was inception really hard too understand?

[The Serpent]

I think it depends on who you are. What I love about Nolan is that his movies are always easy to follow if you just pay attention. You don't need 3 viewings and a psychologist to see what is happening. Everything happens through action on screen or exposition.

Memento and The Prestige have very broken up narratives and they are also just fine to follow. Inception is actually easier to follow (I was surprised the first time I saw it) with a chronological narrative. All you have to do is listen to everything Cobb says (he basically explains the film as it goes along) and you're shiny.

 

[SoranMBane]

Well, I understood it. I find it kind of hard to believe that so many people find movies like Inception or The Matrix so confusing. Yeah, maybe what they're trying to say in terms of theme might get a little tricky to figure out, but the actual nuts and bolts of their plots are fairly straightforward.

 

[blackdwarf]

so the movie is actually a pretty straight forward film, but hollywood thought it would be to diffulcult? shows how much hollywood knows.

 

[Vitor Goncalves]

Well, I understood it. I find it kind of hard to believe that so many people find movies like Inception or The Matrix so confusing. Yeah, maybe what they're trying to say in terms of theme might get a little tricky to figure out, but the actual nuts and bolts of their plots are fairly straightforward.

Matrix was far easier than Inception. And to me inception was still very easy to follow up.

But like somebody else said already, apparently the average joe is shockingly stupid (and probbaly cant even add 1+1).

 

[SquirrelPants]

It wasn't really that confusing once you figured out the fairly simple dream mechanic. I had that figured out after the opening few scenes. It was just much more complicated than most of the mainstream movies these days and so people thought general audiences wouldn't "get" it.

 

[SpaceBat]

Nah, Inception had a pretty clear story. At least for me.
For a bit more complicated, but excellent story, go watch The Fountain. After that, see Mulholland Drive.

 

[l3o2828]

Not at all, all you need to do is pay attention.
I've seen waaay more complicated movies about dreams before, case in point, Paprika, that movie was confusing.

 

[HardkorSB]

i know that i'm really late with asking this, but it has been bugging me for awhile now. a months or something ago i saw inception. i thought it was a clever movie with some solid actors. but what i heard was that people didn't understand it. that it was too complex to get it. not to blow my own horn (do is write the saying correctly?), but i thought it was pretty straigt forward. so am i just one of the many who also get it, or are there indeed people who thought it was too complex.

i don't will judge you if you didn't get it and shit, but i just really interrested to know.

It's not a movie that you will get fully after watching it only once.
SPOILER ALERT!!!
For example, when you watch it for the 1st time you take each character as a separate person. But during the 2nd time, you can already interpret the story in 2 ways:
1. If the "spinny thing" fell then each character was indeed a separate person.
2. If it kept spinning, all the characters in the movie were just projections of the protagonist (DiCaprio and they were just different aspects of his subconsciousness, representations of different parts of his personality.
You can't fully get everything if you've seen it only once.
It's not a real mystery or riddle but still, pretty complex and clever enough that you can get lost if you just watch it casually like yet another big budget movie.

If you want real brainbenders, go watch something like Primer.

 

[Kpt._Rob]

Of course it wasn't for someone with half a brain. That's why I always tell people that Inception was "smart for Hollywood, but that doesn't make it smart." As the South Park parody pointed out pretty well, it was mostly a convoluted mildly nonsensical (in its core mechanics) plot, which used the fact that it confused the average movie goer (who unfortunately has a much lower IQ than I would guess the average patron of this particular website has) to make the claim that it was more complex and layered than it actually was.

 

[Crazy Zaul]

Its perfectly simple to understand

 

[Da Orky Man]

i know that i'm really late with asking this, but it has been bugging me for awhile now. a months or something ago i saw inception. i thought it was a clever movie with some solid actors. but what i heard was that people didn't understand it. that it was too complex to get it. not to blow my own horn (do is write the saying correctly?), but i thought it was pretty straigt forward. so am i just one of the many who also get it, or are there indeed people who thought it was too complex.

i don't will judge you if you didn't get it and shit, but i just really interrested to know.

People found it difficult? What was complex about it? It had multiple reality levels, each having time-dilation effect to a certain magnitude to the next, with physical effects bleeding through to a certain degree. That was all.

If you want real brainbenders, go watch something like Primer.

That movie almost gave me a brain haemorrhage.

 

[Doclector]

I think the fact that people have to rack their brains for the meaning of it all is a merit to the film, considering it's subject matter. Trying to interpret dreams is, in a word, difficult. Especially if it's not your dream. I can just about figure out what my dreams mean via intrspection, but digger so deep into anothers psyche is very tricky indeed. Thus if the film is hard to interpret, it has succeeded it's intention: to cover the topic of dreams.

Is it hard to understand? Yes. Is it hard to follow? Not really. Once you've got the hang of the dream layers, you can follow the plot, simple. But to completely understand the film requires much more attention and after viewing thought of the viewer, a challenge which many would lap up.

 

[Tanakh]

Mulholland Drive

That movie was a little annoying, it is designed to be impossible to understand till the end where they give you some key pieces of the puzzle, after that is very easy and second watch should allow you to understand it without issues.

At least it enjoyable and a very good movie that just doesn't suit my tastes, not like mind jerking fests akin to The Holy Mountain, i really dislike that director which is incidentally cited by Lynch as an influence. Un Chien Andalou on the other hand is an amazing surrealist movie

... ehhh, sorry for the rant.

 

[Windupferrari]

It seemed to me like mocking it for being too complicated just became popular. People heard that complaint, and then they went into the movie expecting to be confused. At that point, it's like when police focus on a single suspect and ignore everything else. They look to satisfy their belief that the movie will be confusing, rather than just trying to understand it (which wasn't really that hard if you paid attention). The same thing happened to Avatar. Sure, it wasn't a great plot, but it wasn't the "worst plot ever" that people made it out to be. But of course, when people went into the movie expecting the plot to suck, they focused on the weaknesses of the plot rather than the movie as a whole.

 

[kinapuffar]

People are just stupid. Inception was very simple.

 

[The Diabolical Biz]

Snip

Snip

I guess you'd both enjoy this then:

Spoiler

The link in case that's too small: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/movie_narrative_charts_large.png

ANYWAY OT: I found it interesting and fun. It took having to think about a film to about the level a blcokbuster can reach and still be successful. Most of the people saying it was really simple and they got everything are probably just bigging up their ego. I, too, was like this until I watched it again on DVD and realised that there's a lot of subtler stuff I missed that makes it a much better and well thought out film.

 

[Hollock]

I feel like that was sorta used to sell the movie. I heard dumb teenage girls complain while I went to see it once of the three times I went.

 

[Total LOLige]

I wasn't confused by it, but I'm an intelligent super being (I joke of course)
One thing that I didn't get was the end scene

Spoiler: End scene bit

I didn't get the spinning totem did it mean he was dreaming or not?

 

[SpaceBat]

That movie was a little annoying, it is designed to be impossible to understand till the end where they give you some key pieces of the puzzle, after that is very easy and second watch should allow you to understand it without issues.

At least it enjoyable and a very good movie that just doesn't suit my tastes, not like mind jerking fests akin to The Holy Mountain, i really dislike that director which is incidentally cited by Lynch as an influence. Un Chien Andalou on the other hand is an amazing surrealist movie

... ehhh, sorry for the rant.

Understanding the story wasn't really the problem though. The main plot itself does indeed become clear at the end, but it's the ridiculous amount of interpretations one can come up with for nearly every single scene or item that makes it difficult.

You don't have to like it and I'd completely understand why. I enjoyed the movie, but it's not one of my favorites either. And no problem, rant away .

Haven't heard of Un Chien Andalou, so I can't say much about that. Might look into it.

 

[Thomas Remenar]

It was perfectly easy to understand. Critics just thought it was to complicated for the "mainstream" media, and they were probably right sense the "mainstream" movies are like Transformers and The Expendables.