> Not trying to be snarky, but what's complex about Inception?
Having to constantly track how many levels deep you are, how time flows at that level, the rules for what may/may not wake you out of a level, the specific actions going on during the specific levels at those rates of time, how they interact all together, and whether you were right about the level the movie took place at the entire time and what that means for it all, and the information you've learned and leaned on to make the assumptions you have at every point.
It's a very complex, complicated movie built out of very simple premises.
> I have a feeling that Inception is kind of like Interstellar in terms of public perception
Possibly. I wasn't super impressed by Interstellar, but not for the same reasons people around me always seemed to point out. To me it felt like a story that might have wanted to make some interesting philosophical points but decided to hide them almost completely behind staid and rote characters and plot and overly interpersonal emotion driven motivations, given the scope of the project they were supposed to be involved in.
> If I've missed any deep concept within Inception
I don't think so, I think you just misinterpreted what I meant by complicated. It's not conceptually or philosophically complicated, it's mechanically complicated. In the same way that two separate expressions of an algorithm or procedure may be simple or complicated, elegant or a bunch of spaghetti code. Inception is a simple set of concepts expressed as spaghetti code, but done so purposefully with the intent to entertain.
> Having to constantly track how many levels deep you are, how time flows at that level, the rules for what may/may not wake you out of a level, the specific actions going on during the specific levels at those rates of time, how they interact all together, and whether you were right about the level the movie took place at the entire time and what that means for it all, and the information you've learned and leaned on to make the assumptions you have at every point.
The cool thing about the movie is that you can misunderstand nearly all of that, and when the music begins playing across all three (four?) dreams you immediately grasp the consequence for the plot.
It's like not caring about Gnu make's console diarrhea flashing past the screen, until the final message tells you a test failed and suddenly going, "Oh, shit."
Having to constantly track how many levels deep you are, how time flows at that level, the rules for what may/may not wake you out of a level, the specific actions going on during the specific levels at those rates of time, how they interact all together, and whether you were right about the level the movie took place at the entire time and what that means for it all, and the information you've learned and leaned on to make the assumptions you have at every point.
It's a very complex, complicated movie built out of very simple premises.
> I have a feeling that Inception is kind of like Interstellar in terms of public perception
Possibly. I wasn't super impressed by Interstellar, but not for the same reasons people around me always seemed to point out. To me it felt like a story that might have wanted to make some interesting philosophical points but decided to hide them almost completely behind staid and rote characters and plot and overly interpersonal emotion driven motivations, given the scope of the project they were supposed to be involved in.
> If I've missed any deep concept within Inception
I don't think so, I think you just misinterpreted what I meant by complicated. It's not conceptually or philosophically complicated, it's mechanically complicated. In the same way that two separate expressions of an algorithm or procedure may be simple or complicated, elegant or a bunch of spaghetti code. Inception is a simple set of concepts expressed as spaghetti code, but done so purposefully with the intent to entertain.