Movies I Despise: Inception (2010)

Title: Movies I Despise
Film: Inception
Year: 2010
Director: Christopher Nolan 

Back a decade ago, in 2010, Inception was touted as a "masterpiece" by nearly every filmgoer, including your grandmother. It was a critically acclaimed, commercially successful venture by the rare auteur Hollywood director Christopher Nolan. Many aspects of the film, especially the booming score by Hans Zimmer, have etched their way into a wide variety of Blockbusters throughout the decade. I know film professors who teach this very film to their students. To say that this picture is not good is film snob blasphemy; but I will try. 

 Inception is about a thief  (Leonardo DiCaprio) who steals corporate secrets through the use of dream-sharing technology is given the inverse task of planting an idea into the mind of a C.E.O.

The plot of Inception couldn't work in real-life & therefore the characters need to give exposition in order to sell the audiences' on the plot devices' believability. For Inception to work you can't be spending too much time thinking "this doesn't make sense!".  There are many movies, like Ghostbusters & Back to the Future, that have to explain their technology. They do so in very compact & digestible ways ("The Libyans!").  Inception spends too much time rambling on about what is happening & why it is happening. "This is happening because of this!" Ok, I get it, it's a dream you don't have to tell me aga- "This will happen because of this!".  Entire characters exist just to serve as plot narration. Can anybody tell me what purpose Elliot Page's character serves aside from exposition? Imagine Ghostbusters, but every 5 minutes the characters explained what a ghost was. 

This constant need for exposition is bad because 90% of the movie is in a dream (or in a dream within a dream). There is no such thing as "dream logic". Dreams can't and shouldn't be be explained. I do not need to be told why the characters are experiencing x,y,z because you can easily get away with "it's a dream". See Richard Linklater's Waking Life for a beautiful film about dreaming. See Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo for a brief creative dream sequence. Inception could have thrown anything at us and instead gave us the most creatively bankrupt ideas for what a dream could be visually represented onscreen. I get why it didn't go all out, you don't want your audiences confused, but Inception's visual style was nearly identical to a James Bond movie. Didn't Goldeneye also have a ski fight scene? 

As Inception concluded with a cliffhanger ending that film snobs will analyze to death on Youtube, I wasn't left with a sense of awe, but rather a sense of frustration and boredom. How could a film with such a creative and intriguing premise be reduced to a B-level action movie?