Nolan's New 'Inception' Trailer Now in English

I saw this trailer attached to Sherlock Holmes over the weekend and, having seen the French trailer a week ago before it was summarily pulled offline, put back up, pulled down again, and repeated, I have to say my original assessment was incorrect. Because the movie is a bit out there, I thought it would work in favor of Christopher Nolan's Inception to have it be in a foreign language...just to keep you off-balance. However, having seen the same thing in English, I realize that it doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference. Actually, the lines in the new trailer are just as confusing, but I can't deny how incredibly cool and unique this looks. You know, I don't think I've given Nolan enough credit as a visual artist, because his stories are so strong and compelling, and while his films do have a tonal signature, they don't always copy from each other visually, no more than the Batman movies need to, anyway. But here, it looks like he's really jumped it up a notch. Why does that matter? Well, to me it matters because he's coming off one of the most successful films of all time and it is a seductive thought to rest on your laurels for a movie or two after that, but Nolan hasn't taken that bait. If anything, he has set a bar for himself that almost looks too high. If I wasn't a big fan of his work and hadn't seen how he has progressed as a filmmaker I'd be more concerned, but because it's Nolan, I look forward to see him go for broke here.
Big thanks to Trailer Spy The only question I have is if this is a summer movie. I'm really not sure this works very well in mid-July, and as James Cameron is proving, you don't need to be a summer movie to make a lot of money. But we'll see.

Comments

[Jeremy]

Not exactly sure what's going on here, but I like it. Christopher Nolan should reboot transformers and make it dark and creepy instead of wise cracking urban robots with gold teeth. Michael Bay should be locked up.

[J.Bradley]

This looks like "The Matrix" meets "Synecdoche, NY" meets a corporate noir thriller. Wow! I hope this really influences the big audience movies into a more thought-provoking direction.

[Lengthy Johnson]

I agree with Jeremy: I don't know what it is - but I like it!

The hit potential remains to be seen, though. If the movie is too "weird" for the average moviegoer, then the words "From the Director of the Dark Knight" is not going to be enough to pack the audiences in.

I mean, people gave "Kingdom of Heaven" a wide berth despite the reminder that it was "From the Director of Gladiator" (and despite "Kingdom" being the superior movie).

I don't know if Leo DiCaprio has enough pulling power these days, either. In any case there has been a recent trend of foregoing movies with big stars if they seem a bit weird. The best example may be the Assassination of Jesse James, which has Brad Pitt etc. doing some excellent acting in a brilliant movie, yet it made a loss even on a 30 million budget.

[Ramsay]

I saw this trailer before watching Sherlock as well. My first reaction was that the trailer tried so hard to be thought provoking that it really just came off as nonsensical. However, upon second glance, it does come together to form, well...something... though I still feel it is too "deep." That being said, I still REALLY want to see it, and the general reaction from the audience seemed pretty positive.

As far as Leo, while he has arguably seen the peak of his career, there is no reason to think that he can't draw a big crowd. I did see the Assasination of Jesse James, and while it was an excellent performance on Pitt's part, I don't think the comparison is valid. We're talking about the director of Dark Knight here, along with what hopes to be a decent marketing campaign.

On a side note, I'm interested to see Ellen Page's performance in this. While its been two years since her breakout in Juno, I really enjoyed her in Smart People. I admit that I haven't seen much of her other work (except for Hard Candy), but this does seem like a different role for her.

[Lengthy Johnson]

Ramsay, I'll give you another example.

In 2005, Kingdom of Heaven bombed in the cinemas, despite being marketed with the tag "From the Director of Gladiator", and despite headlining Orlando Bloom.

Gladiator was still very hot on the home theatre scene at the time and Orlando Bloom was at his peak after his roles in Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean and Troy.

Unfortunately, Kingdom of Heaven drew an audience consisting mainly of lads expecting Maximus-style machismo and young girls who wanted to look att Orlando Bloom's androgynous looks. None of them had the frames of reference needed to appreciate Ridley Scott's multi-layered epic about love and hate, war and peace, religion and reality, politics and morality.

Therefore, Kingdom of Heaven got negative word of mouth and it bombed, despite being one of the superior films of the last decade.

Chris Nolan also has a knack for multi-layered films and Inception could well twist the brains of any young Batman fan.

[SEAN]

Kingdom of Heaven was flawed & flawed from the beginning, the plot lacked depth & no one can buy Orlando in that role, for whatever reason...Possibly b/c of not a huge enough fan base & he's more of a supporting guy, or that's what Hollywood has done to his career...

This film looks great, visually stunning & thoughtful....

No matter what you think of this trailer, one thing is for sure, people who watch it are INTERESTED,& as a film that has yet to come out that is what you want out of an audience from a trailer

[anybody]

Amazing trailer from an amazing director... I don't think Leo is losing anything, he's a consistently great actor (minus Gangs of NY) who does mostly good films (and comparing him to Orlando Bloom, whether in acting ability or star power, is like comparing Tom Brady and Philip Rivers). I love the moment when he says "I have to steal it." Such a simple shot in comparison to the rest yet so intense. I'm also curious to see Page's performance and how it fits it with the talents like Leo, Murphy, Cottilard, Levitt and Watanabe (not to mention Caine and Berenger). I don't care how much money it makes as long as it lives up to the Nolan standard (Memento, Prestige and both Batman's are in a pretty short list of my all time favs - even Insomnia has its moments and Following is great on a budget).

[Derian]

I really want to know what this movies about it looks amazing