Inception Christopher Nolan

Box office

Inception was released in both conventional and IMAX theaters on July 16, 2010.[96][97] The film had its world premiere at Leicester Square in London on July 8, 2010.[98] In the United States and Canada, Inception was released theatrically in 3,792 conventional theaters and 195 IMAX theaters.[96] The film grossed US$21.8 million during its opening day on July 16, 2010, with midnight screenings in 1,500 locations.[99] Overall the film made US$62.7 million and debuted at No.1 on its opening weekend.[100] Inception's opening weekend gross made it the second-highest-grossing debut for a science fiction film that was not a sequel, remake or adaptation, behind Avatar's US$77 million opening-weekend gross in 2009.[100] The film held the top spot of the box office rankings in its second and third weekends, with drops of just 32% (US$42.7 million) and 36% (US$27.5 million), respectively,[101][102] before dropping to second place in its fourth week, behind The Other Guys.[103]

Inception grossed US$292 million in the United States and Canada, US$56 million in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Malta and US$475 million in other countries for a total of US$823 million worldwide.[3] Its five highest-grossing markets after the US and Canada (US$292 million) were China (US$68 million), the United Kingdom, Ireland and Malta (US$56 million), France and the Maghreb region (US$43 million), Japan (US$40 million) and South Korea (US$38 million).[104] It was the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2010 in North America,[105] and the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2010, behind Toy Story 3, Alice in Wonderland and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1.[106] Inception is the fourth most lucrative production in Christopher Nolan's career—behind The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises and Oppenheimer[107]—and the second most for Leonardo DiCaprio—behind Titanic.[108]

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 87% based on 370 reviews, with an average rating of 8.20/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Smart, innovative, and thrilling, Inception is that rare summer blockbuster that succeeds viscerally as well as intellectually."[109] Metacritic, another review aggregator, assigned the film a weighted average score of 74 out of 100, based on 42 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[110] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[111]

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called Inception a "wildly ingenious chess game," and concluded "the result is a knockout."[112] Justin Chang of Variety praised the film as "a conceptual tour de force" and wrote, "applying a vivid sense of procedural detail to a fiendishly intricate yarn set in the labyrinth of the unconscious mind, the writer-director has devised a heist thriller for surrealists, a Jungian's Rififi, that challenges viewers to sift through multiple layers of (un)reality."[113] Jim Vejvoda of IGN rated the film as perfect, deeming it "a singular accomplishment from a filmmaker who has only gotten better with each film."[114] Relevant's David Roark called it Nolan's "greatest accomplishment", saying, "Visually, intellectually and emotionally, Inception is a masterpiece."[115]

In its August 2010 issue, Empire gave the film a full five stars and wrote, "it feels like Stanley Kubrick adapting the work of the great sci-fi author William Gibson [...] Nolan delivers another true original: welcome to an undiscovered country."[116] Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum gave the film a B+ grade and wrote, "It's a rolling explosion of images as hypnotizing and sharply angled as any in a drawing by M. C. Escher or a state-of-the-biz video game; the backwards splicing of Nolan's own Memento looks rudimentary by comparison."[117] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film a full four stars and said that Inception "is all about process, about fighting our way through enveloping sheets of reality and dream, reality within dreams, dreams without reality. It's a breathtaking juggling act."[118] Richard Roeper, also of the Sun-Times, gave Inception an "A+" score and called it "one of the best movies of the [21st] century."[119] BBC Radio 5 Live's Mark Kermode named Inception as the best film of 2010, stating that "Inception is proof that people are not stupid, that cinema is not trash, and that it is possible for blockbusters and art to be the same thing."[120]

Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune gave the film 3 out of 4 stars and wrote, "I found myself wishing Inception were weirder, further out [...] the film is Nolan's labyrinth all the way, and it's gratifying to experience a summer movie with large visual ambitions and with nothing more or less on its mind than (as Shakespeare said) a dream that hath no bottom."[121] Time's Richard Corliss wrote that the film's "noble intent is to implant one man's vision in the mind of a vast audience [...] The idea of moviegoing as communal dreaming is a century old. With Inception, viewers have a chance to see that notion get a state-of-the-art update."[122] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times felt that Nolan was able to blend "the best of traditional and modern filmmaking. If you're searching for smart and nervy popular entertainment, this is what it looks like."[123] USA Today's Claudia Puig gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and felt that Nolan "regards his viewers as possibly smarter than they are—or at least as capable of rising to his inventive level. That's a tall order. But it's refreshing to find a director who makes us stretch, even occasionally struggle, to keep up."[124]

Not all reviewers gave the film positive reviews. New York magazine's David Edelstein said in his review that he had "no idea what so many people are raving about. It's as if someone went into their heads while they were sleeping and planted the idea that Inception is a visionary masterpiece and—hold on ... Whoa! I think I get it. The movie is a metaphor for the power of delusional hype—a metaphor for itself."[125] The New York Observer's Rex Reed said the film's development was "pretty much what we've come to expect from summer movies in general and Christopher Nolan movies in particular ... [it] doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment to me."[126] A. O. Scott of The New York Times commented "there is a lot to see in Inception, there is nothing that counts as genuine vision. Mr. Nolan's idea of the mind is too literal, too logical, and too rule-bound to allow the full measure of madness."[127] The New Yorker's David Denby considered the film to be "not nearly as much fun as Nolan imagined it to be", concluding that "Inception is a stunning-looking film that gets lost in fabulous intricacies, a movie devoted to its own workings and to little else."[52]

While some critics have tended to view the film as perfectly straightforward, and even criticize its overarching themes as "the stuff of torpid platitudes", online discussion has been much more positive.[128] Heated debate has centered on the ambiguity of the ending, with many critics like Devin Faraci making the case that the film is self-referential and tongue-in-cheek, both a film about film-making and a dream about dreams.[129] Other critics read Inception as Christian allegory and focus on the film's use of religious and water symbolism.[130] Yet other critics, such as Kristin Thompson, see less value in the ambiguous ending of the film and more in its structure and novel method of storytelling, highlighting Inception as a new form of narrative that revels in "continuous exposition".[57]

Several critics and scholars have noted the film has many striking similarities to the 2006 anime film Paprika by Satoshi Kon (and Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1993 novel of the same name), including plot similarities, similar scenes, and similar characters, arguing that Inception was influenced by Paprika.[62][63][64][131][132] Several sources have also noted plot similarities between the film and the 2002 Uncle Scrooge comic The Dream of a Lifetime by Don Rosa.[133][134][135] The influence of Tarkovsky's Solaris on Inception was noted as well.[136][137]

Year-end and all-time lists

Inception appeared on over 273 critics' lists of the top ten films of 2010, being picked as number-one on at least 55 of those lists.[138] It was the second-most-mentioned film in both the top ten lists and number-one rankings, only behind The Social Network along with Toy Story 3, True Grit, The King's Speech, and Black Swan as the most critically acclaimed films of 2010.[138] Author Stephen King placed Inception at No. 3 in his list of top 10 best films of the year.[139]

Critics and publications who ranked the film first for that year included Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times, Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times (tied with The Social Network and Toy Story 3), Tasha Robinson of The A.V. Club, Empire magazine, and Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter.[140]

In March 2011, the film was voted by BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 1Xtra listeners as their ninth-favorite film of all time.[141] Producer Roger Corman cited Inception as an example of "great imagination and originality".[142] It was voted as the third-best science fiction film of all time in the 2011 list Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time, based on a poll conducted by ABC and People. In 2012, Inception was ranked the 35th-best-edited film of all time by the Motion Picture Editors Guild.[143] In the same year, Total Film named it the most-rewatchable movie of all time.[144] In 2014, Empire ranked Inception the tenth-greatest film ever made on their list of "The 301 Greatest Movies Of All Time" as voted by the magazine's readers,[145] while Rolling Stone magazine named it the second-best science fiction film since the turn of the century.[146] Inception was ranked 84th on Hollywood's 100 Favorite Films, a list compiled by The Hollywood Reporter in 2014, surveying "Studio chiefs, Oscar winners and TV royalty".[147] In 2016, Inception was voted the 51st-best film of the 21st Century by BBC, as picked by 177 film critics from around the world.[148] The film was included in the Visual Effects Society's list of "The Most Influential Visual Effects Films of All Time".[149] In 2019, Total Film named Inception the best film of the 2010s.[150] Many critics and media outlets included Inception in their rankings of the best films of the 2010s.[151][152][153][154][155][156] The film was included in Forbes magazine's list of Top 150 Greatest Films of 21st Century.[157]

In April 2014, The Daily Telegraph placed the title on its top ten list of the most overrated films. Telegraph's Tim Robey stated, "It's a criminal failing of the movie that it purports to be about people's dreams being invaded, but demonstrates no instinct at all for what a dream has ever felt like, and no flair for making us feel like we're in one, at any point."[158] The film won an informal poll by the Los Angeles Times as the most overrated movie of 2010.[159]