One of my intentions in doing the Film at 11 podcast is to challenge my children by making them watch movies that may be a little outside their comfort zones. For my son Thomas, that means I subjected him to Christopher Nolan’s 2010 mind-bender Inception this week. Although I knew Thomas would enjoy the action and VFX parts, I wasn’t sure how he’d react to the convoluted plot. To my relief, he followed it quite well and mostly liked the movie, aside perhaps for its needlessly-protracted 2.5-hour length. I can’t blame him on that point.
Rewatching Inception was something of a challenge to myself as well. It’s the last Christopher Nolan movie I actually enjoyed, before the director’s pretentious indulgences became too unbearable for me anymore. Yet Inception is also very much a huge step on the path that would lead to dreck like The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar. The film masquerades at being much smarter than it actually is, and most of its pseudo-science notions about dreaming are way off-base from the way human minds actually dream. All the dreams in Inception follow a consistent logic and structure and set of rules, which real dreams absolutely do not. The central concept of inception itself – implanting an idea into someone’s head via their dreams – seems ludicrous when you realize that most people totally forget everything they dreamed about almost immediately after waking up.
I feared that this revisit would make me start hating a movie I used to like. Fortunately, I wouldn’t go that far. I still find the film enjoyable for the most part, so long as I don’t give much credence to how intellectual it pretends (and fails) to be.
| Title: | Inception |
| Year of Release: | 2010 |
| Director: | Christopher Nolan |
| Watched On: | Blu-ray |
| Also Available On: | 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray HBO Max Various VOD rental and purchase platforms |
The Blu-ray
Warner Bros. first brought Inception to Blu-ray in December 2010. I bought a SteelBook copy at that time, and I’ve stuck with it even though a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray later came along in 2017. I’ll concede that the 4K version may well look better, but this isn’t a movie I care enough about to upgrade unless the Blu-ray is noticeably deficient.
As far as that goes, I think the Blu-ray still holds up pretty well. The 2.40:1 image is just a touch soft and a bit dim. Neither is problematic enough to be bothersome. It still looks fine in most respects. However, the disc leaves enough room for improvement that 4K resolution and an HDR grade could benefit it.
Considering that Christopher Nolan doesn’t particularly like surround sound, the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack has more activity in the rear channels than I expected. If certainly not the most aggressive surround mix I’ve heard, a fair number of discrete effects pan to the back of the soundstage. The same track is also found on the 4K UHD; anyone hoping for an Atmos remix shouldn’t hold their breath, as the director doesn’t like that format at all.
More to Nolan’s interest, the soundtrack is quite heavy on bass. The droning Hans Zimmer score BRAAAAAAHHHHHHMMMMMMs as big and loudly as any Zimmer score ever has. Gunshots and explosions also hit with plenty of punch. At least one bass sweep dug deep enough to cause something in my room to rattle. That said, that majority bass is focused more on volume than extension.
Disc 1 annoyingly opens with a dated trailer plugging the WB Insider Rewards program that shut down in 2012. The disc also has a BD-Live link that’s long-since dead.
The centerpiece of the supplement package is “Extraction Mode,” a fancy branding for the Warner Bros. “In-Movie Experience.” In this case, rather than true interactive picture-in-picture content, the movie instead pauses at selected moments and branches off to short featurettes pertinent to the last scene played. Frankly, I found this annoying. Thankfully, the disc offers another option to simply watch the featurettes on their own without playing the entire movie. I expect most viewers will prefer to do that.
Disc 2 is dedicated to additional features, including an hour-long documentary hosted by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, audio-only excerpts from the movie’s soundtrack album in 5.1 surround, a couple art galleries, some trailers and TV spots, and more disabled BD-Live junk.
Related
- Christopher Nolan (director)
- Tom Hardy
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt
The Video File Blog 
Funny. Most people would call ‘Interstellar’ his masterpiece. Just like you, I don’t like it. Not because I consider it ‘dreck’, just because I didn’t get it. Made me feel stupid. Need to watch it again.
However, I do genuinely like post-Inception fare like ‘Dunkirk’ and ‘Oppenheimer’. I didn’t get ‘TENET’ either.
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Interstellar is a profoundly stupid movie pretending to be smart. The film presents itself as being based on hard science, but then the plot is ultimately about magical time-traveling love rays from the Fifth Dimension. I loathe that movie.
This Honest Trailers takedown totally nails it:
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I do wonder why so many adore it.
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