I was talking with an old friend of mine about the summer releases this year and our general feeling of utter blah-ness about the whole summer season, when I said to him, "Well, look at it this way: at least you have Inception to look forward to," naming the upcoming film in which Leonardo DiCaprio takes a stroll through other people's dreams, directed by Christopher Nolan.

"Oh, that," he said. "I don't get that one at all. It's the same basic concept as Dreamscape, and I already saw that. I don't know why anyone would get excited about what's basically yet another remake."

One reason, of course, is that Dreamscape came out 25 years ago, i.e., at a time when a lot of Inception's opening-weekend audience was still in a haploid state. In that respect, it's similar to asking why tween girls are excited about the Jonas Brothers when there's already been the New Kids on the Block.


I have a tween-age daughter here at home. Every time I point out to her that there's an earlier analogue of every single piece of music she likes, she looks at me as if to say, You poor, sad, balding little man. You just don't get it, do you? She does it with love, mind you. But she still does it. Likewise, telling a 21-year-old guy that he can get pretty much the same experience with a quarter-century-old flick starring Dennis Quaid and directed by the guy who did The Stepfather that he'll get with a Leonardo DiCaprio movie directed by the guy who did The Dark Knight is likely to get you a similar result.

But beyond that, I would take exception to the argument that Inception is basically a remake. What the two films have in common is a central conceit, or plot point -- in this case, both films feature a man who can enter other people's dreams and, in doing so, learn things about them or change the course of their lives. It's a pretty specific plot point, to be sure. But it's also like saying that, because the film 9 features a main character made out of bits of cloth that tries to rescue a fellow living doll from the clutches of evil, it's a remake of Toy Story. Anyone who's seen both films knows that's not the case; despite certain thematic elements, they're different stories. Heck, Dark City and The Matrix have so much in common -- including production dates -- that the latter used the leftover sets of the former. And yet, for all their similarities, they are two very different viewing experiences.

I've been pretty consistent in my opinion that Hollywood goes a little too often to the well of sequels and remakes, but, philosophically, I don't really have any problem with filmmakers dipping out of the same well of inspiration or playing with the same basic ideas and running variations of those themes, especially when the filmmakers themselves have wildly divergent perspectives. As an example of this, I give you Michael Herr's Vietnam War memoir, Dispatches, which served as a partial inspiration for at least two films. In the hands of Francis Ford Coppola, it was transmuted into Apocalypse Now. In the hands of Stanley Kubrick, Full Metal Jacket. That's not a bad spread there.

Inception doesn't have similarities just to Dreamscape, of course. You could spend a merry day name checking influences from a number of cinematic predecessors, including the aforementioned Matrix and Dark City and, of course, director Christopher Nolan's own Batman movies. But for me, as a viewer, the question isn't whether a filmmaker uses the same basic ideas as one film or borrows other ideas from another film and outright steals them from a third. The question for me is what the filmmakers do once they start putting those ideas together as a film. Do it poorly as a filmmaker, and you'll be told you've created a cheap knockoff. Do it well, and you'll be told you've breathtakingly reinvented the concept.

And this, to my mind, is a fine reason for my friend to check out Inception, even if he's seen Dreamscape: to watch a filmmaker either master his influences and predecessors or be swallowed up by them. In that respect, my friend has access to a joy that the 21-year-old who's never seen Dreamscape does not: the excitement of watching something that's been done before get done again -- possibly (and definitely, in this case) even better.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 at 10:01 pm and is filed under Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.