In a recent interview with Christopher Nolan, the first question asked was, “Where did you get the idea of being able to invade the dreams of others [the concept for Inception]?” Nolan went on about his fascination with dreams and creating worlds and blah blah blah, but come on … Dreamscape, anyone? Does no one remember there was a film in 1984 with the exact same premise?
That is not to say a deep dive into idea genealogy denigrates either item. Inception was a good movie, not great like Memento, and it gets a little extra praise for being much smarter than the average blockbuster. Regarding its concept lineage, Inception is to Dreamscape as Alien is to It! The Terror from Beyond Space. In both cases, the similarities are there, but both transcended what could be considered their “source material.” The ideas were out there, floating in the Noosphere, plucked by these creators and made into something more, something greater than what they had been.
And that is not an insult to Dreamscape either. It was good film of mixed genres, and the great Max von Sydow had the best metaline to sum up the movie as well his character’s motivation in it – “I’m doing this because it’s fun.” Dreamscape was a fun movie, but I don’t remember anyone gushing about its originality. As far as I can tell, no one asked David Loughery, the Dreamscape scribe, where his ideas come from. The movie fell into the Atwood trap of being “science fiction,” which as we know is about lizard men, as opposed to “speculative fiction,” which is appropriate for intellectual examination.
