Inception (film)

Inception is a 2010 American science fiction film written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, Dileep Rao, Tom Berenger, and Michael Caine. DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a thief who extracts information from the unconscious mind of his victims while they dream. Unable to visit his children, Cobb is offered a chance to regain his old life in exchange for one last job: performing inception, the planting of an idea into the mind of his client's competitor.

Development began roughly nine years before Inception was released. In 2001, Nolan wrote an 80-page treatment about dream-stealers, presenting the idea to Warner Bros. The story was originally written as a horror film, inspired by concepts of lucid dreaming and dream incubation. The film also taps into psychological phenomena like false memories and the introspection illusion.

Feeling he needed to have more experience with large-scale films, Nolan opted to work on Batman Begins, The Prestige and The Dark Knight. He spent six months polishing up the script for Inception before Warner Bros. purchased it in February 2009. Filming spanned six countries and four continents, beginning in Tokyo on June 19, 2009 and finishing in Canada in late November of the same year. Composer Hans Zimmer scored the film, using parts of Edith Piaf's song Non, je ne regrette rien.

Inception was officially budgeted at $160 million, a cost that was split between Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures. Nolan's reputation and success with The Dark Knight helped secure the film's $100 million in advertising expenditure. Inception premiered in London on July 8, 2010 and was released in both conventional and IMAX theaters on July 14, 2010. Released to critical acclaim, the film grossed over $21 million on its opening day, with an opening weekend gross of $62.7 million.

Plot
Dominic Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), along with point man Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), is on an extraction mission within the mind of a powerful Japanese businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe); a form of corporate espionage through dreams. Pain is felt in dreams, but death results in awakening. Cobb carries a totem in the form of a spinning top that had once belonged to his deceased wife Mal (Marion Cotillard); the top spins endlessly if used in a dream. The extraction fails due to the intervention of Mal, whose memory haunts Cobb's mind and sabotages his missions. Saito reveals that he is in fact auditioning the team to perform the act of inception: using dreams to implant an idea. He promises to have murder charges against Cobb cleared so that he can return to the U.S. and visit his children, in return for the mission's success.

The target is Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), son of Saito's terminally ill corporate rival, Maurice Fischer (Pete Postlethwaite). The objective is to convince Fischer to break up his father's empire. Cobb recruits Eames (Tom Hardy), a forger who can change appearance inside dreams, Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a sedative chemist, and Ariadne (Ellen Page), a student whom he and Arthur train as an architect to design dream worlds. When the elder Fischer dies in Sydney, Saito and the team share the flight with Robert Fischer back to Los Angeles and drug him. They enter Yusuf's dream, a rainy downtown area, and kidnap Fischer. However, they come under attack by Fischer's trained subconscious projections, and Saito is badly injured. Due to the strength of the sedatives and multiple dream layers, death will result in the person going into limbo, a world of unconstructed dream space, for a seemingly indefinite time. Cobb reveals to Ariadne that he spent 50 years with Mal in limbo, where they shaped their own world and lives. After waking, Mal had remained convinced she was dreaming and committed suicide, attempting to persuade Cobb to do so by incriminating him in her death, but he instead fled the U.S. and the murder charges.

Eames changes into Peter Browning (Tom Berenger), Fischer's godfather, to suggest to Robert the false idea that Robert's father had created a second will locked in a vault, all of which is a concept meant to prompt Robert to consider his relationship with his father. The team then enters a van and are sedated into Arthur's dream, a hotel, where the team convinces Fischer that the kidnapping on the first level was orchestrated by Browning and that he must enter his godfather's mind to determine his motives. They then enter a third level, actually dreamt by Eames, where Fischer must break into a snowy mountain fortress to reveal the planted idea. To wake and protect the team, the member dreaming each level stays behind at that level, being assigned the triggering of synchronized kicks: Yusuf driving the van off a bridge, Arthur crashing an elevator carrying the sleeping team members (which turns out to happen in a zero gravity sequence), and Eames detonating explosives in the mountain fortress' foundation. Music played into the dreamer's ears is used to help synchronize the kicks by signaling to the dreamer on each level when a kick on the previous level is about to take place.

Fischer is killed by Mal and goes into limbo. Ariadne and Cobb follow him down and confront her. There Mal attempts to convince Cobb to stay in limbo by making him question reality, referring to events that occurred while he was awake. Cobb reveals that he had originally planted the idea in Mal's mind to wake, making him indirectly responsible for her suicide. She attacks him, but Ariadne shoots her. Cobb remains in limbo to locate a now dead Saito, while Fischer and Ariadne return to the mountain fortress where he comes to the conclusion that his father wanted him to be his own man. Cobb eventually locates an elderly Saito and tells him that they need to return to reality. Saito's recollection of Cobb leads him to conclude that he is dreaming, and he reaches for a gun. They suddenly wake on the plane to find the rest of the team and Fischer up and well. Saito honors their arrangement; Cobb enters the United States and finally returns home to his children. He spins his top to test reality, but is distracted by the reunion.

Cast

 * Leonardo DiCaprio as Dominic "Dom" Cobb, the Extractor, a professional thief who specializes in conning secrets from his victims by infiltrating their dreams. Cobb leads a team consisting of Arthur, Ariadne, Eames, Saito, and Yusuf, with the goal of influencing Fischer's actions via his dreams. DiCaprio was the first actor to be cast in the film. Nolan had been trying to work with the actor for years and met him several times, but was unable to convince him to appear in any of his films until "Inception".
 * Ellen Page as Ariadne, the Architect, a graduate student who is recruited to construct the various dreamscapes, which are described as mazes. The name Ariadne alludes to a princess of Greek myth, daughter of King Minos, who aided the hero Theseus by giving him a sword and a ball of string to help him navigate the labyrinth which was the prison of the Minotaur.
 * Marion Cotillard as Mallorie "Mal" Cobb, the Shade, Dom Cobb's projection of his deceased wife and a frequent, malevolent presence in his dreams. The film's main antagonist, she is a manifestation of his guilt about the real Mal's suicide. Dom is unable to control these projections of her, challenging his abilities as an extractor.
 * Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Arthur, the Point Man, Cobb's partner who takes "point" during jobs and is responsible for researching the team's targets.
 * Ken Watanabe as Mr. Saito, the Tourist, a businessman who employs Cobb for the team's mission, and insists on joining them inside.
 * Tom Hardy as Eames, the Forger, a sharp-tongued associate of Cobb's. Eames uses his ability to take the form of others in order to manipulate Fischer in Fischer's dreams.
 * Dileep Rao as Yusuf, the Chemist, who formulates the drugs needed to sustain the dream states.
 * Cillian Murphy as Robert Michael Fischer Jr., the Mark, the heir to a business empire and the team's target.
 * Tom Berenger as Peter Browning, Fischer's godfather and fellow executive at the Fischers' company.
 * Michael Caine as Prof. Stephen Miles, Cobb's mentor and father-in-law, and Ariadne's college professor who recommends her to the team.
 * Pete Postlethwaite as Maurice Fischer, Robert's dying father.
 * Lukas Haas as Nash, an architect in Cobb's employment who is replaced by Ariadne.
 * Miranda Nolan plays a minor role as an air hostess. Miranda is a first cousin to the film's director Christopher Nolan.

Origins
Inception was first developed by Christopher Nolan, based on the notion of "exploring the idea of people sharing a dream space — entering a dream space and sharing a dream. That gives you the ability to access somebody’s unconscious mind. What would that be used and abused for?" Furthermore, he thought "being able to extract information from somebody’s brain would be the obvious use of that because obviously any other system where it’s computers or physical media, whatever — things that exist outside the mind — they can all be stolen ... up until this point, or up until this movie I should say, the idea that you could actually steal something from somebody’s head was impossible. So that, to me, seemed a fascinating abuse or misuse of that kind of technology." Nolan drew inspiration from the works of Jorge Luis Borges when writing Inception.

Nolan had thought about these ideas on and off since he was sixteen years old, intrigued by how he would wake up and then, while falling back into a lighter sleep, hold on to the awareness that he was dreaming, a lucid dream. He also became aware of the feeling that he could study the place and alter the events of the dream. He said, "I tried to work that idea of manipulation and management of a conscious dream being a skill that these people have. Really the script is based on those common, very basic experiences and concepts, and where can those take you? And the only outlandish idea that the film presents, really, is the existence of a technology that allows you to enter and share the same dream as someone else." Harvard University dream researcher Deirdre Barrett points out that Nolan did not get every detail accurate regarding dreams, but that films which really do that tend to have illogical, rambling, disjointed plots which wouldn’t make for a great thriller. "But he did get many aspects right," she said, citing the scene in which a sleeping DiCaprio is shoved into a full bath and water starts gushing into the windows of the building he is dreaming, waking him up. "That's very much how real stimuli get incorporated, and you very often wake up right after that intrusion."

Development
Initially, Nolan wrote an 80-page treatment about dream-stealers. Originally, Nolan had envisioned Inception as a horror film, but eventually wrote it as a heist film even though he found that "traditionally [they] are very deliberately superficial in emotional terms." Upon revisiting his script, he decided that basing it in that genre did not work because the story "relies so heavily on the idea of the interior state, the idea of dream and memory. I realized I needed to raise the emotional stakes." Nolan worked on the script for nine to ten years. When he first started thinking about making the film, Nolan was influenced by "that era of movies where you had The Matrix, you had Dark City, you had The Thirteenth Floor and, to a certain extent, you had Memento, too. They were based in the principles that the world around you might not be real."

Nolan first pitched the film to Warner Bros. in 2001, but then felt that he needed more experience making large-scale films, and embarked on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. He soon realized that a film like Inception needed a large budget because "as soon as you’re talking about dreams, the potential of the human mind is infinite. And so the scale of the film has to feel infinite. It has to feel like you could go anywhere by the end of the film. And it has to work on a massive scale." After making The Dark Knight, Nolan decided to make Inception and spent six months completing the script. Nolan states that the key to completing the script was wondering what would happen if several people shared the same dream. "Once you remove the privacy, you’ve created an infinite number of alternative universes in which people can meaningfully interact, with validity, with weight, with dramatic consequences."

Leonardo DiCaprio was the first actor to be cast in the film. Nolan had been trying to work with the actor for years and met him several times, but was unable to convince him to appear in any of his films until Inception. DiCaprio finally agreed because he was "intrigued by this concept — this dream-heist notion and how this character's going to unlock his dreamworld and ultimately affect his real life." He read the script and found it to be "very well written, comprehensive but you really had to have Chris in person, to try to articulate some of the things that have been swirling around his head for the last eight years." DiCaprio and Nolan spent months talking about the screenplay. Nolan took a long time re-writing the script in order "to make sure that the emotional journey of his character was the driving force of the movie." On February 11, 2009, it was announced that Warner Bros. purchased Inception, a spec script written by Nolan.

Filming
Principal photography began in Tokyo on June 19, 2009 for the scene where Saito first hires Cobb during a helicopter flight over the city. The production moved to England and shot in Cardington, a converted airship hangar north of London. It was there that a hotel bar set was constructed that could be tilted 30 degrees. A long hotel corridor was also constructed by production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas, special effects supervisor Chris Corbould, and cinematographer Wally Pfister; this corridor was able to rotate a full 360 degrees to create the effect of alternate directions of gravity for scenes where dream-sector physics become chaotic. This idea was inspired by a similar technique used in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Nolan said, "I was interested in taking those ideas, techniques and philosophies and applying them to an action scenario". The filmmakers originally planned to make the hallway 40 ft (12 m) long but as the action sequence became more elaborate, the hallway's length grew to 100 ft (30 m). The corridor was suspended along eight large concentric rings that were spaced equidistantly outside its walls and powered by two massive electric motors. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays Arthur, spent several weeks learning to fight in a corridor that spun like "a giant hamster wheel". Nolan said of the device, "It was like some incredible torture device; we thrashed Joseph for weeks, but in the end we looked at the footage, and it looks unlike anything any of us has seen before. The rhythm of it is unique, and when you watch it, even if you know how it was done, it confuses your perceptions. It's unsettling in a wonderful way". Gordon-Levitt remembered, "it was six-day weeks of just, like, coming home at night fuckin' battered ... The light fixtures on the ceiling are coming around on the floor, and you have to choose the right time to cross through them, and if you don't, you're going to fall." On July 15, 2009, filming took place at University College London library. The signage of the library was changed to read "bibliothèque" (French for "library").

Filming moved to France where they shot the pivotal scene between Ariadne and Cobb at a Paris bistro. For the explosion that takes place during this scene, the local authorities would not allow the actual use of explosives. The production used high-pressure nitrogen to create the effect of a series of explosions. Pfister used six high-speed cameras to capture the sequence from different angles and make sure that they got the shot. The visual effects department enhanced the sequence, adding more destruction and flying debris. The next location that the production traveled to was Tangiers which doubled for Mombasa, where Cobb hires Eames and Yusuf. A foot chase was shot in the streets and alleyways of the historic Grand Souk. To capture this sequence, Pfister employed a mix of hand-held camera and Steadicam work. Tangiers was also used to film an important riot scene during the initial foray into Saito's mind.

Filming moved to the Los Angeles area where some sets were built on a Warner Bros. sound stage, including the interior rooms of Saito's Japanese-style castle. The dining room was inspired by the Nijo Castle built around 1603. These sets were inspired by a mix of Japanese architecture and Western influences. The production also staged a multi-vehicle car chase on the streets of downtown L.A. and this also involved bringing a freight train down the middle of a street. To do this, the filmmakers configured a train engine on the chassis of a tractor trailer. The replica was made from fiberglass molds taken from authentic train parts and then matched in terms of color and design. Also, the car chase was supposed to be set in the midst of a downpour but the L.A. weather stayed typically sunny. The filmmakers were forced to set up elaborate effects (e.g., rooftop water cannons) to give the audience the impression that the weather was overcast and soggy. L.A. was also the site of the climactic scene where a Ford Econoline van flies off the Commodore Schuyler F. Heim Bridge in slow motion. This sequence was filmed on and off for months with the van being shot out of a cannon according to actor Dileep Rao. Capturing the actors suspended within the van in slow motion took a whole day to film. Once the van landed in the water the challenge for the actors was not to panic. According to Cillian Murphy, "And when they ask you to act, it's a bit of a task." The actors had to hold their breath for four to five minutes while drawing air from scuba tanks.

The final phase of principal photography took place in Alberta, Canada in late November 2009. The location manager discovered a closed ski resort, Fortress Mountain. An elaborate set was assembled near the top station of the Canadian chairlift, taking three months to build. The production had to wait for a huge snowstorm, which eventually arrived. The ski-chase sequence was inspired by Nolan's favorite James Bond film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service: "What I liked about it that we've tried to emulate in this film is there's a tremendous balance in that movie of action and scale and romanticism and tragedy and emotion."

The film was shot primarily in the anamorphic format on 35 mm film, with key sequences filmed on 65 mm, and certain other sequences in VistaVision. Nolan did not shoot any footage with IMAX cameras as he had with The Dark Knight. "We didn’t feel that we were going to be able to shoot in IMAX because of the size of the cameras because this film given that it deals with a potentially surreal area, the nature of dreams and so forth, I wanted it to be as realistic as possible. Not be bound by the scale of those IMAX cameras, even though I love the format dearly". Nolan also chose not to shoot any of the film in 3-D as he believes that shooting on digital video does not offer a high enough quality image. Cinematographer Wally Pfister gave each location and dream level a distinctive look with the mountain fortress having a sterile, cool look, the hotel hallways had warm hues and the van scenes were neutral. This was done so that the audience would know immediately where they were during the heavily crosscut portion of the film.

Nolan has said that the film "deals with levels of reality, and perceptions of reality which is something I'm very interested in. It's an action film set in a contemporary world, but with a slight science-fiction bent to it," while also describing it as "very much an ensemble film structured somewhat as a heist movie. It's an action adventure that spans the globe".

Visual effects
For dream sequences in Inception, Nolan kept the computer-generated effects to a minimum and preferred to use practical methods whenever possible. Nolan said, "It's always very important to me to do as much as possible in-camera, and then, if necessary, computer graphics are very useful to build on or enhance what you have achieved physically." To this end, visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin built a miniature of the Fortress Mountain Resort set and then blew it up for the film. For the fight scene that takes place in zero gravity, he used CG-based effects to "subtly bend elements like physics, space and time."

The most challenging effect was Limbo City at the end of the film because it continually developed during production. Franklin had artists build concepts while Nolan gave his ideal vision: "Something glacial, with clear modernist architecture, but with chunks of it breaking off into the sea like icebergs". Franklin and his team ended up with "something that looked like an iceberg version of Gotham City with water running through it." They created a basic model of a glacier and then designers created a program that added elements like roads, intersections and ravines until they had a complex, yet organic-looking, cityscape. For the Paris-folding sequence, Franklin had artists producing concept sketches and then they created rough computer animations to give them an idea of what the sequence looked like while in motion. Later during principal photography, Nolan was able to direct Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page based on this rough computer animation Franklin had created. Inception had close to 500 visual effects shots (in comparison, Batman Begins had approximately 620) which is considered minor in comparison to contemporary visual effects epics that can have around 1,500 or 2,000 VFX shots.

Interpretation
Right before the film cuts to the end credits, the spinning top wobbles, leaving the audience wondering if Cobb was still dreaming. In an interview on The Chris Moyles Show, Michael Caine stated that "[The spinning top] drops at the end, that's when I come back on. If I'm there it's real, because I'm never in the dream. I'm the guy who invented the dream."

Music
Hans Zimmer scored the film, marking his third collaboration with Nolan following Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. According to Zimmer, it's "a very electronic score". Nolan asked Zimmer to compose and finish the score as he was shooting the film. The composer said, "He wanted to unleash my imagination in the best possible way". At one point, while composing the score, Zimmer incorporated a guitar sound reminiscent of Ennio Morricone and was interested in having Johnny Marr, former guitarist in the influential 80s rock band The Smiths, play these parts. He asked Nolan, who agreed and then Zimmer approached Marr who accepted his offer. Marr spent four 12-hour days working on the score, playing notes written by Zimmer with a 12-string guitar.

For inspiration, Zimmer read Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter because it combined "the idea of playfulness in mathematics and playfulness in music". Zimmer did not assemble a temp score but "every now and then they would call and say 'we need a little something here.' But that was OK because much of the music pieces aren't that scene specific. They fall into little categories". While writing the screenplay, Nolan wrote in Édith Piaf's "Non, je ne regrette rien" but almost took it out when he cast Marion Cotillard, who had just completed an Oscar-winning turn as Piaf in the 2007 film La Vie en rose. Zimmer convinced Nolan to keep it in the film and also integrated elements of the song into his score.

The trailers for the film feature specially composed music by Zack Hemsey, which does not appear on the official soundtrack.

Track listing
All tracks written and composed by Hans Zimmer.

Marketing
In the spring of 2010, a viral marketing campaign was started for the film. On June 2, 2010, a manual was sent out to various companies. The manual was filled with bizarre images and text all relating to Inception. As the month went on, more and more viral marketing began to surface, including posters, ads, phone applications, and strange websites all related to the film. On June 7, 2010, a behind the scenes featurette on the film was released in HD on Yahoo! Movies. Warner Bros. has spent $100 million marketing the film.

Box office
Inception was released in both conventional and IMAX theaters on July 16, 2010. The film had its world premiere at Leicester Square in London, England on July 8, 2010. In the United States and Canada, Inception was released theatrically in 3,792 conventional theaters and 195 IMAX theaters. The film grossed $23.7 million during its opening day on July 16, 2010, with midnight screenings in 1,500 locations. Overall the film made $62.7 million and debuted at #1 on its opening weekend. Inception's opening weekend gross made it the second highest-grossing debut for a stand-alone science-fiction film, falling behind Avatar’s $77 million opening weekend gross in 2009. In its second and third weekends the film held the top spot with drops of just 32% ($42.7 million) and 36% ($27.5 million) respectively. In its fourth week of release, the film fell to the second spot to The Other Guys.

, Inception has grossed $292,086,685 in the United States and Canada and $531,082,239 overseas. In total, the film has grossed $823,168,924 worldwide thus far. It is the second-highest-grossing Christopher Nolan movie in the U.S. and Canada, behind The Dark Knight which grossed $533 million, the highest-grossing one overseas, surpassing The Dark Knight, which grossed $469 million, and the second highest-grossing one worldwide behind The Dark Knight (which grossed $1.002 billion overall). It is the third 2010 film that reaches the $800-million mark worldwide, while, in overseas earnings, it is the third picture of 2010 that crosses the $500-million mark. Additionally, it is Leonardo DiCaprio's second highest-grossing film right behind Titanic.

It became the highest-grossing Crime time, Heist/caper and Mindbender movie ever at the North American box office. In these territories, it is also the fifth highest-grossing film of 2010. Internationally, it became the third-highest-grossing 2010 release behind Toy Story 3 and Alice in Wonderland and it is currently the 24th highest-grossing film of all time. Its five highest-grossing markets after the U.S.A. and Canada are China ($68,445,823), the United Kingdom, Ireland and Malta ($56,878,570), France and the Maghreb region ($43,437,833), Japan ($40,901,213) and South Korea ($38,705,828).

Critical response


The film opened to strongly positive reviews. Many critics have applauded Inception as a smart and innovative story, as well as the cast, score, and memorable action scenes. Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes reports that 87% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 266 reviews, with an average score of 8/10. Among Rotten Tomatoes' Top Critics, which consists of popular and notable critics from the top newspapers, websites, television and radio programs, the film holds an overall approval rating of 79%, based on a sample of 38 reviews. The website reported the critical consensus, "Smart, innovative, and thrilling, Inception is that rare summer blockbuster that succeeds viscerally as well as intellectually." Review aggregator Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 74 based on 42 reviews from mainstream critics, considered to be "Generally favorable reviews." CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening weekend revealed the average grade cinemagoers gave Inception was B+ on an A+ to F scale.

Rolling Stone magazine's Peter Travers gave Inception its first positive notice, calling it a "wildly ingen­ious chess game," and added "the result is a knockout." In his review for Variety, Justin Chang praised the film as "a conceptual tour de force" and wrote, "applying a vivid sense of procedural detail to a fiendishly intricate yarn set in the labyrinth of the unconscious mind, the writer-director has devised a heist thriller for surrealists, a Jungian's Rififi, that challenges viewers to sift through multiple layers of (un)reality." Jim Vejvoda of IGN rated the film perfect, deeming it "a singular accomplishment from a filmmaker who has only gotten better with each film." Relevant Magazine's David Roark called it Nolan's greatest accomplishment, saying, "Visually, intellectually and emotionally, Inception is a masterpiece."

Empire magazine rated it five stars in the August 2010 issue and wrote, "it feels like Stanley Kubrick adapting the work of the great sci-fi author William Gibson ... Nolan delivers another true original: welcome to an undiscovered country." Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B+ rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, "It's a rolling explosion of images as hypnotizing and sharply angled as any in a drawing by M.C. Escher or a state-of-the-biz videogame; the backwards splicing of Nolan's own Memento looks rudimentary by comparison." The New York Post gave the film a four star rating and Lou Lumenick wrote, "DiCaprio, who has never been better as the tortured hero, draws you in with a love story that will appeal even to non-sci-fi fans." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film a perfect four stars and said that Inception "is all about process, about fighting our way through enveloping sheets of reality and dream, reality within dreams, dreams without reality. It's a breathtaking juggling act." Richard Roeper, also of The Chicago Sun-Times, gave Inception a perfect score of "A+" and noted that it is "one of the best movies of the [21st] century."

In his review for the Chicago Tribune, Michael Phillips gave the film 3 stars out of 4 and wrote, "I found myself wishing Inception were weirder, further out ... the film is Nolan's labyrinth all the way, and it's gratifying to experience a summer movie with large visual ambitions and with nothing more or less on its mind than (as Shakespeare said) a dream that hath no bottom." Time magazine's Richard Corliss wrote the film's "noble intent is to implant one man's vision in the mind of a vast audience ... The idea of moviegoing as communal dreaming is a century old. With Inception, viewers have a chance to see that notion get a state-of-the-art update." Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan felt that Nolan was able to blend "the best of traditional and modern filmmaking. If you're searching for smart and nervy popular entertainment, this is what it looks like." USA Today rated the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and Claudia Puig felt that Nolan "regards his viewers as possibly smarter than they are—or at least as capable of rising to his inventive level. That's a tall order. But it's refreshing to find a director who makes us stretch, even occasionally struggle, to keep up."

Not all reviewers, however, gave the film positive reviews. New York magazine's David Edelstein was reported to "have no idea what so many people are raving about. It’s as if someone went into their heads while they were sleeping and planted the idea that Inception is a visionary masterpiece and—hold on ... Whoa! I think I get it. The movie is a metaphor for the power of delusional hype—a metaphor for itself." Rex Reed of The New York Observer explained the film's development as "pretty much what we've come to expect from summer movies in general and Christopher Nolan movies in particular ... [it] doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment to me." A. O. Scott of The New York Times commented "there is a lot to see in Inception, there is nothing that counts as genuine vision. Mr. Nolan’s idea of the mind is too literal, too logical, too rule-bound to allow the full measure of madness."

Home media
Inception will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on December 7, 2010.

On November 12, 2010, Warner Brothers made available in the United States an Inception Limited Edition Blu-ray/DVD with Briefcase Gift Set which included a metal replica of the briefcase used in the film along with other extra features such as a metal replica of the spinning top totem used in the movie. The special U.S. edition set was limited to a production run of less than 2000 and sold out that weekend.