With 2023’s Oppenheimer, director Christopher Nolan once again proved why he is known as one of the best directors of all time. Nolan’s films often explore metaphysical themes, touching on the concepts of time, memory, and personal identity. He has directed 12 movies so far, and while every film is exceptional, something about 2010’s Inception makes it much more interesting.
Inception centered on Dom Cobb, a professional thief who steals information by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets. Cobb agrees to do the job of planting another person’s idea into a target’s subconscious in exchange for having his criminal history erased. In one of his past interviews, Nolan explained how he came up with this idea when he was in university. His poor sleep schedule forced him to experiment with the concept of lucid dreaming and that’s where he got the idea to create this movie.
The free breakfast at Christopher Nolan’s university led to the creation of Inception (2010)
In an extended interview from James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction, director Christopher Nolan revealed that he came up with the story of Inception (2010) when he was in university and his sleep schedule was a mess. The director said (via YouTube),
“A lot of the inspiration for Inception was from a period of my life when I was in university and didn’t have much money and breakfast was free. I would go to bed at four in the morning or something – set my alarm up, wake up to get into breakfast – go back to sleep, so then you’re in this sleep state where it becomes possible to be very aware of the fact that you’re dreaming and I would experiment with trying to control the dream and trying to make something. It was frustrating and the occasional moment where you get something to work and you’re able to actually channel your dreaming – lucid dreaming. That’s the superpower.”
Around this time, Nolan wrote an 80-page film treatment about dream-stealers that initially made Inception a horror movie. When he revised the script many years later, the idea was switched to a heist film. The director first pitched the film to Warner Bros. in 2001 and it was finally released in 2010.
Inception was the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2010
In the early 2000s, Nolan decided to put Inception on a back burner because he felt like he needed more experience making large-scale films, so he went on to create The Dark Knight trilogy. Nolan was particularly after Leonardo DiCaprio for the role of Dom Cobb in the movie. DiCaprio eventually agreed but the two spent months discussing the screenplay.
Inception was released in the theatres on July 16, 2010, and upon release, it became a massive hit. Apart from grossing $837 million worldwide, it was widely considered as one of the best films of the 2010s. At the 83rd Academy Awards, Inception was nominated in 8 categories but only managed to win 4 awards in the categories: Best Cinematography, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects.
