The teaser trailer for Christopher Nolan's "Inception" has arrived, and it looks like the director decided to split the difference between his memory mindbender "Memento" and his badass "Batman" action flicks: It has acrobatic fight sequences, darkly urban landscapes and a tagline that suggests the movie will take place as much within the human mind as it will in the real world. We still don't know what in the world "Inception" is about, but who cares? That's how Nolan wants it, and who are we to complain when he delivers such amazingly cool stuff?
This project has been on MTV News' radar since word first dropped in February that Nolan had decided to take a step back from Gotham City after "The Dark Knight" to write and direct a film described as a "contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind."
That didn't exactly clear up the "Inception" story line, however, and speculation exploded online about what Nolan was actually planning. Well played, Mr. Nolan. Kudos as well for getting your stars, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotillard, to keep the plot details to themselves.
"You so want to have information — I can see you!" Cotillard teased MTV News in June.
A week earlier, Gordon-Levitt, who replaced James Franco in the cast due to scheduling conflicts, also pleaded the Fifth. "Here's the thing," he told MTV News. "I can't wait to talk to you about ['Inception'], but I've been very specifically asked not to talk about it. I want to respect [Nolan's wishes], because I love his movies, and I'm so honored and grateful to be working with him."
Since the winter, though, some pieces did fall into place. DiCaprio has been described as a "CEO type" leading an elite team with a mysterious mission. Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy ("RocknRolla") are said to be his associates, and Ellen Page is reportedly a grad student and DiCaprio's "sidekick." Cotillard plays his wife, while Ken Watanabe ("Letters From Iwo Jima") has been revealed to be the film's villain.
After months of piecing all this info together and thinking about it in the context of that "architecture of the mind" description, MTV finally got a chance to check out the teaser trailer — and for all its indisputable awesomeness, it didn't provide much in the way of answers. It just further ramped up our interest, which is exactly what a teaser trailer should do. The site SlashFilm.com did go ahead and publish a possible, barebones plot summary it wrung from the far corners of the Internet, and it's anybody's guess how accurate it truly is.
" 'Inception' is about entering people's minds/dreams," the site reports. "A technology to do so has been developed and is done through an injection. DiCaprio and his team work to enter the minds of other characters in order to retrieve/plant information."
Sounds pretty cool to us, and it would certainly jibe with the implication of the "Matrix"-esque fight scenes in the trailer. Whatever the truth is, give Nolan credit for managing to keep concrete details under wraps for so long — a feat almost as impressive as writing and directing a movie that is already one of the most anticipated film's of 2010.
Check out everything we've got on "Inception."
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