"Inception" is defined as a beginning — the act of commencement — but in Hollywood these days, "Inception" might just be shorthand for what happens when you make two immensely profitable movies and a studio backs up a truckload of cash onto your front lawn and says, "Thanks, man! Now go make the movie you've always dreamed of making."
Because that's essentially what went down between Warner Bros. and director Christopher Nolan, who helmed "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight," which grossed a combined $1.4 billion worldwide and resurrected one of the comic world's most beloved film franchises.
Nolan took his pile of cash — a rumored production budget of $200 million — and put together a film about a band of dream thieves, led by Leonardo DiCaprio, that can infiltrate another person's sleep-time reveries and swipe coveted secrets. Their task in "Inception" is to implant an idea rather than steal one — a task so monumental they're forced to construct dreams within dreams within dreams.
What follows is nearly three hours of hallucinatory imagery, killer performances and story lines that unfold like origami to reveal hidden layers you never even thought existed. MTV News, however, has been tracking every hidden layer of this production since word of the movie first dropped. Before you hit the theater this weekend, check out our "Inception" cheat sheet for everything you need to know about what is thus far 2010's coolest flick.
Gotham Will Have to Wait
In February 2009, a few weeks before Heath Ledger won a posthumous Oscar for his turn as the Joker in "The Dark Knight," word leaked that Nolan would not immediately return to the world of the Caped Crusader for "Batman 3." Rather, he'd be embarking on "Inception," which was described at the time as a "contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind."
Aside from that rather vague description, precious few plot details about the new movie would arise for months. Instead, we stood back as the cast came together. DiCaprio signed up in March, and in April, "Dark Knight" vet Michael Caine told us he'd be joining up as well. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe and Tom Hardy eventually rounded out the cast. "I can't wait to talk to you about it, but I've been very specifically asked not to talk about it," Gordon-Levitt told us that June. "I want to respect [Nolan's wishes], because I love his movies, and I'm so honored and grateful to be working with him."
"Inception" Commencement
By the middle of summer, key details about plot points had begun to spring up on the Web, but we still didn't really know what the heck this movie was about. And after the teaser trailer popped up online, well, we didn't know a whole lot more — except that it looked freaking amazing.
The cast continued to reveal almost nothing about the film during interviews. "It's conceptual. It doesn't fit into any genre," Murphy told us. "There are elements of different types of things in it, but it is all from Chris' imagination. I've never read anything close to it before."
Nolan's "Inception" was shrouded in secrecy, but as 2010 rolled around, he had to begin telling the world just a little bit more about the movie. "I think it's really a balance between creating intrigue about the movie, getting people excited to see something original, something different that they don't know what they're going to get," the director explained to us in March. "We have to start giving people a little bit of information, a little bit about what 'Inception' is."
Then in April, he let loose in a spoiler-filled interview with the Los Angeles Times, shortly before a full trailer appeared on the Web.
Welcome to Our Shared Dream
As the film's July 16 release date approached, Nolan, DiCaprio and the rest of the "Inception" crew began to make the press rounds. Murphy and Watanabe took us inside one of the film's craziest scenes, Nolan explained how the movie builds on his "Dark Knight" experiences and DiCaprio highlighted the epically layered story line.
"It's a very rare occurrence where you can do a movie that exists on four different planes simultaneously," DiCaprio said of the film's various dreamscapes. "That was the immediate intrigue: delving into the world of the subconscious with Chris Nolan."
For his part, Nolan had one specific goal in mind when he decided to take a detour from Gotham City and head straight into "Inception." "I think, for me, my whole career in making films, really every time I set out to make a film, I want to try and give somebody in the audience the experience I had watching ['Star Wars'], where it really felt like anything was possible in that world," he said. "That's a really extraordinary experience to have as a moviegoer. I think that's the highest aspiration of the Hollywood blockbuster."
Check out everything we've got on "Inception."
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