was inception really hard too understand?

[Daveman]

It was a good movie and not all that complicated if you paid attention until they decided to pull the massive dick move at the end.

Inception was ridiculously simple to understand.
Yes - it is clever, and I'm not trying to take that away from the film or the writer/director, but Inception is very clever in a totally unpretentious way. It lays everything out nice and clearly without trying to confuse or mislead the audience, and much like the film's main action sequences and overall setup we can see layer after layer after layer as the director reveals them to us, and in that revelation we get the overall genius and intelligence of the film.

There is one tiny, tiny thing that annoys me about Inception though.
The spinning top at the end.
And the way that people obsess over it.
Just saying, but it DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER if the GODDAMN SPINNING TOP falls or not - it is a CATHARTIC FUCKING ENDING for Cobbs character arc because he walks away. Cobb no longer cares, therefore, if the audience was following the film, they should no longer care about the stupid fucking spinning top.
It wasn't even his to begin with - so the point of it isn't to say "Oh this could be a dream", but instead to say "Look at where he is now - he has left his past, his guilt etc. behind him. This was his last job. The totem is no longer needed, his guilt is no longer needed, all that he wants is right in front of him now."

...

The thing is the spinning top at the end undoes all the good you said about it not trying to confuse or mislead the audience. It causes them to question the entire film. In fact, if it doesn't matter and we are meant to feel relieved and no longer care then why is it the last thing we see? I disagree with your interpretation although I think it would be a better movie (or at least one I'd prefer) if you were right.

The way I see it is that as we flash back to the top spinning before immediately going to a black screen we realise that the doubt associated with it has followed him back through the layers of the dream and he will never be fully settled as you say he is. If he had left it spinning and just walked away I would totally agree, but it flashed back at the end and that's why I think you're wrong.

I mean even Total Recall managed to get THAT part right and didn't deliberately force the viewer to question the film's entire plot.

 

[quancer]

I don't think the average moviegoer would've found Inception confusing if they weren't primed to be confused by critics and word-of-mouth. So instead of following the plot as they would intuitively, they perhaps looked too deeply into some of the more extraneous threads in the movie, or lingered too long on questions the movie itself had no answers for.

People should keep in mind that "edgy" movies are always marketed as complex and multi-layered, but that doesn't mean they are; it's best to just approach them like you would any other movie and not let your insecurities muddle the experience.

That said, I felt Inception was a clumsy movie, more interested in conning its audience into admiring its supposed brillance than winning its audience over by being engaging, interesting, or truly entertaining. The Hollywood hype machine is, of course, always complicit when it comes to pushing these sorts of movies, but critics really should've shown the courage to call the movie out on its narrative shortcomings -- shortcomings I believe Inception wouldn't have gotten away with if it had existed in a vacuum, without the "edgy and intelligent" hype at its back.

 

[Deverfro]

It wasnt complicated at all, Its just a little confusing. And the ending is ace.

 

[Nyce1]

The stupid spinning top thing in my opinion was about to fall over. Silly movie ended before we could see. WTB 10 more seconds at ending!

 

[Tanakh]

TBH I didn't found Primer that hard to follow. Yep, it's as complex as films that makes sense goes, and its fun, but IMO it still is entertainment that requires no deep thought to get; i remember 12 monkeys giving me a harder time. The mechanism of the travel however is resolved in a very smart and consistent way

Then again i saw 12 monkeys on my early teens and was learning eng at the time so comparing them might be unfair. I also like 12 monkeys better, but have a crush with Guilliam so might again be biased.

The stupid spinning top thing in my opinion was about to fall over. Silly movie ended before we could see. WTB 10 more seconds at ending!

It was totally going to fall.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Its wasn't complicated it was convoluted. It had multiple simple sequences but they layered on top of each other making keeping them straight complicated even though each wasn't that difficult individually. Its less a really complex puzzle and more trying to solve multiple simple puzzles at the same time. Also... obligatory, "we have to go deeper".

 

[AgDr_ODST]

I had no trouble figuring it all out but the timing of the movie ending left me questioning whether or not Cobb was still stuck in a dream.

 

[Jamous]

No, so long as you paid attention. Strangely enough, if you don't pay attention you're liable to lose bits of plot. Shocking I know.

 

[Romblen]

I'll admit that Inception took a bit more thinking than the average Hollywood film. But the impression I got was that I would have to watch multiple times to understand it. I understood it the first time I watched it.

 

[Norendithas]

I didn't find it complex at all. My mother on the other hand couldn't watch it because it confused her too much.. >.> No clue.

 

[shedra]

The only thing I didn't get in my first watch through was the opening scene. When Leonardo DiCaprio washes up on shore and has a conversation with Old Asian Guy.
Then it snaps to both of them at the same table, Asian guy looking younger.

I figured that it was a dream and weird inexplicable scenario jumps would just happen.
It wasn't. It was the scene toward the end of the movie being shown out of sequence.
I still don't fully understand why exactly Nolan chose to place that scene there.

Every thing else was pretty bluntly explained. Time perception is different in dreams, events within dreams have potential to effect waking thought whether consciously or unconsciously, herpderp it's an okay movie.

 

[DarkRyter]

No. No one said it was.

 

[brenflood]

I think arguing the complexity of the film is a tad pointless. What makes the film great (albeit not some arthouse masterpiece) is that it holds up to multiple viewings very well as a result of the multiple interpretations available to the audience. There are quite a few more than listed on this thread.
I've met some very unintelligent people who had no trouble understanding the movie whatsoever in the first viewing. I'm guessing they just went with the happy ending. One (fairly stupid) hypothesis I've heard if that Cobb's kids are his totem. So, when he can see their faces, he's in reality.

However, the film is meant to be open to interpretation. The top's spinning at the end isn't the only thing that makes the reality seem dream-like. There's the narrowing corridor in the chase scene early on in the movie.

The film holds up to at least three viewings, which is way better than most big budget hollywood films.

The first time, I just watched it with a completely open mind, and still thought the end was a dream considering how sappy everything was.

The second time, I really tried to see a way where the movie would work if Cobb wasn't dreaming at the end, and still couldn't.

The third time, I took the meta-cinema approach. See, Nolan has said that one of his biggest influences for Inception was Fellini's 8 1/2. Seeing Cobb as the director really works considering that once he gets the assignment, he's much more obsessed with inception than he is with getting home. Ariadne fits the role of set designer, and the guy whose head they are going into is clearly meant to be the audience. Any other character fits a role too, but I don't want to write it all out as my comment length will probably prevent from being read as it stands.

I will say the film is not without its flaws. The corporation chasing Cobb and his crew at the beginning of the film never has any reason to stop chasing them. The Asian guy's company is a rival corporation. So, even given the power he has, a phone call shouldn't be able to call both the police and the other company off Cobb's tail. It's an early plot point, but it's a real shame that the movie just drops it hoping no one would notice, or hoping the Asian guy's phone call took care of it.

 

[Sovvolf]

No, its not going to be hard to understand for us internet fairing gamers who know quite a bit about movies, plots and other such junk. We're pretty much trained for stuff like this, we're used to following stuff like this, we've probably followed smarter more complex plots in our video games, where you can fit a smarter more complex plot (given the average time for a game is around 10 - 15 hours).

That doesn't make the people that did find it complex stupid and I honestly hate it when people say stuff like that. They're simply not as media savvy. I wouldn't mention this part but I've seen an awful lot of comments like this in the first three pages and it really gives me an headache. Look at us geeks and how mature and intelligent we are and yet we still can't get over the childishness of "You can't do something as good as me, thus your stupid"...

Its the whole "You didn't get this mathematical equation? well then your stupid" attitude which I honestly, honestly cannot stand. Your not stupid if your talent in math is limited if you get what I'm saying here.

That being said, I did applaud Inception for being a smart film specially when compared to a lot of dribble that comes out these days. I don't think they made it complex for complexities sake though, I just think its pretty much their style of writing movies, the Nolan brothers have a good amount of talent and this is the kind of films they like to write.

Ba'h what ever I've had my say here. I didn't find it hard to follow, I can't imagine someone with a decent amount of media savvy to them (like the majority of people here) finding it hard to follow.

 

[imperialwar]

Well, I didn't find the whole dream within a dream hard to follow that was a fairly easy concept to grasp.
The thing that i concluded though was the whole thing was a dream sequence constructed by Cobbs own subconcious from start to finish, the concept introduced to Ken Wantanabe's character of the "quest" for acceptance, in this case Cobb's involvement in his wife's suicide.

 

[Rems]

I found it quite easy to follow and understand. I was however impressed at the level of depth it showed for a Hollywood summer blockbuster. But as others have said Hollywood smart is not exactly Eisenstein smart. Just look at the crap they mostly produce.

 

[Assassin Xaero]

I didn't get who the old guy at the table was at the end... but I missed the beginning of it...

 

[notimeforlulz]

Kind of, it was hard to get the plot out of that french chicks horrible acting.

 

[Ickorus]

Wasn't really hard to understand to be honest, when my friends were discussing it before I saw it they were going on about the..

Spoiler

bit where he jumps off the building to escape limbo and they couldn't figure it out and thought he should have died because that's what they said happened if you died in the dream.

 

[Bobbity]

It's not really all that complicated, but if you watch it a second time, then you'll notice a tonne of minor things that you originally missed. They don't further clarify the plot, but they do add some interesting things to it.