I think Inception is one of my favorite sci-fi films already. It's probably in my personal top 20. But in my opinion it's Nolan's best film by far, and it's probably even my favorite film about dreams or nested realities. I've had a ton of lucid dreams, and I have to see every movie that touches on the subject, just to see if it's anything like the dreams I've had. The idea itself isn't new, but I don't think I've ever seen it done this well in a film before. I saw one critic saying it was ripping off The Matrix! What the shit is that? As if The Matrix invented the idea of "it's all a dream world" in the year 1999? The idea has been a part of many religions and philosophies for thousands of years. Ugh, I hate critics who are so willfully ignorant. It's like saying The Terminator invented robots, or Lady Gaga invented dance music.
Bleck.... anyway...
It definitely blew The Matrix out of the water with its characters, story, and action. I love Yuen Wo-Ping's choreography in the Matrix, and in all his movies really, but he's got nothing on the hallway stuff in Inception. Whoa.
The nested dream layers really reminded me of eXistenZ, but the subconscious projections of the wife subplot really got me to care about the characters more. And I thought it was great how each layer of the subconscious was so completely different, and had different manifestations of Mal. (If you haven't seen eXistenZ, it's basically the same dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream type of story, but instead of dreams, it's multiple layers of virtual reality video games. And it's directed by Cronenberg and stars Jude Law. It's awesome.)
Also, it's always great to see one of these dream movies use the dreams as a plot device rather than the point of the whole film. The dreams were an excuse to have badass action scenes, many different locations, crazy physics, and battles with your own subconscious. But it still remained a solid action/thriller instead of a philosophical treatise about what's real or not, like some other meandering dream-logic films like Waking Life.
The group dream stuff was done pretty well in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (I highly recommend it to all nerds, just for the Dungeons and Dragons kid in a wheelchair who turns into "the wizard master" in his dreams to fight Freddy Krueger), and Satoshi Kon's Paprika, one of my favorite animes of all time. Paprika is about a similar device for group dreaming, but for therapeutic purposes instead of theft. But the dreams in Paprika are craaaaaaaaaazier.
Honestly, I felt like Inception was a great blend of eXistenZ (for all the nested reality and "wait, whose dream is this?" moments), Paprika (for the technology, dream-hopping, and the "dream detective" plot), and Solaris (for the sci-fi ghost of an ex-wife haunting you forever angle). But... I thought those were all great tastes that tasted great together. I give it uh... 4.5 stars out of 5. I dock half a star for that horribly cheesy "dream a little bigger" line during that one shootout. I'm pretty sure that line was written for the trailer, but it's too cheesy for the film in my opinion. The whole movie was serious business and then he says some stupid one-liner, and it hurt. There goes your perfect score, stupid movie.
Whoa. Oops. Sorry about that wall of text. Got carried away.
TL;DRL: 4.5 out of 5. Loved it. Favorite dream movie. Nolan's best.
