Inception: Thoughts and Questions

Spoiler Alert: If you haven't seen "Inception" and want to, stop reading now. 

I saw Inception yesterday. It was a decent movie, but I didn't find it as amazing as people are claiming it to be.

Of course, it's a crime if you don't like a movie which is extremely popular and which everyone else around you likes. The movie's faithful army will try to defend it ferociously. Questioning your intelligence or giving arguments why you must be wrong. I have experienced this, when I said I didn't like "The Dark Knight" and "3 Idiots."

But I'm not saying I don't like "Inception." In fact I'm saying it's all right. Though that apparently is not sufficient -- I should love the movie!

That aside (and this is where the spoiler warning kicks in), I do have some questions from the movie:

1. Why should a dream end because you die in the dream? What stops you from being a part of the dream, but not be alive? I mean, after all, it's a dream.
2. Why does Cobb (Leonardo Di Caprio) trust Ariadne (Ellen Page) with so many of his secrets so quickly?
3. When Cobb's wife, Mal, kills Fischer Jr, why does he (Fischer Jr) end up in the next level of the dream and not go into "limbo"? Same for Saito.
4. During the final sequence, what's the kick for the 1st level of the dream? How do they wake up at end of the flight journey to LA? As the ending is a bit fuzzy and you are forced to question if everyone even does wake up, this might be hard to answer. 

Update: Certain theories which answer the questions above and a few more can be found here. 

3 Idiots

People are raving about 3 Idiots everywhere. People like it so much, that talking anything negative about the movie is a crime. The movie-hall where I went to watch it had it on for something like 12 shows -- 12 EFFING SHOWS!! I remember a time where there were only 4 shows in a movie hall and the tickets cost 40 bucks -- given my age, I also remember Keo-Karpin, Rasna, and two rabbits from Lijjat Pappad. Coming back ... yes the movie ... and here is where I put the SPOILER ALERT!

With that out of the way, 3 Idiots is a movie with the message that students should study what interests them rather than what will land them a lucrative job. If I were to describe the general theme of the movie in one word, it's: "Independent-Thinking" (yes, those were two words, but look how smartly I hyphenated them)

While watching the movie, I felt that there were two forces pulling the movie apart. One being the good part (for lack of words in my vocabulary) which showed the real deal in engineering colleges and which made me laugh. The other part being the cringe-worthy part which showed Bollywood illogic in all its charms. The good part reigned the first half of the movie. The cringe-worthy part unfortunately took us to the end.

There are jokes in the movie which have been lifted off the net. A certain part even seemed to have come from the book "The Kite Runner". So if we think about it, although the makers of the movie wanted the message of independent and original thinking to get to the audience, they themselves didn't get it completely.

Final word: watch it once. Or if you can wait, just download it off the web (legally) after 12 weeks and don't spend money on those expensive tickets.

Questions from Avatar

I saw James Cameron's Avatar yesterday. I liked the movie, but have some questions (questions may contain spoilers ... ALERT!):

• Why does the Pandora wildlife allow "bonding" (the connection they make via those worm-like things at the end of their hair)? What is in it for them -- there doesn't look to be an evolutionary advantage? Who would want to be controlled by someone else just to (sometimes) serve and die (did I just define soldiers)?
  

Figure 1: Thanators are the meanest in the Pandora wildlife. Not many people like them.

• Where are the f*cking robots? Come on, I mean. If we have rubbished earth, mastered space-travel and found life on another planet, we would (should? (must?)) have honed our present-day robots. And if so, why not send them to battle instead of humans?
  
• More of a philosophical question: how do you determine, which is the most intelligent life-form on a planet? Do we just assume that whoever looks closest to human beings, is the most intelligent? The Na'vi happened to be the most human like. Apart from the fact that they have hair which bonded, every other aspect is human: looks and body structure, red blood, hunter gatherer, bipeds, sleep, their own language, rituals, etc. In fact Na'vi's are just the regular folks who live in jungles in planet earth. And we have our sympathies towards them just because they look like us?! I mean, who was rooting for good old Thanator (Figure 1), except me, when he was trying to kill Jake Sully. I ask: is it OK to kill Thanators, but not the Na'vi?
• Why were the main ship's glass walls not vulnerable to the Na'vi arrows, but those of the choppers were?

  Answered (source):

  However, it is rumored that a Na’vi firing in a vertical attack dive can generate enough combined velocity (between the 40-meter-per-second release-velocity of the arrow from the bow, and the 120 knot dive speed) that the two-meter long arrow can hit with sufficient kinetic energy to penetrate the Scorpion canopy if fired at close range.

  
  
• What would happen if two Na'vi hair-bonded? Who would control whom?

Figure 2: The Na'vi are blue and angry. Bonus question: what would happen if someone cut off a Na'vi's hair? Who is their barber?

• During the final bombing, in all their wisdom, why do the humans choose to literally throw explosives out of the main ship? And such explosives which explode, without a detonator, on just contact? The attack on the home-tree was impressive, with all those rocket like missiles. But no, for the Tree of Souls, we will just dump some explosives labeled ... "explosives" (duh!).
• And continuing on the attack on the Tree of Souls ... did the humans leave their entire base unguarded and take each and every soldier for the attack? If not, then how did the Na'vi conquer Hell's Gate (the base) so easily?
• Who amongst us believes that there will be a sequel? I for one do and am hoping that it does. I mean come on, if I were the CEO of RDA (the evil corporation exploiting Pandora), apart from being extremely handsome, I would also be quite pissed-off that a bunch of indigenous folks have stopped my mining operation because a trigger-happy general cut down a tree. And I would want to send in more forces, and get my base back.

  And if I were Jake Sully, I would know that this is going to happen and would be busy training the Na'vi in the art of explosives and gun warfare. Maybe I will fix couple of Gun Turrets on a Thanator, maybe people will start liking Thanators because of this, maybe the Thanator population will become happier, maybe more people will start hair-bonding with Thanators ... Ah! What a pretty Pandora!
  

Routine Post

• I have been having a nice relaxed long weekend. Yesterday and today, I have done nothing but stay at home, eat, sleep and play the guitar. It has been a long time since I completely lazed out on a weekend, and I was missing it.
• Songs which I have been trying to play (and sing along) are "Make You Feel Better" and "Desecration Smile". Both by Red Hot Chili Pepper and are beautiful songs. The chords are pretty simple. It's just that I suck at singing. Interesting side note: a few days back I thought I had "invented" a strumming pattern (rhythm) of my own, just to discover that it's actually the same as the one used in "Desecration Smile". Anu Malik, I empathize with you.
• I saw the movie 13-B on Saturday at PVR. Looks like the recession has hit the movie goers as well, because we booked the tickets on the same day (earlier you could never get weekend tickets, unless you were booking on Wednesday) and managed to get it! The movie is supposed to be a horror movie, but the director has tried to squeeze in comedy, songs, family-drama, sex and violence. It's three hours long and I actually felt that it was a good time-pass (although that could very well be because I was in a really good (crazy) mood). Is it scary? Nah.
  
• I'm having serious doubts about continuing my kickboxing classes. The pain in my right shin, from the last sparring session, is still there. The cuts which I got on my lips haven't healed, but have turned into mouth ulcers which hurt me with every gulp of water or food. The risk of injury weighs quite heavily on my head.
  

Cheeni Kum

I didn't like it. Maybe it was because of that 6 year old kid in the movie - the one having blood cancer - I found her very irritating. Or maybe its just too much of Amitabh Bachchan.

Shootout at Lokhandwala

The movie is so immature that I could figure out that I'm going to regret watching it within the first 2 minutes. The direction is amateurish. The editing haphazard. The actors are not good either. I wonder why so many famous actors would have done such a shitty movie; maybe for the money. In fact I would rate this lower than Spiderman-3.
Don't go and watch it!

Spiderman 3 sucks

The movie reminded me a typical 80's Bollywood movie. Its 3 hours long. Has plenty of emotional sequences. Confused parallel unconnected story lines. And at the end someone else takes the bullet for the hero and refuses to go to the hospital while he is dying a la "मुझे hospital ले जाने से कुछ नही होगा। मै यही ठीक हूँ।" Add around 8-10 Anu Malik songs and you would have a Bollywood masala movie.
My suggestion? Go watch Bheja Fry instead.

Bheja Fry

Excellent movie, had me all rolling over with laughter.