Inception

Wow! It's not often that I'm willing to pay to see a movie twice! But Inception was worth it, especially the second time around. (As a side note, I went to see How to tame your dragon twice also, but the second time wasn't as good as the first, sadly.)

So if you haven't seen Inception yet, don't read this post. Spoilers!

After my first screening, my brain was reeling for hours, days, trying to figure out limbo, time frames, dreamers vs. subjects, etc. I was also convinced that Leonardo was still dreaming in the last scene. If fact, I was convinced that he'd been dreaming for a lot of the movie... and this was somewhat disappointing to me. It reminded me of elementary school, when we were assigned a short story essay and were told to make the ending surprising. I remember making my "surprise" ending a wake-up scene... gasp! It was all a dream! My teacher was not impressed and wrote in the margin "pas très original, tu peux faire mieux!" and I was devastated. So ended my short story career. So needless to say that though Sh. and I (Sh. went to see both screenings with me) were both convinced that Leonardo was sleeping at the end, I didn't want that to be the case.

So round two! This time it was Sh. once more with her husband and my other friend So. (Sh.'s husband's name also starts with an S... ggrrr) This time around I found the shooting scenes rather long, and the whole winter world sequence hilarious: who thought of snowmobiles pulling skiers with guns would be a good idea? Still, a lot more things made sense, and best of all, all three of us who saw it for a second time were convinced that in fact Leonardo was awake in the end. :D This made me happy. Why did we come to that conclusion? For one, the kids were older looking, and So. was convinced that their clothing was somewhat different than the first time. Also, I thought that their voices on the phone sounded older too. For another, we came to the conclusion that Ellen Page and Leonardo did not go into limbo together, but into his dream, which brought them into his old limbo. Then after Ellen Page leaves on the kick, Leonardo dies because all the buildings were falling, and then falls into limbo. This explains why he ends up on the beach again, and why the Japanese guy is so old and Leonardo is not. And its at that point, after the sedatives in the plane wear off, that they all wake up! I don't know if this makes sense, but that's what I'm going with!