INCEPTION thoughts...
I know Inception came out about 5 months ago, but I've been thinking about it quite a bit recently.
First off, I need to say that I really enjoy the film greatly. I seem to enjoy many films about dreams... Dreamscape, Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer, Waking Life, Vanilla Sky, Total Recall (heh.) And to be honest, the "creating reality while you're in it" aspect totally fascinates me. Probably one of the reasons I enjoy Minecraft so much, but I digress.
I am sad to say that there are a few aspects to the rules in the film that I don't quite understand or agree with.
1 - Time Compression
Okay, so people go to sleep and join up in the dream world. And since the unconscious brain works faster, there's a 20x time compression. Five minutes in reality end up being 1 hour in the dream world. I understand this, and we're all good here. My problem is that when they do the dream-within-a-dream that things fall apart for me. If they're all already in a dream world then they're all already working at this 20x speedup provided by their real brain's speedup. If they go another level deeper, their dream world is still limited by their physical brains, so there can't be another 20x speedup. So, 1 hour in the dream world will be 1 hour in the "next level", as I see it. But it does make for a great mechanism for the film.
2 - Nested Dreaming
There's no reason why within a dream, you would need the equipment to go another level deeper. they're already in a dream world... all you need is for the architect to send everyone into the next level. Technology has no meaning inside the dream world. Perhaps they use the machine as a kind of familair mechanism to get another level in... Even though they don't actually need it, they use it as a kind of ladder to help them get where they need to go. Okay. nevermind this one. I figured it out. heh.
3 - Zero g in subsequent levels
When the van is shooting off the bridge, everyone inside is in freefall. (I'll overlook the fact that this is actually within a dream, so body physiology shouldn't even be a factor here) This means that within their dream, they are floating in space, and in the hotel, they certainly are. My problem from here is that the dreamer in this level is in zero-g, just like their bodies are one level up in the van... which means that all of them should be floating above the ground in their dream one level down as well. This means that their snowy trip to the hospital should also be in zero-g. Sound follows down the dream levels, so gravity should as well, especially considering that the inner ear functions were not inhibited...
I think the sign of a great film is one where you see flaws, or have problems with aspects of it, but still enjoy watching it. This is certainly one of these kinds of films.