Inception

Fast Company’s Co.Design held a competition to design an infographic diagramming the complex plot of the blockbuster movie Inception. My winning entry is fundamentally a timeline of Inception’s dream architecture, with each character’s trajectory represented. Characters are shown dropping in and out of one another’s consciousness as they progress through the dream layers. The movie’s timeframe premise is emphasized; the perception of the passage of time increases with each deeper dream layer. The nested circumferences of a concentric circle grid expand and converge to reflect the scaling timeframes. The timeline is also warped forward into the future reflecting the dreams’ exponential effect on time, allowing each character’s timeline curvature to reflect his or her subjective experience of time.

Watching the film Inception again. This is so good I’m crying. Masterpieces like this remind me that I love speculative fiction, it’s just a fact that often it is done poorly here and there and it breaks the immersion or interest. I know this film has been called cyberpunk, but that it’s not a clear example because it does some of the tropes subtly and others not at all. But I also think I don’t really want cyberpunk, I want this brand of speculative fiction.

Finished it now. Great as always. I don’t really mind, but I think I found few inconsistencies with how the time translates between dreams. I think it was supposed to be 20x per level, but the van dropping from the bridge could not have taken more than few seconds, but Cobb said Arthur would have minutes to do his elaborate drop with the elevator, and it looked like something which would take tens of minutes at least. On the other hand I interpreted that the gunfights in the film are purposefully unreal, ie the fights go partly as the dreamers imagine them and their imaginations are idealized. So in the film’s universe it’s internally consistent how mook bullets never hit. That concept of idealization might be extended, so that it seems we shouldn’t read to deeply into things like the timings.

I like the lore the film has, for example the projected security forces and the limbo. It’s kind of similar to Matrix now that I think about it. Ever since seeing the film for the first time I have yearned for more films (or other material) in the universe with equal amount of depth — so presumably another film by Nolan, which he has hinted for. But just now I also thought that some parts of the setting were probably quite tailored to the story. I mean for example things that seem cool, like the concept of “kicks” and the heist tropes (architect, chemist, thief…). Probably it’s just my poor imagination, but I thought maybe it could be somewhat difficult to make another film in the universe that is close enough to be in the same genre, yet not repeat the previous film too much. Or I believe it could be done, but maybe Nolan thinks that he will have a better shot at it later when he has had time to think and do other stuff on his mind. In a way I respect him not rushing into making a sequel. Also I’m aware Inception probably wasn’t as big commercial success as the Batman films for example, but I don’t think Nolan does films just to reach the widest audience.