, Once again, you cannot origami Paris without the visual effects artist. So I just want to like, you know, I don't want to ignore all of the incredible work that they did on this film. But a lot of these set pieces and setups are done practically in camera, be it, you know, like all of the Joseph Gordon-Levitt hotel stuff. If you've watched behind the scenes, which is one of my very favorite behind the scenes that I've ever watched in my life, watching the hallway rotate, you know, so that he himself can. can do these stunt, most of his own stunts, you know, the exploding fruit in the street, like, you know, that is done with different camera speeds and stuff like that.

So, like, you know, with shots mapped together and stuff like that, but doing so many effects in camera, which again, Nolan cites Stanley Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey and also his own work on The Dark Night and Batman Begins. That's a real flex to me. Like, Joe, which other podcasts would you say are most influential on your podcasting work? And then you just like list off a bunch of your own pods. I think the prestige TV podcast is really, really aspirational. Do great work on that show.

It's true. But yeah, his experience doing practical. And it just makes the film feel eternal. We talk about this a lot. We talk about, you know, Lord of the Rings, which definitely has a lot of digital effects in it, but Lord of the Rings versus something like The Hobbit, which is much, much more digital effect-heavy,

and then just looks staler sooner. And that's just, you know, the nature of these kinds of looks. Okay, we will, as you mentioned, have sort of performance-specific categories when we go through our categories of this film. But I do want to ask you this question because... So I was watching...

I watched this film a couple times to prep, and one of the times I watched was on this flight, I had recently with two of my friends. We coordinated on, one of them was watching on the like seatback, because the Inseptune was just like the Inflite Entertainment. So seat back screen. Someone else is watching on their phone. I was watching on my phone.

So we were like coordinating our thing. And then we had to pause every time there was an in-flight announcement because an In-flight announcement pauses the seatback entertainment. And so we had to like pause recalibrate. Challenging. It was like a real inception, like sort of coordinate your kicks. sort of viewing experience. Can't mess the kick.

It wasn't my only inception viewing experience, but it was one of them. And the conversation that I had with those pals was about one of them really did not like Leo

in, did not think Leo was the correct choice for Cobb in this movie. And that person had not seen the film previously or had. She had.

And she liked it. But maybe I hadn't watched in a little while or whatever. Got it. But she felt like Leo was a little, stiff inside of the movie. The role was offered to Brad Pitt and Will Smith before it was offered to Leo.

They were either uninterested or confused or whatever until Leo was like, fuck yeah, I'll do it. It's a really interesting time in Leo's sort of star trajectory in that he doesn't make any movies in 2009. 2008 was kind of a tough year for him because he made Revolutionary Road and Body of Lies, neither of which really landed, I think, the way that he, you know, Revolutionary Road was this hugely touted Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, reunion, and it got attention, but not, I think, wasn't, and the body of lies, nobody liked.

So that was 2008. 2010, he does both this and Shutter Island, a movie, a Shutter Island, a movie that is definitely grown in people's estimation, but was not, like, super, super, like, tip-top well-received when it came out, is my memory. Both of them, twisty, psychological, dead wife movies. Yep. You know, yeah. But just like, and then, and then I, and then I,

After this, he makes Django and Chain. I feel like his performance in Django and Chain just really cements a completely different time in DeCaprio's career. I'm just sort of like, I'm trying things, big things. Interesting. Yeah. Wolf of Wall Street, Revenant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is him coming off of like, you know, he was like Teen Leo.

And then he was like, I'm actually, take me seriously Scorsese, like, muse Leo. and then this is like a sort of in between. But Inception being such a huge hint, him being the undeniable anchor star of it, is like a huge moment in his career. But I'm wondering how you feel about Leo in this movie. Or are you like, I can't think of anyone else as Cobb. It's got to be Leo or it's no one.

Or how do you feel about it? You know, so I will say in general, I think just because his career is so, you know, top to bottom loaded, that any quiet period doesn't really feel like notable to me because it's such a, those always feel like blips that are just, you know, like blips that are just, were never very far removed. I mean, what is it?

Like gangs in New York and Catch Me If You Can or both O2, right? Aviator. I mean, he gets to piss in jars in O4. That's a thrill. Departed. 06. Great one, obviously. So, yeah, I, I, I.

Blood Diamond, big action were. Blood Diamond. Yeah. Also, 06. I think Leo's great in this movie. And I don't know if I would say I can't imagine anyone else playing Cobb. Like, I don't necessarily feel that way about it. But that doesn't mean that I don't think he's great in the role or great in the film.

And I will just outright spoil one of my picks in a coming category because I think it's hard not to mention it in this context here. Like, I'm sort of puzzled. I mean, I guess not when you just look at, like, the volume of films from each of them over the ensuing years. But, like, and also the fact that, you know, Leo has his muse and another director, obviously. But, like, I'm kind of puzzled that they've never worked together again. I know. It's strange to me because I think that Leo is such a, obviously, like, incredibly gifted, but captivating performer in somebody who is able to, like, hit. I think his Cobb, like, these.

You know, he's driving so much of the film and the story and the action and the mystery. And he has to be somebody who can, like, we believe can compel all of these people to do this thing. And then also immediately they can say to him, like, how could you not tell us this thing? How could you not tell us that if we die down here, we don't wake up? Like, and all of that tracks completely, very quickly for us. And I think that every scene with Moll, like you also kind of believe, I think, and are compelled to believe and accept that he could have this, like, depth of history with the character like Arthur, but not share with him, everything that he very quickly shares with Ariadne, like almost he was desperate to be able to welcome somebody into this confidence,

even though he also clearly feels like he's been found out. And the, just deeply, like, harrowing nature of all of the different Molladne. all exchanges over the film. And the haunted look in his eyes as he, you know, the bloody kind of swollen eyes as we get to the bookends, right, where we opened before understanding exactly where we were and then returned to and everything that has happened in between. I think he does like a really great job with it. So I'm not, I wouldn't say it was like, it's my favorite Leo performance necessarily, but I think he's quite good in the movie. And I wish, I wish we, I hope we get to see Nolan and DeCaprio work together again at some point?

I think, I will say this. He is supposed to be the emotional center of this movie, right? It's his job to get back to his kids that is haunted by his dead wife and it's his team and all this sort of stuff like that. I don't think he is the heart of this movie. Because Eames is. And I also think, I don't. I know I'm biased. I think Killian, like, when it comes to delivering emotion in this movie,

Killian is much better at it than Leo is, I think. And so, which is not to say that Leo isn't good at that in movies. Like, we've seen him do it time and time again. I think what's also interesting, and this will come back in my categories as well, but, like, I have never in another Nolan movie seen such a clear avatar for the director than Leo is, Cobb is, for. Christopher Nolan, just in the way that like, not just the color of their hair, but like the way their heads are shaped and their hailer and then just sort of like the way that they're dressed.

Like, he looks like Chris Nolan in this movie. People are very fond of mapping the various roles in this movie to like filmmaking roles, right? And if there is a filmmaking role to be assigned to a character, he is the director of this particular project and stuff like that. So, you know, Nolan has talked about that about, like, making Cobb, like, a bit of an avatar for himself. And so when you're doing that, there's just, like, a different, there's, it's kind of constricting, I think, to be an avatar for the filmmaker inside of a story. It can be.

And so, yeah. I think Leo is great in this movie. It never occurred to me to think of someone else in this role other than Leo. Brad would have been great. No question. You know. Brattle would have been obviously fantastic. I think that part of the reason the

that more restrained performance really works for me is because it feels to me like necessary and intentional. Like the character is operating in it from a position of fear, right? Fear of the way that this, that the mall's projection is no longer something he can contain or control. Obviously like that is literalized in her press. throughout the film and then we build towards something like the, oh my God, my God, you brought a freight, like a literal freight train in here? What are we going to do? And then like when you,

of course, compound what is happening in any given sequence or moment with the like, well, that's the only way I can dream. And you know you should stay away, but you're drawn because you miss this person and this thing and what other could, who would have the strength actually to like deprive themselves of that if it was the only way they had to spend time with the person they loved and lost, and fearing other people discovering that, but also what it means for himself, the path back to his kids, if he gives into that. I think, like, that more, like, moderated and modulated performance works for me in that, in that respect.

But I certainly understand the counter argument. I agree with that. I just think, you know, and you get modulations on it, like, his so almost like feral desperation in the old Saito limbo sequences or obviously in the flashback to Mal's death, there is that, you know, his frantic. But I just think, I mean, I think as, oh, God, this really just does sound like I'm in the tank for Killian Murphy, but like if you think about something like Oppenheimer, where you've got Robert Oppenheimer, who is in a similar situation where he is like trying

to hold everything together is a fairly restrained person. But there is constantly turmoil going on in an interior way that I'm not sure I get on that same level from a cop. But elsewhere in the cast, I just wanted to like run down a couple things. First of all, this idea that the role of Saito was written for Ken Watanabe after Batman begins. Chris Nolan's like, this guy rules. I barely used him. I would like to give him a bigger role. this is his biggest like first big role

English language role and I I think he's just phenomenal in this movie obviously The role of Arthur was originally going to go to James Franco But Franco got busy And I just I really love JGL in this In this role And

And then Killian based his role On some of the Murdoch boys So this is some like proto-scession work Elvis boy Work from Killian as Fisher here. I think that I also, in that idea of Cobb as Chris Nolan Avatar, I think it's interesting to think about Arthur as a sort of Jonathan Nolan stand in this sort of like younger brother

type role that Arthur fulfills inside of this, you know, close collaborator, but definitely sort of like younger, treated as like younger brother. Yeah. And then, and sort of physically more closely resembles Jonathan Nolan than. you know, in relation to Kristallelin. And then also this idea of like, wife as close as collaborator,

because Emma Thomas is, you know, Crystal. His wife is his producer is probably as close to collaborator. Yeah. Yeah, this idea. So like all of that's inside of the mix here. Yeah. I love that.

On the brotherly front, like I feel like one of the, one of the moments that I kind of like quietly love the most in the movie is after a Sado has been shot, that limbo revives. reveal this thing, this huge crucial piece of information that cop has been withholding. The way that he, the defense mechanisms kick in. He's just blaming Arthur, right? He's like, how could you not have known that Fisher had training and like now we're fucked because

look at all of this army of projections that are out here. They're going to kill us. None of us are going to survive. None of us are going to have a chance. And Arthur's like, you didn't tell us this like massive thing. Also, how to train get in here? Yeah. The way that you like, that that. level of like clearly I am right to blame for so more much of this but I will I will blame the person closest to me in the room yes it was real real brother or like best friend or even romantic partner stuff just like a thing you do with somebody who has known you a long time like the person who could also fill the role in the movie where you know when Ariadne is like asking about mall how

was she that I love that quiet way that Arthur says she was lovely like just somebody who actually genuinely knew her and knew their life and knew their relationship and their history, right? Like, not someone who has learned about it subsequently. You feel the depth of their, the just expanse of time that they've spent together. And it's just a crucial perspective because we have, we have, Maul is this sort of malevolent, obviously, figure, threatening figure. We've got Cobbs, obviously, like, deeply personal dream memories of her. but, you know, who can tell us about her who's outside of that worldview? And so for Arthur, even though it's brief for him to just be like she was lovely, is very important.

As I mentioned, people love mapping filmmaking roles on these various people. Like, our guy Eames is the actor and, you know, Arthur is the producer and Saito is the money guy. and like all this sort of stuff like that. Yusuf is the visual effects artist or the technical side of things. Nolan does not like to talk about this movie. Like it's a comp for filmmaking. But he does like to talk about it as like a comp for building.

And you know, Eames is a designer name. Like there are designer names inside of this. He talks about architecture. He talks about designing. He talks about mazes. He talks about something like the city of Mombasa is itself like a maze like city and all this sort of stuff like that.

So he's talking about what it means to build and design and construct. And if you, the viewer at home, are like, yeah, like constructing a movie, then that is fine. That's not how Christopher Nolan likes to talk about it. So I thought that was interesting, like that he's just sort of like, it's not about movie making. It's about architecture. And everyone at home is like, okay. And yeah, and aren't they the same thing, though, in some way, right?

Like, isn't constructing a movie, building a fortress or a maze or a, a, a, post? portal in some way. I love that. Of all, I mean, so many of the character names obviously map on to something else in life or history. Eames, I mean, it's hard to pick. There are a number of great ones and very compelling ones. But Eames is particularly good, not only because to that, to your point, this iconic, fabled Titan of Design. But because he's a forger, like, I don't, I'm not enough of a furniture expert to actually say this with any level of confidence, but I feel like you could probably make the case that the Herman Miller Eames chair is like one of the most imitated piece of the furniture. So it's just perfect. It's great.

You guys have an Eam's chair, don't you? I know. We do. Yeah. It's my pride and joy. Like, genuinely, your house is so beautiful. And, like, walking around your house, I was like, wow, this house is beautiful. And then my eyeballs went immediately to the Ian's chair.

And I was like... It's new. Pretty new. It's beautiful. It was a big moment in my life to get that. Oh, yeah. That's a tick. I've really done it.

I've got an even chair moment. We barely use it because it's just Halo sits on it every day. He loves it. Classic. A man of taste. A throne for a king. You know what I mean? Exactly.

Yeah. You mentioned this already, but I do want to just underline this idea that like the open nature, the debatability of the ending. The ambiguity of the ending is part of what keeps Inception constantly talked about, similar to like the ending of The Sopranos. There is joy to be found in an ambiguity, an ambiguous ending, not just because it will keep people debating online for all of time. But also, because to your point, it then makes the moviegoing experience so subjective. What story do you want to be watching? Yes, exactly.

You know, are you watching a movie where Cobb ends the story inside of a dream? Or are you watching a movie where it's important that Cobb be in reality? Is that a happy ending? Is that a sad ending? What are the clues you want to track that define it one way or another? Chris said in, Nolan said in a variety interview, I think from the Oppenheimer run. So just recently, he's like, I think it was Emma Thomas, his wife. producer Emma Thomas, who pointed out the correct answer, which is Leo's character.

The point of the shot is the character doesn't care at that point. It's not a question I comfortably answer. He's moved on and is with his kids. The ambiguity is not an emotional ambiguity. It's an intellectual one for the audience. That being said, duh. Michael Kane said in interview when he was confused about what's real and what's not inside of this movie, Chris Nolan told him, if you're in the scene, it's real.

and who's in the final city of this movie, Christopher Nolan. So if you choose to believe that Michael, that Chris Nolan was being completely clear when he told that Michael Kane that, that Michael Kate is remembering that perfectly, and then all of that is true, that could be a clue that the ending is the real world.

But I actually prefer it to be ambiguous. Also in the screenplay that we have, Rob Honey was asking me, he's like, what does it say at the end of the screenplay? And it's the top wobbles, and then it's like an M-Dash cutoff. So there's no information one way or another inside of the in the screenplay. Of course. Right.

Why would it be? Like, I get the definitive answer at last. And of course, that would defeat the point entirely. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Anything you want to say about the ending? I mean, you've already sort of alluded to it, but anything.

Do you have a personal? I'll come back to it. I'll come back to it in one of my picks. Okay. Yeah. I do have a personal belief. Okay. But people have to keep listening to the pod to find out what it is.

What a tease. What a teaser. Wow. You're really good at this. Do you have any inspirations for this pod? Would you say like a big vote has inspired you in your work on the most of the podcast? My pick would be the prestige TV podcast. Oh, man. My pick would be Batman Begins.

Okay, great, great, great, great. The Dark Night, just like Christopher Nolan said. Yeah. Two more things, and then we'll get into our categories. One is this idea of the science of sleep. Not only a great Gail Garcia-Bernel movie, but also I love that movie. Me too. I saw that in like a little art house theater in college, actually.

Oh. That's a wonderful memory on Westcott Street. I really hope I'm remembering the name of the street, right? Because if I'm not, it means I'm so old that I can't remember one of my favorite streets in Syracuse. But there was a theater there, and it was very close to this is even more important. Alto Cinco, because the covered burrito at Alto Cinco is one of my favorite. favorite pieces of just bites of food in Syracuse, New York. And we are recording at lunchtime.

Always a mistake. I think I saw that at Sunday. I think that's true. West God Street, Syracuse, New York. Let's see. Anyway, science of sleep. Great guy who goes to San Bernardal, Michelle Gondry movie. But also, Chris Rennel did do interviews with some sleeps.

Okay, there's this great. I love this. piece of video he did where he's talking to various actual sleep scientists. And then there's a woman who is like pretending to be a sleep scientist who is an actress. And you can tell

because her makeup's better. And also her delivery is not as natural, but that's okay. If you weren't paying close attention, you might think this is just another sleep scientist expert that he's talking to in this grainy video interview package.

Are we absolutely certain this wasn't like an early an early prototype for the rehearsal. And like we had actors portraying the roles in order to learn something crucial about the science of sleep could be

or about movie making. There's real information about the science of sleep in there that's so interesting and it's about like how difficult it is to pin down the exact border between

dreaming and wakefulness that that space is so spongy and liminal that they cannot map the synapses correctly to be like this is the moment. you're no longer dreaming.

So that's interesting to me. It's interesting to me that across cultures, there are universal dreaming experiences. Like flying is always a positive dreaming experience, no matter if you grew up with Richard Donner, Superman, or not. Like, this idea of flying is joyful idea, falling, terrifying idea, being chased, terrifying ideas. And these are very, these are common shared human dreaming experiences

and that cross, you know, geographical borders and cultural boundaries and stuff like that. I think that is fascinating to me. This idea that it is very common for people to dream of dead loved ones or lost loves and try to map those dream experiences sort of on their brain to the real lived experiences of those people in order to keep the memory of those people alive. So when you get to the Fisher father and son interaction the end of this movie, like that is, you know, a key core thing that we do so often in dreams. And this idea of lucid dreaming and changing your negative experiences to positive ones,

all this sort of stuff like that. That being said, this fake sleep scientist inside of this video is like then starts talking about these governmental experiments, these military experiments that are mentioned in the movie as if they're real things. And so for a while, people thought, well, there's this real government thing where soldiers are stabbing each other in their dreams and blah, blah. But that was just like a little bit of viral like Blair Witch-esque marketing that Chris Nolan did for this movie, which is fun. Great stuff. Have you ever tried Lucid dreaming? No, have you tried Lucid dreaming? Not like formally

or anything, but I remember when I learned about it for the first time, which was probably also actually like maybe late high school, but more likely like probably in college. And I remember thinking, oh, that just seems great. Like being able to do. dream about the thing that you want to dream about, because I love a good dream. I hate a bad dream. But I know this is a controversial opinion. I hate a bad dream. Love a good dream. And it's interesting because on the one hand, I actually do really kind of like to see where my dreams take me and what that reveals about what my anxieties are or what my desires are. But lucid dreaming is a pretty compelling prospect. Just like really like trying to focus your energies on.

this is what I want this dream to be about or what I want to be able to explore in a dream is kind of fascinating. I don't sleep. Great way to have the exact sex dream you want to have. Oh, okay. Yeah, I don't sleep walk. I would imagine. I can't say for sure. You don't sleep walk.

You're in the back of a theater of Inception and someone is yelling at you. I don't sleepwalk except if I'm in times of extreme stress and that I've been known to walk around and talk to people in the house while sleeping. Like really, really extreme stress. I will dream of usually working. Great. Yeah, I had so many work anxiety dream last night. Late for a panel.

Wonder what that could be about. Everyone else went on without me. We'll make sure you're on time. And then got there and I was in pajamas. Not that would stop me. Oh, you'd be honest. You'll be thrilled to see you in your gin jams. I'm not a huge distinction between my pajamas and my outdoor garb.

I've also definitely done the thing where you're having a great dream and you wake up and you still have more time that you can sleep. So you try to like go back into that dream. Yes. And you're like, I can do it. Get me back. I can recreate it. I was right there. Yeah.

And then like you cut. So close. Another 30 seconds. It needs to be a millisecond because of time dilation. Speaking of coming soon. The Nolan has not said never to an inception sequel. He's like, that world is interesting to me. He's not said yes, but he's not said definitely no.

Do you want an inception sequel and what would it be about? Boy, that's a hard one. Because you know my tendency is to almost always say yes to this stuff. Like if I loved something, I want to go back. I think it's just such a, to me, the movie is. like this perfect article and I don't want to, I don't want to, I'm not sure if the prospect and enticement of more, which is intriguing, is worth the risk of diluting the legacy. Like it makes me a little bit nervous. I think what I would be, I would not necessarily,

I don't think I would want to go back with these characters. But, or spin off one character? Eames, I would go back with Eames. But like, I don't want to be back with Cobb. I don't want to know something definitive about Cobb. Yes. But using this world to explore another story or another person's psyche. You would have to spin off with Eames and have him never say something direct about what happened to Cobb. Yeah. We don't want him saying, I worked for a guy once who got stuck forever in Dreamland. Could be a prequel.

Could be the time that he didn't get Inception to work exactly, right? Are we digitally de-aging people? What are we doing? Well, it's Tom Hardy, so he'll probably just be like, I'll wear a mask of some sort. I'd rather cover my beautiful face. Are you to do what they made Diego Luda do, which is stick his face in a bowl of ice and jade roll the shit out of him every morning before? Man, the ice water bowl thing, it's all over my Instagram. Oh.

I don't know why. What have I done with my algorithm that I get so many? many of those videos. You have perfect, pearly glass skin and everyone else. Certainly not that. How can I? I guess I, maybe I'm,

I don't, I honestly can't explain it. I must be lingering on enough, like, seems shocking that this would be true for me, but I guess I must be spending enough time on some sort of like wellness or beauty or fitness or something, fashion, lifestyle, reels that I'm getting served these ice water bowls.

Maybe I'm just like, I don't know. Maybe I, I honestly can't explain it, but they're all over my feed. I have no explanation for it. It's that in cats and sneakers, pretty much. That sounds right. And a lot of still Superman press junk it.

I think what's happening, and I really hate that this is happening to you, because it definitely happened to me several years ago, is they just know how old you are. And even though you look like you're 18, they know when you were born. Anyone who saw my shirt. full-on stripes. My peltz of gray hair would say you look young and dewy. You look young and dewy, but they're going to try to make you believe that you need them.

I think it's the opposite. They're like weird. You're 38, but it looks like you've been in limbo for 50 years. Check out this reel. What happens if you dunk your face into a bowl of ice water every morning? Something to think about. All right, let's do our top 20. Inception top 20, combination of superlatives and other sundries.

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Are ready? Yeah. I'm excited. We're starting and you may or may not recall from a Batman Begins podcast. Each of these categories comes with a quote from a Christopher Nolan films that just helps set up the category. This is first one is why so serious? funniest line or moment from the film. Mother Rubin. Okay, this is one of the areas in which I will be celebrating our beloved Eames. But more specifically, even than that, the Eames-Cob repartee in the Mombasa intro scene is, I think, just an absolute delight and highlight of the film. The, like, cashing in of the forged chips and cops and... quick little glance and saying,

your spelling hasn't improved and Eames saying piss off. Again, I think a great way to just like indicate a history that we haven't gotten to share with those characters but understand is there. Everything with the tail

in that stretch when God says, that price of my head was that dead or alive? And Eames is just like, don't remember CEMS starts shooting. Incredible. And then when the tail sequence ends,

the chase sequence ends, and Eam says, so this is your idea losing a tail, eh? Cobb says, different tale. I just, that is such an amusing, it's a very intense frenetic movie and the levity in that sequence. And in general, of course, from Cobb is, I think, excuse me, from Eames is I think wonderful, plenty of Eames, Arthur moments that really make me chuckle as well. So that's, that's, that sequence with Eames and Cobb in the, we need a, we need a forger, is my, my pick. I have some runners up, but I'll save them till after you share your,

your winner here. What do you got? Eames and Arthur were so special that I remember and I did not in my you know, early internet days spent a lot of time on Tumblr, but I definitely hit the Eames Arthur tag on Tumblr because

the very, very special time on the internet. This is actually a quote pulled from our very next category. It's you mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger darling when Eames shows up with a bigger gun next to Arthur. You think that's a symbol for anything, a dude going into a dream world and saying you mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger darling while hoisting a large gun so big, he needs both hands to hold it?

I wonder what that could be about. I don't know. I wonder if Freud has ever talked about that. I think that is one of my favorite lines in any... movie ever. And this is a real, this movie was a real calling card for Tom Hardy, who had done, you know, like British period stuff and like a few other things. But like this was really like, who's that guy? And it's what's interesting was, you know, one of our later categories is sort of like, you already, you already sort of revealed that your answer is probably Leo, but like, you know,

who worked with Nolan in this movie and never worked with them again, but should have. but like this is just this breeding ground for the Dark Night Rises cast. It's almost the same cast. It's like it's absolutely insane. So, you know, pulling Hardy and Mary Cotill and JGL and all of them and plucking them over into. It's wild. Really funny. Okay.

So that's, I mean, that is my moment or any time that Eames is fucking with Arthur. Because Arthur is like so self-serious. And so that's just like a really. really, really a good combination. I will say, I think a failure of this movie is the attempt to, like, create some sort of, like, little crush that Arthur has on Ariadne,

like the moment when you, like, The kiss and stuff like that. Yeah. I don't mind the kiss if those two had any chemistry, but they don't. Right. But Arthur and Eames have just, like, chemistry to spare. And so I was like, you should have put your energy there instead. Well, as we'll get to in another category. You'll remind us that, you know, the

Nolan movies are full of many things, but not necessarily a kind of powerful sexual energy. So I also toss out the Eames. We already have alluded to this a few times, but the bit too much of free champagne before takeoff, A, Yusuf is just incredible, really, really great. And, you know, so that somebody gets some shine here

other than Eames or the Eames adjacent scene partners, I, well, though, Eames is very obviously, so we can't have Snowland without Eames. I do love when Fisher in what is largely a very, as you've noted, emotionally rooted role rips off the couldn't someone have tripped up a goddamn beach

that's great. That's great. I do get it to get it on. I love it. All right. Speaking of Eames, you mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling. Sickest set peace. I've ever been. So, we have another category, if anybody did not listen to the Batman begins pot or did but has forgotten.

We have stunt coming in a separate category. So I just, in case anyone was like, how could you not pick the obvious thing? I was to say I'm picking it there. Yeah. So zero grab rotating hallways are coming later. And because I had put that down, I think the first thing I filled out in the entire outline was for the stunt category was the Arthur hallway fights, which I consider to be one of the most important bits of visual filmmaking in the history of cinema. 100%.

I decided to go elsewhere here. And the set pieces in this movie are kind of like all mesmerizing, but they're difficult, I think, to separate from each other because they're intentionally stacked on top of each other. The thrust of the Fisher mission and the kicks and the layering of the kicks and everything that's happening with the van falling and the elevator and our stuff. Plot, all of it, the hallways, like, incredible, unbelievable, just highly memorable. I think I'm going to pick enough things from that stretch of the movie elsewhere that I decided to go in a part of the movie.

I wasn't sure I would talk about otherwise today, which is the opening. I think that the opening of the movie, the fact that the movie starts with the dream within a dream layering. And we, like, I think, I remember when we did our bad man being against Bont. talking about the number, that we were basically in essence in five different time periods within the first, like, 30 minutes of the movie. This is obviously something Nolan loves to do. Yes.

But you could, I think maybe an inception more than anywhere else, you could lose your audience completely right from the jump with what happens here at the start. But that's not how it goes, right? We're just like, holy shit right away. We're riveted. The majesty of the visuals, you know, we have the, collapsing Sado Dream. We have the swaying lights, the rush of water coming in because they've dunked on the

hair above. Cop has gotten dunked in the tub in the flat. We have the mystery starting to unfold in real time. Dreamers down below. Oh, Dreamers in the flat. Nash is monitoring. Explosions outside. Oh, Dreamers again.

We're on a train. Nash is dreaming. What is happening in this movie? What is going on? When will I understand? understand it. The carpet. A dream within a dream. I'm impressed. But in my dream, you play by my rules. Beat ah, but we're not in your dream. We're in mine and the rush of the crowd into the room. It's just like the tension we have right away. We're introduced to the mall as a figure and this

idea of the betrayal and Cobb shooting Arthur down in the Sado dream because we're like, oh my God, you can inflict pain on somebody, but then you could wait. them up and how that will set an expectation that is that subverted later with limbo. When Seda wakes up in the flat and pulls the gun from the under the pillow and like points it at Arthur, it's just this incredibly complex opening stretch that is not only really a riveting set piece in action because of what is happening down below and then in the flat where we're stacking set pieces and action sequences, but because it introduces us so incredibly well, to how the rest of the movie is going to function.

I wanted to kind of like toast it because it's, it's, without a setup that's that strong, where are we? You know, we need that morning. It was one of my answers to like best twist of the movie. Yes. That like first, there's another level of dreaming going on is really, really good. Also, shout out Lucas Haas. It was here.

Okay. Um, obviously, I agree with you. A hallway fight is, we'll just put that aside. Um, I'm going to say the chaser from Mombasa, which you already sort of like mentioned, but the way in which that whole thing is constructed to, so that later when, when mall is like, hey man, are you sure that's real? You've got, you know, paranoid delusions of people coming out, you know, from nowhere. So like, you know, the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the cobal men showing up as,

you know, unexpectedly and aggressively as, you know, these other attackers inside of the dream space, the maze like quality of the city, the absolute dreamlike sensation of this alleyways getting smaller and smaller and smaller and I have to shove my body through this fucking crevice. I was going to say I'm shocked by the pick because that is crevice adjace. Yeah, but I think I think about that visual all the time. Yeah, it's good. like just sort of like shoving himself through the end of that alleyway, something like that. So I think that she's through Mombasa in terms of set pieces is my fave.

Okay. You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Who is the real villain of this movie? My pick here is doubt, specifically doubting your own mind, which in general is one of my favorite things to explore. of a harrowing thing to explore, certainly inside of a story. I think this is like the way that this is, we do get, ultimately we get both sides of this in this movie, and I'll actually talk about the other side of it in a different category. But doubting your own mind is, is the inverse of something, of the thing I like to talk about a lot, the kind of like boon and the empowerment of the,

of course, it's happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real idea? This is like the, to invoke Black Mirror again, and this is the, you know, playtest episode. This is the playtest horror. This is the like, what does it mean when you can no longer trust your own mind and trust that you are able to decipher and discern the barrier, where the barrier is between spheres of reality, between the real world and the dream world? The fear that takes root when you start to doubt that, the idea that maybe at some point you want to doubt that, or like, well, that you would be so lost that you wouldn't be able to to tell the difference anymore.

I think that from the very beginning and in a number of different forms, doubt is just this like constant specter in the movie in an abstract that they must ward against, like when Arthur explains totems to Ariadne and he says, that way when you look at your totem, you know beyond a doubt that you're not in someone else's dream. Like just in establishing the way to navigate this kind of. of world. It's there. In the way that the extraction or inception teams talk about and think about manipulating a dreamer, like, for example, needing Fisher to doubt, as Eames will explain, Browning's motives, that that is so crucial to the plot that unfolds. And then, of course,

obviously, just this question of what's real and who gets to decide that. When Ariadne and Cobb go down to the fourth layer to where Mall has Fisher and Mall says so certain of your world of what's real. Do you think he is? This is what you were just mentioning. Or do you think he's as lost as I was? I know what's real, mall. No creeping doubts, not feeling persecuted, dumb, chased around the world by anonymous corporations

and police forces the way the projections persecute the dreamer. I love that because it plants not only maybe waters, what has already been planted as a seat of Dowd and Cobb's mind, but also the police. than in our mind as a viewer like, we're like, wait, are we sure we know what we're watching, too? So it's just so brilliant and disorienting deliberately on the snow level when it's so creepy, like mall lowering herself from the ceiling to the, oh, she fish her. And we get the, she's not real. And that quiet Cobb, how do you know that?

Like the way that Cobb's uncertainty. is building to, you know, we have this, like, the through line of the movie is what will be revealed about what has happened to mall, right? Inception, when Cobb did it, what it meant, where it led to. I'm talking about that in another category. I'm sure we both will have it come up many times today. But the fact that we get this, like, kind of parallel earlier stage version of it for Cobb, what if you're wrong? What if I'm what's real? You keep telling yourself you know what you know, but what do you believe? What do you feel?

And like, that's such a powerful but scary idea and the movie is interested in both sides of that, which I really love. So my runner up here was like hubris as a villain, you know, just the idea of making worlds, making the subconscious your playground, basically, and how completely and totally a totally reckless that is ultimately. But yeah, I ended up going with doubt. What do you have here for this category? I want to say, I forgot to mention this earlier, but like the various, this is just in response to something you just said, the various ticking clocks on this movie are so interesting.

Not just the like sort of like we're coordinating our watches and we're dropping the van and we're blowing up the charges and we're doing all of that stuff. but also like there's the internal external pressures on on cob the like yeah uh you have until the plainlands at lax and if you haven't figured this out by then you know blah blah you've got uh you know cobble is chasing him but he's being chased interiorly by his own demons and his own guilt as you as you pointed out um that there are interior motivations of i need to get back to my kids though my question has always been why couldn't his mother-in-law just bring the kids to him somewhere else in the world? Yeah. The kids geoloc to L.A. because they not come to a country that has no extradition law? It's just a question I have.

But, you know, so he's got these internal drivers and external pressures. And then inside of the heist, which already had a clock on it, you've got Cito gets shot right at the beginning. And so then there's like the ticking clock on that of like how long. long as is this wound going to take to, you know, take this player off the board and lock him and limbo and all this sort of stuff like that. So I thought that's really interesting. Okay. Come back around. So this movie comes out July 2010. In May of 2010, a little television show you might have heard of, Lost has its final episode. So Lost is the biggest show in the world when Christopher Nolan is making this movie. And if you were wondering, if it is influential on this movie, you just have to look at the flight from Sydney to LAX

or the recurring numbers that pop up over and over again in this movie. Or my real villain of this movie, Daddy Issues. Certainly, yeah. Because there's something that, of course, Nolan visits across many of his films is definitely obviously present in his Batman movies. But Robert Fisher's daddy issues. Man, yeah.

as an emotional driver, you know, to manipulate this guy into making the business move that Saito needs him to make is, you know, bad dads as the little bit of this movie. I think is really interesting. So that is my pick, is daddy issues. That's a great one. I just love thinking about the way in which loss is, like, because loss has been so hugely influential on Jonathan Nolan's TV. work, you know, Westworld and fallout and persons of interest and all this sort of stuff like that is all like very snarled up in the Lost legacy. But, you know, Christopher Nolan doesn't talk a lot about his TV influences, but I cannot

believe that he wasn't gobbling up Lost every week on ABC. And the ending hadn't happened yet. And so, you know, people felt the way they did about the ending of Lost, but it had not happened when he was making this movie. So it still was just this like had this grip on sci-fi genre storytelling, the Lost Model. So, um, great show. Have we mentioned that? Just thought I'd mention it. I love that one. I wrote Daddy and she's down first and then I was like, wait, the flight to from Sydney to L-AX. Oh wait, the numbers that pop up everywhere. It's here, it's all here. Okay. I love it. Are you watching closely? Most exquisitely gorgeous

shot. I'm going to go first on this just because I'm just going to echo something you already said, which is the CITO opening, and I want to call out the, like, the castle setting specifically, the lanterns swaying, the water crashing in, as you mentioned. Again,

a lot of this physically done. This is a set, but it's based on Nizjo Castle in Kyoto. And I just think it's one of the most beautiful sets I've ever seen. And the way in which, you know, Saito ends up there in limbo. And we cut from old Saito, like, to bedraggled Leo, to younger Saito, to exquisitely well-cofted and besuited Leo.

But the lanchions are the same. And just, like, all the beautiful lacquer and screenwork and all the sort of stuff like that. I just think it is, like, in terms of, I figured what I was watching recently were somebody in, in a level of their mind palace wash up on a beach, but I was just like, oh, inception. But, but this is. I thought you were going to say, you forget what you were watching recently,

where someone was like, I need to descend out of this window on this rope. I'm going to just really trust that you stay in that chair because I asked you to. What were we doing? What were you doing here? Come on. I also love in that sequence where, you know,

So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so much of Cobb's mind, knows everything that he knows. Right. So this is Arthur's taste? But that part where she's like, Arthur's taste. But like, the real mall would know that. The real mall would be like, this is Arthur's state, this is Arthur's dream. So I just really like that like, like, yeah, she knows what Cobb knows automatically, but I also like that this fake mall is sort of like smart enough to figure, you know what I mean?

It's like, it's not really her deducing it, but it also is us watching her deduce it, which I think it's really interesting. Anyway, yeah, the whole Saito setting, I think, is just absolutely gorgeous. It's just like the camera tilts up, the golden light of the lanterns is just indelible to me. So that's my pick. Great one. I'm going with Ariadne bending Dream Paris for the first time. Pretty iconic. Genuinely, the one is the most iconic. I mean, I was like, this is one more one.

Should I pick something less obvious than this? But I don't know. You know, it's interesting to think of things that become iconic before you've even seen the movie. And I feel like that's what happened with this just from the trailer. Everyone's like, what are we about to watch? And this is kind of a smuggle pick because this is the sequence that also we have a wake up and then going back into the dream world in between. But this is also where we get, you know, it's the first time that we're like really exploring how. how, like through active conversation and exposition, how this happens, right? What are we watching?

How is it done? How was it achieved? And I will just like never forget the awe I felt seeing this entire sequence for the first time on the heels. We're coming on the heels of Cobb needs his architect, right? So he goes to his father-in-law, Stephen Miles, and we have this conversation that really primes us for what we're about to watch when Cobb says, like discussing basically what the draw is not just money. You remember, it's the chance to build cathedrals, entire cities, things that never existed, things that couldn't exist in the real world. And you're just like, okay, right.

And then at the cafe table with Kavanaughana, you're like realizing that dawning that this is a dream and the discussion about genuine inspiration, the mind creating and perceiving in tandem. That's such a great exchange and idea. And I think inside of the sequences where maybe the exposition sometimes feels more apparent, that always struck me as a good example

of deft writing and deaf filmmaking where you do, like you do have to explain the rules of the universe, but only so far as you must, right? So like, give us enough to allow us to allow us to understand what we are watching and what is happening. But do it with enough restraint that there's kind of like cover your granting allowances for what needs to happen after.

I really like that balance. And the shaking coffee cup, the exploding, you talked about this exploding magazine stand, the fruit stand, the flower stand, the buildings. It always reminded me of like, this is really weird, but it reminded me of like when I was kid. I've asked you this on a pod before I feel certain and we discovered maybe this was a regionally distinct childhood offering, but DC Discovery Zones, yeah, so this was like a huge thing. And Marilyn and I assume on the Eastern Seabor, but I don't know.

And this reminds me so much of like when you would jump in the foam pit and these like blocks of foam just explode into the air. Great stuff. So that could have, that stretch could have been my stand-in-lumpic because I think it is, is iconic imagery. But then we wake up, we go back in, we get the five minutes here, is one hour there, time primer and then Aradne realizes this is less about the visuals than how it feels

though obviously it's also about the visual splendor and asks what happens when you start messing with the physics of it all and then does exactly that and we watch Paris just like a piece of paper folded in half like an envelope being sealed and the

cars and the streets become the sky and the walls and you have this moment where like you can glimpse for a second into a courtyard that you could never see unless you were in a plane and then it latches on to the roof of the, it's just like. And also the way Cobb's reaction to it of just sort of like he mesmerized. Has spent so much time doing this and his brain doesn't work this way the way that her brain works. Like a natural, right? You're watching a prodigy at work. And then of course we're going to build

toward the like, real world's not going to be end off after that. And you understand why. Right. So yeah, that's my, that's my pick. The Paris Street just fucking great. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. All right. No one picked, neither of us picked Cobb or Moll's limbo world, which, you know, maybe some, something for them to reflect on in terms of their particular. Yeah, you have 50 years. I don't know. Did it work? You know what might have said. It's not for me. You didn't like this sad, derelict childhood home right up against the river there. Okay. I do always enjoy the, we both, like, wanted a home, but we really love the amenities.

I'm adding in amenities. He doesn't say that, but I believe it is implied the amenities of, like, high-rise, luxury living. I'm going to get down of that. I can't remember to forget you the scene you think about the most. Again, maybe very obvious, but this for me is the ending. I think there are plenty of other picks here, like the something that I have coming in another category. I'm just spoiling.

What is wrong with me today? I'm so undisciplined. You're just excited. I am excited. I'll be talking about the, um, um, cobb is responsible for what happened to his wife, um, reveal in another category. Uh, and I think about that quite a bit. And I think about the hallway fight quite a bit and just so much in the movie, but the ending for,

I'll keep this quick because we, you know, we talked about it at the top, but this is an interesting one to me. We're like, and I am not to be, I would like to be clear. I'm not saying this is right. Obviously, it is clear that it is not right, and it is meant to be debated and it opened to interpretation. To me, just my read on it, it's always been like definitive because the top wobbles and it's about to fall. So it's the real world. Now, I think there's plenty. This reminds me of a great baseball debate where I like you can go on baseball reference or fan graphs and find the sabermetric data you need to make your case no matter what.

Like there is ample support for either argument. You're, this is a dream. I think it's a juicier ending if it's the dream. And I, and that's, that's what I was going to say ultimately is like, I feel like I look at the wobbling top. And to me, that is an indicator of something that I think the movie has talked. taught me. Yeah.

But I don't need that to be true. And I think it's really interesting, perhaps more interesting, ultimately, if it's not true. And I think that what you, the quote you read, the Nolan quotes about how, like, the, the point is really like,

Cobb, this character who we have seen, every time they emerge from a dream and they return to the real world, what does he do? He immediately goes and he spins the top. And he almost like, huddles around it, won't go and engage with other people,

stands their looks, needs to know. Right? Has to have that clarity and that he has to be assured. And so the fact that he spins it, but then walks away and goes to the kids and the kids who,

by the way, are like in the same fucking outfits, which is a pretty big argument in favor of the other side. They're like, they're older. Yeah, Nolan was like, we use different kids.

Yeah, they're different kids and they're older. Yeah, they're older. Even that, you can be like, they're the same. That's the pink dress and the plaid shirt, but you could also be like, they're just the kids are multiple years older than the kids in the memory. Perfect example of how you could make the case either way. He's just like, I am going to be with them. I think if he has made this big speech to mall about how he knows what is real and what is not and knows that she is not real and knows that he

has to make the choice to go be with them and then that's not what happens. That is so intense and like devastating. That I really like thinking about the story that way. So it's the reason that this is my pick for what I think about the most and what is kind of like rooted its way into my psyche the most is because I have this kind of dissonance with it where I think I know the answer, but I kind of like the fact that we don't, you know, and I like being able to like explore all the possibilities

and consider the different outcomes on what they tell us then. I think logically if you stack up like the evidence of like the wedding ring, when it's there, when it's not there. the top wobbling, Michael Kane is there, all that sort of stuff. You know, then you get, this is real worlds. Yeah. I like the idea of, you mentioned hubris earlier, like a man so hubristic who believes he can manipulate emotions and consciousness, can build worlds, has just flown too close to the sun, has done this horrible thing to his wife. I don't know that I think he gets to live happily ever after in this beautiful house in Los Angeles.

Like, I think he gets trapped in his own hell paradise. And that's a more interesting sci-fi ending to me. But, like, I don't think he needs to be, like, punished. This is a beautiful dream that he has found himself in. But, like, I don't know that he gets to escape this net that he's built for himself. That's sort of where I am. I just think it's, like, it's devastating. But I kind of think that Cobb is the kind of guy who is barreling towards a devastating ending, you know?

He's an addict. Oh, yeah. I mean, the elevator bay memories. And that's my, that's actually my scene that I think about the most or sequence. I don't know. It's hard to like nail it down. But like the idea of organizing your memories, like levels on an elevator. Yeah.

And having the hotel room setting, the beach setting, the family home setting, all these sort of things ordered on an elevator. It's interesting. I'm going to come back to a spoiler for one of my picks. I'm going to come back to the Location Scout, Lori Balton on this film. But she was talking about the fucked up assignments that she was given for this. And they're like, we need an elevator that opens up. out onto a yard. Can you find us a building where the top of the building is a yard? And she's like, okay. You know? So, but this idea of just sort of like, it's such excellent dream logic.

You're these levels of your memory are, you know, especially when we're talking about levels of inception and going deeper, deeper in the dreaming. So just the confection that is the elevator. Yeah. I think. And just sort of, again, I think Ariadne could. have, like, we could have done, like, three more passes on that character to make her, like, a little less just, like, someone who asks questions and throws around accusations. But I think that, I was talking to my friends about this. I was like, she's the archetypical, like, wet blanket character. By that, I mean, I don't think she's a wet blanket. All of her questions and comments are concerns are extremely rational. But we talk about something like, we talk about a show,

like Breaking Bad, and we talk about a character like Skyler White, who a lot of the audience hated because her job was to obstruct the quote-unquote fun of meth-making and crime. Like, that was her job was to be an obstruction. And so then you force that person, usually a woman, into this role of being this wet blanket, unstopping the fun kind of character. And so Ariani being like, Cob, no, Cobb, don't, Cobb, no. And we're like, more dream, fun, Bondi, shootout stuff. That's what we were.

It's a tough thing. But her discovery of the, like, sick danger and, like, how scary Marian Cotillard, how, like, brain-meltingly hot and scary. Shocking stuff. At that basement level of the elevator is, you know, is unforgettable to me. Yeah, I think about that. I like the idea, too, of, like the way that the. shame is you go deeper into your own shame.

I like the Cobb, a character who has as much awareness of how this works and what it can do is anyone and what the risks are, is anyone, says something like, I think these are things I need to change, like knowing that that's not what this is about,

like knowing that that's not what the journey is or could be the peril of even thinking that way. Really incredible. And the way that that primes us for like, I think that the, in terms of the pacing and editing and sequencing of the movie, like, it is such a rush when we get full clarity at the end, but in part because it is such a steady drip of exposure. Like, we are glimpsing and learning so much, so painful and so worrying as we go. And we constantly, especially in that sequence, feel like we have really newfound, layered understanding, but also that, like, wait, what don't I, what have I not seen yet? And so, you know, we were talking about like Eames and the names earlier with Ariadne, obviously,

this like character from myth associated with, you know, navigating an aid navigating the labyrinth, right? And in that sense, you kind of like to think that Nolan's almost like just going to put right in the name an explanation for why this character's going to like ask so many questions. Like we got to ask someone who's like, how do we get out? But also, of course, someone who was an architect constructing the, the, amazing knowing the path in the first place. It's just, like, fascinating. But that's a great pick. That sequence is awesome. And we'll have a stretch coming later again on the score, the Zimmer score, which is fantastic. But the music, when Maul kind of charges at the elevator, that's maybe the most overtly, like, horror-like stretch in the movie. It's genuinely scary. It's great.

And you're like, oh, ocean waves, how serene. No, I'm not supposed to think this is serene. I can't be like lulled into that. It's fantastic. Did I tell you what I found out recently linguistically related to the Ariadne? No, tell me. The origin for the word clue linguistically is traced back to a word we use to use to mean a ball of thread. And it comes from the myth of Ariadne giving a ball of thread to help you get out of the maze. and escape the minotaur. It was like, I think it's like

Q-L-E-W or something that's clue. And it's like, so to get a clue is to get like guidance out of the maze and it comes from a ball of thread, a ball of yard. Is that amazing? Incredible. That just blew my mind. Great. Great nugget.

This is obviously all lightning are already very palpable excitement for The Odyssey. This is making me really excited to get back to Percy Jackson as well. We have a couple seasons to before the labyrinth awaits. But that's a boy.

The Minotaur's always waiting. Always. Always. All right. This next category is, swear to me. This movie is rated PG-13, which means it could have exactly

one FOM. Where would you put it? This was easy for me, actually. Yeah. Okay. I love when our cherished

Arthur leads one of the layer to hotel projection pursuers to the stairwell drop. It's the pay. Is this your answer? How could it not be? Because like, genuinely, before the exercise of prepping for this podcast, every time we watch this, every time I watch the stretch of the movie, this is the payoff, of course, for we've had the Arthur Ariadne,

Penrose steps training sequence, like the idea of a closed loop, how important it is to disguise the boundaries and cheat the architecture as you're creating these worlds. And then Arthur leading to like an actual implementation of that drops this guy over the edge and says paradox. Now, in my mind, so funny that you just mentioned Breaking Bad, because in my mind, I have always heard a very madness bitch, Bich. Yes.

Paradox bitch. I'm like, dude, we're so, we're having a real mind melt right now. I wrote in my notes. Paradox. Actually, it should be Paradox, bitch. Yes. Same. And then I wrote, but why not fucking paradox?

Fucking paradox. Bitch. Absolute mind-mell moment. Did you accept this into me when I was sleeping? Perhaps Jesse from Breaking Bad and stepped at us. Did you open up my mind safe and put this inside? Yeah, fucking paradox bitch. Absolutely.

Great stuff. Paradox bitch is like, I was thinking about Jesse. I was also thinking about welcome to the OC bitch. But either way, it's just sort of like, paradox, bitch. But instead he just says paradox. I know, Arthur, he's so tame. So buttoned up. Okay.

Okay, this next category is left over from Batman Begins. I don't have like a great, I have an answer. I don't have a great answer for this. I do. Okay, great. I mean, it's not a good answer, to be clear, but I have an answer. It's actually a bad answer, but I have one. He doesn't speak English.

If he does this with an accent thicker than Sourcrow's sauce, most baffling accent, Mallory, what is your answer here? Okay. I ranted about this for a long time during the infamous Rewatchable's episode on this movie. But, and I would like to be clear, I understand the French origin of the word, the fact that the character is not American, but the fact that Mal, M-A-L, which also happens to be my name, is pronounced by every other character in the movie as Darth M-M-L is- I'm thinking Grand Mall seizure, but okay. insane to me. It doesn't make sense. Now, if mall says her own name that way, okay.

The prefix mall has French roots. I remember very vividly, I've told the story before, but having to do a research assignment once when I was a kid, like everyone had to do it all, like, what does your name mean? And it had to do this really, like, devastating experience. My name means unfortunate, unlucky, bad, ill, ill-fated.

Like, it's terrible. Horrible experience. But, yeah, like, why is Arthur saying mall? Cob, even Cobb. I mean, I get it. But, like, why? So that's my pick. I just, I understand.

And yet, I don't. Okay. So, like, if you knew a woman named who is French, yeah. And her name is, like, Maui, like, M-A-R-I, but it's, like, Maui in French. Personally, I would say, Marie.

Marie. Because I don't have a French accent. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. I think this is personal to you and I want to support you. Thanks. I appreciate it.

What's your selection here? I don't really have a good one. Like, Killian Murphy's hearing an American accent, but he does a pretty good one. Like, everyone's accent work is pretty good. So I, the closest I had was like either, I think it's just, yeah. Fine. Mary Cotier is impenetable.

accent. I will say this, and I don't want to throw this person under the bus. One of my friends who was watching this on the plane was like, where is that actresses from? She has like a very subtle and like unidentifiable accent. I was like, okay. 9-11 truth or Marion Cotillard's accent just like reeks of Brie. I don't know what to tell you. It's the Frenchest thing you've ever heard. I do have questions about how a Cockney accented Michael Cain raised a daughter who who speak such accented English? Like, wouldn't she, did he never speak French in the house?

Like, never speak English in the home growing up. Like, you know, that sort of, like, why is her accent so thick of her father? And her mother doesn't have a French accent either on the phone talking to Cobb. So, anyway. Grow up in... I support a regional accent. Paris?

Yeah. Yeah, but, like, still, like, people who grew up in one place but have parents to speak different language, usually speak both of those languages at home. And so have unaccented. versions of all of those. Anyway. I'm excited for your accent takes on Fantastic Four. Oh, okay. Even without John Malkovich?

Yeah, yeah. I just thought I was like, I remember Vanessa Kirby's American accent to be that good. I mean, to be clear, I think Vanessa Kirby is, as you know, my queen, my wife, a legend. I've never had a reason to doubt anything. But I was like, this is, but you're the accent expert and I am not. But I was like, this is a good accent. Wow. All right.

Joe Quinn already does. dazzled us with Eddie Menson. I knew what to expect there. Yeah. Yeah. But for Kirby, I'm, you know, I'm always in like a Margaret, Margaret headspace, either in the Crown headspace or a Mission Impossible headspace. So, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. No one cared who I was until I put on the mask. Best use of a Nolan versus regular. Should we say it on the count of three? One, two, three. Tom Hardy. So, no?

I, okay. This is where I will, can we go out of order? to talk about another category here, because I have to ask you if he's eligible in another category. This was my dilemma. You can also pick him for multiple categories. I mean, I already have. That's why. Okay.

So we have coming up in a couple categories, Amateur Seek the Sun, Getty in Power Says in the Shadows, stealth MVP of this movie that not enough people talk about. I would like to pick him for that. But I wonder if you think that's like he's not, is this reminds me of kind of like picking someone for like the Dion Waiters, he check and it's like that person's in too much of the movie to be eligible

for that. Like, is Tom Hardy as Eames eligible for the stealth MVP of this movie, not enough people talk about or do enough people talk about him as the stealth MVP of the movie? I think enough people do,

but if you would like category spread, I will certainly allow you to put Tom Hardy there if you would like to put someone else here. Okay. Okay. I, okay, I'll go with Hardy in the other category.

I thought that this one best use of a Nolan verse regular was really hard for the reason you've already mentioned, which is like, this and this cast is the Dark Night Rise's cast. It's crazy. So this one's a toss up for me between Joseph Gordon Levitt, who I really love as Arthur, or your cherished beloved Killian Murphy, who. He's so good. I just felt like I couldn't pick him again. Okay. I'm going to pick him here.

Okay. I'm going to pick him here. We obviously, we picked, we both picked Michael Kane in this category last time. That was where we really celebrated his work in the Batman trilogy. But, yeah, I think I'll go with Killing here. I think, like, Fisher has to interest us as a just plot device and then become a character. he has to, we are deeply emotionally invested in. Spoilers for some other categories coming later.

He has to be a Mark who becomes a team member. It's just like really delicate and as usual, he is sensational. So he's my pick. I was prepared with backups in case you picked him, but since you happened, I'll go with him. I was really thinking of picking him, but I was like it would be too embarrassing if I picked Killian Murphy once again. So I will just give it to Tom Hardy.

Great. This is, he just, you know, talk about a forger, talk about a thief. He just steals every scene that he's in. So good. We haven't even mentioned this, the scene on the elevator where one of the, one of the ex-Elon Musk's to Leriley turns into him and he's like flirting with Saito and Saito's like, no homo, oh my God. But like all this stuff is so fun. All of the like watching him sort of like learn Tom Barringer's movements, the mirror transition sequence and just all the like verve he brings to every single, you know. And also the way that they costume him.

I haven't done a deep dive on the costume analysis, but I am interested because like, you know, Arthur's almost, Arthur's wearing a lot of brown. He does wear that black slim suit in the hotel sequence, but he wears a lot of brown. Cobb is usually in black. Eves is in a lot of like purples and pinks. Ariadne, of course, is in like a terribly dated 2010 scarf and layered situation, but a lot of pops are red on her.

So I think there's some like interesting color coding with the characters. But he is like florid sort of like shirts and and looks. and the way that Tom Hardy talks about, like, how he created the character to be a bit of, like, a, he calls it, this is a very, like, British term, a lovey, which is, like, yeah, like a, you know, an old queer theater actor sort of thing. And I just, I just think he's phenomenal this movie, just, like, absolutely phenomenal. So, yeah, Tom Hardy. He's the best. What? Okay, here we go.

Time to die. Time to talk about the hallway. Why do we fall, sir, so we can learn to pick ourselves back up? Best done, it's not even close. What do you want to say about this hallway sequence? How do minds come up with things like this? You know, genuinely. You mentioned the, like, behind the scenes making of featureettes that are available.

I have, like, I vividly remember, like, reading print magazine articles about this. the day. I love, I mean, any second that we get in the layer two hotel level hallway fights, incredible. I love that we evolve over those sequences, though. Like, we go from, and it's all just iconic, both visually and conceptually, it's memorable, it makes your jaw drop, all of it. We go from, like, the first rotating hallway when up, you see. Yusuf is driving and the van starts to slide on layer one,

and the hallway begins to rotate on layer two. And we've been primed for how what's happening in one place will affect what's happening in another layer. The van crashes and rolls and the dream passengers like lift their arms. And Arthur and his projection pursuer, the security, begin to spider walk. It's like we're just fully in a Spider-Man movie, right? Spider-walk across the walls and door frames and ceilings and slide around. as the van rolls and then slide into a room, into the room to continue the fight, and Arthur gets the gun and shoots, and the van stops, goes flat, and the room stops spinning, and goes still.

And then the second hallway fight sequence, we're in zero graph. The van is falling off the bridge. We have, again, had, like, the prime and can't drop you if there's no gravity. Like, we are ready for what awaits, but we could not possibly be ready for what awaits. How could we be the is like remarkable. It is astonishing. And Arthur's moving through. It's like we're in a rocket ship. And the projection is hiding behind the floating furniture. And the way they're pulling their bodies around and they collide in this midair embrace. And Arthur has to choke him out. And just like against the ceiling light fixture. And this whole time, of course, we're cutting between the other layers. And there is just, I think, because of that, because we're coming and going. something that feels almost like deceptively casual about the mastery of what we are witnessing.

It's like, I'll just give you a couple seconds of this incredible astonishing historic thing that I have done. It doesn't need to be, we're here for 17 uninterrupted minutes just on this. Whenever we cut back to the Snow Fortress level, I'm like, no, take me back. Same. A same. Totally. Yeah, I feel similarly. And yeah, like, as you noted at the top, the practical effects and like learning about the way that they use these rotating sets and the, like, the airline hangers and the actors are suspended

from wires and where is the camera? Are we moving on the side? Or are we at the top or the bottom with a wire dropping to, like, simulate that effect? It's just so incredibly cool. Like, that sounds kind of reductive, but it's just so fucking cool. And I, like, I love it. And I think it's something that people, like, it passes that test. High Mark's, top of the, the list for like you see this and you know exactly what movie this is from immediately. I would also, yeah, you just need to see like one little edge of the hallway slant and Joseph Gordon-Levitt to sort of like run up the side of it and you're like, wow, this is it. Listen, this is a history lesson for our much younger listeners and I will say before Tom Hardy

did Rihanna umbrella dance, our sweet-faced song and dance, our sweet-faced song and leading man was Joseph Gordon Lovett. We're coming right off of 50 days of summer off the 2009 episode

of Saturday Night Live where he did a whole singing in the rain opening sequence. He is a dancer. He is a dancer. Not like as trained as Tom Hardy as a dancer,

but he is like a guy who's just like giving you Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly. Like that's he he even has like a bit of like

an old Hollywood mannered way of talking. He looks. loves a hat, he loves a suit. This is Joseph Gordon Levitt's whole vibe. So, yeah, James Franco, however I feel about James Franco, leaving aside anything else I feel about James Franco, like, just physically, I would much rather watch this, like, dancer figure in the hallway do this stunt. And especially when the, one of the first people to like sort of use this technology is Fred Astaire, who danced on the ceiling in one of these road.

rotating set scenarios, danced up the wall and across the ceiling. And so, you know, to give us Joseph Gordon-Levin in a slim-fit black suit, just sort of like feline gracefully, darting up and down around the walls and, like, and fighting something like that is just cinema. Truly cinema. Truly. Excellent. Okay. be able to pencil one in.

Chick. All right. All right. Stealth MVP of this movie that none of people talk about. Amateurs seek the sun, get eaten, power stays in the shadows.

This is where you want to talk about Tom Hardy. Yeah. So I do, again, is it stealth, if you could just make the case pretty easily that he is just the actual MVP of the movie? Maybe not,

but be that as it may. I think the blend of the hots, like you mentioned, he's just ripping fits off, left and right. The humor, as we've talked about.

I always love, in addition to, like, the, you know, your condescension is much appreciated as always, Arthur. Thank you. Moments that we've already toasted. I love, like, the more subtle humor, like, we should charge Fisher a lot more than Cato for this job. Therapy nod. The charisma, the effortless charm of, as you've noted,

you mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling. The blend of like, I think this is really crucial to why the character is so successful, but the performance as well, that blend of expertise, genuine expertise, but also he, as we've discussed, functions, I think, as a successful audience aid when he is like, sometimes he's the expert and sometimes he's like, explain the math to me, you know? Yeah. It's an effective balance there. And I think also similarly on the blending and balance front, like he has a, he brings a, presents

a great blend of belief, certainty, right? You need the simplest version of the idea in order for it to grab naturally in your subject's mind. It's a very subtle art. You know, he's the one who says, like, start at the absolute basic, which is what? The relationship with the father. He has a certain level of conviction and confidence, but then also there's this cold calculus that he brings, which is rooted sometimes in doubt or uncertainty. Like, he's like, I'm going to wait this out. after the limbo reveal, right? It's like, and then when they miss, he's like, I'm not the one who's like, not going to get back to my family. So he's kind of simultaneously, he agrees to the plan for them to go deeper,

but then it's like, I'm leaving with or without you. He's this true believer and totally practical all at once, which is not something that applies to like very many other characters. And of course, he's just kind of a dick in the most entertaining way watch. Like when he says of Arthur, but he has no imagination, I'm like, this is just chef's kiss delicious. But then he's a, he's a poet, too. Like when he talks about how if you, if you're going to perform inception, you need imagination. He's just the best. He's just so fun to watch.

Tom Hardy's always great, but this is, this is one of my favorite Tom Hardy performances. I just love it. This is a great pick. I went with and I've already teased this. Lori Bolton, who is the location scout for this movie. Love it. Love it. That's a great one. You see it again in Tenet. Jonah Nolan did a lot in Westworld,

but this idea of using real world locations to still give you an otherworldly, you know, a sense of being set in a different time, a different place, a dream world is pretty incredible. and just some of the asks that she was given to do. There's a great, you know, you can read a bunch of different interviews with her, but there's a great, there's a website called movielocations.com where the article will just take you through every step of inception and tell you like where every location is. And it's just like it's really incredible.

A lot of it is, you know, century cities here. Like a lot of it is L.A. A lot of it is the UK. A lot of it is France. We do go to Japan. We go to Calgary. in Canada and Leonardo Capri was like, see you again soon for my Oscar and the Revenant.

I'll be back, you know. But I just think all of the locations are so stunning in the architectural pieces. And again, I just think that that is so much more enduring than, you know, shooting in the volume or just like digitally creating something like this. I just think that that is an underrated, skill inside of the movie making team.

Great pick. A crucial one for this movie. Great pick. Love it. All right. You're waiting on a train, a train that will take you far away. Best Dead Wife Moment. This category was created for small, obviously. I mean, you could just pick the entire movie.

It's the whole movie. Yeah, it is. It really is the whole movie. I do think that, and you already mentioned this line. Yeah. I can't imagine you with all your complexity. all your perfection, your imperfection, this idea of like, I mean, yeah, everything that Mall does and like, you know, you know how to find me, like, oh, you know what to do, like all this sort of stuff

like that. All of that stuff is good, but I can't imagine you with like, you know. Yeah. That's my specific pick as well. I think the way that Mall is this like oozing, uh, oozing into every crevice of reality and all is a ghostly figure. And then obviously actually this, this presence is a projection in the dream world and there in so many different harrowing sequences or building budding reveals. But then when you get to that moment, like, it's so powerful and impactful for both of the characters. And like, man, that next bit, look at you. You're just a shade. A shade. Oh, man, you're just a shade of my real wife. You were the best that I could do. but I'm sorry, you're just not good enough.

And I love that because it's like savage but feels really crucial. It's like it's directed to her, but it's really, he's telling himself that. But also like honoring her is like as much as highly as I think about myself. You're not the real thing. I can't even touch the absolute marvel that was my wife. Yeah. It's great. And she's dead.

And Chris Rennelan loves the dead wife. I mean, stay tuned for the prestige. It's dead wives all the way down in that movie. Okay. They won't fear it until they understand it, and they won't understand it until they've used it. Clearest, great, quote-unquote, great man moments. We talked about Thomas Wayne a lot.

We talked about this for Batman Begins. What do you have here? So I had a few. This wasn't one where I felt like it's got to be this one thing for sure. I had like a few that I was kind of torn between. I think ultimately I'll go with just like the idea of these people who deign to build these worlds and think they can. And like, you know, when Cobb goes to see Miles and ask basically for, you know, the most talented student, the setup is I need an architect who's as good as I was. And when Cobb is explaining later to Ariadne what it was like to spend 50 years in limbo with Maul, he says,

and this is obviously about both, you know, Cobb and Mall, not just Cobb, but it wasn't so bad at first feeling like gods. It's just like, yeah, I bet. We created, we built the world for ourselves. We did that for years. We built her own world. That was mine too. Just like him talking about like building and building. and destroying worlds inside of their own minds for an eternity together.

Absolutely. It's tough not to pick that one ultimately, I think. I do think that the entire like Inception Fisher plot hinging on the idea of creating something for yourself, like basically the, in order to be your own great man, you can only be your own great man by being your own man. This very great man, Conan. Yeah. So that would be a runner up here, I think.

Just something, jumps at, like, do you think, what do you think would have happened to the Roy siblings if they had gotten some inception therapy. Great question. Don't be Logan. Be your own, be your own man. Boy, what's the pinwheel for like Roman or Kendall? Something that's, I'm going to think about that later. Boy, and then I'm going to cry. Not an actual serious pick, but a more comedic second runner-up would be Sado saying I bought the airline seemed neater. What a flex. I have to say, shout out to like the random guy and the train, the random, like, kid in the train at the beginning who was running the machine. And shout out to the flight attendant on this flight who's running, like, this

dream briefcase. Genuine, like, real nitpick for me in a movie I adore. Way too much responsibility for that person. Yeah, exactly. I was like, that person needs to be on the team. Yeah. Sorry. Okay.

Leave Yusuf behind to run that is what I would say. Okay. Let Yusuf moderate the drug doses. Why not? Okay. he is the hero Gotham deserves and not the one it needs right now. Who was regrettably miscast

and who would you replace them with? This was hard, I thought. I know this is kind of easy actually. Really? Tell me. Okay. Tell me. I think Elliot Page is a weak link in this movie. I like

Elliot Page as a performer. Yeah. So it might just be how the character is written. But I think you need like a bit more like you need this character. like we were talking about with Eames, like,

I think this character needs to be like a bit funnier, a bit sassier, a bit like, you know, whatever, like, that's not usually Elliot Page,

like, coming off of hard candy, uh, and X-Men and coming into this, like, I understand you, and you want something very young, someone very young,

who can convincingly portray, like, very cerebral and, and, and that all fits the bill. But I just, there, there is something missing there for me,

with that character. And I hate to do two female characters in a row, a Christopher Nolan movies, but I don't always think that's his strongest suit. So I would say, if you want to get the, if the age is most important, May women,

this is the same year that May women does, like Scott Pilgrim, I just really love May women in terms of, like, I could see May women in this role and being just like a bit more, like cheekier, challenging her, like, challenging, in a way that, I don't know,

livens up some of the exposition requirements for this character a bit. Or if we want to go full Dark Night Rise's feeder team, let's get Andy Hathaway in here and just complete the set, why not? Identical cast at that point instead of just largely similar. I went with a much, much, much smaller presence in the film because I was struggling with this one.

So when you've actually already? shout it out today. I went with my beloved Lucas Haas from Witness as Nash. Obviously, like, it's fun that, you know, a member of the pussy posse is here. A member of the pussy posse. Like Leo's bestie is here. I get it.

But, yeah, I think it could have been interesting to, maybe not. You know, the movie is so well-paced, but potentially could have been interesting to slightly boost that presence, given the betrayal, you know, selling out Cobb and Arthur

to bargain for his life, how that could have, if it was amplified just a bit. Like star power-wise, just make that a bigger after. So you're like, where you start the way, you're like, oh, this is clearly

going to be a member of the team. Yeah. And then they're gone. Yeah. And then it just sort of like heightens the paranoia among the team of like where trust, because we already have the like, well, I'm sharing dreams with you.

So like it is my business element. But if that were more widely, spread from the jump of just like who was going into this situation with me and what might they do to save their own ass if something turns i think could have i don't know but again it's like it's this was a hard one for me so you're like i love this movie it's perfect justice okay you don't really want to want to work it out you want to be fooled most satisfying twist i can't wait to watch the prestige okay um same i already mentioned that i think the first dream within a dream yes the first like what yes there's another layer of dream

is phenomenal. But also, I did it to my wife. That's my back. It's just unbelievable. The wall up when it all comes together, and we realize that Cobb knows inception can work because he used it on his own wife, planting the idea that eventually killed her,

is so intense. I think, like, the, again, this, like, astonishing restraint of building toward that reveal. The way it is teased out across the film, I just love, like, the mystery and the mounting terror on the mall projection front, what we and Ariadne glimpse in that elevator bank memory sequence, the eye just like, knowing the Cobb knows that it works as possible

because he's done it before, but not knowing all the particulars and having to wait to find out, and then the question of what happened to Mall and why and that lingering look we get at Mall's childhood home, it's like, we build, we build. And then when all of the strands braid together finally and Cobb and Ariadne, they go down, he knows Maul is going to have Fisher, like they have to go down there. And he says, guilt, I feel guilt, Mal. And no matter what I do, no matter how hopeless I am, no matter how confused, that guilt is always there reminding me of the truth. What truth?

And you're like totally ready at that point, but also it's still a punch to the gut, that the idea that caused you to question your reality came from me. It's like spine tingling. Why do you think in his most desperate hour, Cobb didn't try to tell her that, like, in the hotel confrontation or something like that? Even if she might not have believed him, like, he didn't even, like, try to admit that in trying to stop her from killing herself. Yeah.

I feel like you... I don't mean that as a nitpick because I don't... think it's totally out of character for him. But I just think that, like, that has to only, like, do you think that he, do you think he never told her? I don't know. Yeah, we were just never shown.

Yeah, because I think that that's, like, you could read it a couple different ways that it's this, like, shame he carries and that when she says, when he, like, you betrayed me. Because it's treated like a revelation, even though this is a projected version of her, it's treated like a revelation to her in that moment. when he says it, you know?

Yeah. I like the idea that part of, you know, because we, as we get the continuation of this scene and the explanation and we're cutting, what we're hearing is in the presence, but what we're seeing is in the past, right? So we're seeing like this reveal is that are caught with the visuals of mall putting the totem in the safe in the dollhouse, a dollhouse, how perfect. Like just too perfect. Cobb, their Dom finding it, spinning it.

spinning it, locking it away, the train tracks, waiting for the train litany, waking in the real world, mall is detached, you know, the sequences of like running the finger over the knife blade, the hotel room jump, all of it. Like, you could have a version of that where it's this withheld thing because it feels like too deep of a, as we hear, like too deep of a betrayal to be, to ever voice out loud. And also because he doesn't know until it's too late where it will ultimately lead, or the version of it where he's constantly saying to her, the way I pulled you out was by spinning the top

because the spinning means dream world and that was why we're here, but I didn't know. I didn't know that it would keep spinning. I didn't understand that that had taken root that that would cause you to question your reality. And I planted an idea, a simple little idea that would change everything that her world wasn't real. The fact that the totem is the thing that she had locked away,

something deep inside, a truth that she had known, but chose to forgot all of it so good. like that it wouldn't have mattered if he had told her because the inception worked and it's spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning and it's deep and it is the simplest version of the thing which is the spinning top means this isn't real and so no matter what he said whether he's screaming it across the windows in the hotel room as she's poised to let go and fall and has let her shoe drop off her foot or in the kitchen table with a knife in her hand or any other moment it wouldn't have made a difference. because the idea took root. That's like so upsetting to have to confront. And it's just like, boy, but yeah, when she's crying and saying you infected my mind, somebody has been, you betrayed me. And I think that also, of course, is like, again, that really heightens the tragedy because he did it.

There was like a well-intentioned reason. But still, what did he do? He broke into the safe in her mind and touched this thing that is for her alone. Yeah. Boy, really good. Really good. You do something out of love and fear, but where does it lead somebody?

And then what can you do with that after? And then where does it take you? Are you ready for an abrupt mood change? Here we go. Okay. It's not who I'm underneath what I do that defines me. Yeah. Nolan is not known for a sexual content,

but let's go ahead and try to excavate the horniest moment of this film. Okay, here's what I have. I already mentioned something, something eams in Arthur. Sure, that's in there. But. Here's what I'll say. We don't get to see it. But Cobb and Mal,

Marian Coatier and Leonardo DiCaprio, two extremely hot people. Yeah. Who clearly enjoy having sex with each other. Get a really nice hotel room every year for their anniversary in order, one must presume, to have a fuckstrapaganda. Right? Who knows? They have young kids. They're busy jobs. Maybe they're just there and like...

Sleep and watch cable. What do you think? Room service? They did in those decades that they spent in the dream world where they could bend reality. Holy shit. What kinky dream sex did they have? Well, again, you know, mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling. The possibilities are boundless. If you can bend a city, what else can you bend inside of... a dream world. That's my question.

Hob and Mall, something, something, fucktopia. Dream fucktopia. Who wants to go home to the kids when you can do that? Dream fucktopia is a great title for something in the future. This is a... Probably not. This connects deeply and intimately to, perhaps curvedly, to perhaps curvedly, to my pick, which is the team is prepping for the mission, and Yusuf is explaining that his compound creates a very powerful shared connection and accelerates brain function, so they'll have more time

on each level, right, 20 times normal brain function. So level one compounded week on level one, six months, 10 years. And Ariadne says, who'd want to be stuck in a dream for 10 years? And then Yusuf just goes, smirking. And he goes, depends on the dream. All right, Yusuf. Just 10 years of cascading, mounting orgasms is what I take Yusuf to mean. And I understand why his dream layer is full. All right. Dream fucktopia, the opium den that is.

Okay, great. Okay, wonderful. Love this for us. Okay. And ideas like a virus resilient, highly contagious. The line that his heart is 15 years later. that line is of course from inception. Yes, it is.

But what is your answer to this question? I do think the header quote could be the pick. Certainly. That's a great one. A lot of contenders crowded field here. I am going with, actually I'll stick with the use of dream layer for a moment.

When Eam says they come here every day to sleep and the man who is administering the compound says no they come to be woken up? Very good. The dream has become their reality.

Who are you to say otherwise? And I think this is a really important, first of all, that's just like a bar. But I think it's a really important in a movie where so much of what we're seeing is like what can go wrong, how you can lose yourself. And this is a version of losing yourself, but maybe willfully, right? Maybe because something is better there. I think it's important to get the other side of that and see that there can be something welcoming or envisely. about how the dream world grips you and transports you and maybe what it unlocks for you that is not an offer for you in your real life. Obviously, we see what can go wrong, but to also

see what can go right, even just an instant there feels necessary. For me, it's, I mean, an idea is like a virus resilient and highly contingent. It's very interesting. But in the dream state, your conscious defenses are lowered and it makes your thoughts vulnerable to theft. This idea of like, what do we passively consume, you know, especially like in this world where so often be included, like, we are scrolling on our phones and sort of like in a passive state. And we're absorbing, if you're scrolling on whatever social media platform of your choice. And in the mix there, there's always ads inside of like everything else that you're taking in and sort of like, you know, how is that? We talk about that with TV, but now it's like even more of just this sort of like mental space that we sort of drop ourselves into in order to like scrape together some dopamine and all of our stuff to get through the day.

So I don't know. I was just thinking about that, this dream state and our lower our lowered defenses. Cheery, Joanna. Okay. Speaking of which, most devastating moment, you think darkness is your ally, but you merely adopt the dark. I was born and it molded by it. A most devastating moment. Is this Arthur finding the pinwheel in the safe for you?

This is in fact... Robert, Robert, Robert, sorry. Robert finding the pinwheel in the safe. This is in fact our beloved Killian as Robert Fisher, opening the vault on the snow level, having this final moment with his father, and opening, punching in the numbers, opening the safe, seeing the will,

and then pulling out the pinwheel. And no matter how many times I've seen this movie, I will never stop breaking down into tears when I see this. It's just like so, this is, you know, devastating in a good way, right? Like this, even though it is manufactured and deceptive catharsis, it is catharsis and healing. And like, it's beautiful. And the performance from Killian here is so, so, so good. And that idea that like something fundamental, this is a heist.

It's a job, but like something fun, the same thing that when they were plotting the mission, right, start with this basic thing, the relationship with the father, to give some healing at that, like, the basic thing, like this core central relationship that, like, he's not going to be able to, like, necessarily achieve on his own is kind of this, like, in a weird way. Like, they've, they've, it's a gift. Yeah, invading his. mind, but given him this incredible gift, a gift and a theft at the same time. I love that scene, even though it is Eames pretending to be Uncle Peter, like, with Tom Berger and Killian

sobbing wet on the side of the river there. Like, yeah, that moment, too. Really good. Watching, you know, the Batman movies and then this movie and just watching Killian take these, like, lesser roles inside of the movies building to Oppenheimer and the Oscar It's just like, it's so satisfying to watch Killian show up and be like, sure, I'll do, I'll do this role in Inception where I am, you know, number six on the call she or whatever it is. I will show up and be the scarecrow at all three movies and be barely in the movie, but I will give it everything so that you're thinking of me when you make your Oppenheimer movie and I get that role and I absolutely crush it and then I get an Oscar for it.

It's very satisfying to me. It's really good. I love to when they like they have, because it's wallet, you know, they're opening it and they see the picture. So it's like that, like, useful? Maybe. And then it's like every time that open the wallet, it's there. And we, of course, have had the like glimpse into the must be a cherish memory. I put that there. Beny hasn't even noticed. And that idea that like something that matters to you enough that you carry it with you, but you're not sure it means anything to another person enough that they would even notice it. And then that person, maybe the last thing

they said to you mustered their final breath and final strength, like to say disappointed. And then to get to find the pinwheel there, again, via inception, but even so, and to hear, like, you know, disappointed that you tried, like that you felt you had to be me. That's what I was referencing early, this idea of mapping a more positive memory on top of a painful memory. Yes. And sort of improving that little nerve center in your brain is a thing we do while dreaming. So, wonderful.

Yes. Loved it. Can you hear the music, Roberts? Most unforgettable Zimmerism inside of this movie. Great musical movie. Great score. I will not attempt to say the title of the kick song that you already beautifully said earlier.

I regretter anything. No, I regret nothing. I love, I think my favorite part of the score, it's a fantastic score, is the, whenever we have this pre-kick surge in the score, the iconic, like, don't, don't, don't. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just, it's so, so, so, so, so good. That's my favorite. And then, like, the slow buildup at the beginning of the song, the way the apps, like, the way it blew my mind, I don't know when I learned this, but it wasn't right away. It was like a couple years later. The way that I learned that the iconic balm of this is just

like slowed down. Yeah, like slowed down. Also, I just found out this week that the runtime of the movie, which is like, what, two hours 28 or something like that, it's two hours 28 minutes of the movie. The track is two minutes, 28 seconds. It's like exactly matches, but dilated the length of time of the track of the song. Okay. For me, I think this is the end of a beautiful friendship. once again, shout out Tenet.

Actor who never returned to the Nolan verse, but should have. I already said, for me, this is Leo. I hope we get to see them team up again. Who are you going with here? This is sad. I bummed myself out with this. But Pete Possilthwaite, who shows up, who died the next year, 2011 of cancer, was like basically dying when he made this movie.

He died of cancer in his 60s, way too early. What a, like, absolute incredible performer. You know, he doesn't do a ton in this movie, it does it very well and could have done even more, I think, in other, in subsequent Nolan movies if he had lived longer. So shout out Pete Possible Wade, who is an absolute legend. And it's, it's, like, beautiful to see him in this. And, like, you know, think about him and Leo and Romeo and Juliet.

Or, you know, like, just that, that sort of creative relationship across years of a career and stuff like that. I also think casting him and Killian as father and son is just inspired because of the I mean, two of the great sets of cheekbones in the history of film. Great point. Did you know that in the photo that's in the wallet, that that's Killian, like, in a mustache playing the dad in the photo? They want a mustache glasses like Gillian. Okay.

Some men just want to watch the world burn the most Nolan thing about this movie. I'm going to say it's hiring Leonardo DiCaprio to play yourself inside of a movie. Great pick. Oh, man. Incredible. You know, if you could do it, why would you? Yeah, I guess. Absolutely.

I love that. My answer to this is kind of like lame, but I don't mean it to be a cop-out. It's just like, I think that there's nothing about the movie that isn't a Nolan thing about the movie. You know, I think it is the most Nolan-y of all of Nolan's movies. I think if you had to show someone one Nolan movie to explain. Bose them to and make sure they understood his sensibility, his ambition, his style, his interests, his preoccupations, you would show them this, I think. Like, dreams, time and perception, the power of ideas, the human capacity for invention,

the nature of reality, the yearning, the absence. It's just all here in every frame of the film. So, yeah, all of it. Last one at least, this is what we're doing all through Hot Nolan Summer, perhaps into Chris Nolan Fall, perhaps all the way. until we get to... I just don't want to stop now that we've started. It's so fun.

July of next year. Oh, man. Our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us. What aspect of Nolan's upcoming The Odyssey are you thinking about slash most hype for this month? Is yours of the same as mine, which is that the IMX screenings are already sold out a year in advance? This was fucking crazy.

Within that the tickets were on sale that far. I can't, I was like, what? Within an hour, 95% of seats were snapped up according to exhibition sources, repping about a total of $1.5 million in sales despite a relatively small pool of seats. It's 25 or 26 locations over the July 17th through 19th weekend. IMAX 70mm Odyssey sold out a year in advance. If you weren't looking at your phone right when this posted, you got fucked here. This was tough.

They're being resold. I don't like that. Don't do that. Like on eBay so like that. This is like a big, you know, I hate that. It's a big part of my life because of a sneaker culture, so I'm not as offended by it. But I can see how that, yeah, that's not a good place to be heading. Can we get more IMAX screens?

I don't understand why there isn't. What's going on here? I have no idea. We'll have to ask Fanrock. But I feel like what I've been told is that IMAX is always gone, Dolby's always gone, and then everything else is wide open. I feel like the IMAX isn't like

when they were doing sinners in the 80 millimeter, there was not an L.A. location where they did it. It was like, I think that's true. That sounds impossible. I think that's true. And I was just like, why is the, I love the Metro,

our San Francisco IMAX, iconic, beautiful. L.A. deserves an IMAX of, equal stature. So I'm probably wrong. Hopasandrughey's jupel.com if you want to educate me on the iMacases of Los Angeles. But like, yeah, let's get more IMAX. But like, you know, you know, Superman made a ton of money. Like people are going to the movies. It's very, very exciting. And especially like this idea of, let's make the fucking Odyssey. The Odyssey feel like a movie event so indelible. This is like why we have to value Christopher Nolan. Like, however you may feel about

some movies or the others that he's made, the fact that he is capable of this is nothing but good for the movies and the cinematic experience. So I feel very lucky. I've been at the movie theater a lot lately. It's been really fun. It's been great. I am. This is like so L.A. bubble of me, and I'm sure that's a big part of it, but every time lately that I'm like, can I see this an IMAX or in Dolby? It's just. so hard, so hard. So, you know, throw that out there. Okay, here's my pick. Yeah. I do think we could go with just fathers and sons in general, but I'm going husband and wife. I'm going a husband, Cobb, or Odysseus, longing to reunite with his wife, Mall or Penelope.

That's what I'm going with here. And that makes Tom Holland, like, young James, I guess. Yeah. Turn around. Turn around tolemachus. Yeah, exactly. We'll see his face, plenty. I wonder when a song called Turnaround Telemachus.

I think it could be the breakaway pop hit of July. Tell me. Thank you so much, Mallory Rubin, for coming into this dream scape with me. Thank you to everyone who worked on this show. Thank you to the great John Richter. Thank you to Carlishter, Boga, now in Los Angeles. extremely exciting. Thank you to Arjuna Rigub Powell

for all of his juggling of everything. He's about to run through the entire gauntlet that is San Diego Comic-Con with us. So Arjuna, rest well. We need you. And of course, to Jomey Adiron for the socials, for the memes, for everything that he does.

You can also see Jomi at Whiskey Girl in San Diego, et cetera, et cetera. The game will all be there. And thank you to Malari Rubin. Thank you to you. We'll be back with our Comic-Con. dispatches. We'll be back with Fantastic Four coverage, with villains, with Stranger Things, with Buffy.

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