Academic

"Inception" -- why no mention of "Dreamscape"?

By Tung Yin

The new Christopher Nolan movie "Inception" opens today, and it's been getting pretty good reviews.  It's about Leonardo DiCaprio as some kind of psychic who can get into your dreams and steal your secrets.  From the previews, it looks like the sequences in a target's subconscious are pretty wild -- buildings crumble or melt, the laws of physics don't apply consistently, and so on.  I have to admit that it looks pretty impressive.

But what's weird is that the reviews I've read compare it to "The Matrix" in terms of mind-blowing CGI, but there's been no reference at all to "Dreamscape" -- a 1984 movie starring Dennis Quaid as a psychic . . . who can enter people's dreams.  Any movie that has a character (the bad guy) in a dream sequence wield nunchucks while saying "I saw 'Enter the Dragon' 87 times" is awesome in my book.

Granted, Nolan's pedigree as a director suggests that "Inception" will be more thought-provoking than "Dreamscape" was, but still, it's an obvious comparison.  I guess movie memories go back only 25 years?

Full post as published by The Yin Blog on July 16, 2010 (boomark / email).