Unintelligible Sports Rants

Stick with movies like "Catch Me if You Can," Leo.

I know this isn’t exactly timely (or on the topic of this blog which, as you will recall, is sports) but I feel I must get my thoughts on the movie “Inception” now before they become even more irrelevant. I’d hate to have this rant come spilling out two or three years from now; everyone would be like “Yeah I remember that movie, I thought it was pretty good, why are you spazzing about it now?”

At least now I can tie it to “Inception’s” Oscar win (and the release of an Inception knockoff that looks even worse, if possible). If you will recall, that abortion of a film won the award for some category nobody remembers right now except movie-obsessed douchers who are the type of people who actually enjoy watching awards shows celebrities put on for themselves practically weekly so that they can kiss their own respective asses as much as possible. Also, someone with Google could probably find out in like two seconds, but I really don’t give one iota of fecal matter what that award was for anyway since we all know it was essentially made up by Hollywood phonies.

Of course the main problem with “Inception” was the hype surrounding it. Hype can hurt the best of movies and can destroy mediocre films. Yeah “Extract” wasn’t a great motion picture. Neither was “From Paris with Love.” And yet I am not wasting over a thousand words ranting on either of them here, despite the fact that “Inception” probably lines up about even with both. Enter hype.

Unlike the films that quickly faded from the spotlight, flocks of movie-going morons pissed themselves over how original and complex and deep “Inception” was from about 5 seconds after its release, and they made sure to tell potential movie-going morons about it. And so it spiraled out of control until people actually thought this cinematic dirge was worth multiple viewings. They forced their buddies to see it, their families to see it, random people off the street to see it, at gunpoint if necessary. Which seemed fine, really, on the surface, considering it seemed like a semi-original concept coming out of an industry that produces 98% recycled garbage in the form of remakes, sequels, and rip offs. The only problem was that “Inception” wasn’t original. Also it sucked. So, yeah, two problems, technically-speaking.

Yeah, the actual plot hadn’t been done before, but the idea of confusing the audience into thinking they aren’t smart enough to get it is not original. A good idea maybe, since idiots will go back to see it again to pick up on what they missed, but not original. The Painfully Complex genre has been around for a long time, it just isn’t as prevalent as the Romantic Comedy. Anyway, that seems like enough intro for a movie I’ve already wasted too much of my life thinking about, so I’ll get at it. (Along those same lines, don’t expect me to cite character’s names in my breakdown or anything specific. I’m not wasting time looking those things up, and they aren’t important.) From here on out, I don’t want to discuss this thing in person for the rest of my life. I am going to rationally, if not angrily, state my case here, and I will here no argumentation on it because I am right and you aren’t. Without further ado (whatever that means), I give you my in-depth analysis of:

WHY INCEPTION SUCKED

Reason #1: This is supposed to be a movie, not an instruction manual, or a textbook

The first half hour or so of the movie is meant just to confuse the hell out of you (set the tone early, right?) and it’s the only part of the movie where the storyline really seems like it might matter. For the remainder of the movie (the final five hours of it or so), it no longer ever attempts to be a movie, but instead becomes an owner’s manual for dreamvading. Which might be sort of helpful if the concept was real, but as far as I know some hayseed Hollywood writer came up with it, not a biologist-psychotherapist. So what you spend the majority of the time as a movie watcher doing is getting drilled with rules and regulations and technicalities and specifications on how to mind-rape someone. Yeah, we get it, you created a totally complex concept that we have to literally study to understand. But it’s not real. When people spend that much time studying Pokémon, which are just as real as dream-sodomy they are seen as dork jagoffs, not savvy connoisseurs of fine entertainment.

And every time you think you’ve got it figured out they throw another one at you. They don’t set it up beforehand either (the movie never commits to ANYTHING), they just sort of throw it out there as if everyone knew it the whole time, instead of the real reason which is they needed to make up a new rule to let the plot resolve itself while still making sense (it turns out this did not work anyway…I’ll get to that).

“So you know if you die in a dream you just wake up right? OK, well if you are sedated when that happens then it isn’t OK. Ditto if you are in a dream within a dream and you are sleeping or in a coma in the first dream and it’s before sunset. Oh, what, you got shot in that exact situation? Well, that’s cool as long as you visually seem to be Mexican (or a similar race to that, it was hard to tell). Oh, so you died in that scenario too? Oh gee, well, um… OK sometimes it doesn’t matter if that happens we just decided.” And so on.

After spending all day learning the rules of the game, you are ready for some actual action, which brings us to…

Reason #2: OK, so you can enter people’s dreams…maybe do something sweet with that ability instead of something that you could do much more easily with blackmail or by talking it out

So, yeah, the movie ends right after you finished getting trained in to your job as professional Dreambuster, but before you actually get to see anything sweet done with that power. Don’t get me wrong, the problem was certainly not that it wasn’t LONG enough. Don’t want to imply that, God knows. You would think that during the 150 freaking minutes of that thing they’d at least do SOMETHING.

“Oh, you got some dude who was already not exactly positive in his convictions to change his mind?” Real impressive. Use the concept of Inception to kidnap the President’s son or something, good lord. Nobody cares if you can slightly alter the addled mind of some fruity wishy-washy middle-aged white guy. Oh wow, pretty sweet, couldn’t have done that with a late-night visit from a ripped 300-lber named Vinny like a real movie might have. Or a well-worded letter.

And speaking of unnecessary dream B and E, why pay the huge bribe or whatever to get Leo back in the U.S. when you could have just used that money or power to persuade that corporate weenie to give up the company and saved a hell of a lot of time and planning.

Reason #3: Limbo…so why the hell does it matter if you end up in it again?

Hard to get real worked up over the peril the characters find themselves in when you realize they are at no risk whatsoever of anything bad happening to them. They talk about Limbo like it’s an eternal-sentence in Hades. In reality, worst-case scenario, they get to live a dream-life, doing whatever they want until they die, only to get ANOTHER life once that dream dies and they get back to reality. I’d repeat that as many times as possible if I were them, because we all know that your dreams kick the piss out of anything that ever happens in real life (Packers’ Super Bowl victories and Mike Bruesewitz slam dunks not withstanding). Everybody wakes up from time to time wishing they could fall back asleep and continue whatever dream they were just in. Nobody enters a dream and thinks, “Damn I wish I could be awake right now.”

Reason #4: A “kick” happens when you fall backwards in your chair…or when 200 lbs of C4 blows up your elevator cart

I am no physics expert, but it appears to me that having your chair being pulled backward by gravity toward earth for 0.3 seconds and having military-grade explosives detonated 3 feet from your face do not create equal amounts of force. Why that dude went through the trouble rigging the elevator makes no sense to me. Just freaking push them awake.

(Or kick them awake. I mean how obvious does it have to be? The word is IN the word. Heck, it IS the word. Why pass up the chance to kick Ellen Page in the face? (I know, she seems sweet, but YouTube a couple of videos of her being interviewed and you’ll see my point. We get it, Ellen, you are way better than everyone else.))

If you can’t simulate the action of a chair slowly tipping with a forearm shiver to the chest, then you are the wrong guy for the job.

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At risk of this rant going over the 2,000-word mark, I’ll let those four reasons stand on their own, but I would have no problem adding to the list if the need arose.

(Hard to imagine such a circumstance for that: “SOMEONE NAME 5 OR MORE REASONS WHY INCEPTION SUCKED OR THE DOG GETS IT!!”)

Bottom line is that the only way this thing works is if it turns out every single scene in the movie was a dream, as they hinted at in that incredibly lame final sequence in which they again committed to nothing, this time by having that top thing spinning as it cut to credits. I’m not sure if the whole thing being a dream would make things more or less lame, however.

Which brings us to “Source Code,” the soon to be released film that seems to be a cross between “Inception” and “Groundhog Day,” but subs out DiCaprio and Bill Murray in favor of Jake Gyllenhaal. Eww. Would anyone actually see this!? If this thing sells a single ticket it will be too many. Whoever is responsible for making these movies can go to Limbo.

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