Nolan Countdown Part 7 - Inception

 

Hello everyone and welcome to Some Like It Scott's latest limited series: Nolan Countdown. Each week in the lead up to Christopher Nolan's latest film, Tenet, the two Scotts and countdown special guest, Jay Habib, will be working their way through Christopher Nolan's full filmography in chronological order, starting from his humble beginnings making "budget" films like Following and Memento, all the way to his most recent days making mega-blockbusters like his Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, Interstellar, and Dunkirk. This time, Jay Habib has actually seen these films (quite a few of them, quite a few times actually), but there will be fresh takes, crazy theories, and deep conversations about one of the most interesting auteur filmmakers of this generation all along the way. Join us each week!

On part 7 of the countdown, Scott, Scott, and Jay take a look back at Christopher Nolan's first foray into science-fiction, with 2010's sci-fi thriller: Inception. Set in the near-future where the technology to infiltrate people's minds through their dreams has been developed and is used by powerful corporations as a form of corporate espionage, Leonardo DiCaprio's Dominick Cobb is an expert in "extraction", or the theft of confidential and personal information from people's minds. Cobb, however, has a dubious past, and is believed to have murdered his wife (Marion Cotillard), an accusation which has forced him to flee the US and his children. Using his unique talents and skill set, Cobb's goal is to find the job that will erase his past and reunite him with his family. After a failed job in Japan, Cobb is confronted by his target, Saito (Ken Watanabe), and is left with an ultimatum: do one final job for Saito in exchange for free passage back to the US and his family, or be left to fend for himself against an angry former employer and continue to try to find his own path back to the US and his family. The catch? This is no simple job. Saito demands that Cobb perform "inception" (i.e., plant an idea in a target's mind), a feat that is believed by nearly everyone, except Cobb, to be impossible. The target is Robert Fischer, the sone of a wealthy rival CEO on his deathbed. Fischer is poised to take control of his father's empire, and Saito would much prefer it if he were to organically decide to disband his father's company rather than to carry on his legacy. For inception to work, Cobb must assemble a team to infiltrate deep enough into the mind of Fischer and in an intricate enough manner for Fischer to believe the idea is his own. Cobb's team includes his partner, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt); a novice architect, Ariadne (Ellen Page); a forger, Eames (Tom Hardy); a chemist, Yusuf (Dileep Rao); and Saito himself. However, none of these individuals are entirely aware of how dangerous this mission will be or the secrets that Cobb may be keeping from them, and naturally, things go wrong almost immediately once the mission has begun. The countdown trio discusses everything you could possibly imagine about this movie and more, including its technical aspects, the characters and performances, the plot and numerous themes, and yes, its controversial ending, with one co-host offering that maybe the "answer" to the question doesn't even matter.

 

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