This is not a review of Inception. I'm not going to discuss Inception in-depth, either, so there will be no spoilers here in case you haven't seen it yet. It will hopefully become clear later on in this editorial that I thought Inception was a dashingly-crafted good time, and a movie that got a lot of mileage out of eluding people's guesses of what it would be. Going by the vague premise unveiled in teasers and Christopher Nolan's previous filmography, many likely expected a movie full of crazy plot twists, another film like The Prestige or Memento scattered around a shifting dream-world matrix. Yet the plot of Inception is fairly straightforward in-and-of itself (despite the complexity of the in-world rules dictating that plot), propelled mainly by the strength of its central idea. Much has been made of the fact that Inception was one of the few movies released this summer not based on previously-existing material, but I will argue that its originality is far more significant than that: Inception is the rare movie that starts almost completely from scratch. So this is what I would like to discuss today: ideas, whether they are in decline, and how Inception makes a damn good case that those in the creative arts cannot lose sight of them completely.
So what is a film's "idea"? Admittedly, I don't have a concise explanation for what, exactly, I'm talking about, as a movie can bring new ideas to the table in a variety of ways. Ideas permeate every stage of a movie, but for the most part I'm talking about a film's general, central premise. Boil the plot of a movie down to one or two lines, as simple as possible, and you have its premise. Compare that premise to other films and see how many start to sound the same. Very few completely original ideas exist anymore, and this is another logical inevitably. Someone more knowledgeable in economics than I will have to tell me the term for this, as I'm sure there is one — like oil, dinosaur bones, or rare Magic: The Gathering cards, there are a finite number of purely original, unused movie plots, and thus their discovery will decrease over time. A film — or a work in any mode of storytelling — can achieve success, I believe, in two broad ways: its idea, and its execution. Of course, a film doesn't require a new idea to be good; it doesn't even need to alter an existing idea all that much in order to set itself apart. In other words, it's more important to have a well-executed "story" than a totally original premise. A good premise can still lead to a bad story, after all, and even a good story can be poorly executed. (In case this is confusing, the "story" of a movie is the more specific way in which its "premise" unfolds, the way its characters bring about resolution — but for the sake of simplicity, I'm not going to discuss the originality of story here). Now, to further simplify, I'm going to suggest the somewhat less-than-scientific proposition that a premise can be measured for originality, and that a premise can be varying degrees of original when compared to other films.
Here's an example. "A soldier arrives in a foreign land where his people are seeking valuable resources, despite the protests of primitive natives. After falling in love with one of the natives, a beautiful princess, he questions his allegiances and helps to reconcile the differences between the two cultures." That description describes the plot of Disney's Pocahontas, but it's also the exact plot of James Cameron's recent blockbuster Avatar. (I am far from the first person to note the similarities between the two). Of course, Avatar got quite a bit of backlash for its lack of originality, so let's look at some other examples. Many of the best movies made in recent years are not necessarily based on original ideas — which isn't a problem, so long as they establish their creativity on different terms. Take the premise of There Will Be Blood, which isn't particularly novel: "An oil prospector and his son make their fortunes in turn of the century California." It's simple, and its success lies in the many elements that make up the unfolding story: its execution. Of course, in lumping all the elements that make up a film into one category, I don't want to dodge the fact that any of these smaller elements can make or break the film. There Will Be Blood succeeds, and establishes its originality, through its cinematography, acting, soundtrack, and characters, et cetera. Similarly, a film can present ideas on a smaller scale, even if the general premise itself isn't necessarily that inventive. A good example of this is the original Star Wars. Here's the premise: "A sheltered farmboy, anxious to leave his home, finds himself caught up in a plot to rescue a princess and overthrow an evil Empire." Taken on such a basic level, Star Wars doesn't sound all that different from various "epic quest" stories that proceeded it. Like Avatar, Star Wars: A New Hope can't be given credit for taking an old story and just transplanting it to space. However, if you view both ideas and execution as intertwined and thus layered, Star Wars gets more original just one layer down. Let's take a slightly expanded premise: "A sheltered farmboy, anxious to leave his home, finds himself caught up in a plot to rescue a princess after her home planet is destroyed by a seemingly-unstoppable new weapon under the control of an evil Empire." Star Wars was designed to show off original ideas within its various layers of execution: as set-pieces, plot-points, or even as characters. Darth Vader, though not unique in his actions as a villain, is fairly original taken in the context of the full movie — in his design, rank, powers, and motivations. To further illuminate how ideas can set a film apart at every level of design, one only has to compare the original Star Wars trilogy to the new one. The "prequels" are unoriginal and uninspired in nearly every way that a film can be, often stealing scenes wholesale from their predecessors, relying on flashy effects and overly-stylized, emotionless action-sequences. It's as if Lucas were merely referencing his original ideas rather than thinking up new ones. Where the original film gave popular culture the idea of a "lightsaber," the new films try to dazzle you with smoke and mirrors: a character with a double-bladed lightsaber! A character that fights with two lightsabers! A robot that has four lightsabers! In my opinion, there is hardly a better example of why we need original ideas.
People are talking about Inception for a number of reasons, of course, but the fact that it has mastered both idea and execution is chief among them. I wrote this editorial with Inception in mind because the film is itself about ideas — the importance of ideas. Christopher Nolan isn't the first person to capitalize upon this sort of meta-commentary, but he built a film around it in a way that few others have. Inception can be taken as a metaphor for the shared experience of watching film, and itself serves to highlight just how a good, bold idea can take hold in people's minds. An idea is "the most resilient parasite," but the act of "inception" is not limited to a single mind — Inception is itself an act of inception, and I believe this was fully intentional. Of course, the art of ideas is not entirely lost, and I hope the success of Inception goes to show why it cannot be. There are many ways for a film to make money, but few ways to build a reputation as a landmark filmmaker. Take Charlie Kaufman, one of the few scriptwriters in Hollywood to have a large following — and he's earned it. Kaufman's films are terrifically rich with both idea and vivid execution, setting him aside from nearly everyone else in film today. Charlie Kaufman is successful for his ideas, and this reputation — the strength of the ideas he has set to film — will outlive money-makers like Michael Bay, who contribute very little. Pixar is another contributor of inventive ideas lately, and most agree that their track record is nearly perfect. Their reputation is equal to their creativity. Or, for a more complicated example, take the bizarre career of M. Night Shyamalan, who made a name for himself as a creator of original, odd ideas. For a while, this worked as well would be expected — take the "idea" behind The Sixth Sense, and consider just how permanent it has become in the cultural consciousness. Yet interestingly, Shyamalan soon turned this strength against himself, making films that grew ridiculous and uneven, sinking under the weight of expectation that his ideas would come in the form of an astounding and increasingly preposterous "twist." Ideas are hard to come by, and unfortunately, they're also easy to ruin.
All this hopefully makes the case for Inception. As I said, this is not a review of that film, and thus I don't want to write too much as if in defense of it. But for comparison, here's the premise of Inception, the basics of the film stripped down as much as is possible: "A team of thieves is able to extract information from the mind of a target while the target, as well as the team, are in a shared dream. After a job gone wrong, the team is hired to do the opposite: plant an idea in a new target's head." In essence, Inception follows the structure of a heist movie. Yet how many films would be even partially be described by that summary? Any? Could you confuse it with The Thomas Crown Affair or Inside Man? How about films dealing with artificial realities within the mind, like The Matrix, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or even The Science of Sleep? Even the basic premise would not be at all similar. Regardless, this is not to say that Inception was executed perfectly: that's been argued, discussed and shouted-about elsewhere, and even if you disagree, I'm not here to debate the point. My claim is simply that Inception marks an increasingly rare kind of movie — a movie that is entertaining, successful in its use of cinema as technique and art, but a film that also contributes to the shared popular mind, our cultural dream state. Ideas are scarce, and for every new one, for every Inception, there's suddenly another benchmark. In the future, any movie that leans a little too close to Inception's territory will at once be compared to it and torn down accordingly — and thus, a little more of that available pool of ideas is taken away. Let's be fair: it's hard enough to execute pre-existing ideas, to shuffle things around enough so as to find an original story, much less an original premise. It's damn hard, and rare, to make a movie as well executed as There Will Be Blood, and who cares if it has superficial similarities to Citizen Kane? But to do both — to invent, and perfect, within the same film — is no longer commonplace in cinema, and is thus understandably lauded as a landmark accomplishment.
