Inception Dreams
Leonardo DiCaprio
“Last night, Leonardo DiCaprio dreamed of monsters. One by one, they came at him—‘these ferocious, intense creatures’—and one by one, he subdued them. DiCaprio’s new movie, Inception, takes place almost entirely within surreal dreams, but he seldom remembers his own. This one stuck with him. ‘I had these giant gloves,’ he explains the next evening, with faint embarrassment, ‘and I had to put my hand in their mouths as these monsters ravaged me and wrestle them to the ground. I had to time it perfectly as they went around me in a rotation—otherwise it would have caused mass destruction.’ By the time his alarm went off at 9:45 a.m.—he sleeps late between movies—DiCaprio had defeated the demons and saved the world. He woke up in his house in the Hollywood Hills feeling pretty good about himself.”
From “Leo Faces His Demons,” by Brian Hiatt, Rolling Stone 1110, August 5, 2010, p. 48.
Christopher Nolan
“Christopher Nolan wakes up. It’s just before eight. He wants to go back to sleep—he was up late last night, like any self-respecting student would have been—but the only way he’ll get a free breakfast is if he drags himself down to the University College of London refectory now. He duly does so, and returns to bed shortly after. Sleep takes him once more. Only a light sleep. But interesting things happen in light sleep. Christopher Nolan stands on a beach. He stoops and grasps a handful of sand. Looks at the tiny, innumerable grains. A thought coalesces: ‘My mind did that. It put every grain of sand into my hand…’ Not only that. ‘We all do this, every night, when we dream. Our minds create and perceive the world simultaneously. The mind is infinitely expansive, and infitesimal…’”
From “Crime of the Century, Empire Magazine July 2010, p. 90.
Marillon Cotillard
“I had a dream that was so dramatic. I’m in a hotel room with a very close girlfriend of mine, except now she is a famous actress and has all these people around her. We’re arguing about things, how close we used to be, then she starts crying and I take her in my arms. I say, “Don’t be sad – we had an amazing time.” Then, suddenly, we’re in bed together, but we’ve turned into men. I’m Thomas Magnum and she’s Mike Hammer, but we’re really fat and hairy and have moustaches. And then we’re running through a jungle, jump off a cliff and get freeze-framed in the air, as a title card in big red letters flashes up. I woke up and couldn’t stop laughing. Then I told my friend. She said, ‘I’d like to be in your head…’”
From “Fourteen Weirdest Dreams in Hollywood,” by Nick de Semlyen, Empire Magazine April 2010, p. 129.
Leave it up to Hollywood to change something as wonderful as Lucid Dreaming into a nightmare!
It’s hard to tell from the trailer if there are some good qualities about the movie. I’ll go see it just to know.
There is no question that lucid dreaming happens.
Laboratory studies show that during lucid dreams, parts of the brain that are normally unactive when people are asleep remain active.
Inception was a complicated, mulit-layered movie worth seeing again. The fact that it has many stars and a fascinating topic will inspire audiences to view the movie. This alone is valuable … even if, perhaps, they skew the lucid dreaming and shared dreaming experiences, making them seem so much darker and drug-dependent. However, I believe anything that gets the general public to think more about their dreams and expanding their dream possibilities is great. Thank you IASD for putting out more sound information about lucid dreaming, and giving others the opportunity to share their experiences and ask questions.
A big-budget movie like Inception can get lots of people thinking anew about dreaming and its possibilities. Good point about the emphasis on drugs as part of the dream-sharing process in Inception. In the 1985 movie Dreamscape, the trajectory of the main character (Dennis Quaid) was from using technology to using his own innate psychic powers to enter other people’s dreams.
Inception was a futuristic movie that held true to real lucidity for the most part. The technology they used and extra logic they added made the movie really good and into a movie. Without the extra stuff they prolly couldn’t make a movie let alone a good one.
I thought inception was mind blowing and incredible. It has definitely opened my mind to the lucid dream state and has made me explore the whole concept of astral projection. If we can astral project and others can as well why couldn’t we meet on the astral plane and therefore enter the world of dream sharing? I’ve watched inception a handful of times and i catch something new that i hadn’t seen the previous time watching. So for the people who said it was horrible didn’t take it for what it was. Breaking it down and criticizing every detail is not what the movie was originally made for. It was to open our minds to the dream state and opening our minds to wonder if extraction and inception are actually possible when are guards are lowered. The subconcous is a wonderful and powerful thing, and we must not underestimate the possiblities of our dreams!
Your first problem – if they were in a dream and Saito got shot, he could just say “there is no bullet in my chest and I wont be bleeding anymore” and there wouldn’t have been, because they are in a dream. And the place where Saito first understands they are in a dream because Mal told him and they are threatening Arthur, Cobb could just have used “telekynesis” (which i always do when i understand when i am in a dream) with his mind to take away their gun… BUT if they would have done these things, people would have expected to do these kind of obvious things in every situation and that would have made the movie too… too easy? wouldn’t it?
Second – they were in a dream within a dream within a dream, and in dreams the law of physics don’t aplly and this really can happen, when you are sleeping in car and the car is falling off of a cliff…
Third – to me it didn’t seem too much action, I know when it is too much action and I don’t like action… but yeah, the film could have been more deep into the mysterious world of dreaming
Four – motivation wasn’t lame. As Saito said: When Cobol Energy gets him out of the way, the will become a new superpower. And they could like rule the world or smth. Lame? No. One man couldn’t have so much power ower the world, right? Still lame? And to Cobb yes, it was just a last job and to see his children, very intrigueing.
Five – I have watched Inception four times. People are different, so, this is YOUR problem, so sorry.
I honestly havenever watched the film, but always heard that its about lucid dreaming. I always was scared to lucid dream after i watched that movie but i want to face my fears and actually do it. Could someone tell me how i reach that state?.
I’d recommend you go to Ryan Hurd’s website, dreamstudies.org, where he has a lot of good resources about lucid dreaming.