Inception - Tumblr Posts - Page 2
‘Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.’ Matthew 5:4
5/02/2024
Positive emotion trumps negative emotion every time. We all yearn for reconciliation, for catharsis.
Inception (2010) dir. Christopher Nolan
PREDICTION:
The Gang Does a Clip Show will be centered around the gang’s Delusion, in that their collective, false, and more successful idealistic self images will be explained and described to each other out loud, making them real in a sense because that imaginary version of each of themselves and their wrongly recalled memories now exist explicitly in minds other than their own.
I think Always Sunny is taking this to above the next level, as they do, by making it literal - These delusions actually start manifesting.
(Additionally, and a bit self indulgently, Mac’s will undoubtably involve Dennis to an extent, so who knows where that could go. This could be used purposely to layout a sort of ‘best of macdennis’ supportive moments for catching up anyone who isn’t as familiar with the show/somehow didn’t notice, perhaps with the intention to make their relationship, however it changes next, have a chance to be well received and understood by a wider audience than if something like that wasn’t done as a recap.)
I wish I’ve seen Inception, but taking a look at the overview of what it’s about, maybe the new reality of this episode will be the shared dream world of their now openly shared delusional self perceptions.
And that the episode will explore the inception/origin of each of their strong held delusions about themselves (ex: Dees acting prowess and entertaining ambitions or Franks ‘attractive looks’ that allow him to woo women).
If interconnected dream worlds are the basis for the movie Inception, maybe The Gang Does a Clip Show will use the gang’s inseparable dependency on each other, that allows them to reliably stagnate in their delusions with enabling support without usually making progress towards success with these dreams, as the foundation for which clips are shown to outline their reasoning for being able to maintain such denial of elements of themselves and their lives where they instead embrace a more comfortable delusion. All their dreams of what they want and who they want to be, but are delusional about, combine into one new reality to make an actual “dream world.”
As a dream is in an ever-forming state, their delusional dreams/aspirations in relation to each other and the world around them as time goes on have to be constantly malleable in order to be kept alive as a dream or belief that’s still, by some stretch, logically possible.
I wonder if the viewer’s experience watching will be incorporated in anyway. Like in the movie, us all viewing this show is a similar exercise to what could be shared dreaming, and for Sunny, we are all participating in and supporting the gang’s shared delusions.
I’m watching Inception before the new episode airs tonight and was struck with the idea that
The Gang Does a Clip Show and PTSDee are linked through themes of false reality
A main detail to how time is spent while in a dream versus reality is that much more time elapses in the dream while it’s only been a fraction of that in reality. For example, in the movie, a group of people come together everyday for three or four hours in real time to spend 40 hours dreaming a shared dream.
This reminded me of the seemingly out of place moment from more recently in the show from PTSDee (s12 episode 7) when Mac is just dozing on the couch in Charlie’s apartment while Charlie and Dennis are over by the windows doing what is the focus of that scene.
And Mac is first revealed to have been sleeping when he suddenly startles himself awake from a dream and worringly asks how long he has been out sleeping.
Dennis and Charlie reply dryly, like what are you talking about, you’ve only been sleeping there for 35 seconds. And the episode continues on without any specific reason for that.
I think this is Inception/The Gang Does a Clip Show (s13 episode 7) related.
In reviewing the whole episode, the majority of the scenes are intensely dream related.
This episode is mostly a dream.
A rundown of the dreams and false reality themes, always involving Mac:
The episode begins with a fake out scene where Mac and Frank are soldiers with guns drawn going through an abandoned building and Frank ends up shooting a child who is appearing to offer them water. This causes Mac to try to revive him with cpr and at this the perspective changes to show that Mac is performing these motions on nothing in the middle of Paddy’s with him and Frank wearing virtual reality gear as Charlie and Dennis watch on from their seats at the bar. They discuss with each other how Mac and Frank have been playing in the virtual reality nonstop for days. [instance #1]
Mac later emerges from another war scene that is a surprise again to the viewer in that he wasn’t playing the game with virtual reality goggles, but was actually dreaming this time of elements of the game, combined with an emotional appearance of his father Luther; trauma involving father issues is arguably the main topic of the episode. [instance #2]
Mac gets up from bed in his and Dennis’ apartment from this dream to go see Dennis in his room, calling out to him saying that he had a dream seeing that his light is on. He opens Dennis’ door and this is the very well known scene where Dennis is practicing his stripper routine and goes to kiss Mac, but Mac wakes up from this too, shooting up in bed - The bed he, Dee, Dennis, and old black man share in Dee’s apartment. [instance #3]
Mac looks over to see that Dennis is missing from his side of the bed, seems to second guess himself and his surroundings at this point and when he goes to see Dennis doing a similar strip tease in the main room, with Dennis approaching Mac and getting very close up to nearly kiss and closing Dee’s bedroom doors instead.
This was a dream (the war scene) within a dream (waking up in his own bed in his and Dennis’ apartment and going to Dennis’ room to see him dancing and Dennis holding his face and leaning in to kiss him).
In Inception, the goal is to go deeper than ever before - To achieve three layers, which is a dream within a dream within a dream. Only two layers had been done, just as in Always Sunny. So I also think that Clip Show with have this goal as well, having a three layer fake out, a deeper layering than ever before.
Frank describes Mac (at the veteran’s support group) after this is disclosed to him over the phone in the middle of the night as “He doesn’t know what’s real anymore!”
Now the scene that came to mind while watching the movie, Mac on Charlie’s couch. The scene opens as Luther looms over Mac as he’s sleeping in bed with the others at Dee’s. As he attempts to kill him after he wakes up to see him standing there instead of saying he loves him, Mac wakes up in a panic from sleeping on Charlie’s couch. He worriedly asks how long he’s been asleep there and Charlie says “You got here five minutes ago and have been asleep for like thirty-five seconds.” [instance #4] Mac soon falls asleep here again.
The final dream revealed is right after this, where Frank and the stripper dad appear to be playing the game in virtual reality, but that is shown to actually be Frank’s dream as Mac wakes him up to go see the strip show. Mac explains how he and the stripper dad finished the game without him after he fell asleep and how Mac brought him there to the back office, because he wanted him to get some sleep after he felt better after finally sleeping for 10 hours. [instance #5]
Could this show be so well thought out ahead of time that Mac’s ability to dream in layers to incorporate themes he and the gang are struggling with will be used as a way to travel back to past episodes to create, and stick with, new timelines?
PTSDee was the first episode after Hero or Hate Crime, the first episode after Mac permanently comes out to be comfortable with being gay. The main theme is father issues (Mac dreaming of wanting Luther’s love, Charlie and Dennis analyzing how Charlie grew up without a dad, Frank, who is Charlie’s real father, dreaming about telling how he loves ghouls, just as Charlie is known for, Dennis exploiting different facets of ‘daddy issues’ for his stripper persona with Charlie as more and more his son, going on to have a loving game of catch with him be their strip show, and Dee manipulating a father to do an explicit lap dance for his daughter).
Of the final three episodes of that season, s12 episode 8 The Gang Tends Bar and s12 episode 10 Dennis’ Double Life are infamous for Mac and Dennis analysis and feeling secondhand pain at seeing both their sadness and emotional frustration at what decisions are made where situations could have been different if certain opportunities were seized rather than things being left unsaid or abandoned.
This season is trending towards delving deeper into the characters, and there’s a lot loaded in the chamber ready to play with if they’re altering reality.
I’m taking an online digital painting class, and this week’s homework was to take three movie screencaps with good lighting and composition to study, using limited tone and a hard edge brush in photoshop. These were mine, from the movies Imitation Game, Inception, and Unbroken. I didn’t have as much time to work on these as I would have liked, in between homework for school and studying for finals
"TOM HARDY" Illustration by Christian Cimoroni.
is it weird that I like listening to cinematic orchestral music?
for example