As the film celebrates its 15th anniversary, Flickering Myth’s Hasitha Fernando looks at the story behind Christopher Nolan’s Inception…
Over the years Christopher Nolan has cemented his name in the industry as an auteur filmmaker whose efforts have mesmerized audiences the world over with their inventive storytelling, dazzling visuals and epic scale. Inception can truly be described as one of Nolan’s best works as a genre filmmaker and as it celebrates its 15th anniversary we take a look at what went on behind-the-scenes during the making of this mind bending, genre melding sci-fi masterpiece and then some…
Christopher Nolan took over eight years to write the script
In the present day and age Christopher Nolan is someone who requires no introduction. The uber-talented filmmaker has crafted some of the finest cinematic masterpieces in modern times with efforts like the critically acclaimed The Dark Knight Trilogy, the mindfuck crime noir Memento and the awe inspiring sci-fi drama Interstellar. After concluding his third film Insomnia in 2002, Nolan pitched his idea for Inception to studio execs over at Warner Bros. and was even given approval to pursue the project. However, as the script was not written by that time, Nolan decided that rather than writing it as an assignment he’d craft it as a spec script and present it to the studio when it was done and dusted. So, with the basic premise in place Nolan went off to write the script, assuming that it would take a couple of months for him to finish, but he ended up taking a whopping eight years to complete it. Between this time period the director was selected by Warner Bros. to reboot the Batman franchise and the rest, as they say, is history.
During an interview with Entertainment Weekly Nolan elaborated how he based the character’s featured in Inception’s story on real-life roles he encountered during filming. In that particular scenario he envisioned Cobb as the director, Arthur as the producer, Ariadne as the production designer, and Eames as the actor while Saito represented the studio which oversees the production. Inception was Nolan’s first wholly original work since his feature film debut Following which was released in 1998. Memento was based on a short story penned by his brother Jonathan Nolan, Insomnia was a remake of a Norwegian film and The Dark Knight Trilogy adapted several comic book source materials.
Leonardo DiCaprio made significant contributions during script development
Through the years Leonardo DiCaprio has gone on to become one of Hollywood’s most dependable and versatile stars. Receiving his first Academy Award nomination for playing a developmentally challenged boy in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, DiCaprio achieved greater recognition in mainstream movies like Romeo + Juliet and the blockbuster disaster flick Titanic. However, it is with more dramatic roles in early 2000s efforts like Gangs of New York and Catch Me If You Can that DiCaprio became recognized as a force to be reckoned with.
From the get-go the talented actor was the one and only choice for the role of Dom Cobb. While other actors were sent the script, Nolan and producer Emma Thomas only had DiCaprio in mind from the very outset. After he was cast, DiCaprio spent months fine tuning the script with Nolan. During an interview Nolan stated: “He made some extraordinary contributions to the script and really challenged me to make the script clear, but also to follow its interior logic and really be true to the essence of the characters and the rules we set out.”
The role of Saito was exclusively written for Ken Watanabe
Ken Watanabe is primarily known for his samurai centric roles in his native country of Japan, so it came as no surprise that the role which brought him international recognition was in a similar performance in 2003’s The Last Samurai, for which he earned an Academy Award nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category. Since then Watanabe had worked in multiple Hollywood productions ranging from WWII films like Letter from Iwo Jima and kaiju monster flicks like Godzilla and its sequel Godzilla: King of the Monsters. During this time period the actor also forged a great working relationship with Christopher Nolan working with him on Batman Begins. Because of this Nolan wrote the role of Saito exclusively for Watanabe, as he felt the gifted actor received only a limited screen time in Batman Begins.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt performed most of his stunts on Inception
Starting his career as a child actor on such movies as A River Runs Through It and Holy Matrimony, Joseph Gordon-Levitt got his big career break playing the role of Timmy Solomon in the TV series 3rd Rock from the Sun. The young actor then moved on to playing more serious, dramatic roles in critically acclaimed indie flicks like Manic, Mysterious Skin and Brick. 500 Days of Summer saw Gordon-Levitt making a splash in a big way playing the lovelorn Tom opposite Zooey Deschanel’s Summer and nabbing a Golden Globe Award nomination. Shortly after Gordon-Levitt received an offer to star in Inception, replacing the previously eyed James Franco. During an interview the actor revealed that he went to his audition, wearing a full suit “just in case”, not knowing that his character Arthur also sported similar wardrobe. During the shoot Gordon-Levitt also performed most of his stunts for the movie, which was pretty impressive to say the least.
Mal was one of Marion Cotillard’s favourite roles in her whole career
After getting her start in French cinema Marion Cotillard’s breakthrough came with the action comedy Taxi written by Luc Besson of Leon: The Professional fame. The actress then went on to win the Academy Award for Best Actress for her critically lauded portrayal of Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose, a few years later. When Kate Winslet turned down the offer to play Mal in Inception, Cotillard was approached to play the character which she gladly accepted. Coincidently, the Edith Piaf song “Non, je ne regrette rien” ended up being used prominently as a plot device in Inception. At one point Nolan even thought of removing the song from the movie to remove any speculation but luckily Hans Zimmer convinced the filmmaker to keep it. Cotillard later revealed during an interview with French website AlloCine in 2016, that Mal was one of the favorite roles of her entire career.
Tom Hardy was an up-and-coming talent when he was cast in Inception
Tom Hardy is a big name in the industry right now, but back when Inception was being filmed Hardy was an up-and-coming talent with movies like Star Trek: Nemesis and RocknRolla. But Nicholas Winding Refn’s Bronson brought the young actor some much needed attention through his mind blowing, tour-de-force of a performance and that undoubtedly influenced Nolan to cast Hardy as the dry humored yet more than capable Eames. In an interview with the Guardian Nolan talked about his reason for picking Hardy for Inception, “He can inhabit a role. He saw the potential of the character right away and brought a cheeky quality to his performance.” Hardy, however, was inspired by someone whom he closely associated during the shoot to fine tune his performance – his director Christopher Nolan.
Most of the action set pieces were done using practical effects
During production details of the film’s plot were kept an absolute secret with Nolan cryptically describing it as a contemporary piece of science fiction “set within the architecture of the mind”. Inspired by late 90s movies like The Matrix, Dark City and The 13th Floor, Nolan wanted to craft a truly mind-boggling, genre bending flick replete with extensive special effects sequences and epic action set pieces. But Nolan being who he is, wanted to achieve most of the aforementioned through practical, real-world solutions and as a result a majority of the trippy visuals we see in the movie – such as the Penrose stairs, rotating hallways and zero-G sequences – were the combination of inventive production designs, nifty camera work and clever stunt choreography. Quite ironically, even though Inception went on to win the Oscar for Best Visual Effects the film only had around five hundred VFX shots, as opposed to most big budget tentpoles which have over two thousand VFX shots.
Hans Zimmer did not assemble a “temp score” for the movie
Usually when movies are made a “temp score” is used to serve as a guide to capture the mood and atmosphere a filmmaker is looking to achieve when directing a scene. But when it came to Inception, maestro Hans Zimmer did not assemble such a score but instead crafted the score simultaneously while Nolan was shooting the film. Inception featured a very electronic heavy score and Zimmer employed the assistance of Johnny Marr, former guitarist of The Smiths, to play the iconic Ennio Morricone-esque portions of the score using a twelve-string guitar.
The ambiguity of the closing credits were completely by design
The ambiguous nature of Inception’s closing credits, where the camera closes in on Cobb’s spinning top as it starts to show an ever-so-faint wobble, was done intentionally by Nolan. For the filmmaker the important aspect of the conclusion of the movie was the emotional payoff that came with it, “The real point of the scene—and this is what I tell people—is that Cobb isn’t looking at the top. He’s looking at his kids. He’s left it behind. That’s the emotional significance of the thing.”
Box-office success, solid critic reviews & awards glory
Made on a production budget of $160 million Inception went on to make $839.4 million at the worldwide box-office by the conclusion of its theatrical run, making it the fourth-highest-grossing movie of 2010 behind Toy Story 3, Alice in Wonderland and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1. It is also the fourth most lucrative movie of Nolan’s career after The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises and Oppenheimer and Leonardo DiCaprio’s second most behind the box-office juggernaut Titanic.
At the time of its release the movie received solid critic reviews across the board and hence holds a respectable 87% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 368 reviews and an average rating of 8.2/10. Peter Travers of Rolling Stones described the movie as a “wildly ingenious chess game” and concluded his review by writing “the result is a knockout”. In its August 2010 issue of Empire, gave the effort a glowing five star review elaborating, “it feels like Stanley Kubrick adapting the work of the great sci-fi author William Gibson. Nolan delivers another true original: welcome to undiscovered country”. The movie made into multiple year-end top 10 lists and won big come awards season. At the 83rd Academy Awards the flick garnered eight nominations, winning Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing. At the BAFTA Awards the same year, the movie received nine nods and won prizes for Best Production Design, Best Sound and Best Visual Effects.
Since its release 15 years ago, Inception has been hailed by film critics and cinephiles as not only one of the sci-fi genres most original efforts but also as one of Nolan’s very best works, which is certainly saying something. What are your thoughts on the film? Let us know on our socials @FlickeringMyth…
Hasitha Fernando is a part-time medical practitioner and full-time cinephile. Follow him on Twitter via @DoctorCinephile for regular updates on the world of entertainment.
