writing. photography. film criticism
It’s been reported that some kind of remake and/or prequel is in the works for Ridley Scott’s 1982 cyberpunk film Blade Runner. As a fan of both the film and the original novel I find this somewhat troubling but also rather amusing. It seems that no other story has had such a complicated history with the freedom of creative expression, and now it seems they want to open this can of worms yet again.
While waiting in the security line at Newark Airport last December, I had a minor revelation. It was a terrible line, probably the worst I had seen in my 4 years of flying home from the East Coast, so there was not much for me to do but look around and taken in the sights. That’s when I noticed the signs.
They’re at every airport, the helpful “baggage claim” or “terminal” placards that help you find your way during what is an unavoidably disorienting experience. I stared at the “C-2 Security Checkpoint: All Gates” display board for a while before I recognized the distant echoes of authoritarianism in signage, and its relationship to screenwriting.
Okay, that’s unfair. Inception didn’t win Best Original Screenplay because the Academy preferred The King’s Speech, and with good reason. It was a great film built upon the foundation of a powerful script. (Why Hans Zimmer didn’t win Best Original Score is beyond me though…)
The most common criticism I’ve heard regarding the execution of Inception was that it felt like too much of an information dump. Nearly everyone I spoke to who disliked the film cited this as a reason. Even among those who did like it, they found the numerous explanatory sequences to be draining and a hindrance to the action of the film.
Here’s my reaction: I honestly didn’t mind. I realized that there was a sea of exposition to wade through, but it didn’t bother me. Christopher Nolan created a complex alternate universe and then did his job as screenwriter. He made the rules of this new word accessible to his audience so that we could suspend disbelief. I see nothing wrong with this. It is the task of every writer who dabbles in speculative fiction, where the traditional logic is lost in favor of more fantastical approaches to looking at the world. So where did Inception go wrong?
© 2024 Mariel Calloway
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