30DoW: Day 12

12. In what story did you feel you did the best job of worldbuilding? Any side-notes on it you'd like to share?

Of any, I'd say it'd most likely be Tigress. Really, nothing I'm working (or have worked) on is exactly what you would call "built", things are all pretty organic right now (which is a round about way of saying I'm almost making it up as I go). I tend to be more a character writer (...not sure that means what I think it means), so most of my detailing skills lend themselves to the people rather than to the world.

But Tigress has the most going for it at the moment. I have a solid idea of what the culture and principle land is like; it's primarily a pseudo Indian/Chinese grab bag, set in a lush jungle area. I think part of the reason I have a better grasp of this than I do others is I'm kinda following several Disney formulie. I'm plucking elements from the standard Disney story and using them in, what I hope are, new ways that are still familiar.

But the world around them isn't the focus of the story, it's the characters. I've spent this much time creating and putting so much into them, my style leans in the direction of putting them in the forefront instead of taking a lot of time to world view everything in a 360. I'll come up with what I need, and will make sure it fits nicely in with everything previous and following, but won't always think about more than that at the time.

This doesn't always work with all stories, but for this one it is.

I wish was more detailed like that, it's always a fun exercise, and it helps with immersing yourself into the world better for writing.

Inception: I have seen it

By now, if you haven't seen Inception, either you don't enjoy cinema, don't care about the hype attached to the piece, or hate Leonardo DiCaprio. I won't fault you the last one, but he's gotten better; honestly.

My roommate/best friend wanted to see it again, and this time I got to tag along. I'd really been not planning on seeing it, at least not until rental prices, mainly because I'm not a Dicaprio fan and the trailers, while visually interesting to a degree didn't interest me enough to warrent full ticket consumption. But, he wanted to go, I've read good things, was intriged by the supposed mind-warpedness of it, so indulgeded myself (and really I shouldn't've, I really don't have the spare change to be spending like that).

I won't go into the story; much, but that's not the point. It's been done, you can Wikipedia the thing if you so choose, and too many reviews have already been written, blogged, or vlogged about already (these two being my favorites).

No, what I'm going to talk about is the movie concept, dreams and dreaming, and really an issue I have with the film itself. I saw the movie about a week ago, so I've time to ponder my pondering (narf).

As you well know, the core concept of the movie is a reverse heist film, instead of stealing they are implanting, and they do this in your own mind. They enter your dreams, concocking this elaborate story in order to get where they need to be and what they want from you. And they are damn good at their jobs.

The movie itself, I'll start with, is excellent. It really is a well crafted piece of art, brought to you ten years in the making by Christopher Nolan, most notably of Batman Begins and even more notably The Dark Knight. This is his dream project (no pun intended), the whole reason he did the Batman films in the first place was to gain big budget movie experience so he could do this. He picked the best actors for the parts (DiCaprio included) and wrote an almost unbelieveibly twisting plot.

The movie, despite what people may say, is not terribly hard to follow. It asks a lot of you, to actually think and pay close attention, but it does so because it knows it's worth it. This isn't a college experimentational film, this is a craft honed to razor sharpness and it will cut you like a prison bitch if you look away.

That being said, I gave into biological functions and had to use the bathroom in the middle of the film.

But this post is not to lament about the film... well, not meant to praise it, anyway. The chewy nougat center is dreams. How things react, how you react, and what these outsiders will do to get what they want. The whole concept, while incredibly entertaining, leaves me with some qualms.

This is a dream world we're dealing with, residing entirely in someones head; why is everything so damn linear? A point is made early about how in a dream, those you remember, you remember where you were, but not how you got there. I accept this. But, by and large, dreams do not follow set scripts, they teeter-tag across the spectrum of your mind and things get weird. And if you're imaginative, your dreams are an acid trip without the dry mouth.

Granted, this is where the Architect comes in. Should you not know, the Architect is the person hired by the team who crafts the story of the dream, down to the finest detail (if not, that detail can fubar you pretty quickly), and they are responsible for setting the stage of the heist. They must be highly intelligent, for it's their job to make things easy to access yet confusing as well, because if it's too simple the person will figure out they're in a dream. It's up to them to make things seem like they, as outsiders, are supposed to be there, least the hacked mind sense them and attack. So I see how, these dreams at least, flow like set stories. But still...

Something I don't understand is, despite all the planning and such, how does someone from the outside control the dreamrealm of another person? They have to implant that story somehow, and to Nolan's credit he remains incredibly vague on any and most all details of how the process actually works; they go into detail about dreams and very thoughty processes, but the actual technological aspect is kept as a side note, especially how everyone sharing a sedative cocktail somehow mindmelds everyone connected. If it wasn't though, suspension of disbelief would gunk up the works and the movie wouldn't be as good as it is.

But still, they at one point specifically tell the target he's in a dream. Shouldn't that, in theory, immediately put him into a lucid-dream state, where by knowing where he is grant him control?

And this is what, to me as a dreamer and writer, kinda turns the whole ordeal kinda down a few notches. It's a dream world, and expect for a little reality shifting, two specific uses of dream physics, a couple unintended uses of dream physics, and some pretty heady concepts, things are remarkedly normal. Everything is "normal". The mind of a global businessman might not be too exciting, but the dreams are just so... not flat, but scripted. Nobody flies; no one tries to just bend things to happen (well, they explain why that's bad, so I'll give that one up), but it's so... "normal".

I think I lost what I was trying to say. And looking back, I don't know if I'm having the best time describing what I, not dislike so much, but find a little disappointing. I think dream, I think imagination at it's highest limit; there being none.

This is Hollywood, and unless given a literal unlimited budget (though James Cameron can't be too far from achieving this), there are always going to be limits to what a film team can do. They pushed viusal effects for sure, they earned an Oscar nod in that category (among many others). I don't want to take anything away from this movie, it is wonderful and fully worth your time.

But when I think about the concept of dreams, I walk away wanting more.

*Edit note* Underwhelmed that was the word I was looking for, the dreaming left me a little underwhelmed. I wish to be fully whelmed.