2. Inception- Revised

                I originally had other ideas for what I was going to write about for Inception. Then we watched eXistenZ in class. I noticed a lot of parallels between the two movies so I decided to redo my entry on Inception.

When you strip each movie down they are both about the same thing, multiple levels of reality tucked inside each other. For Inception it was levels of dreaming, by the end of the movie they were three levels deep in a person’s dream. In eXistenZ they used a video game that created a game within the game.

Both dreams and games offer the same medium though. They both are typical ways for people to escape reality. In a game you are literally given another character to be. One of the most popular types of games is a role-playing game. In these you assume the role of another character; your life is fleshed out for you. The only limitation is the game system. In dreams you are still you, but you can do whatever you want in a dream, your only limited by your imagination. In the end, both act as ways for people to escape the everyday struggles of life.

Both movies also address what happens when an artificial reality becomes so strong it blurs the lines between what’s real and what isn’t. Mal’s death happened because she had spent so much time in limbo she wasn’t sure what reality was anymore. She believed that dying would wake her up to the real world, but she was in it all along, her mind had just been corrupt by spending 50 years’ worth of time in dream world. We also see toward the end of eXistenZ the main characters slowly lose touch with what is a game and what isn’t. As there is a battle going on Allegra and Ted aren’t sure if they’re in reality or the game still. This doesn’t stop Allegra from killing people without a second thought though. Her excuse was all based around this being in a game. For her being in the game meant a loss of human morale. She wasn’t 100 percent sure she was in the game though so to keep that morale in what could have been the real world is slightly disturbing.

The ending of the two movies is where I see the most overlap between the two. In eXistenZ we see everyone wake up from the game (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3f521sUTaE). This seems to be the highest layer of reality now. As the shooting goes off though the very last shot is the man who played the waiter saying “aren’t we still in the game?” This is very similar to Inception’s ending scene (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnsahVaa_0Q). We see Cobb get back to the plane which is the highest level of reality and he gets to return home to his kids. He goes to spin his top and we see the top waver, but we never actually get to see if it falls down. This gives the idea of is Cobb still in a dream? Both these movies end with that same question of what is truly reality. This blurs the lines between realities even more. Throughout the movies we assumed that they were at least in control of their alternate realities. That is something that could be done one day in real life. Extreme alternate realities could be created. These end scenes bring up the question of how do you control these realities? Can you even control these realities?

That’s the mystery of these two movies. The plots are very different. This shows that it’s not just one sort of alternate reality either. Dreams and games are completely different. The underlying themes are the same though. Alternate realities are dangerous. They have their own sets or rules. Most importantly though, what happens when the realities start to blur? Or worse, what happens when the artificial reality becomes more desirable than the real one?

movieclips "eXistenZ (10/10) Movie CLIP - Are We Still In the Game? (1999) HD" Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 2 Oct. 2011.

Nolan, Christopher, dir. Inception. CD-ROM.

thequizandquestions "Inception - Ending Scene Full (5/5) (HD)" Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 7 Mar. 2013.