Bigger than Batman: Christopher Nolan says 'Inception' is 'the biggest challenge I've taken on'



So what exactly is “Inception”? That’s a popular question after a visually dazzling but enigmatic trailer was released for a film that didn’t exactly clear things up with its title.

Is it an international thriller? A story of madness and lost love? Or Hollywood’s very first metaphysical heist movie? The answer is “all of the above,” according to writer-director Christopher Nolan, whose follow-up to “The Dark Knight” seems to have Ian Fleming, the Wachowski Brothers and Sigmund Freud as its spiritual advisors.

“I think we’ve put a lot of different things into the pot with this one,” Nolan said this week during a break from the editing bay.

“I grew up watching James Bond films and loving those and watching spy movies with their globetrotting sensibility.... We get to do that here, not just geographically but also in time and dimensions of reality as well. We get to make a movie that’s expansive, I suppose you’d say, in four dimensions.”

The Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. release is shaping up as one of the most intriguing releases of 2010. Leonardo DiCaprio leads a cast that includes Marion Cotillard, Cillian Murphy, Michael Caine, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page and Ken Watanabe.

The film was produced by Emma Thomas, who is Nolan's wife as well as his career partner. She said that "Inception" is a story that requires a huge canvas. The pair didn't set out looking for a way to top their Batman epic in scope, that's just where Nolan's "Inception" script took them.

“It’s something that we had been talking about on and off for seven or eight years," Thomas said. "Coming off of the ‘The Dark Knight,’ the only thing we really knew is that we wanted to do something more personal. It seemed like the right time to do this. The fact that it’s really just an enormous movie -- that wasn’t ever really a factor in the decision. This story lends itself to a movie of this size."

A key part of the premise is corporate espionage by way of dream invasion, but motives and even reality are slippery in a film that toys with perception as its travels through time and space. The crew covered a lot of territory too, filming in six countries.

“This is the biggest challenge I’ve taken on to this point,” said Nolan, who may return to Gotham City for his next feature. “We’re trying to tell a story on a massive scale, a true blockbuster scale – the biggest I’ve ever been involved with. We tried to make a very large-scale film with ‘The Dark Knight’ and with this one we wanted to push that even further.”

Leonardo DiCaprio Says Inception “Didn’t Make Sense to Many of Us When We Were Doing It”

The material and its complexity are what I’m attracted to…I’ve been lucky to work with people who want to tell stories that hit on different cylinders simultaneously. ‘Shutter Island’ is definitely that. ‘Inception’ is the same. It is Chris delving into dream psychoanalysis and, at the same time, making a high-octane, surreal film that came from his mind. He wrote the entire thing, and it all made sense to him. It didn’t make sense to many of us when we were doing it. We had to do a lot of detective work (laughing) to figure out what the movie was about.

I watched the trailer and was like wth... the whole street and buildings bending like that... 

Looks set to be the year's most anticipated flick!

Haha...C. Nolan managed to make one trailer that nobody can really understand!!!   
I guess we shud wait for the next trailer then

New Inception Tidbits: Plot Details Confirmed, Running Time and Conception



There hasn’t been much new on the Inception front recently, but I thought I’d cover some of the recent tidbits we’ve missed.

/Film Shane T informs us that in the February issue of Empire Magazine, there is a very brief mention of Inception in the “On-Set Preview” section, where it states that writer/director Christopher Nolan came up with the idea for the movie when he was only 16 years old. Crazy…

Secondly, Playlist has also reprinted a quote Nolan gave the magazine which further confirms the leaked plot line from last year:

“Basically the film deals with levels of reality, and perceptions of reality which is something I’m very interested in. Its an action film set in a contemporary world, but with a slight science-fiction bent to it. Cobb [Leonardo DiCaprio's character], who is the center of things and expert in a particular technology that the film revolves around, has put this team around him [Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon Levitt]. It’s very much an ensemble film structured somewhat as a heist movie. It’s an action adventure that spans the globe.”

And lastly, star Leonardo Dicaprio was recently interviewed by movies.ie where he was asked about Inception, and answered:

“I can tell you it’s about two hours long, give or take,” DiCaprio smiles. “Anything more than that, and Chris has vowed to have me strung up by my tongue…”

Christopher Nolan Filmed Some of Inception Using 65mm, Calls 3D “An Interesting Development”

“We have the highest quality image of any film that’s being made and that allows us to reformat the film for any distribution form that we’d like to put it in. We’re definitely going to do an IMAX release. We’re excited about doing that and using our original negative 65mm photography to maximize the effect of that release.”

“3D I think is an interesting development in movies or the resurgence of 3D. It’s something we’re looking at and watching. There are certain limitations of shooting in 3D. You have to shoot on video, which I’m not a fan of. I like shooting on film. And so then you’re looking at post-conversion processes which are moving forward in very exciting ways.”