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This week:
BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU. In a very special episode of Great Bad Movies, our incredible editor Sam picks our movie, and then plants the idea in our dreams. So now we think it was our idea. (He did that by invoking our relationships with our fathers. It’s a whole thing.)
While Greg and Joe both think this is one of Christopher Nolan’s best movies, it is not without some asterisks. Hence: A perfect movie for Sam to pick for our show.
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated, so… You know… It’s not our fault.
Greg: Joe in the movie we watch this week. Leonardo DiCaprio helps people dive into dreams inside of dreams. Have you ever had a dream inside a dream before?
Joe: I have. They were kind of scary. I wish they were as fun as the ones in inception. But what would happen is I would be being chased by some kind of invisible bad guy. And I would know that they were bad and coming to get me. And then if I looked in a mirror, I would see my reflection looking back but looking sinister.
Joe: Oh, and it’s kind of like a Twin Peaks feeling. So it was terrifying. That’s like one of my biggest fears with mirrors. And so I would actively be trying to wake up in the dream.
Clip: Wake up.
Joe: But still be in the dream. And that would go a few rounds until I was like, actually awake. Wow. I would love to say it was, a good time. It wasn’t. It was a it’s a total nightmare for me of, like, not being able to wake up and being chased and not being yourself.
Clip: You know.
Joe: Like a demon had taken over, basically. So, yeah, that’s that’s what it was.
Greg: Okay. I have so many questions.
Clip: Okay.
Greg: What does a more sinister Jessica Tucker look like? I can’t even imagine.
Joe: Yeah, because I’m pretty sinister.
Greg: Is there guideline for what happens? Yeah.
Joe: Pretty much it was that I don’t know if you’ve ever seen, like, the poster for smile of that movie. It was kind of like that where it would be like, okay, I think myself, but I knew it wasn’t me in the mirror and oh yeah, I can feel it. I’m having flashbacks though.
Greg: Oh no. Don’t have that dream tonight.
Joe: Yeah, I won’t, I better not if I do, I’m blaming you.
Greg: So wait, what if that was just the first level? What if you start with that dream and then you fall asleep while looking at yourself, the sinister Joe. And then it’s just like you’re at Disneyland for the second level.
Clip: That would be awesome. Sinister Joe, go to Disneyland. Yes. Perfect on Space Mountain. Like with my arms folded and.
Greg: Just one of those scary adults that goes to Disneyland by themselves that night.
Clip: Exactly.
Joe: Pops. Kids balloons as they’re walking down.
Greg: The FBI would be all.
Clip: Over you. Yeah.
Joe: What about you, Greg? Have you ever had dreams within a dreams or anything inception like, happen in your dreams?
Greg: I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream inside a dream. The only dreams that I remember are like stressed dreams which happen, like all of this summer. Getting ready for that stand up show with Isaac Slade. I was having stressed dreams most of the summer and also, I dreamt I had a show this last weekend, so I had to learn a bunch of songs.
Greg: I was worried about that. Whenever I’m doing something at work, you know, I have like website code, nightmares.
Clip: Or.
Greg: Something I’m sure everybody can relate to. But I’m like, my brain is trying to figure out how to do something in my sleep. So it’s mostly stress, dreams. Yeah, I suppose it’s like I’m looking in a mirror and seeing like a stressed out version of myself in the mirror, and that’s scaring me. Yeah.
Joe: It’s stress. Greg.
Clip: Stress, Greg. Yeah, lots of eyeliner.
Joe: Yeah, stress. Greg and Sinister Joe go to Disneyland.
Clip: Be great.
Greg: All right, let’s get to the show.
Clip: Let’s do it.
Clip: There’s one thing you should know about me.
Clip: I specialize in a very specific type of security. Subconscious security. You’re talking about dreams.
Clip: It’s called inception. Already.
Clip: I think I found a way home, and this last job, that’s how I get them.
Clip: I have it under control.
Clip: You mustn’t be afraid to dream bigger, darling.
Greg: The year is 2010, and Christopher Nolan pulled out an.
Clip: Old.
Greg: Script idea that he had and made inception. He wrote and directed this movie, and we are talking about some amazing stars in this movie. We’re talking about Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt ten want to not be Elliot Page billed as Ellen Page in this movie Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard is in this film. Lucas Heights shows up. Of course, Michael Caine shows up because it is a Christopher Nolan movie.
Greg: We are talking about the movie inception and this is a very special episode of Great Bad Movies. We are going through personal picks of the people who work on this show, and people probably know that you and I work on this show. People may not know that our incredible editor of this show is a fellow named Sam Cunningham, who lives over in Kentucky.
Greg: And so this week we’re doing Sam’s pick. We are here to talk about Sam’s, one of Sam’s favorite great bad movies. Let’s start with you, Joe. Joe, Sky Tucker. What makes inception a great bad movie?
Joe: This is or is an interesting pick, and it rides the line for me of a great movie and a great bad movie of the Christopher Nolan movies I have seen, and I have not seen all of them, I want to share this with that. You have not seen Oppenheimer, okay.
Greg: But you’ve been going through a whole phase since we watched tenet, right? Okay.
Joe: Yeah. So I have seen most of his movies. I think there are only a couple, including Oppenheimer, that I haven’t seen.
Clip: To.
Joe: Date. Of the movies I’ve seen of his. This is his best one for sure. What? Yeah.
Greg: Really?
Joe: I think by a whisker it’s better than The Dark Knight.
Greg: Great. Okay.
Joe: It’s a really interesting idea. What I really appreciate about this movie is.
Clip: You.
Joe: And I could both come away with completely different views of how this movie ends. I could be talked into the fact that this is entirely a dream that the main character, Leonardo DiCaprio, is in, and that there is no reality that we see at all. Okay, I could be talked into you just kind of follow the the plot of the movie and it is what it is at the end.
Joe: And, you know, it’s kind of got the wrapped up happy ending.
Clip: Sure.
Joe: And I could be talked into the fact that it could be the inception is actually them implanting an idea in later DiCaprio’s brain.
Greg: Oh, wow. Who’s they?
Joe: Whoever it could be Ken Watanabe.
Clip:
Joe: So it’s a really fun, interesting idea. And these are themes that Christopher Nolan likes to play with. Yeah there’s the prestige this movie and tenet really are. If you think of them almost as a trilogy of trying to fool the audience or. Yeah. And on the flip side, it suffers from kind of the matrix bad movie. They can do anything in a dream, and they decide to have guns and car chases, right.
Clip: And ski chases.
Joe: And James Bond moments. And so the whole universe is open to you, and this is what they chose to do. So that is where it like it falls off for me a little bit of like premise, but I’ll flip it over to you, Greg. Fine. Hard. Yeah. Why is this a great band movie or is it a great bad movie or is a great movie?
Greg: I loved this movie when it came out in 2010, and I loved that. This was a big budget kind of continuation of what he was doing with memento and my in my mind also, maybe The Prestige and A little bit of insomnia, which was his third movie after memento. This is a great bad movie because it tends to strain credulity.
Clip: Credulity a little.
Greg: Bit. Upon rewatching, and especially now after we’ve seen tenet. So we’ve seen him go full Nolan down the inception path. It’s like, oh, maybe we can’t trust him with this always, you know? So I think that this is the if I was to compare this movie in tenet, this is better in a lot of ways. Yeah. But at the same time, it is just a.
Clip: Crazy.
Greg: Movie. Sometimes that’s making huge leaps. And just the Nolan of it all is just like, hey, let’s just have a good time here. I was very surprised watching it this week, how some of it feels a little bit old in the action scenes.
Clip: Yeah, that.
Greg: Really surprised me because when this movie came out, I was pretty blown away by the scale of it. But the action scenes in tenet are better agreed. So, you know, it’s a little bit of a mixed bag. I love that we watched it. And I loved that Sam brought it up. I personally was shocked he didn’t ask us to watch interstellar, but he probably thinks that’s just a great, great movie.
Greg: And Sam, sent in his thoughts on this movie. Sometimes he’s, like, called. And he’s given us a little voice memos to play on the show this week. He’s going to let us know a little bit about this movie, and you’re going to read what he wrote on why we are doing this movie. What did he say about what makes this movie a great bad movie?
Joe: So forgive me, I’m not in character of Sam as well as I could be, but again, just we cannot underscore enough how important he is to this show. He he.
Clip: Edits our.
Joe: Ramblings and makes us sound coherent. It’s amazing and so, so appreciative of his work. And so. And when he did this, I had seen this not not that long ago, maybe over the summer was for the first time I watched it.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: And so I was pretty blown away by, by it the first time I saw it. And it kind of stuck with me as I kept thinking about it. So yeah.
Greg: We should say he’s already saved this episode. Yeah, we’ve been recording for three hours already, and he has probably cut two hours and 45 minutes out of it.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: That’s what he does. We repeat ourselves just constantly.
Clip: And then he just cut to the chase real quick for us. Yeah.
Greg: We should let everybody know a peek behind the curtain. We are horrible at this.
Clip: And the only.
Greg: Reason the show is good is because I say.
Clip: Yeah, pretty much.
Joe: All right. So this is, why inception is a great bad movie. Per Sam, he said my 15 year old self would be mad at the word bad being spoken in the same sentence as inception. Back then, I thought it was perfect. And honestly, it still kind of is. It’s almost peak. Nolan, the thinking person’s action movie I love alternate reality movies that are just close enough to our world that they could be real.
Joe: Plus, Tom Hardy casually firing a grenade launcher like he’s ordering t sign me up. Or, in the words of Joe, I’m in the tank.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: 100%. Tom Hardy makes steals every. I mean, I love Tom Hardy. He is amazing.
Greg: He’s so good in this movie too.
Joe: Yeah, he is so good. But now coming back to it with my older, more curmudgeonly brain, I couldn’t help but notice about 80 to 90% of this movie is exposition.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: So much exposition.
Clip: Totally.
Joe: Elliot Page, his acting talents are are all but lost to a role that confines him to receiving all the dream mechanic and plot explanations. Yeah, and the wild thing is, even with all that exposition, I’m still confused. It’s not tenet level confusing, but it’s still kind of catty. Wampus.
Clip: Totally.
Joe: Bonus points for the catty Wampus being in there. Sam. All that said, who am I kidding? Any time Nolan and Zimmer team up, I’m all in. Even if I’m completely lost, I’ll still pretend I understand it and call it genius. Perfect. Nailed it.
Greg: Oh wow. I think we should just wrap it up.
Clip: Yeah, I think we’re done.
Greg: Great. But I gotta go.
Clip: Yeah, yeah. See you soon.
Joe: Yeah. So that’s a Sam’s. Sam’s will bring in. He’s got some drinking games and some important questions he’s asked. We’ll bring those in at the right times, 100%. I agree with all of what Sam said.
Greg: 100%. Yeah. Tom Hardy just saves it throughout. I mean, he’s been in what, three has he been in three Nolan movies.
Joe: Yeah obviously he’s Bane and Dark Knight Rises or.
Greg: Yeah. Have you watched that one yet?
Joe: I have not watched that one yet.
Greg: Okay. Can we talk about your journey through Nolan since tenet? Sure. Because this is going to be fresh in your mind. So tell us what you have watched and, tell us what this journey has been like.
Joe: Okay. So obviously the first movie I saw was of his and I only saw it once. I saw it in the theater was memento. Yeah, sure. And I thought it was amazing.
Clip: Yeah, totally.
Joe: It was like nothing no other movie I had ever seen.
Clip: Yep.
Joe: From there, the next one I saw was tenet. Wow. So that is like the break I took from Nolan.
Clip: You’re like, I’m going.
Greg: To give it a minute.
Joe: Yeah. I was like, all right.
Clip: You might be.
Joe: The hot new thing.
Clip: But let’s give you 20 years and then let’s come back and see.
Greg: You don’t know what the cookies taste like halfway through cooking in the oven. Yeah, I’m going out early. Okay.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. So then we watched tenet, and then I was like, okay, let’s do it. So I went back and I watched Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.
Greg: Sure. Which one is better? You like Dark Knight more?
Joe: Oh, Dark Knight, Heath Ledger is steals. Every scene in that Batman Begins is for sure a great bad movie.
Greg: I like that movie.
Joe: I like it too. It’s a it’s one of the better Batman movies, but it’s it’s pretty ridiculous. And. Yeah, yeah, Heath ledger makes The Dark Knight. Then I watched The Prestige.
Greg: Which what’d you think?
Joe: I thought it was pretty terrible. It’s his.
Clip: Worst movie.
Greg: Did you watch insomnia?
Joe: Oh wait. So is that the one Al Pacino and Robin.
Greg: Robin Williams I think Hilary Swank is in it. Yeah, it takes place in Alaska.
Joe: I have not I’ve wanted to. Yeah. And then inception. So those are the ones I’ve seen. Oh. And I saw Dunkirk.
Greg: Okay. So you haven’t seen interstellar.
Joe: I’ve not seen interstellar.
Greg: Okay. I’m so sorry to say, that you haven’t seen interstellar.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: You haven’t seen insomnia? You haven’t seen Dark Knight Rises.
Joe: Correct? Yeah. I have not seen that. Or Oppenheimer.
Greg: Oppenheimer was. I’m pretty sure that was my favorite movie that year. I think that that’s one of those rare times where the best film at the Oscars was like, yeah, no, I think that’s my favorite. The other one that I really loved was The Holdovers that year, which was just kind of a quiet movie that takes place over winter at a at a boarding school.
Greg: And so when you watch inception, you’re saying it’s it’s the best one?
Joe: I think so. So here are my just kind of off the top of my head Nolan isms that I have noticed throughout. He loves to start every movie in the middle of the action in an action scene. Every movie starts with a bang. I appreciate that. Totally struggles with female characters, that aren’t mothers. Yeah, it’s just kind of his thing.
Joe: He always likes to have, like a knowing nod at the end when things have gone well of like the characters have resolved something like there’s a father son moment at the end of Dunkirk. There’s, you know, as they’re leaving the plane and then inception and going through customs, they’re like, they’re all separated, but they like kind of look at each other and kind of give, you know, some nods.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joe: There’s those moments, and he likes to play with the reality so that like the prestige to me and, and memento I think as the first one. But that one’s kind of, you know, working back in time. You know, if you think about all of his movies, are these kind of movies, if you have memento, you have The Prestige ten and inception.
Joe: They’re all kind of trying to play with reality and what it is, you know? And what’s the full story? I think memento does a really good job. We kind of get to the beginning of the movie or the end of the movie. Yeah, and you kind of know everything, but there’s no resolution, which I appreciated. Sure. Dunkirk was really interesting in terms of like, it’s a war movie, but there really isn’t a lot of character arc.
Joe: It’s really just kind of showing.
Clip: Just.
Joe: The craziness of this moment that’s happening. And there are kind of 3 or 4 different storylines that are happening that kind of intersect and part, but they’re not. It’s not like any movie I had ever seen. You never see the Germans, even though they’re very present within the movie. They’re just like the shadowy figure within it. So I, I really appreciated doing Dunkirk that way or doing a movie that way where it’s, you know, yeah, you can only do Dunkirk if you’re Christopher Nolan.
Joe: You know, when he did it at this stage of his career, if that’s his first movie.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: The studio is saying what they’re basically pulling the plug on it. They’re like, there’s no arc, there’s no characters that we, you know, know and like and like, right. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s like no other war movie I’ve ever seen.
Greg: But that movie was super successful.
Clip:
Greg: People went to the Imax theaters to see that one. I’ve never seen Dunkirk. I have Dunkirk earmarked to watch at a special time and in a special place. And right now that place is filled with moving boxes. And so it is not right now, and I can’t do it in that place, so it’ll happen. I’ll be watching that movie in like nine months, I think.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: If I seem entirely out of my head tonight, I should. I should say that, we’ve been moving in the last week, and, it’s just been, like, nonstop for a couple weeks. And so I haven’t been sleeping and stress streams and probably stress streams with. And dreams. Yeah. I keep looking in the mirror and seeing Evil Joe guy Tucker.
Greg: It’s been a very weird couple nights of sleep for me. So if I’m not firing on all cylinders tonight, that’s why. But this movie was written as, like an 80 page, I think outline or treatment by Christopher Nolan after he had made Memento and Insomnia, and he just kind of decided, I don’t think I’m ready to make this movie yet.
Greg: I need some more experience. So he went off and made Batman Begins, The Prestige and The Dark Knight, and then he was like, all right, time to finish up inception. I think that’s really interesting that, you know, someone with the talent to make Memento and Insomnia to really well-made movies kind of decides, I’m not ready for this one to do this one.
Greg: Right, I need to I need to grow up a little bit more. I wish I thought that way in my life. I wish I thought, now’s not the time. I probably need to grow up a little bit more before I do this thing, but, that’s. I guess I’m always just afraid if I don’t do it now, when’s it going to happen, you know?
Joe: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think. What? Yeah, this is definitely a high concept film.
Clip: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: And it’s visually pretty amazing. Totally. I think it’s one of the prettier movies of his. And I do I found it really interesting, the whole premise I think, and watching it now twice in pretty short succession though, I think the the other hole that I found in this plot. So basically the, the basic plot of the movie is their whole thing is they go into people’s dreams and then they steal information from.
Clip: People.
Greg: Where that’s extraction.
Joe: That’s extraction. Right? Their whole the whole thing of this is that they’re going into someone’s brain to implant something, to make a change. And it’s the hardest thing that you can do because, yeah, it’s got to be subtle and all of those sorts of things. Yeah. And so Ken Watanabe, the opening scene is I’m trying to steal something from him and they are unsuccessful.
Joe: And then he brings them in and says, you need to I’m either going to kill you or you can help me defeat one of my competitors and his business, Ken Watanabe. As business is so powerful and successful that it can change like immigration status.
Clip: And Mike.
Greg: Murder charges.
Clip: Murder charges and.
Joe: By airlines and all of these things. Yeah, but he is afraid of his competitor. And so that’s really the setup for the movie.
Greg: He is great. He is so great. And he looks fantastic.
Clip:
Greg: His suits fit him better than any suit will ever fit me.
Joe: Yeah. And maybe it is just like if you’re a billionaire you just want to win at all costs. So it doesn’t really matter. Even if you’re like the second richest person in the world, you want to be the first richest. And so.
Clip: Sure.
Joe: But, you know, the whole thing is he’s trying to implant a memory in Killian Murphy so that he breaks up the company and doesn’t destroy his business. But it’s like you’re already so power. I just it fell flat a little bit on the motivation.
Clip:
Greg: It’s so fascinating because it’s kind of like Ken wants to. Nami is hiring Leonardo DiCaprio and is able to clear the charges if he does one last job. And these charges are preventing Leonardo DiCaprio from returning to America to be with his kids like he can’t. He’s he’s in places with extradition or no extradition, right?
Joe: Why those kids can’t be moved to Europe.
Clip: It’s impossible. It’s impossible. Don’t move that way. Yeah. Okay.
Joe: All right.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: So the motivation for Leonardo DiCaprio is I want to get back to my kids, which is, one I can relate to. And then Ken Watanabe, he’s saying that Jillian Murphy’s dad’s company is, like, such a monopoly that it’s like, the most powerful country.
Clip:
Greg: Like a superpower. And so would like the noble thing to do would be to break that up. So there’s a little bit of kind of like monopoly moralizing going on. Yeah. We need to break this company up. And then we find out that Killian Murphy is a more sympathetic character. And so I was just going to say that if there is a bad guy in this movie, it’s probably Ken Watanabe.
Joe: I think so.
Greg: But he’s such a great dude in the crew that.
Clip: Yeah, this.
Greg: Is kind of an interesting movie where there really is no bad.
Clip: Guy.
Joe: Yeah, I agree, and he’s also, again, so rich and powerful that he can buy an entire airline, right, to get them on the right plane with Killian Murphy to put him to sleep to what I, you know. Yeah, those are the moments to me that push this into the great bad realm. And while we’re talking about it. But there’s also a case to be made that this movie takes place entirely in Leonardo DiCaprio’s dream, but he never gets home to his kids.
Joe: Sure, he’s just in a dream because it opens and closes with the same shot of, you know, he is on a beach. He’s captured. He’s taken the Ken Watanabe, who’s old, right? That’s the opening scene. Yeah. And he’s got to rescue him from that moment. So and I know that there are people and probably lots of Reddit threads on inception and what’s really happening, but there is a strong case to be made that this is just lead in under DiCaprio’s dream.
Greg: What do you think of that? Let’s get to the bottom of this.
Joe: I’m not sure that I believe that. It’s just everything is in a dream, but I think there’s a case to be made that his wife was right, because the whole thing is she kills herself because he incepted his wife. Is that a verb? That’s right.
Greg: Where it is now.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. To believe that they were in the dream world.
Clip: Kind of forever.
Joe: And they were. Yeah. And it ends on that cliffhanger of him running out to his kids and the top that is his totem. That kind of proves we don’t know what’s happening with you know is as he still in the dream. So it’s possible that he’s just forever in the dream state and that she was right and that this is her trying to wake him up, potentially.
Greg: So he has a top. He stole this idea from her. It’s a thing in the real world. If you’re in a dream, the top won’t ever topple over, have to spend forever. And if you aren’t in a dream, the top will act like a normal top. And everybody has their own what they call a totem. To find out if you’re dreaming or not.
Greg: Because it’s probably maddening to be in dreams the way they’re, and be operating in other people’s dreams. At the end. They show it wobble a little bit, but we don’t actually know. Yeah, but here’s some facts, okay? Okay. He says he can never change what his kids are wearing in the dreams. And at the end they’re a little bit older and they’re wearing different clothes okay.
Greg: Michael Keaton says that Christopher Nolan told him when you’re in a scene that means it’s real and it’s really happening. We’re not in a dream. And Michael Caine is in that scene with him at the end. Okay. And Christopher Nolan says I left it ambiguous on purpose because I don’t think it matters. The thing that matters is not if this is a dream or if it’s real life.
Greg: What matters is Leonardo DiCaprio’s relationship to it. So how does he feel about if he’s in a dream or not? His perspective changes at the end of the movie, and so whether he’s in a dream or not, his subconscious has accomplished something.
Joe: I agree with all of that, and honestly, I don’t care.
Greg: Well, and it’s that apathy that I wanted to talk to you about.
Joe: Okay, awesome.
Greg: That’s what we brought you.
Clip: Well, the well, well, screw you and this whole world.
Greg: Well, I mean, let me add defensiveness in this list. Hold on just a second.
Greg: Yeah, I think that’s what Christopher Nolan saying. He’s like, the thing that he cares about is the whole thing is taking place. Showing Leonardo DiCaprio’s life and how he feels. And they say in the subconscious, your emotions guide your subconscious, not facts, which I think is a really interesting, thing to kind of sit and think about for a while.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: And that explains my stress dreams.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: Something that’s that’s why I’m here tonight for you, Greg, is.
Clip: Why you stressed dreams come.
Joe: Because of them.
Greg: And do you have stressed dreams?
Joe: Oh, yeah, I have dreams when I am stressed that, That brings me back to, like, when I was playing sports a lot, so, like, I’ll be playing tennis.
Clip: Yeah. And then I’ll.
Joe: Like, try to run. And, you know, you’re trying to run in a dream where it’s like, possible or like, I’ve got to tie my shoe and then all of a sudden, like, there are no shoe laces in the shoe, and I’m going to go to the cupboard to find the shoe laces, and they’re not there. And it’s like, you know, that’s my stress stream face.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: Yeah. See, that’s what we needed a little bit more of in this movie.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: One time I had like a horror movie style dream. It was the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me. But the thing I was so scared.
Clip: Of.
Greg: Was a bottle of Hershey’s chocolate sirup.
Clip: Awesome.
Greg: And I woke up and I was like, oh my God, wait, Hershey is what? Like that was the thing that was the scariest in the world. But interestingly, when Christopher Nolan came up with this movie, it was a horror movie. And then he later decided, no, I’m going to make it a heist movie.
Joe: I can see it’s interesting. I think what and what I appreciate about it and was like, probably why, you know, where I think it succeeds. Where tenet doesn’t, is you do get an emotional resolution with the movie, whether he’s in a dream or in in real life. He’s gotten what he wants, he’s back with his kids. And, you know, we have that resolution with the movie.
Joe: And, you know, we hope that he is happy.
Greg: But also just we understand how he feels in general in life, you know, and we see him having really emotional conversations with his wife, Marion Cotillard, who has a whole journey throughout the movie as well. Even though she’s passed away, she’s in his subconscious and he’s kind of working through those feelings. We don’t get that in tenet. No, we’re just trying to barely hold on to what the plot of that thing is.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: This movie has that. There is so much explaining.
Clip: In this movie.
Greg: There’s so many terms. It is so funny to me how many times they are just throwing new terms at you and it’s like, oh my gosh, his movies are so explaining.
Clip: Yeah, but.
Greg: It does set up a pretty great action sequence at the end. And it turns out it was just for a big dumb action sequence.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: But then there’s also some emotional stuff to it too. So I think this because of that emotional throughline in this movie, it’s it’s the better Nolan movie for sure than tenet.
Joe: Oh yeah. Yeah, 100%. And I didn’t even mind the exposition scenes. And they are numerous, but they’re kind of fun. There’s there was a piece where like, I just the oh, okay, this is what we’re doing. Yeah, I get it. Yep. I’m not I’m not upset about it. You know, it’s got some of the classic tropes of a heist movie.
Joe: You got to get the team together. You got.
Clip: Yeah, set.
Joe: It up and and walk through it. There’s a twist at the end when you know it’s not working. And they’ve got to go deeper and, you know, right. They’ve got to explain how time works. And a dream that, you know, you know, an hour of real.
Clip: World is a this and that, this dream and that this.
Joe: And this level and.
Greg: Right, right, right. Can I just explain what that is really quick? Yeah.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: So normal time for us. One minute of our time is like three minutes of the first layer of dreams time. And then it’s like a week in the next layer and then like ten years in the layer underneath under that. Yeah. And they keep going into like subsub sub levels until they get to the bottom which is limbo.
Clip: Yeah. Which who knows, who knows.
Greg: And this is where Leonardo, Leonardo DiCaprio and Marion Cotillard spent 50 years together. Let’s play a couple clips from this movie to kind of show this exposition that we’re talking about. This is what it’s like when Leonardo DiCaprio is talking in this movie.
Clip: On apologies all you’re getting right was that he hasn’t shown you want to wait? No. We’re supposed to deliver Citus expansion plans of COBOL engineering two hours ago. By now, they know we failed. It’s time we disappear. Where are you gonna go? Wait. No, sorry. I can lie low there. Maybe sniff out a job when things quiet down, you stay to send my regards.
Greg: Okay? I need to mention something right away. Here. I think Leonardo DiCaprio is doing a Hayden Christensen impression. This entire movie.
Greg: Listen to this audio and tell me this is it. Hayden Christensen.
Clip: Why? No. Sorry, I can lie low there. Maybe sniff out a job and things quiet down. You stay to send my regards.
Greg: That is so episode two and three from Star Wars, Hayden Christensen. It is all the way throughout the movie. It’s like there’s just no way he’s not doing that on purpose.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: Okay, so that’s that’s him talking. Let’s get to the heart of things a little bit more. This is a great scene with Tom Hardy where Tom Hardy is explaining how he has tried inception in the past and why it’s so hard.
Clip: I think very much inception. Now, before you bother telling me it’s impossible.
Clip: No, it’s perfectly possible. It’s just bloody difficult.
Clip: Just it it’s Arthur keeps telling me it can’t be done.
Clip: Although he’s still working with that stick in the back.
Clip: He is good at what he does, right.
Clip: Oh, it’s the best. There’s no imagination. Not like you. Listen, if you’re going to perform inception, you need imagination.
Clip: Let me ask you something. You’ve done it before.
Clip: We tried it. We got the idea in place, but it didn’t take.
Clip: You didn’t plant it deep enough?
Clip: No, it’s not just about depth. You need the simplest version of the idea in order for it to grow naturally in a subject’s mind. It’s a very subtle art. So what is this idea that you need to plant?
Clip: We need the air of a major corporation to dissolve his father’s empire.
Clip: You see, right there you have various political motivations and anti monopolistic sentiments and so forth. But all of that stuff and so it’s really at the mercy of your subject’s prejudice. You see, what you have to do is start at the absolute basic, which is what the relationship with the father.
Greg: Tom Hardy is unbelievable in this movie.
Clip:
Greg: His ability to conversationally get exposition out is almost second to none in my mind.
Joe: Agreed.
Greg: He is light years ahead of everybody else in this movie when it comes to that. And like there are some heavy hitters in this movie,
Joe: Have you ever watch Peaky Blinders?
Clip: No.
Joe: So Killian Murphy is in that he’s the lead and he is.
Greg: He’s so good in this movie.
Joe: He is so good and he is amazing in that. And Tom Hardy is in Peaky Blinders as well.
Greg: Oh, I didn’t know.
Joe: He’s kind of a side character. So he kind of comes up okay. You know a couple times a season and he again steals every scene. There’s like Tom Hardy is one of my favorite actors. Yeah. There’s a physicality to his roles there. Totally I just I you can’t explain them as you see it. And he is he is like your eye is just on him.
Joe: Yeah. Every scene.
Greg: 100%.
Joe: And it’s it’s like, well if Tom Hardy says it, I believe it. So.
Greg: But also like he’s just like smirking and and relatable. I don’t know how he does it.
Joe: Yeah. It’s wild.
Greg: Here’s the line that Sam was talking about right here.
Clip: You mustn’t be afraid to dream little bigger down in.
Greg: Cillian Murphy is like using his little gun. And Tom Hardy just shows up with this massive, like, grenade launcher gun. The fact that he can just call people darling, yeah, is the greatest.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: So do you think I could pull off, darling?
Joe: I mean, you can try, but it’s not going to be Tom Hardy level. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.
Greg: I think that’s a pretty high bar to shoot for. Anybody expects Tom Hardy enemy.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: Oh I do so.
Clip: Okay okay.
Greg: Okay. Well, there was one very specific moment in this movie, Joe, where I decided this was my new favorite movie of all time. And here it is, right here.
Clip: Come back to reality, Tom.
Clip: Place reality. Those kids, your grandchildren, they’re waiting for their father to come back home. That’s their reality. And this job, this last job, that’s how I get there. I would not be standing here if I knew any other way.
Greg: One last job, Joe.
Clip: Yeah, that’s.
Greg: Right. One last job, and then he gets his kids back. Amazing.
Clip:
Greg: Got to get the gang together.
Joe: That’s right. Build this team. That’s awesome. This is where we get Elliot Page I had to look up because the character’s name.
Greg: Oh it’s such a good name.
Joe: Sticks out. Ariadne is a Greek god. Oh I’ll say this. And then it’ll click. Everything will click in. That helps people get out of mazes by tying a string or something like that. So that was what I was like, okay. Because of course, let me just character creates the dream world reality and.
Greg: Right, the architect.
Joe: Yeah the architect. And basically the job interview is to make a maze. And so that’s the through line on that name, which everybody else has a normal movie name.
Clip: You know. And then Ariadne and I.
Joe: Finally looked it up. I was like, okay, oh.
Clip: There we go. Yeah.
Joe: That’s a little on the nose.
Greg: Just like everything in tenet.
Clip: Yes.
Greg: Yeah, they’re all kind of like the architects. The forger. There’s so many different terms that we need to explain, but all the people seem like pretty awesome to hang out with. Except for Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He seems a little stiff.
Clip: In this movie. Arthur. Yeah.
Greg: I was bummed that Elliot Page didn’t have more to do in this movie. They give them a real, lot to chew on, but it’s still a questionable part. I wish that they had more.
Joe: Yeah, I mean that character is really there to, as Sam says, ask a question that spurs the exposition along or the plot along at this point.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And it’s not befitting an actor of their talent.
Greg: And somehow Elliot Page is getting to know Leonardo DiCaprio’s character more than anybody else has. Learning things about Marion Cotillard and the relationship and you know, how things are going wrong in his subconscious and seems to like, put it all together so quickly.
Clip: Yeah. Very quickly.
Greg: Like it’s very concerned about things that I think I would need a few months to be concerned about probably.
Joe: Well, I mean, if you’re three levels deep, that’s like five minutes in the real world. So if that’s okay, that’s true.
Greg: Yeah. That’s true.
Joe: The the other thing that I noticed in this movie the second time and why it to me it’s a great bad movie is.
Clip:
Joe: Every time they wake up from a dream, they are not groggy at all.
Clip: They’re just perfectly awake every single time. Right.
Greg: In every level.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: And every level. They have been asleep for. And, you know, the last scene of is supposed to take place over a flight from, like, Sydney to LA, which is the longest flight. Yeah, some, some crazy amount of time. They wake up like they just close their eyes for two seconds and then, oh, here we are. So every single time they wake up.
Greg: Ken Watanabe we have been in limbo for he was an old man before he woke up from that. Somehow he’s like, all right, I need to make a phone call. He remembers the plot so quickly.
Clip: Yeah. It’s so good.
Greg: Pretty incredible.
Joe: Yeah, I think I mentioned this at the kind of the opening, but again, one of the biggest, I think challenges that I had with it is there’s a moment when Elliot Page and Leonardo DiCaprio are like, first meet and they go into a dream together. And you see, like the city fold over onto itself.
Greg: Which is amazing.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Hilariously sounds like just wood and rusty hinges as.
Clip: It’s doing this.
Joe: Exactly. But you see the power of the architect. What Elliot Page’s character is can do in the dream.
Greg: Sure.
Joe: And again, the action scenes are just people with guns and cars shooting at each other and chasing each other. And you have, again, the vastness of the universe to play with. You know, the the concept is that, you know, when other people are in your subconscious, your subconscious attacks. The other people that are in your dreams, essentially is.
Clip: The piece.
Joe: And they decide to attack with guns and, sure, bombs and all of that, which is fine. It’s an action movie. Yeah, kind of a heist movie. But again, I’ve had dreams with monsters in them that are not human and like, could not have been your subconscious. I guess I have a gun horror with it. That’s probably what would have happened.
Joe: But but to me that’s just like, oh, you could do anything and this is what you decided to do.
Greg: One of those first times with Ariadne, when Ariadne is learning how to like, be an architect, when that one starts to go crazy, like flowers are flying everywhere, like crazy things are exploding. It’s more creative.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Which really made it seem like, oh my gosh, that could happen at any time throughout the rest of it. I mean, it kind of doesn’t, but it.
Joe: Yeah, feels.
Greg: Like it could. Yeah. Like anything is possible here. So I guess I appreciated that. You know, that happened early on because it really did set a tone for the rest of the film.
Joe: Yeah. And I wish I wish they had done that more, you know, kind of. Yeah. They yeah they’re beautiful shots.
Greg: Pretty amazing. Yeah.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: So I wanted more of that. I also get that you probably hit a certain point of you can’t just go totally making it a little bit crazy. It’s already tough to follow. And so I understand why the choices were made at different points of like, you’re asking people to make a lot of leaps with you, and then if you kind of throw in like fantastical effects on top of it, you might lose people.
Joe: That’s my justification for it. But I’d be curious what Christopher Nolan thought around, you know, because I spent a lot of money on on sets and building out practical like, you know, stunts and explosions and all of that.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: For, you know, I dream worlds in a sense. And so that’s, that’s interesting to me.
Greg: We had to get to the snow world. We had to get in the rain world. And it was raining because Yusuf hadn’t gone to the bathroom before he fell asleep. Yeah, that was pretty hilarious. Yeah, we had to race down a road. There was a train going down the road at some point.
Clip:
Greg: Yeah, there was all kinds of crazy stuff going on. I feel like Christopher Nolan, just like in tenet, where it’s just like, what if we just did stuff that was read? I feel like that’s also what happened in inception, you know. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And in like the first half of this movie when they’re kind of flying around in helicopters and big cities and things, some of the most beautiful.
Clip:
Greg: Large canvases of shots in film history happened to inception. It is just striking how beautiful this movie is. I was curious though. What did you think of the coloring of the movie in like the first half? It felt a little tentative to me with the coloring. Did you have that same problem that you had with tenet?
Joe: Not as much, but I did notice it.
Greg: You did okay. Kind of looked like an old James Bond movie to me.
Joe: Yeah, a little bit, yeah, but not as bad. I also, and I’m curious your thoughts on this. His use of slow motion in this is is almost Zack Snyder level slow mo, not quite.
Clip: Not quite sure, but he really.
Joe: Leans into slow mo. Yeah, this like no other Christopher Nolan movie that I’ve seen.
Greg: And there’s meaning behind it and that he’s showing what level of dream you’re in and how slow this world is going compared to the one above it and the one below it. So there’s actually like meaning to it, which I appreciated. Having said that.
Greg: Starting with the positive, here comes the but it opens with the ocean. And just like Point Break, I was like, I mean, it’s still twice as fast as I want to see it. That should be going half as fast.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: What’s what’s going on? The waves are so awesome when they’re in super slow mo. Yeah, but I mean, he was probably following his own internal logic of, you know, that level and how fast it should be going and whatnot. So I really like that there’s a weight behind Christopher Nolan’s directing and his camera movements compared to Zack Snyder.
Greg: Yeah. Zack Snyder to me is doing something rad in a different way.
Clip:
Greg: And I think the weight behind Christopher Nolan’s like there’s a lot of intentionality in how the camera is working that feels more trustworthy and more weighted to me. And having said that, Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder are friends like Christopher Nolan drove the man of Steel scripts to Zack Snyder’s house because they were friends, and Christopher Nolan produced that movie with his wife.
Joe: It should be noted that you feel about Zack Snyder the way that I feel about Michael Bay. I’m sure you struggle with his movies, and I really struggle with Michael Bay movies.
Clip: Yeah, and.
Joe: I totally agree about Zack Snyder and Christopher Nolan of, like, The Weight. And some of it feels like with Zack Snyder, he’s just like, well, look what I can do. I can like, yeah. And there isn’t necessarily a logic within the movie of like, why we’re doing this. It’s just like, well, this looks cool.
Clip: Sure.
Joe: Whereas I do feel like Christopher Nolan is trying to say something, whether you get it or not. Yeah, that’s a separate question. But he’s trying. He’s trying something with his movie making in a way that I appreciate.
Greg: The cinematographer of this movie worked with Christopher Nolan for a long time. They’re not working together anymore, but he was this guy named Wally Pfister, and my next door neighbor wrote a commercial and filmed it with Wally Pfister directing it for Amazon. Awesome. So I got to hear stories like he was just like an open book of like, yeah, what do you wanna know about Christopher Nolan?
Greg: Unfortunately, I don’t remember any specific ones, but he would come home from these location shoots and just be like, yeah, he’s a cool dude, really great guy, you know? And, had a lot of very, very nice things to say about Christopher Nolan. Oh, I just remembered I should. There’s a story I should tell. When I worked at the Seattle International Film Festival, I worked there one year, and I was in charge of the box office, so we had like 35, 40 people in the box offices around Seattle for the Seattle International Film Festival, which is kind of like, made a June 3 or 4 weeks.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: It’s one of the longest film festivals in the country. And so, you know, it was like a four month job. So one day, somebody who works for me in the box office got sick and couldn’t answer phones. And so I answered the phones with a couple other people for that day. And I pick up the phone, and the voice on the other line kind of has like a little bit of a British accent and is the most personable person I’ve ever talked to in my life.
Greg: First question. Hey man, what’s your name? I’m Greg. Greg, hey, I’m looking for and he was looking for my boss Carl, and so he said, you know, can I talk to him? And so I was like, yeah, hold on a second. So I call, you know, my boss’s office. He’s not there. And so I get back and, the way that this guy is talking to me on the phone, I just immediately would do anything for him.
Greg: Like, it’s super personable. He’s asking me direct questions of things that he needs, and I just would do anything for this guy. There was a very different kind of conversation than I’ve ever had on the phone with somebody. And, he was calling about this thing called the Secret Festival, which you really can’t give any specifics about it.
Greg: It’s a thing that Syfy does where you buy tickets to it, but you don’t know what you’re going to see. And then they show you something that is illegal to show for copyright reasons in the world. They show things like, Todd Haynes student film, The Karen Carpenter Story, told exclusively with Barbie dolls, which Mattel doesn’t allow to be shown anywhere.
Greg: Right. But we got some reels and they showed it at the secret festival. So anyways, he’s calling about something with that, so we can’t really be specific about what he’s calling about. I was just like, okay, okay. He’s like, right, can you write this down? I don’t want to leave this recording. I just want you to write it down and let him know this and put it on his desk.
Greg: I was like, no problem. Oh, who should I say called. He goes, oh, this is Chris Nolan. Click.
Clip: What’s awesome?
Greg: I just talked to Christopher Nolan on the phone and man, I got to tell you, listeners of the show will know that I’ve been, like, obsessed with directors my whole life. Right. And I’ve always wondered, what on earth do these people do to get 250 people on set to capture their vision and move forward in telling a story with the right kind of tone, you know?
Greg: And how can they work on this stuff for three years? And there’s just so many people in the process. How do they get all these people on board? Is it just a happy accident? Always. And the answer is directors know how to endear you to them and capture the vision of what it is that they they’re trying to make.
Greg: And I really would have done anything this guy asked me to do over the phone. And I was like, oh my gosh, I just talked.
Clip: To Christopher Nolan. Yeah, unbelievable.
Joe: I always think it’s, a sign of, a good director and probably a good person when actors follow that director. Totally. You know, Killian Murphy and Michael Caine.
Clip:
Joe: Tom Hardy, multiple movies.
Greg: Sure.
Joe: With Christopher Nolan.
Greg: Totally.
Joe: And to me, that means that he’s doing a good job of building a relationship that is feels equitable of like, everybody knows their role and, you know, treated well. And, you know, you see this with Martin Scorsese, who’s worked with the same actors, you know, over and over or right, Wes Anderson or those, you know, it’s like to me, that is the mark, not of just a good director, but, you know, a good person that they that people want to follow them and work with them and continue to work with them.
Joe: And, you know, Killian Murphy, I think has been in almost all of his movies.
Clip: You.
Joe: Know, because he’s in.
Greg: Batman Begins.
Joe: He’s in Batman. And yeah, that’s the first one all the way through. You know, he just like, pops up sometimes even randomly and like, does he need this? Like, I just wanted to come in for a day of work, kind of, yeah, you know, thing. So yeah, to me, I don’t know what he’s saying exactly. But to me it’s like people want to work with him.
Joe: Yeah, we’ll follow him. And there’s, you know, a trust level that happens there.
Greg: So I thought so many times when I was watching inception, what was it like when you read the script to this movie?
Clip:
Greg: It must have seemed so stupid. Yet he’s so trustworthy. It’s like, well, Christopher Nolan’s making it, but there are so many times where even Leonardo DiCaprio, who’s very good in this movie, I think he does a very good job.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: And, you know, he goes, he was working with all of the best directors and getting old. I mean, how many movies have you seen with him where he’s like putting a silencer in a gun? Like there were some some things like James Bond. These scenes in this movie, I was like, oh, this is kind of fun that, you know, he’s doing kind of James Bond stuff.
Greg: You don’t really see Leonardo DiCaprio do that very much.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: But, you know, he had worked with like, Ridley Scott before this, a lot of Martin Scorsese, you know, he’s working with all the best directors. He just trusted Nolan, I guess. You know, this couldn’t have looked very good on on the page.
Joe: Yeah. Again, it’s a confusing movie. Famously, you know, Will Smith had passed on The Matrix because he didn’t get it right.
Clip: And it I.
Joe: Feel like he was offered I don’t know if he was offered this role.
Greg: But I think he was or at least he was somebody that Christopher Nolan had in mind. It was Lean on Leonardo DiCaprio and Will Smith.
Joe: Yeah, it’s it’s interesting to think about what that script looks like, and I know it went through some I feel like I’ve read something about, you know, once he just decided that multiple people could be in the same dream, and then you could go in and go dream levels. That was kind of what made the movie as like, you know, he had the idea around it, but then being able to go deeper and have everyone together in the dream was the turning point for him when he was writing the script.
Greg: I love it when Elliot Page sees Leonardo DiCaprio sleeping and just goes and plugs in to whatever the machine is, the sedative and suddenly is joined in the dream.
Clip: It’s so.
Greg: Hilarious.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: How on earth does that work?
Joe: Yeah, don’t.
Clip: Worry about it.
Joe: I’m actually it’s one of those moments where I’m glad they didn’t explain it, I’m sure.
Greg: Are you also a little surprised that they didn’t explain it?
Clip: Yes, 100%. It’s definitely.
Joe: You know, less is more.
Clip: Oh, yeah. They’re this.
Joe: Is the same.
Clip: Thing.
Greg: Classic Christopher Nolan. Yes.
Clip: Is more. Yeah.
Greg: Are we here to have the conversation that needs to happen about Gordon-Levitt?
Joe: I think we are. I think this is why you come to this podcast.
Greg: Obviously. Well, at what point did Joseph Gordon-Levitt get on your radar?
Joe: Third Rock from the sun.
Greg: Okay, okay. So early.
Joe: On and then I think probably I think I think in the angels in the outfield.
Greg: He was. Yeah, yeah. Which I’ve never seen you but stalk way before. I even knew way.
Joe: Before I was way in on Joseph Gordon-Levitt. So I. Yeah, he’s one of those child actors because he was pretty big as a kid that made the transition kind of through adolescence into adulthood. But he has been on my radar for 20 or 30 years.
Clip: Yeah. Yeah.
Joe: And I like him. He’s I’m always happy to see him in a movie. And I think he does a good job. And this of being a good counterpoint to Leonardo DiCaprio and the team, he’s kind of like the voice of reason. Yeah. Of what’s happening. And you know, isn’t just like, oh, let’s just go totally crazy with everything that happened within this movie.
Greg: Yeah. I never watched the Rock from the sun, and I never saw angels in the outfield. So the first time I saw him was when Ryan Johnson made his first movie called brick.
Clip:
Greg: And, I bought Ryan Johnson’s stock immediately when that movie came out. And so I’ve seen all of his movies opening weekend in the theater since then, but he was so cute. Brick was like an incredible noir movie, that takes place in high school. And all of these kids, like, have their own kind of language. And and it was like a fascinating movie.
Greg: He has a great performance. They’re also saying words that don’t mean anything, but you kind of understand it was a really kind of it was almost like for me, like watching Shakespeare where like, I don’t know what that word means, but the way they just said it, I think I understand that’s what Brett kind of felt like sometimes.
Greg: It was kind of a cool feeling. And then two years after this movie, he made Looper with Ryan Johnson. And those are probably my two favorite movies that he’s been in. I’ve seen a million of them, but I feel like he’s really good as an additive character.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: To a movie. Every movie would benefit from Joseph Gordon-Levitt having a person, but I feel like Joseph Gordon-Levitt should just be added to every movie. He’s the first call for number four on the roster.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: He’s really funny. He’s really sincere.
Clip:
Greg: He does angry pretty well. He can run down hotel hallways that are rotating.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: He becomes the matrix.
Clip: For, like.
Greg: 25 minutes in this movie.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: Where the whole world is twirling, and then suddenly he’s. He has zero gravity for.
Clip: Quite a while. Yeah.
Joe: That was a really fun scene. And. Yeah, I totally agree about everything about him. He’s, underrated. Character actor is probably the best way to put him. Yeah, and he’s probably due to star in more of his own stuff or beer.
Greg: But I wonder if you will. I mean, like 500 days of Summer.
Clip:
Greg: That’s supposed to be huge. But then it kind of wasn’t.
Joe: I feel like there was another one he did.
Clip: With Scarlett.
Joe: Johansson maybe that he wrote and directed.
Greg: Don John.
Clip: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: So he’s one of those people that’s just he’s been in Hollywood forever.
Clip:
Joe: And I’m always happy to see him in a movie. That’s that’s probably the best way to put it.
Greg: Totally. Yeah. This is this is his heyday too. I think we should really kind of flag that he is really good at picking movies because the year after this he did a movie called 5050. Do you ever see that movie with Seth Rogen directed by Jonathan Levine?
Joe: I don’t think I saw it, but I know it. Yeah.
Greg: Like, oh my gosh, it’s so good. Jonathan Levine is somebody we could focus on for quite a while. He is so good.
Joe: I feel like. And then this might be just a Christopher Nolan, like, I’m looking at this cast and like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, every single one of them really is like someone you are excited to see in a movie.
Greg: 100%.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. You’re like, oh, Killian Murphy’s in this. Awesome. Yeah, Tom Berenger is in this. I haven’t seen that guy in forever.
Clip: Yeah, he’s.
Joe: Great in this. He’s got a very small part, but it’s. Yeah. Awesome. Tom Hardy you know everyone sticks the landing on their roles in this and you’re excited to see them.
Greg: Which is an impossible feat.
Clip: For.
Greg: Characters to like have this kind of reports exactly like tenet. Tenet was a ridiculous movie, but when people were hanging out, it was a good hang.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Where tenet kind of veers off is and maybe he was trying to distance it from this movie. It could have used a little bit more of that heart is what I was missing from it. Like, yeah. You know, while it is, this movie is exposition heavy.
Clip: At my key point.
Joe: I like it because I like these characters, I do. I wish I were sitting in the room with them and having this ridiculous conversation around, you know, whatever the sedative is that is going to keep.
Clip: People deep enough to go.
Joe: 3 or 4 levels deep into a dream, you know, it’s like, awesome. I’m in.
Clip: This.
Greg: It’s got some great stuff.
Joe: Yusuf also steals, the leap. Rao steals every scene he’s in to me, and I wanted more of him.
Greg: Absolutely. I mean, in 2009, he was in a movie called avatar.
Joe: One of the greatest movies I hated.
Greg: Oh, you saw him, avatar the Way of Water?
Joe: Yeah, that’s why I hate water.
Clip: Which is why the.
Joe: Second half of this movie I just hate because it’s basically.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: Do you think Christopher Nolan should make a James Bond movie?
Joe: Oh, yeah. Sure. Yes. I think it would be amazing.
Greg: He’s been very overt in saying, I’d love to make a James Bond movie if I was going to make another kind of genre film, kind of like the Batman series. And his favorite James Bond movie is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which has a famous ski scene. So this kind of emulates that a little bit. I think that was also one of Daniel Craig’s favorite movies.
Greg: And also Cary Fukunaga, who directed No Time to Die. Back to Christopher Nolan, James Bond. Yeah, I think they met with him for the new movie. You know, if they were going to, it seemed like he should step in if they were going to reboot it, which is happening right now. They spoke with him, but he, insists on having final cut.
Greg: And the James Bond series doesn’t give that to directors. So he’s out.
Joe: Yeah, well, I mean, I get it. If I were Christopher Nolan at this point in my career. Yeah, I feel like he’s earned final cut.
Greg: And if you’re the James Bond series, why wouldn’t you give it to him?
Joe: I don’t know. And now Amazon owns it. Owns the rights.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: Sidebar on James Bond.
Greg: Let’s do it. Let’s do it. Let’s have the conversation. That didn’t need to happen, but now does. Yeah I’m the new James Bond.
Joe: So the the part that I’m excited about is that you have Amazon money behind it. They can get the directors the actors, they can the budget. It’s going to be unlimited. Okay. So that’s like the good part of it.
Greg: Kind of like Apple did with F1 this summer. They spent $300 million and made a solid movie. Yeah, because they could because it was all marketing for them.
Joe: And they yeah, they have so much behind it that they can just put it everywhere on so many platforms. And you know, so my worry is that they’re going to turn it into movies and shows and prequels and this and that, and they’re going to dilute what makes it great, which are the movies.
Clip: To be sure.
Joe: And because Amazon is what it is, the behemoth that is going to, you know, wants to be the company store. And instead of trying to make a great movie, they just need to make an okay movie that they can sell to everyone. And we’re going to get kind of a middle of the road James Bond movie because they’re trying to like, appeal to everyone instead of make a great movie.
Joe: That would be my worry.
Greg: Has Amazon made movies that were like that, The Tomorrow.
Joe: War that movie is for sure a movie we should.
Clip: Do. Yeah.
Joe: Real dumb. You know, they did Without Remorse that Tom Clancy.
Greg: And that was rough, right?
Joe: Yeah, it was real bad. Their shows, though, have been good. You know, The Rings of Power, which is a prequel to the Lord of the rings, is great to me, though. The I just worry that we were we could veer towards the last two Pierce Brosnan James Bond movies territory with Amazon owning the but not.
Greg: The first.
Joe: Two, but not the first two. I mean, GoldenEye, what’s the second one?
Greg: Is it tomorrow never dies?
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: So those who are good, you know what’s got Jonathan Pryce in the second? That’s Tomorrow Never Dies, though. And Jonathan Pryce and,
Greg: Yeah, he’s like the.
Joe: Yeah. The media. Right? Yeah. Those the first two. Yeah. Are great. Great.
Clip: Maybe a stretch. They’re good, they’re good. They’re they’re decent. They’re okay. I’d watch them again.
Greg: I would describe those movies as GoldenEye plus three more.
Clip: Okay I think I like.
Joe: The second one more than.
Clip: You. I think you do.
Joe: I should also say I haven’t seen it.
Clip: In 25 years, so.
Greg: So in response to what you just said about your hopes and fears for James Bond, they’ve hired Danny Villeneuve, who is, I mean, what the other Christopher Nolan I mean.
Joe: I might put him above Christopher Credible.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: He is an incredible get.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: It’s almost like when Sam Mendez got hired for Skyfall, it was like, oh, wow. And Sam Mendez was kind of. He was he had had a couple tough movies in a row, so he kind of needed a bounce back. Danny Villeneuve is coming off dunes. I mean Best Picture nominated. Incredible films. Yeah, I didn’t love Blade Runner 2049, but I liked it.
Greg: I loved arrival. Arrival was incredible. So he’s one of the best directors they could possibly put in that scenario?
Joe: Yeah, I.
Greg: Think that Amazon hopefully will learn from Disney’s oversaturation of both Marvel and Star Wars. Disney kind of ruined both of those universes by overdoing it. And I bet Amazon has been watching that and the broccoli family before they hand it over the rights. They wouldn’t let them do stuff like that. And so I kind of wonder if now that it’s just common knowledge that Disney ruined Marvel and Star Wars.
Clip:
Greg: And needed to like slow down, I think it’s more of a universal known thing that you shouldn’t do that if you’re to Amazon to James Bond. But we’ll see.
Joe: Yeah I forgot that that villainy was in has been tapped to and I agree I think he’s probably too good a director.
Clip: For.
Joe: For it. But I’m going to watch that movie and be so excited when it comes out because of his attachment to it.
Greg: Totally. Maybe they should call this next one Spector to like Isaac Slater saying a couple weeks ago on our show. All right, so that’s we’ve done it.
Joe: Yeah. And the conversation about James Bond in the middle.
Clip: Of a.
Joe: Inception episode.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: All right. Well, Joe, it occurs to me this maybe some people haven’t seen this movie and maybe they are in bend, Oregon, where there is still a Blockbuster Video.
Joe: Oh, nice.
Greg: And they are walking down the aisles trying to figure out what they should watch. They are picking up Blu rays and DVDs, maybe some VHS tapes, and they’re picking up the box reading the marketing materials on the back to see if it is the movie they should read that night. So we’d like to do the same for inception.
Greg: That’s right. It’s time for the back of the box.
Joe: I’m going to warn everyone. I went a little different with my back of the box this week, so just be prepared.
Joe: It’s the back of the box. In the world of the future, we will be able to infiltrate your.
Clip: Dreams while.
Joe: In your dreams we can steal information. But what if we could also implant ideas and concepts and change our behavior? What if we were doing it right now? What if you are asleep and you don’t know it? Wake up before it’s too late.
Clip: Dot dot dot.
Greg: Wow. Okay, so you you thought this was the horror movie?
Joe: Yeah, I kind of went a little ominous for that.
Clip: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: All right. Well that is the marketing back of the box. But let’s let’s get honest here. What is the Joe. This guy Tucker real back in the box.
Joe: All right. Real back. The box. Inception is a high concept movie with multiple realities together. And it’s a dream within a dream within a dream universe. While there are some Nolan isms in the movie, it is a fun ride that is best experience without questioning what is happening on the screen, but living moment to moment and scene to scene.
Joe: People will debate its meaning and what is actually happening for ages, and that’s part of its charm. We both could think completely different things and both be right. And that is what makes this a great movie.
Clip: Okay, nice.
Joe: And I have to come back to this. What I appreciate about the ambiguity of this movie.
Greg: Sure.
Joe: Is you and I could both kind of come away with completely different understandings of the movie and still enjoy it just as much. Yeah, and that is a, a the hard thing to, to be able to navigate.
Clip: It does.
Greg: A few things well.
Clip: Very cool.
Greg: What was that thing that you walked away with.
Joe: I like the ambiguity of it. Yeah I think that’s what I walked away with. And you said it before around the emotional resolution of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character as all we care about, whether he is still in a dream or it’s reality, it’s real to him. That is kind of the resolution that I was looking for. Whether it is, as you say, Michael Caine is in the real world or not, or whether there is even a real world like you could, you could totally go down those kind of meta analysis of this movie.
Joe: And to me, that’s that’s a sign of the enjoyment of this movie of like, it’s there isn’t a clear black and white answer of what’s happening.
Clip: Yeah, that’s.
Joe: The success of this movie is being able to give multiple people multiple realities, which is what the it’s like. It is a meta moment. And still enjoy it.
Greg: Yeah. It feels like that should make a mess trying to do too many things at once. And you could walk away feeling like Leonardo DiCaprio is mourning the death of his wife.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: But also celebrating that they had a long life together in limbo. They lived there 50 years. We kind of see that they grow old together. He is having resolution with that. He also gets to arrive home, you know, a relatively young man with two little kids and and reunite with them. But then there’s also, like the subplot of this movie of Killian Murphy and his dad is passing away, and he thinks that his dad doesn’t care about him and is disappointed by him.
Greg: And it turns into a really sweet story of the dad kind of releasing his son and saying, you know, I’m disappointed that you were trying to be like me and in kind of like they actually kind of do something pretty awesome for Killian Murphy in this movie.
Joe: You know.
Greg: Where he, he, at the end of the movie, kind of gets to go off and live his own life, not, you know, tied to the disappointment of his father. I’m walking away with all that stuff. But towards the end of the movie, I was like, hold on, this was a heist movie. Yeah. Leonardo DiCaprio is just stolen my heart.
Greg: That’s what’s happened.
Clip: Here.
Greg: Why am I all misty in this room right now and tearing up? I mean, all three of those stories are pretty incredible. Yeah, and I would not looked Christopher Nolan for an emotional story yet. Oppenheimer was an incredible movie. You’ve got to watch that movie. Yeah. And I think he’s really getting to some real stuff, but also like big vehicles flip over.
Clip: And huge.
Greg: Snow chases happen.
Clip: And.
Greg: People have, like, white snow outfits in the snow and white grenades and white machine guns. It’s amazing.
Clip: Yeah, it’s it’s.
Greg: A big dumb movie that works on a lot of different levels.
Clip:
Joe: Yeah. It’s one of those where in juxtaposition against tenet. Yeah. All of where it succeeds.
Greg: Tenet fails vice versa though.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Tenet works in some ways that inception doesn’t 100%.
Joe: And so it’s one of those, I would love to see someone cut those movies together.
Clip: Oh, that’s like.
Greg: Going to say, should we do a double feature?
Clip: Yes.
Greg: Is it like one of our Bruce Willis parties that we used to throw?
Clip: Yes.
Joe: Absolutely. Is what I would say.
Greg: Double feature of Inception and Tenet. I might never watch a movie again if I had all those two movies.
Clip: Back to back.
Greg: But also, the bar would be raised very high in a couple different ways. All right. Well, Joe, should we get to the box office and the critical reception of this movie?
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: This movie came out in the summer of 2010, I think it was, July 16th, something like that. Domestic box office of this movie was $293 million, international box office was $533 million. This movie made $846 million worldwide.
Joe: That’s pretty crazy. So it made some money.
Greg: It made some money. And it was following The Dark Knight, which also just made an insane amount of money. So Christopher Nolan is on a roll.
Clip:
Greg: Luckily, we have some home movie sales for this movie as well from the DVD and Blu ray sales. We have another $167 million.
Joe: So this made almost $1 billion. Yeah. Total. Yeah. Okay.
Greg: And there will never be a sequel.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: It’s a one off movie. It’s an original movie in 2010. And so that gets us to what critics thought of it. What do you think the, tomato rating is on this movie? The critics tomato rating.
Joe: I mean, it feels like A78 since we’re talking about it, you know?
Greg: Yeah, it does like there were some stupid stuff, but it was also really good. Yeah.
Joe: But I know that this movie is pretty beloved. I’m going to go pretty high on this. I think it’s like I’ll go 9087.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: Now we have 250,000 audience score rankings on this as well, which is nice. Nice to have a large sample size for this. What do you think the popcorn meter. The audience scores for this movie?
Joe: I’ll go 92 on that 91.
Greg: Okay. Amazing. Yeah, that’s about right. Although I, I would I would expect the critical reception of this movie to maybe go down as time goes on.
Joe: I can see that.
Greg: All right. Let’s start with our hometown paper, The Seattle Times, and one of our favorites, Moira McDonald. She said, it’s a long movie, 2.5 hours, but doesn’t feel so. And is the rare would be blockbuster that demands close attention and would surely reward rewatching four out of four stars.
Joe: I agree with all of that. It’s a long movie that doesn’t feel that long to me.
Greg: And it rewards rewatching, but I sort of understand what’s happening in the movie. By the end, I think I understand what I’m supposed to do anyway, whereas tenet, I was like, well, I hope the fifth time.
Clip: Is a good one.
Greg: Let’s go right over to A.O. Scott, The New York Times. His friends call him Tony, Tony Scott. He says, Mr. DiCaprio exercises impressive control in portraying a man on the verge of losing his grip. But Mr. Nolan has not, in the end, given Cobb a rich enough inner life to sustain the performance. There’s some nuance to that. Yeah, we haven’t even gotten to the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio’s name is dumb in this movie.
Clip: Which is just incredible.
Greg: This is after, I think, Fast and Furious, but before fast five.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: All right, I’ll allow it, but barely.
Greg: Yeah, you can sneak in one alternate. One of our favorites, Amy Nicholson wrote. Beautiful and bloodless, like a dream. It doesn’t implant ideas you’ll carry with you outside the multiplex.
Joe: I disagree with that, because the first time I watched that, like it stuck with me for a while, I think I just got I got pulled into the the emotional part of it and, and really was curious about what was, you know, what was happening. Like I was I spent a lot of time trying to think about like what what was happening in it and, and the different versions of what could be the truth.
Joe: So, yeah, you’re wrong.
Clip: Let’s be okay thing. Okay.
Joe: Okay. The New York Times or whoever that.
Greg: Was, that was Amy Nicholson.
Clip: Yeah. All right, let’s see.
Greg: Newsweek says even if you tick off the film’s overload of references, a matrix here, a James Bond, there, the amazing effects and Cobb’s quest carry you along, the Atlantic says. Like his protagonist, Nolan excels as an implant of subversive ideas. This time, alas, he doesn’t quite dig deep enough for them to take root.
Joe: I disagree, but that’s right. I mean, I get it, though. It’s it. I think my biggest criticism, it’s almost out of the fandom of of Christopher Nolan in the sense is I don’t think his movies are as smart as people think they are. Sure. And Sam, I know that that might be a shot at you, and it’s not personal at all.
Joe: It’s to everyone. But you basically.
Greg: I think that’s kind of what Sam was saying, you know, revisiting it that, yeah, that was his take on it as well. We’ve read a lot of reviews by Stephanie Zucker from Movie Line, and this one is a pretty good one. If the career of Christopher Nolan is any indication, we’ve entered an era in which movies can no longer be great.
Greg: They can only be awesome, which isn’t nearly the same thing.
Joe: I think that that is probably of this movie and of some of his movies, like the.
Clip: Best, the Script. Yeah.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, totally. Salon.com says inception may have been directed by Christopher Nolan, but Nolan’s dreams are apparently directed by Michael Bay.
Clip: Okay. That’s amazing that that’s that’s perfect.
Greg: This is my favorite one. Remember the mostly positive reviews for this movie? But David Edelstein of the New York Magazine and Vulture wrote, I wanted to surrender to the stream. I didn’t want to be out in the cold alone, but I truly have no idea what so many people are raving about.
Clip: All right.
Joe: Fair. But also, that might be a little a little negative.
Greg: We’ve all been there. Yeah. You have all been there.
Clip: Yes.
Greg: We just weren’t personally there. But I love that he was All right, Joe, you know what? I bet if you got together with your friends to watch inception, I bet there are some good drinking games that we could come up with for that party. Should we get to drinking games?
Clip: Oh, we.
Joe: So need to get to drinking. I have so many drinking games.
Clip: Awesome. Let’s do it.
Joe: And Sam has some amazing ones.
Greg: Oh, great.
Joe: Okay, so we’ll bring those in, but we’ll start with our start drinking games again. You don’t have to be drinking alcohol. Could be water, coffee, juice.
Clip: Soda, energy drinks.
Greg: You’re just marking the moment. Yeah. It’s more fun when you mark a moment by drinking something.
Joe: Yeah. So does it have a silent helicopter? Silent helicopter. But there’s a helicopter. And there’s a helicopter that is going that’s landed. And the rotors are going, and they’re having a full on conversation.
Clip: Just right there with now that’s. Yeah, take a drink. It’s basically.
Joe: We, No pushing in enhance that. I saw, not really a slow motion look in the middle of chaos either or explosion with silent suffering in the rings in their ears. There are some really, like, when, Elliot Page is blowing up stuff, but it’s not exactly the same thing. There’s some pretty explosions and effects that they have.
Joe: So.
Greg: Sure.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: There’s no title in this movie.
Greg: Right? Except at the end. Yeah. They go to the credits at the end.
Joe: Yeah. So that’s kind of, you can decide to drink or not.
Greg: I think you finish strong. If inception is on the screen, you have to take a drink.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Flashbacks to dialog. And it flashes back to those kids and the beach. And there’s a lot of kind of repetitive shots. I think that the CGI in this movie is, is really good. So I didn’t give the bad CGI, you know, the probably a few moments I missed, but honestly, I didn’t notice it. And where I noticed the CGI is when you’re supposed to notice the the effects of the moment.
Joe: So.
Greg: Yeah, I mean, like CGI close calls is kind of what we usually go for. And this is right at the tail end of when that was a thing. Yeah. 2010 so very tasteful, except it was more CGI heavy, I think. I couldn’t quite tell, but like when when Elliot Page and Leonardo DiCaprio are at the Parisian cafe and things are exploding.
Greg: If they did that for real, that’s incredible. But it did kind of look like a CGI close call to me, in a way. Yeah.
Joe: I’ll let the person to your left tell you if you’re drinking or not on that one.
Clip: Love it. Okay.
Joe: Great. Bad shots are everywhere in this.
Greg: Great bad shots are when somebody’s shooting at you from not very far away and they are somehow missing.
Joe: Yeah, but almost hitting you like, almost every time.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: Totally. So like when they’re in the van especially. And a million people are shooting at them and they’re asleep and not getting hits and flipping over.
Clip: It’s ridiculous.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: I did not do the inexplicably wet streets, although there are wet streets. But we kind of know why. Because it is pouring rain. Because you simply.
Greg: Go to the bathroom before you fall asleep.
Joe: Exactly. That makes sense that that’s the explicable wet street.
Clip: Yes, yes. Totally.
Joe: No. Give us the room. No. Interpol. I did mark a cell phone smash. I think the brakes, the cell phone at one point. Okay. I can’t remember the scene, but I did have it in my notes, so that’s kind of a 5051. So those are the stalker drinking games. I’m going to toss it to you, Greg, for your first one.
Joe: Then I’m going to do Sam’s first one and then I’ll do mine okay?
Greg: Okay. Every time they show the spinner totem.
Joe: Yeah. So I have that. And Sam also has. Yeah. Any time specifically Dom or Leonardo DiCaprio spins his totem or at the top. Okay. And then I have a couple of those. So there are every time he spins it. Yep. Then there are just shots of it spinning and then shots of it falling over. So any time basically anytime you see the top.
Joe: Yeah. Take a drink. Okay. So.
Greg: Inexplicably spinning totem.
Joe: Yeah. Inexplicably spinning totem.
Greg: My next one is any time they say the word inception.
Joe: I love that one.
Clip: I was trying to think.
Joe: Of. I have that. No, I don’t have that one. Awesome. Sam’s first one is anytime something should be a kick. And we are going to have to explain what a.
Clip: Kick is, but doesn’t.
Joe: Wake them up. Example van rolling down the side of the hill in the first frame. It only affects the gravity of the second layer, but.
Clip: Nobody wakes up.
Greg: That’s so solid. That’s incredible.
Clip: So good. Yeah.
Joe: So a kick is how you get out of a dream quickly. Is the sense of falling in a dream. Because everyone to have that you fall, you feel like you’re falling in, you wake up. Right. So that’s what they call a kick I had every time they say the word kick.
Clip: Oh that’s great. That’s one of mine as well. My gosh, you’re drinking a lot. Basically.
Greg: It’s incredible with three of us working together.
Clip: Yes.
Joe: Exactly. All right. What do you got? What else you got, Greg?
Greg: Anytime Tom Hardy says will be lost in limbo until our brain turns to scrambled eggs.
Clip:
Greg: So if he ever says that, take a drink.
Clip: Okay. Probably one.
Joe: Time.
Clip: So finish your drink. Sure. Yeah.
Joe: I feel like Tom Hardy is a master of adding like an extra word like that or thing.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: All of his stuff is, is like that. All right. This is from Sam. Anytime LePage asks a question that is obviously place for them to explain things to.
Clip: The audience 100%. Every time Elliot.
Joe: Page asks the question is.
Clip: Basically taking this drink.
Clip:
Joe: Mine. That is very similar to that as every time there’s a scene that is just an exposition scene. So it’s like, 4 or 5 people in a room and they’re explaining or it’s Tom Hardy explaining. Yeah, yeah. So take a drink.
Greg: My next one is anytime Tom Hardy says, you mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.
Joe: Might just be happy every time it says darling.
Clip: Yeah, it gets it. Yeah.
Joe: That’s awesome. This is Sam’s last drinking game.
Clip: Okay.
Joe: Any time Leonardo DiCaprio uses his signature full voice, whisper, this is up for interpretation. So the person to your left determines when this happens.
Greg: Oh, my gosh, she’s a professional already.
Clip: I know, Sam thoughtful.
Joe: These are awesome. Yeah. And I’m going to put in a request that you submit drinking games for every single episode.
Clip: Now. Wow.
Joe: These are top notch acts.
Greg: I just feel like he just said hard pass. I’m not sure.
Clip: Yeah, probably.
Greg: I have enough going on in my life.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: I have and this is this is going to be a tough one. So this probably should be drinking water every time they say the word dream take a drink.
Greg: Wow.
Joe: Which is a lot in this movie.
Greg: Did they talk about dreams in this movie.
Clip: Yes. Maybe.
Greg: I guess in the off chance they do take it away. Yeah. Just in case you don’t know, assign one of these to a different person in the room or just to, you know, each individual should have different ones so that you can point to them. It’s time for them to take a drink when that happens in the movie.
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: My next one is any time they cut back to a van falling off a bridge in slow motion.
Clip: Take a drink.
Joe: My, that links what this one is. Every time there are slow motion shots of the van, take a drink.
Greg: Okay, that’s about the same.
Clip: Yeah, it’s.
Joe: About the same.
Greg: Every time. Tom Hardy hands Ken Watanabe a white grenade. Oh. White grenade.
Clip: Yeah. Specifically that color grenade.
Greg: That props person got a bonus?
Clip: Yeah, they better.
Joe: Ab I have every time. And and I would exclude the rain shots from this, but.
Clip: Okay.
Joe: Shots of water bike waves and water are falling into bathtubs. Water plays a really key role in this movie beyond just, you know, having someone not going to the bathroom before they fall asleep.
Greg: So like when the van is flipping, if they show water hitting the sides of their faces in slow motion or.
Joe: Falling into the water, not the rain itself, because the rain, because they’re like basically that entire scene in the van, the chase scene before they’re.
Clip: Just.
Joe: In rain. And that would be that’s too much. It’s too much to drink.
Greg: But if our characters are underwater in a scene, there are people doing, like, a keg stand.
Clip: Yes. Okay. Yeah. Obviously. Yeah. Okay.
Greg: Something I’ve never done.
Clip: Yeah. Me neither. Okay. Seems terrible.
Greg: I can’t turn it upside down.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: All right. My next one is every time they show the kids.
Joe: Oh, I have that one too.
Greg: Yeah, yeah. I have every time Marion Cotillard shows up to ruin things.
Joe: Yes, I have that too.
Greg: She, like, shows up to ruin the inception. Yes.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. Every time you hear that Edith Piaf song. Oh, good drink.
Greg: We have to talk about that.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: The Edith Piaf song is what inspired Hans Zimmer and his crew. He has like a stable of like 20 or 30 people who actually write the music for him. This is like the the worst kept secret in Hollywood is right. All these people have like, just entire buildings of people writing their music for them. So what he or his crew did was they they slowed down the Edith Piaf song and wrote the score on that.
Greg: So it’s like they would take the tempo of the song and then they would subtract a certain percentage from it, maybe matching the frame rate of the slow motion, I don’t know.
Joe: Right.
Greg: And they would match and then the tempo would be that. And so check this out. Here is the opening of our movie of inception. This is kind of the what you would expect to hear in the movie.
Greg: Here’s the Edith Piaf song. You.
Greg: And then here is what that song sounds like.
Clip: Slowed down.
Clip:
Greg: So they slowed it down a certain percentage and then wrote the score on top of it.
Joe: And that’s awesome.
Greg: Isn’t that amazing?
Greg: So anyways, I thought that was really fascinating. You know, we haven’t talked about at all, which is my next drinking game. So this lines up perfectly okay.
Clip: Perfect.
Greg: Every time the score goes.
Clip: But yeah.
Greg: Take a drink.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: It’s not as jarring as it is in tenet right. But yes. Yeah totally.
Greg: That thing took over trailers and movies for a decade.
Clip: Yeah. But,
Joe: So.
Joe: I have every time there. Slow motion. There is so much slow motion that you think Zack Snyder directed the film. Take a drink. The person to your right can make that determination that we’ve talked about the person in your life twice now.
Greg: So. And I, I usually only look to my left, but every time I look to my right in my life, it’s Snyder sitting right there telling me to take a drink.
Clip: It’s really weird. Yeah.
Greg: All right, I’m out. Do you have any more there?
Joe: Yeah. Anytime. There’s a mirror in a scene, take a drink.
Greg: Okay. If Sinister Joe’s guy Tucker is in that mirror, take two.
Joe: Yeah, take two and run for your life. I think.
Clip: This is the.
Joe: The answer. And then, anytime they say dream within a dream, take a drink. Those are my. That’s my solid one.
Greg: All right, Joe, let’s move on to Joe’s trope. Lightning round, aka signs. You might be watching a great bad movie.
Joe: It’s not as many tropes as you might think in this movie, and I added a new one of getting the team together. That’s got to be a trope now to me of, you know, because they they go to the different places and talk to them. So they talked to Tom Hardy and the guy that got them under who’s got to use the bathroom, all of that.
Joe: So getting the team together, there is a scene when the van falls into the water and the sound disappears. Finally, after the van is falling for I feel like as long as the plane is landing and trying to take off and fast six is how long the van is falling off the bridge.
Clip: It’s.
Greg: It has to be longer. It has to be longer.
Clip: It might be longer.
Greg: It’s the only movie that is longer than Fast and Furious.
Clip: So. Yeah.
Joe: That’s true. We have one last job, and it’s, we have, duffle bag full of guns, medical care from a loved one or partner or friend, for Ken Watanabe character. I kind of have downloading a file under pressure because they’re downloading something into Jillian Murphy’s brain, and that’s.
Clip: That is.
Greg: A.
Clip: Stretch. It’s, I’m not. I’m not lying. That’s a stretch. But we didn’t have a lot of.
Joe: Tropes in this one, so here.
Clip: We are.
Greg: God bless it. That’s amazing. All right, Joe, there have been many elephants in the room during this episode. Is it time for us to get to important questions?
Joe: It sure is.
Greg: All right, Joe, did inception hold up then?
Joe: I think. Really? Well then.
Clip: Yes.
Greg: And does it hold up now?
Joe: Yeah, I think it does. I don’t know if it quite as well as it did in 2010, but it’s been 15 years. You know, it’s.
Greg: Pretty good shelf life.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And a bummer that Tennant I feel like kind of ruined this movie for me where it’s like, oh boy, we’re getting close to Tennant. Yeah. Territory this unchecked breaks bad.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: Exactly.
Greg: All right, Joe, in this movie, how hard do they sell the good guy?
Clip: Not very. They don’t. Yeah. Two. Classy. Yeah. That’s how you.
Greg: Get to an 87%. All right. Yeah. That’s exactly how hard they sell the bad guy.
Joe: Who is the bad guy? Is there a bad guy?
Greg: I mean, it’s kind of Marian courtyard in the trees.
Clip:
Greg: It’s Ken Watanabe if you have. But you have to think about it.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: That he’s kind of on the team and he’s good. And there’s a Killian Murphy but not really I don’t know. There’s it’s it’s confusing.
Greg: So we are not sold. That’s what I hear you’re saying that’s all. Yeah sure. Why is there romance in this movie.
Joe: There really isn’t romance in this movie other than the lost love of their of their marriage.
Clip: Right.
Greg: But then acknowledging we did have a good run. We did grow old together. Yeah. And they show their hands holding on the railroad tracks and then like old wrists.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: Some really good effective old school film.
Clip:
Greg: Techniques in here where there were not special effects. I thought that was nice.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Joe are we bad people for loving this movie?
Joe: I don’t feel like it for this one. I don’t think.
Greg: So.
Clip: Yeah. I think we’re good.
Joe: I think we’re good. Yeah I agree.
Greg: That feels nice.
Clip: For once. Yeah.
Joe: Finally.
Greg: Does inception deserve a sequel? Inception. And the answer is a dollar sign.
Clip: Okay.
Joe: I don’t have an answer for this, but Sam has the best answer that could ever be had for.
Greg: This, I love it.
Clip: Okay.
Joe: Does this movie deserve a sequel? Yes. And the sequel follows Fisher Killian Murphy, who with a newfound belief that his father want him to be his own man, dissolves the business and uses the fortune to start a new business of making paper pinwheels and selling them at baseball games for fathers to buy for their sons. One day, after particular success of selling pinwheels to almost every dad in the baseball stadium, Fisher realizes that every spinning pinwheel in the stadium is not slowing down, but just keeps spinning.
Clip: Then he wakes up.
Joe: Mic drop I can’t, I can’t even.
Clip: Compete with this. This is the best sequel. Seriously.
Greg: That is incredible.
Clip: Oh my gosh, so good.
Greg: Why are we even here?
Clip: I don’t know, I feel like we just.
Greg: Need to hand this over to Sam at this point.
Clip: No.
Joe: So that’s my answer.
Clip: To this one time thing.
Greg: Okay. That’s really good. That’s really good. Next important question. Does it deserve a prequel?
Clip: No, it doesn’t deserve a prequel.
Greg: Okay, well, first of all, it needs a 50 season Netflix series depicting each year that they were in limbo. It’s a romance 50 series.
Clip: All right.
Greg: Or something. That really struck me while I was watching this movie is they talk about when they’re talking about inception, they’re like, oh, yeah, it’s kind of like extraction. They’re like, it’s not extraction. It’s something totally different. It’s much harder. Yeah, I think there’s two prequels to this movie called Extraction and Extraction two.
Clip: Two of the greatest movies ever.
Greg: Does it deserve it? Of course, it already has deserved it.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: And already it’s already gotten it.
Joe: Speaking of great Netflix movies, I just watched The Gray Man again.
Clip: Like a week ago, and it’s.
Joe: So good. It’s so.
Greg: Wow.
Clip: Holds up holds up. Okay.
Greg: So next important question should inception have been nominated for Best picture at the Oscars in 2011?
Joe: I would be okay with it, but what was it up against? What would it be up against?
Greg: Let me say, the films that were nominated that year, The King’s Speech, Which Way? Black Swan.
Clip: Okay.
Greg: The Fighter, The Kids Are All Right, 127 hours, starring James Franco, who was originally cast as Arthur in this movie, Joseph Gordon-Levitt replaced him. The Social Network One of my favorite movies of all time. Toy story three, one of my favorite movies of all time. True Grit, Winter’s Bone, and the last movie nominated for Best Picture in 2011.
Greg: Inception.
Joe: So I guess it should have been. And it was so nailed it.
Greg: Are you okay with that?
Joe: I’m okay with it.
Greg: Great. Look at that year though. That’s an incredible year of movies.
Joe: That is an incredible. Yeah.
Greg: All of our best directors made a movie.
Clip:
Greg: All right Joe how can this movie be fixed aka who should be in the remake?
Joe: Okay. Again Sam has the perfect.
Clip: Answer for the good question. So I just I couldn’t.
Joe: Think of one an answer. And honestly, now that I read Sam’s again I’m not even gonna attempt an answer after that.
Clip: So okay.
Joe: This movie is fixed by blending it with The Edge of Tomorrow, where Tom cruise keeps living the same day over and over again because it’s actually a dream. Tom and his inception team have placed Tom cruise in this dream to test him.
Clip: If he.
Joe: Endures and accomplishes the mission, he is the newest member of the team. All goes well until they realize Tom cruise is populating the dream with his own highly trained projections. Who who won’t relent until Dom and his team are eliminated, and the team of killer projections are all played by Sir Michael Caine.
Greg: So the only thing better than Michael Caine being a movie is multiple Michael Michael Caine.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: I cannot stress enough how much better Sam answers are than mine on all fronts.
Clip: And for this episode.
Greg: And you know what? I think that one is funny because that honestly seems like something Tom cruise would do.
Clip: You know,
Greg: I think this should be remade. I do think this should be remade. And I think we should make two remakes, honestly. And they could be parallel movies. I say we definitely go with Sam’s. I think we just remake it. Land for line with Hayden Christensen because I think it’s that different.
Clip: Okay. I mean.
Greg: I think Marion Cotillard, who is, on The Morning Show this season on Apple TV+, best show about, you know, rich people. And they spent a gazillion dollars on it, but she’s pretty good in it. I think that we replaced her with Emma Stone.
Clip: Okay.
Greg: Because I could see her doing this role really well.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And it takes place in the Star Wars universe.
Clip: Okay, I meant I thought I would watch the hell out of that.
Greg: So it’s not inception, it’s in tattooing.
Clip: Okay. At that rate. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Greg: So what album is this follow up question. Did it take you a lot of time to come up with this one?
Clip: Yes. This was this was a tough one.
Greg: This was a tough one.
Joe: Yeah. It is an imperfect answer. I had to kind of do my my fallback when I don’t have an answer kind of really quick is I go to the year it was made and kind of look at albums.
Greg: Interesting. Okay.
Joe: For me, this is a high concept movie. I went with what is kind of a to me, a high concept album or a concept album, and this is Gorillaz Plastic Beach, which is an underrated Gorillaz album. To me. It’s one of my favorite. It’s a third one, okay. It’s got some amazing songs on it and it’s kind of.
Clip: It’s, it’s.
Joe: It took me a while to get into it. I didn’t quite understand it, but it grew on me and it’s one that kind of it is has its own feel that I was, you know, I love the first two albums. I was kind of expecting a continuation and it kind of makes a left turn for me. Okay. And so that’s kind of it.
Joe: It feels imperfect. It’s not exactly right. But to me, I was like, okay, it’s a kind of a concept album and this is a high concept movie. That was my tenuous strain.
Greg: What song on that album would somebody have heard, or what do you want to put on our Spotify playlist.
Joe: Might be Rhinestone Eyes or Stylo.
Clip: Glitter.
Joe: Freeze on Melancholy Hill. I mean, they’re just some beautiful songs that are not what I was expecting. And so it’s kind of like, you know, I wasn’t expecting this movie I did. Some of these songs are really beautiful.
Greg: I like it. For me, I was thinking of, well, first, I really just wanted it to be the album that The Cranberries made that has the song dreams in it.
Clip:
Greg: Everybody else is doing it, so I can’t wait, but I’m not going to do that. That’s too simple. What I really want to say about this movie is what happens when a director matures into somebody who can make something that has definite strands connections to memento. But with a budget of I don’t think I said before, it’s like $160 million, something like that.
Greg: It was like a return to form after the Batman trilogy of super confusing, high explaining movies. Although the Batman movies also kind of have that. So I kind of felt like it was like, okay, this is Christopher Nolan showing us his true self, and he would probably make a movie like this as much as he could. There’s a lot of explaining in interstellar.
Greg: There’s a lot of explaining in tenet. It’s a lot of explaining in his movies. But I felt like this was one of his most successful, like you were saying, outings there. So a return to form and very successful. And so I went with an album that also came out in 2010. So I’m going to call this Arcade Fires the Suburbs.
Clip: Okay.
Greg: They had made their first album, then they made Neon Bible. It’s something about that album was like a return to form for me in a way that, Neon Bible had kind of strayed. It won all kinds of awards. It was one of their most popular albums, one album of the year at the Grammys that year. And so I’m going to say that, it was just a higher level for the Arcade Fire, but they were also connecting back to what made them great in the beginning.
Clip: Awesome. Perfect. Yeah, I love it.
Greg: And so I’ll say the first song on that album, which is called The Suburbs, but you hear in coffee shops all over the world today.
Greg: All right, Joe, it’s finally come down to it. How would you rate this movie? Would you rate it a great bad movie? Good bad movie. Okay. Bad movie, bad bad movie or awful bad movie?
Joe: It’s on the edge of a great, great movie for me. Honestly. Yeah. And I think there’s just enough kind of ridiculous action scenes in it, that it’s a great bad movie.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: A movie that I thoroughly enjoyed, a movie that I look forward to watching. Again, these are the kind of movies that I love watching more multiple times, because there is a lot packed into them. And the second time, and I’m glad I watched them within a couple months of each other. Yeah, that I missed the first time that I got this time.
Joe: But it’s there’s still enough ridiculousness that I don’t think it’s just a straight great movie. So but it’s a great bad movie.
Greg: I agree, I probably would have called it a great, great movie in 2010, 2025. I call it a great bad movie. Yeah for sure. Yeah, but it is. Yeah. One of the best great bad movies we’ve watched. It’s not as ridiculous as Fast Five. It’s not as silly as fast Five.
Clip:
Greg: But it’s, it’s it’s a Christopher Nolan great bad movie for for sure.
Joe: And it’s no less enjoyable to me than fast five, maybe a little less.
Clip: Because that ball scene. But.
Joe: You know, but that is like a classic great bad. Just like it’s ridiculous.
Greg: Fast five is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen in my life.
Clip: A great yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joe: Absolutely. But yeah, I completely agree with you. This is this. Yeah, this is a great movie and a great bad movie.
Greg: Thank you, Christopher Nolan. Thank you everybody who acted in this movie. You were incredible.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: But especially thank you to Sam for picking an incredible film for us to watch this week. What a great week to watch inception.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely. And thank you, Sam for your drinking games.
Clip: And this is basically.
Joe: Saving this show with.
Clip: Yeah with your participation.
Joe: At it.
Greg: All right Joe. Well we did it.
Joe: We did it. Nailed it. You had the conversation the movie out about inception. I don’t feel like anyone should probably talk about this movie again. You know, they just refer to this.
Greg: They had a very strong run of 15 years.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: We should say. As always, spoilers for the movie inception.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: If you haven’t seen it, pause this episode. Yeah, run out and watch it and then come back right to the spot.
Greg: Absolutely.
Joe: Save it for you.
Greg: Absolutely, listener. If you have enjoyed this episode, would you do us a favor and tell a friend about great bad movies? There’s probably somebody in your life, a group of people we hope that you’re getting together with and watching the movies that you love and coming up with drinking games the way that we love to do. People need to be watching great bad movies together.
Clip: Absolutely.
Greg: Call an old friend. They haven’t talked to you in a long time and be like, you know what? Tonight is the night for Under Siege to let’s go to dark territory.
Clip: I love that that’s the movie that you bringing people together. Yeah. Our territory. Absolutely.
Greg: If you’ve already told the friends, you know, rating reviews on your favorite podcast app, if you’re listening to us on our website, find us on your favorite podcast app and start following us there. Tracking with us as we go through the greatest movies in the history of our lives.
Joe: And I just want to drive home that point in our lives. Greg, in my lives.
Clip: Absolutely nobody else is. This is not relatable at all. No.
Greg: We are going through a series of picks. We’ve gotten Joe’s pick on our last episode, which was Kate Sam’s pick. I’m going to pick the next movie, and then we are debating whether we should do an audience pick after that. And so please find us on Instagram. Great bad movies show on Instagram. We’re going to be doing a poll here pretty soon and be a part of the crew that votes what the audience pick is for our movie.
Greg: You can find us online at Great Bad Movie Show on YouTube. Great Bad movies.com is our website. All kinds of different ways for you to reach out to us and tell us what great bad movies we should watch.
Joe: It’s going to be awesome. I’m excited for the audience pick and for for Greg’s pick next week, which it’s going to be awesome.
Greg: It’s going to be good. Oh my gosh, Joe, I just noticed the time. Listen, this has been great, but Tom Hardy has been making me feel really bad about that. My gun choice apparently is too small, so I need to go and find a bigger gun.
Joe: Yeah, you might want to paint it white too.
Greg: I guess I’m in the snow.
Clip: Yeah, that’s a case. That’s that’s that’s.
Joe: Okay. I got to run to, I got to go check if the van falling off the bridge has finally hit the water yet.
Clip: So it’s once. It’s been a while. That’s amazing.
Greg: Because I am actually in that van, and it has been following this entire episode. We are just about to hit the water, so I’m assuming that’s when my dad will finally accept who I am.
Clip: Yeah.
Joe: Yeah, probably. Probably. Anyway, I just got this special top. It never stops spinning. I don’t know what it. I hope it doesn’t have dire consequences for my reality or something.
Greg: As long as your kids are wearing different clothes, I think you’re good.
Clip: Okay. Sweet.
Greg: Okay, well, that works for me because I am exhausted about the concept of inception right now. I’m so tired of talking about it. So I’m going to take a step back and, just working on my old school extraction skills.
Joe: Oh, that’s good, that’s good. I got a plane to catch. I’m. I’m hoping to get some work done on the flight, though, so I got to stay awake for this thing. Sure.
Greg: That works for me. Because you know what? I think it’s time for me to go through my James Bond snow phase, so I better go.
Joe: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That tracks. Anyway, I ended up sleeping on the flight that I just took. Oh. It’s weird. I have a completely different relationship with my father now. I don’t understand that. That’s. Oh, that’s all good.
Greg: And Tom Berenger.
Clip: And Tom Barrett.
Greg: Okay, well, that works for me because, you know, my totem has been spinning this whole time. Is this one that you just did a minute ago?
Clip: Maybe. But don’t worry about it.
Greg: We’re twinsies on this one. Listen, we have to go for the same reason for once. Who cares?
Clip: All right, well, that works for me. So.
Greg: Joe, this has been amazing. Thank you, Sam, for everything, as always. And I will see you soon.
Joe: See you soon. Thank you. Sam.