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Inception Explained: a really cool scrolling animation of the plot

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Re: Inception Explained: a really cool scrolling animation of the plot

#71

Post by mechanical_fish »

Avshalom wrote: post #67
mechanical_fish wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the plot of Inception really is very complicated for many people, but probably not if you're a computer programmer in which case you literally have years of formal education in the structures that this plot is built on, and even a formal vocabulary to describe it with. (e.g. " Inception is a movie that keeps pushing other movies onto the stack.") You're suffering the mathematician's disease, ably satirized by Fey…

>No, the plot of Inception really is very complicated, unless you're a computer programmer Or a carpenter. Or a secretary. ... chef, janitor, burgerflipper, librarian, bassist, cop.

Sigh. It's so exhausting to have to write bug-free prose.

I apologize. Let's try that again.

What I meant to say:

Some people do not claim to understand Inception all that well. Some do. And some understand it so well that they go out of their way to publicly state their annoyance that everyone on earth doesn't see how obvious it all is. I venture to guess that computer programmers are disproportionally likely to be members of the second and third groups. (Please note that I have said nothing about carpenters! I didn't mean to say a thing about carpenters!!)

EDIT: Incidentally, I'm upvoting you even though your razor-sharp criticism makes me do more work. ;) These downvotes! They are like mosquitoes!

Re: Inception Explained: a really cool scrolling animation of the plot

#72

Post by harshreality »

ctdonath wrote: post #44
outworlder wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joel Spolsky says that some individuals appear to have been born without the part of the brain that understands pointers and recursion. Maybe that's the case here?

Dunno about "without", but certainly not well used. Once explained recursion to someone using a simple programming example; we stepped thru it for two hours before he got it.

I would have thought everyone learned that concept in grade school. Is it legal to graduate someone before they understand mathematical induction?

Re: Inception Explained: a really cool scrolling animation of the plot

#73

Post by mortenjorck »

jerf wrote: post #63
3pt14159 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is something that most people missed: Reality was a dream the whole time. There are hints throughout the movie, but the entire thing was a dream. Most people point to the wedding ring theory as evidence that it wasn't, but that just shows the lead's state of mind, not reality.

Word of God is that this is not true and that the top level of reality was indeed reality. The camera panning away from the spinning top before it fell down was supposed to represent that Cobb is now dedicated to his children and no longer worried about whether it's reality, not a low-class cheap mindscrew about whether it's all a dream or not. Note that having the whole thing be a dream completely drains it of all i…

The cut away from the totem was simply the film's final inception: a seed of doubt in the viewer's mind.

Re: Inception Explained: a really cool scrolling animation of the plot

#74

Post by natep »

Jabbles wrote: post #45

Perhaps someone here can explain something that has annoyed me since I saw Inception. Falling (accelerating under gravity) is meant to "wake you up". Whilst falling you feel weightless - almost by definition (if you and the weighing machine are accelerating in sync, you apply no pressure to it). For some reason falling causes the loss of gravity in the dream world, and there's that whole scene about "recreating gravi…

Because it's not the falling, it's the jolt of landing. When in free fall, you are not actually accelerating. In terms of landing, though, it doesn't matter if you hit the ground or if, say, the bottom of an elevator hits you.

Re: Inception Explained: a really cool scrolling animation of the plot

#75

Post by javajosh »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #70
pharrington wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be sure, you're getting downvoted because you're claiming non-programmers can't easily understand the concept of an activity having -multiple layers-. An execution stack is but one example of this. The construction of a cake, for example, is another.

It's nice for someone to actually say so, thanks. I'm getting tired of all the reflexive, unexplained downvotes. HN is an unfriendly and cold place, these days. Meanwhile, sure, it's easy to understand that Inception is a cake. I'll concede that. But: it's not so easy to frost all three layers of the cake at the same time. The part where Inception gets tricky for me is where they start intercutting from layer to laye…

There seems to be a pervasive misunderstanding that downvoting is for what you disagree with, rather than for comments that do not add to the discussion. That is, downvotes are for noise, upvotes are for signals, and "signal" includes things you disagree with.

My new hobby (in the XKCD sense) is upvoting every well-reasoned argument that I disagree with on HN. :)

Re: Inception Explained: a really cool scrolling animation of the plot

#76

Post by Jabbles »

natep wrote: post #74
Jabbles wrote: post #45

Perhaps someone here can explain something that has annoyed me since I saw Inception. Falling (accelerating under gravity) is meant to "wake you up". Whilst falling you feel weightless - almost by definition (if you and the weighing machine are accelerating in sync, you apply no pressure to it). For some reason falling causes the loss of gravity in the dream world, and there's that whole scene about "recreating gravi…

Because it's not the falling, it's the jolt of landing. When in free fall, you are not actually accelerating. In terms of landing, though, it doesn't matter if you hit the ground or if, say, the bottom of an elevator hits you.

I haven't seen the film since it came out, so I may be mistaken. Didn't Cobb demonstrate to Ariadne that you wake up when you sense yourself falling? By tipping Arthur's chair over as he was dreaming? Arthur (if it was that character) didn't fall on the floor, there was no jolt. Also, doesn't the van land in the water, and no one wakes up?

Re: Inception Explained: a really cool scrolling animation of the plot

#77

Post by throwaway1972 »

sp332 wrote: post #33
evincarofautumn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not alone. If you want a movie with actual complexity, watch Primer. Oh, you’ll probably think you get it the first time through, because the writing is great. Then you’ll rewatch it a couple times and see just how much you missed, because the writing is brilliant .

Completely relevant https://xkcd.com/657/ Edit: This is completely on-topic, why the downvotes? Edit2: originally said "obligatory" but maybe that's too meme-ish for HN.

Maybe you should have linked to an actually useful attempt at breaking down the very complex timeline of primer:

http://www.screened.com/primer/16-61068/all-images/132-63755...

Re: Inception Explained: a really cool scrolling animation of the plot

#79

Post by aggie »

agscala wrote: post #43
Pewpewarrows wrote: post #3

This was really well done. I'd just like to point out a few things, as someone who's watched Inception way too many times: 1) It is never said that 3 levels is the maximum depth of a dream until Limbo occurs. My interpretation has always been that Cobb and Ariadne hooked up a shared-dream machine to Fisher's dead body, which brought them into Limbo. 2) Why are there 2 Limbos? There's the one Cobb and Ariadne follow F…

Another issue I had is this: In the scene when they're in the hotel, they lose gravity after the van drives off the bridge. Then they go further to the winter place and gravity has been restored despite the fact they're floating around in the hotel.

The gravity/kick effect only effectively permeates the next level down. This is why they need to set up a chain of kicks to move all they back to the fist dream level. In the third level, they are only subtly aware of the kick from level one, and one of the characters mentions they "missed" it, as in they didn't coordinate kicks.

The dilution of the gravity effect seems consistent with exponential expansion of time.

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