Friday, November 01, 2013

(Produced) Screenplay Review: Inception

Premise: A man must infiltrate someone else's dream, and plant an idea, in order to get his life back.

Written by: Christopher Nolan

Technical: Shooting script. 146 pages.
















Trying to portray something as infinitely creative and mysterious as dreams in such a linear, clean cut way, as is done in Inception, is inane; especially considering the fact that Nolan has no imagination (his idea of an interesting dream is movie stars in suits, getting into shootouts, racing to complete a heist? Please.) To supplement this, Nolan uses melodrama, as Inception is all falling buildings, life-or-death scenarios, and dreams within dreams within dreams. But genuine emotion, true moments of humanity, Nolan seems to know little about, as his dramatic range seems incapable of extending past mindless action sequences. There are no humans in Inception; only tools. The dialogue is one long round of endless, on-the-nose exposition. Most of it, especially during the heist, reads like it came from a six year old playing with action figures ("We have to try!" "What do we do?" "We're going as fast as we can." "Look out!" "What was that?") only a six year old has infinitely more creativity and cleverness than Inception does. And of course the screenplay follows the usual Hollywood plot arc; complete with a happy, bow-tied ending. The rules of Nolan's dream world, he seems to make up as he goes along. As a result of all this the script comes off as extremely constructed and artificial (which dreams are not). Inception tries so hard to be clever, that it becomes nauseatingly silly.

This screenplay is abominally, abysmally bad. Sheer stupidity.



About: Inception was released in 2010. Written, co-produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.

search screenplay isles