What is this? Inception month, or something? (further afterthoughts - Text)

It occurred to me recently that there was a bit of a plot hole in Inception which I somehow managed to completely miss, in spite of the fact I caught the plot holes in all of the other Nolan films I watched. And here it is:

They state early on that if you die in a dream whilst under sedation, you will go into limbo, a very deep layer of the subconscious from which it is damn near impossible to escape. Whilst I have no problems with this suggestion, I wonder how it can affect the characters when they are in deeper levels of the dream at the point at which they die. The reason you go into limbo if you die in the first layer of the dream is that you cannot wake up, as you are under sedation, so you must spend that time somewhere, and that somewhere is limbo. However, when they go from the first level of the dream to the second, they are not technically going under sedation for this, merely an overall sedation which is keeping them asleep the whole time. Surely, then, if a character dies in the second layer of dream, they should awake in the first layer of the dream, rather than go into limbo? Maybe my memory is a little hazy, but I don’t recall that ever being explained – and since we see that exact thing happen at the start of the film when Leo’s partner is killed in the second layer of a dream and awakes in the first, I have to wonder why this wasn’t consistent throughout the film? Of course, if this had been applied, there wouldn’t have been much tension, as when the guy whose mind they need to incept dies in the third layer, he would just wake up in the second if it had been done like this – but it’s just a thought...


Voice

Inception Comic (it's an MP3, obviously)

To make up for the fact that I haven't been bothering to write for ages, it seems I have split my article on Inception over 4 different Blog posts now - making it look as though I am slightly more active than I actually am. But who cares? As long as I post all the good stuff, everything should work out just fine. Anyway...


Apparently, the role of Cobb (the lead) in Inception was originally offered to Matt Damon, who was forced to turn it down due to scheduling conflicts (source), so in light of this, I have create a comic, which I dedicate to Mr Damon. I hope you enjoy it:





(I know I probably should have included this as a little joke just at the end of my review, but I didn't think of it until today, so it gets it's own post. Still, you liked it, right?... right?).

Inception: Afterthoughts (Text)

I was debating putting the title over the Inception poster, but apparently some other Douchebags have already named their show "Afterthoughts", and have already reviewed inception. WANKERS! Still, here's a link if you're interested (we critics have to look out for one another).


As you may have been able to tell, I bashed out my Inception review pretty quickly after returning from the cinema, to get it online as fast as I could. Of course, since it was around 2:30AM by the time I finished writing it, this meant I was completely knackered for almost the entire period I was writing, having gotten up early that morning to go to the gym (whilst I’m at it, I wish to correct a mistake from my review – I stated that I was seated next to a 20 stone powerlifter in the cinema. This is false – he is a 20 stone strong man), and so I felt there were a couple of things I missed out of my review which I would actually quite like to discuss. Here they are:

Whilst I briefly mentioned that the special effects in the movie were fairly well done, I would like to refer to just 2 of them a little more specifically, because I really enjoyed these. The first real “wow” moment of the movie, for me, came when we first saw Leonardo DiCaprio being awoken from a dream via “dunking”. We see Leo in the dream, avoiding falling rubble as the dream collapses around him, and then cut to outside, in the real world (or, as it actually is, a shallower level of the dream), where Leo’s team decide to wake him. Leo does not respond to just noise, or slapping or shaking, so they tip him backwards into a bathtub full of water which was in place specially for this purpose. As Leo falls back into the bathtub, the footage from the first level of the dream slows right down, as time appears to move faster the deeper into the subconscious we go, and this shot is intercut with the dream sequence collapsing as water rushes in from every angle and a tidal wave crashes over our star. This was the first example of any kind of “kick” used in the film, and also introduced us both to the time differences between levels, and also the idea that outside actions will effect what’s happening in a dream, and it really helped set the tone for the entire film. As I said, watching Ellen Page being “kicked” through all 4 levels of dream and into real life near the end is definitely the best effect of this nature within the movie, but that first one just set everything up so perfectly, and was so well executed, that for me it was the point where I thought “hey, this could actually be really good. Except the ending will be shite”.

Another thing I liked was the way in which Leo’s partner from the start is not simply killed off early on, as I was expecting, to be replaced by Ellen Page, but rather everyone joins together as a team, and are all involved in some way in the plan coming together; no one is just a token character, they all have a reason for being there. I was pleased with this because the trailers made it look as though the entire film was just Leo and Page going into people’s dreams, and I think the way the characters were all cleverly intertwined and reliant on each other was a great improvement on what I had been expecting.

Another thing I liked was when Leo’s partner from the start of the film (who was ridiculously familiar, but whose name I can’t be bothered to find on IMDB, despite the fact it would probably have been quicker to do so than typing this explanatory statement) walks up the walls and onto the ceiling in zero gravity whilst the camera rotates around him; not because the effect is so incredibly well done (though it is fairly good), but because it was such a good homage to one of the greatest effects shots in cinema history; the shot from “2001: A Space Odyssey” where we see one of the astronauts do the exact same thing. Oh, and because it spawned this picture:


Which is, of course, an homage to this picture.


I also felt that I should maybe go into slightly more depth with regards to the whole reality/dreams thing at the end. Some people will no doubt say that it was all a dream in Leo’s head, and that he was just a business man who fell asleep on a plane and dreamt about the people around him being able to travel into dreams. Whilst no-one speaks to him on the plane at the end, making this theoretically a possibility, I highly doubt they would give him such potent looks if he were just some guy they were on the plane with who fell asleep for the entire journey, so I think a lot of the film was meant to be “reality”, with only the very end possibly being limbo. However, it does occur to me that Leo may have created this entire scenario, as his wife suggests, in Limbo, and that nothing in the film actually happens, but is all in his subconscious. Of course, this would mean having to discard the totem spinning at the end as being relevant, as we see it stop a couple of times during the film when he tries it in “the real world”, and so there is no evidence to back up this theory, as we cannot even say he is dreaming at the very end. However, because he finds his wife’s totem in limbo, it is possible that he just imagined the totem, so the totem will stop in the levels his mind believes to be real, and not in the ones his mind believes to be fake; and does not actually truly signify if he is awake or not. The totem spinning at the end, therefore, could be a signal that he has finally accepted his entire reality is a dream, and that he is ready to wake up. Under closer inspection, this answer also makes sense, because when he wants to escape limbo with his wife, they just kill themselves and it magically works, but when Ellen Page is in limbo, she doesn’t just kill herself to wake up, but goes through all the pain of having to get the kicks just right to return. If you returned to reality just by killing yourself when in limbo, there would have been no reason for them to ever be scared of dying in a dream and going to limbo, because they would know it was easy to wake up again. I therefore feel, with this in mind, that there is a strong possibility that it was all created in Leo’s mind whilst in limbo, and that he will eventually wake up next to his wife in the bedroom where they were testing to see how deep they could go. Whether or not this is what Nolan intended, I do not know, but even if it wasn’t, I like the interpretation I previously suggested as well. Either way, I feel this is one of those endings people will be talking about for a long time, and I think Nolan has outdone himself, for once, in making a twist ending that is actually intelligent and that actually makes sense.

I do just have one minor problem with it, however, in that surely it doesn’t matter whether it is real or not, because eventually Leo is going to wake up, regardless of how deep into his subconscious he has gone, and it will be as though nothing has happened. If he was in limbo the whole time, he will wake up with his wife and kids, and if it was mostly reality, he will eventually wake up on the plane, as a literal interpretation of the events depicted will suggest. Sure, it will feel like 80 years or whatever when he’s down there, but once he has awoken, the amount of relative time spent in limbo will become nothing. As long as his brain isn’t fried, as they suggested could happen if one went into limbo, then as soon as he wakes up, Leo should be fine. The question of whether or not the events are real, therefore, is moot; because whatever happens, he will eventually wake up (or possibly already did at the end). The only real fun is in deciding whether or not the events were “real”, so to speak. Also, if you could live a lifetime in 10 hours of actual time, surely that would be a good thing to experience? At both the start and end, we see Leo and Ken Watanabee in limbo, with Watanabee’s guards surrounding them. If you can imagine people and create them in limbo, surely a whole world can be imagined (as I have just suggested, and as Leo’s wife suggests within the film), and therefore why would losing your mind become a problem? Just a thought, but I think in some ways this movie raises a lot of philosophical questions about the importance of reality. Why wake up if you can create a perfect world that will last forever in your mind? Jesus, that’s almost as deep as the questions raised by the Stretch Armstrong movie.

So, there you have it, a couple of additions to yesterday’s review, just to augment it a little. I think this was a very enjoyable movie, and I certainly recommend it. I hope you have enjoyed reading my 3 part discussion of “Inception”, and if not you can bugger off. Cheers!


Voice

Inception Review (Text)

I suppose I can’t really discuss this movie without giving away the ending. After all, I was ranting on for quite a while about how the ending would be where this movie would all fall down – so I’m going to throw a Spoilers warning out there straight off – just so you know. That said, however, there are some things I can discuss without giving away too much.

The indelible (not infallible – see what I did there?) Mr Fonch over at Cracked Lips and Caffeine recently wrote a review of the television show NCIS, based solely on how hot Abby, the main female character in the show, was. Now, whilst I ripped on him for a few minutes over the fact he wrote “a lot” as “alot”, and proceeded to tell him he was an idiot for suggesting that all the many crime scene investigation shows that are around now are rip-offs of CSI despite the fact I could plainly see he had the MillenniuM boxset on his video shelf, I felt he was onto something. I’ve heard a lot (unintentional – sorry, Fonch) of guys discussing Ellen Page before, and it seems to me that, much like Marmite, or The Dark Knight, you either love her or hate her. Now, whilst I’m not big on the kind of attitudes her characters have in most films (typically being the “quirky” character, which basically is another way of saying “unbearably annoying”. Shit, she’s almost as bad as Michael Cera on the scale of douche indie character actors – though probably has more upper body strength…), I am actually only going to discuss her looks in the next paragraph, so skip ahead if you don’t want to hear what you all know is true.

I suspect most of the guys who find Ellen Page really hot are closet paedophiles. There. It’s out there. Deal with it.


See what I mean? What is she, like, 12? Well, a quick Google search informs me she's actually older than I am BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT, DAMN IT!

You see, the fact is, she has a body like a 10 year old’s, and a very young face. Do I find her attractive? Of course I do, she’s very pretty – but I wish guys would stop referring to her as outright “hot”. Now, I know what you’re probably thinking: “dude, she’s waaaay over 16 now, what’s the problem? Are you telling me you never fucked a 16 year old before?” Well yes, she is, and yes, I have. But what concerns me is this borderline creepiness I see when guys are going on about how hot Ellen Page is, and then drop lines like “Oh yeah, she’s so hot, if I was [the guy in X-Men 3] I would totally have gotten with her”. WHAT?!?!?! WASN'T HER CHARACTER 13 IN THAT FILM?????


Also, the whole PVC/leather fetish thing is just weird. Basically, you're either turned on by plastic, or by dead animals. You make me SICK!


Just in case you'd forgotten about that time I said I was gonna fuck Miley Cyrus...


But, off the paedo thing for now, because as we all know, calling someone a paedophile is the lowest form of humour. Incidentally, what’s Princess Di’s favourite ice cream? Carte D’or and Walls! Hmmm… I think that one needs to be said out load and with the right inflection to be funny…


Oh right! Car door and Walls! Now I get it!

However, I will say this for Ellen Page, I think she’s more attractive than Megan Fox, who has the WEIRDEST FUCKING THUMBS I HAVE EVER SEEN AND OH MY GOD I’M GOING TO PUKE HOW THE HELL IS NO-ONE ELSE SEEING THIS? WHAT DO YOU MEAN I MUST BE GAY TO BE LOOKING AT HER HANDS HOW COULD I NOT NOTICE THOSE FUCKING THINGS THEY’RE FUCKING REVOLTING!


I rest my case...

Plus, fancying her is less creepy than those guys who go on about how hot Emma Watson is whilst watching Chamber of Secrets (you know who you are!). And I do think that the people who go the opposite route and hate on Ellen saying she’s not attractive are maybe just over-reacting to too much crazy positive hype, in the same way that I would tell people I hated the Dark knight when really I just disliked bits of it; because I had to break through the wall of fanboy obsession. So, let’s leave it with this for Page’s looks: If she was a regular girl I met, I would ask her out, and I would shag her; but I wouldn’t jerk off over home movies of her when she was 13. ‘Nuff said.


When a woman calls you out like that, there's only one solution


But, onto the actual movie itself. Obviously, what I really want to discuss is the ending, but I’ll chuck a few things out there to pad my review out a bit…


And now we spend 300 words discussing Patrick Bateman diversifying his profolio...

The effects were really well done, and were very effective. I hated on The Dark knight big time for the shitty, shitty CGI on Two Face, so I’m pleased to be able to say that the effects in Inception did not take me out of the movie at any point (although, the incredibly small leg room in the cinema did quite a bit. Seriously, are those seats designed for people who are 5’5” and 130lbs? and the narrowness – it’s cool when I go with my mate Josh who’s about 11 stone and skinny, but I was sitting with a 20 stone powerlifter who has a 52” chest today – they just don’t cater for that!). I liked the way a lot of the action was framed, and for once the slow motion actually seemed appropriate (Which is quite a rare thing these days).

The acting was pretty good all round, as well, with no-one doing anything quite awful enough for me to suspend my suspension of disbelief and actively think about their acting whilst the movie was going on, which is more than I can say for Nolan’s last picture (Remember kids, gargling with nails and smoking 5 packs a day to supplement your 3 meals of gravel ISN’T what acting’s all about). Not only that, but all the shots were nicely framed, and for the most part the transitions were nice too (with the obvious exception of Ellen Page and her coffee cup when they are at the Café in Paris).

I do, however, have some complaints. Chief among these is the continuity problems, which is what annoyed me most about this film. The idea is that as you go deeper into an individual’s subconscious, the more time slows relative to how it was in the earlier levels. However, this is never kept consistent – and the amount of time that passes in one level relative to the next varies wildly. Of course, this was done to avoid the difficulties of having to synchronize events across the different levels whilst filming, on the assumption that most audiences will be too dumb/too forgiving to care anyway, but it did bug me as I was watching it that at one point a minute in the first level was the same as about 3 in the second, and by the end 10 seconds in the first was the same as 10 minutes in the second. But hell, if you’ve gotta mess with shit like that to get the story in a half decent shape, then I guess it’s well worth the sacrifice. After all, these problems didn’t bother me all that much as I was watching.

The other problem I noticed with this was the fact that what’s happening in the real world effects the dream at the first level, and what happens in the first level effects the second in the same way, and yet there is no link between the second and third in this manner in terms of the gravity/environment, yet the music before the kick can still be heard in the third level when no other environmental factors are affected. But whatever, I’m sure some fanboy online somewhere has written a 10,000 word essay on why this is.


Because some days posing with your guns and guitar hero controllers just isn't enough...

The only other continuity problem I had was this: When Leo’s talking about getting him and his wife out of limbo, we see them exiting young, and yet soon after we see them there a little earlier on, old. Now, either they aged, in which case they should have been old when they left, or they had complete control over everything so could reverse the effects of age, in which case why did they let themselves age at all? I didn’t quite follow that, but thanks to how this movie was resolved, I feel like it may have been because I wasn’t following closely enough, and not just that Nolan is a complete Numpty who doesn’t think whilst making his films (which is what I previously thought).

When I was writing about how Memento could have all been a dream, I suddenly had an awful feeling that this was how Inception would end; it would turn out that everything was all a dream. But it was far more intelligent than that, even if the ending was ridiculously predictable.



Just like Memento, we had the “big twist” thrown in about 10 minutes before the film ended (seriously, why the fuck to people go on about Shayamaln ending all his movies with a twist and not say anything about Nolan doing the same? Memento? Twist. Batman Begins? Twist. Prestige? Twist. Dark Knight? Twist. Inception? Mother-fucking TWIST! By my count that’s Nolan 5, Shayamalan 4 (Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, The Village, and from what I hear The Happening. Signs doesn’t count as a twist because, well, it wasn’t), and although it felt like a slight cop-out and didn’t entirely explain everything, I was relatively happy with the explanation; just like Joe Pantoliano’s speech at the end of Memento. It was relatively intelligent, not overly predictable, and tied things up fairly well. But this wasn’t the best part of the ending. After the big revelation, we see Leo go deeper into the subconscious, and into limbo, to rescue one of his team who had died in the dream and fallen through, before seeing everyone wake up with the “kick” (this was done really well, too – we follow Ellen Page as she comes up through 4 layers of dream to the real world, each time waking up with a kick from one layer to the next – probably my favourite part of the movie (or any Nolan movie!)). After they have woken up, Leo goes back to his family, and we get the standard happy ending, except everyone in the cinema knew (and one guy even shouted out) that he is still dreaming and is in fact still in limbo, simply dreaming he has awoken and returned home. Now, you may be asking why I like such an obvious, predictable ending when I’m normally so happy to rip into Nolan – but the reason I liked it is because it’s so obvious! It’s been done countless times before, and it’s so much better than any of the other endings I was worried Nolan might try and use.


I was going to post an image of the ending of Lost, but if you search for "lost ending" on Google you get Hugh Laurie doing the Sieg Heil salute, and... well... how could I resist?

What’s great about this ending is that it’s ambiguous; is he still asleep, or is this real? If he is asleep, is he in limbo since he went in after Ken Watanabee, or is he in limbo from when he and his wife were there? It’s like the “they were asleep/dead all along” ending, but more interesting because you have to decide for yourself when it happened. It’s just like “Minority Report”; does Tom Cruise really save the day, or is he in the prison where your mind is pacified by thoughts that leave you no longer wanting to escape? It’s like “Taxi Driver”; is it all real, or does DeNiro die on the sofa and the last bit is him imagining what it would be like if he survived (or, is he completely insane and everything beyond a certain point much earlier in the movie all a construct in his deluded mind)? WHO KNOWS? So congratulations, Christopher Nolan, you have reused an ending which directors have been putting in their movies for years, and it’s your best movie yet!


This is what came up when I searched for "Christopher+Nolan+Happy".


That’s right – I really enjoyed Inception, much more so than I did, say The Dark Knight. It’s complicated, but not to the extent you can’t easily follow it. It’s smart, but at the same time very familiar – it’s everything a blockbuster should be. Sure, there were bits that annoyed me, and a few errors in continuity and possible plot holes, but nothing so big it detracted from the story in any way, and certainly nothing as major as in Nolan’s previous films. This movie in no way deserves to be rated the 3rd best movie ever made (as it is on IMDB), but I would certainly recommend watching it. Or I would, but the Expendables is out tomorrow, and I have a feeling that’s going to be even better!


Rating:


****

4 stars


Great fun; excitement, adventure, and well worth the 4 quid discount ticket I bought to go see it. It isn’t ground-breaking, and isn’t the most intelligent film ever (as some are purporting it to be), but damn it, it wasn’t half bad (especially for a Nolan movie).



Voice



Although whilst we're on it, it did piss me off how the bad guys were stood 1 metre from the car with the good guys in with automatic weapons and still couldn't hit them - you'd have thought one could shoot well enough, or get up on the roof and shoot down through the metal, or something? Just a thought...

Inception Preview (Text)

So I'm off to see Inception tonight, and will no doubt be reviewing it very soon. Before I do so, however, I thought I might give all of you a little preview of my thoughts going into this movie. Not about the movie, as such, but more about its Director, Christopher Nolan...


Christopher Nolan’s newest movie, Inception, has received nothing but praise from audiences and critics alike since its release a few weeks ago. It has risen to #3 on the Internet Movie Database’s list of the top 250 films (a list that Trailer Park Boys is curiously absent from, despite having an average rating of 8.1), and is being talked about by damn near everyone. But I’m still not sure it’s going to live up to the hype.

Now, it’s no secret that I disliked The Dark Knight, despite the fact that almost everyone else I’ve mentioned this to thinks I’m an idiot for saying so, and it may seem like I’m getting ready to hate on Inception based solely on my dislike for Nolan’s last film, without even giving his newest offering a chance. But the fact is, Nolan does have a real problem with his movies, despite the fact that I seem to be the only person on Earth to have even noticed this (just like how I seem to be the only non film student who realises the violence in David Cronenburg’s movies isn’t at all ‘realistic’ just because it’s graphic; but is in fact heavily stylized). And that problem is this: the endings of his movies NEVER make sense.

Oh, don’t believe me? Well, let’s see, shall we?



MEMENTO



The ending to this one is actually pretty cool, and was a nice twist. Hell, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it turned out M. Night Shayamalan wrote this movie (Though I was surprised when I learnt he wrote Stuart Little), because I can imagine people saying “ooh! What a twist!” whilst watching it. But it doesn’t make sense: Larry discovers that his wife survived the attack, and that the story he had been telling everyone about Sammy killing his diabetic wife was actually his own story – fine, I get that. It’s cool. Then we have the fact that his wife’s attacker is already dead, and that Teddy in fact helped Larry find the guy, and that Larry was the one who killed him. Again, nicely done, I’m loving this shit. But this is where it gets dodgy. Larry finds out the guy he’s just killed was some drug dealer Teddy wanted off the streets, and that Teddy has been using him all along, playing on the fact that Larry wants revenge for a crime that he can’t avenging already, and using this to get Larry to take care of people he wants dead. Larry isn’t happy about this, but Teddy points out that it gives Larry’s life a purpose; his hunt for the killers is the only thing that’s keeping Larry going. Larry is mad and wants revenge on Teddy, so decides to set him up as the next victim in the hunt for his wife’s attacker, and leaves himself clues to find Teddy, knowing he will kill him once he has followed all the clues.

Now, let’s think about this for a second. Larry sets Teddy up to be his next victim as revenge for Teddy using him. But why does he do this? If Larry just wants revenge on Teddy, he might as well just kill him then and there. After all, there’s already the body of a drug dealer in the basement, an undercover cop’s body turning up at the exact same scene would just make it look like a rip-and-run had occurred, or the deal had gone bad. But maybe Larry feels that he can’t just kill Teddy, because he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he did? Well, thinking about this logically, this is also a ridiculous suggestion, for 3 reasons

1. Larry has just killed a man 5 minutes earlier, so is clearly capable of doing so. Now, you may say that this doesn’t count, because he killed this other man in revenge, and hatred makes you capable of doing things you couldn’t normally do. Fine, that’s a sound argument. Were it not for the fact that:

2. Larry wants Teddy dead as revenge for using him before! If Larry just wanted to find someone to kill to make himself feel better, he could have set up literally anyone. Hell, if he’d stuck with the guys Teddy was getting him to kill, he would have been killing far more deserving people. The only reason he chose Teddy was as revenge for Teddy using him, and he therefore has his motivation right there. If he wants revenge on Teddy enough to kill him, he should do so then and there. If he doesn’t want to kill Teddy then, why does he want to set himself up to kill him in a few days? Either he wants Teddy dead, or he doesn’t, and if he does, why not kill him right then? After all:

3. It’s not as if he’ll remember anything! If Larry is worried about feeling guilt or remorse for killing Teddy then and there rather than setting him up to be killed later, then he must already feel guilt for setting Teddy up – but he knows he will forget about that. So why doesn’t it seem to register with him that if he murders Teddy he will be no more likely to remember it than he is to remember setting Teddy up like that?

Of course, if he kills him on the spot, Larry won’t be able to keep going, trying to find his wife’s killer, and so his life won’t have purpose, but in his ending monologue, Larry goes on about how he thinks the fact the world goes on without him is important, and that he’s glad there’s a bigger world out there than just what his mind will allow him to see. He says he wants his life and actions to have meaning, so why would he set up a scenario which can only benefit himself, by giving him something to do? After all, the real attacker is already dead, so any real impact on the world Larry wants to gain from going after Teddy has already been achieved. He is only going after Teddy because it will keep him busy for a while, and yet he then says how important the world outside of what directly effects him is to him. It doesn’t make sense, and is nothing but hypocrisy. Plus, since it only takes him a couple of days to kill Teddy, it means that he is basically back in the exact same position of not having a John G to kill only 2 days later. A man gave his life to keep Guy Pearce entertained for about 2 days, which he forgot five minutes later anyway. Yeah, great ending there, Chris.




The only thing I can think is that I didn’t get the ending, and there’s some kind of hidden meaning in the ending monologue. Maybe Larry is actually Sammy, and he’s sitting in the mental hospital imagining everything? That’s all I can think of. Otherwise, this ending doesn’t make any logical sense. If he wants Teddy dead, he should kill him then, if he doesn’t, he shouldn’t. Simple as that. The whole film is therefore rendered essentially pointless by the ending revelation – which makes for what I call a bad ending. Hell, having it so he was in a mental hospital imagining everything wouldn’t be any worse than that: either way the whole thing was pointless.



THE PRESTIGE



Ok, Hugh Jackman has a cloning machine which he uses to put on the greatest magic show ever. He walks in, and clones himself, then he falls through a trap door in the floor of the stage, and into a glass box filled with water, which he drowns in. At the same time, however, his newly created clone appears at the back of the theatre, becoming the Prestige which he ends the trick, and the show, with. He can perform this trick as many times as he likes, but either he or the clone will die each time, as the one in the machine must fall into the water. This must happen because if he did not kill either himself or the clone every night, eventually there would be countless versions of him walking around, and this would create a massive problem. Killing is the only way.

Except that the trick would have worked just as well if he had cloned himself once, and then done the trick exactly the same way as Bale’s character did, only with a clone instead of an identical twin. That’s it. No killing, no dying. No worrying about whether he is going to be the man in the box, or whether he shall be the Prestige, just Jackman and his clone, chilling like Bale and his twin. Simple. Hell, at the end of the film, Hugh Jackman’s character acknowledges that the original version of himself must be dead: if the original was transported and the clone created in the machine, then he shot his original self when he first used the machine. If the original stayed in the same place and the clone was created elsewhere, then the original drowned on the first night of the show. In this same conversation, he speaks of the horror of stepping into the machine, knowing there was every chance he was about to die a horrible death, despite the fact it was so easily avoidable if he just used common sense! He had already used a body double earlier on in the film – and that only failed because the guy didn’t look quite enough like him (it’ll probably turn out Jackman played his own double now I’ve typed this) – why not just do it the exact same way but WITH AN EXACT CLONE OF HIMSELF? Seriously, what a retarded plot hole.

Again, all I can think of is that his subconscious wanted him to go through drowning all those times over so he could experience what his wife went through in the final seconds of her life, but then why bitch about the horror of it to your mortal enemy when he’s just about to kill you? I just don’t understand…



THE DARK KNIGHT



Batman unites the people of Gotham against the mobsters and other criminals, and forces the police department to clean up its act, which allows the election of Harvey Dent as the DA for the city. Harvey Dent is involved in a big explosion which causes half his face to be burned off, and his girlfriend is killed at the exact same time, which drives him insane. Dent becomes a villain, named Two-Face, and decides to start killing dudes, because why not? At the end, Batman is forced to kill him, and then explains to commissioner Gordon what must be done to regain the trust of the people, so that evil will not prevail. How does he do this? By getting Gordon to tell everyone that he, Batman, the man who brought Gotham back from the brink of collapse into a society of scum and villains, killed the innocent Harvey Dent, and to deny that Two-Face ever existed.


What?

So let me get this straight; the great hero that all the people of the city are rallying round, the one that keeps the criminals scared and the police in order, is being made into a scapegoat for the murder of a DA? And that’s supposed to help? There are only 2 ways that scenario could possibly pan out:

1. People think Batman’s lost it and killed an innocent man. Everything reverts to exactly how it was before Batman turned up in the first place, and the mob take over the city again.

2. People think Dent must have been corrupt, and that Batman is just branching out and tackling corrupt officials. Dent’s name is smeared even more than if people knew he had lost it and become Two Face.

Literally, that’s it! I don’t see any other way that can resolve itself. God, I hated that ending, but since I’ve done a full review of The Dark Knight already, let’s just sum up by saying; it doesn’t make sense.


And let’s not forget Batman Begins; the guy who trains Batman to fight crime is actually evil and wants him dead? I mean, I don’t really mind that ending, but it’s hardly brilliant, is it? Plus, they just close down a whole big section of the city and give the inmates of the mental asylum free reign forever after? I’m sorry, what?




Basically, fuck Nolan’s endings. Let’s hope Inception’s a bit better (and that it won’t turn out the characters were dead all along, or something).



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