Tuesday, May 19, 2020

[Roll Your Own Life] The Movies That Made Me (Part 23)


INCEPTION (2010)

Very nearly at the end of the list - I thought I'd stop at twenty-four. So we're getting a lot more recent.

In the build up to Inception's release, no one knew what it was about. There was a cryptic trailer with lots of strange scenes (including the weird corridor fight scene) and the tagline "Your Mind is the Scene of the Crime" before it was eventually changed to the tagline "The Dream is Real". But I loved Christopher Nolan's previous movies, and that corridor fight scene from the trailer looked like it was a bit Matrix-y so I had to go and see it...


I remember staggering home in a state of shock, and my mind immediately went to "why haven't they made an RPG of this?" I went to see the movie again a week or so later to really take it in, and immediately put it at the top of my "favourite movies of all time" list. I was just mesmerised by how cool it was, the way it played with time speeds depending upon the level of dreaming, how the technology had evolved, and I wanted to know more.


I did become a little obsessed with it. I immediately bought the bluray when it came out, and I think that Christmas I bought family copies of it on DVD (which I don't think they appreciated). I scoured Ebay and managed to get a copy of the promotional booklet that was a heavily redacted instruction manual for the PASIV device and its original uses.

When our local Odeon upgraded one of the screens to IMAX, they brought back some of the big IMAX movies for screenings that could really show off the capabilities of the big screen and big sound. Of course, Inception was one of these, and we had to experience the cool new screen. So big... and so loud. The Hans Zimmer soundtrack made your chest vibrate, and you could see the fabric of your own clothes move with the sound. It was awesome.

Still I wanted more. The bluray included a prequel (The Cobol Job) - a 15min motion-comic that sets up the beginning of Inception, but it wasn't enough. I wanted to know more about the world in which Inception was set. Who built the devices? Why? What else could they be used for?

And so I started writing WILD. An RPG of dreamshare technology that I've been chipping away at for nearly ten years. I've spent so many years on it, developing the background, changing the rules over and over again, and I think finally a smaller starter version of it may actually come out in the near future (once I get my writing commitments out of the way).


It's just an awesome film in my books. There are very few deaths, so it became a comfort movie when I was feeling down due to the real world kicking me in the nuts. I may have over analysed it as now I can't unsee the way that "the kicks" work is wrong at the end of the movie, but it's going to be a tough thing to sell any other way.

My excitement about Christopher Nolan's new movie TENET is very high, but I really want him to delay the release until it is safe to go and see it. It just looks to be the ultimate follow-up to Inception - it could even be in the same world - but if it means I have to wait for it for my own health and others, I'm willing to wait.

If you've never seen Inception, you really should remedy that. It's amazing, and will leave you questioning your reality.


*For those paying attention, my current top 3 movies are:
1) The Matrix
2) Inception
3) Fight Club

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