Brand New Inception Footage Screened at ShoWest; Plot Details Confirmed, Visuals Stun Attendees

Earlier this week I posted a video interview of Leonardo DiCaprio discussing the complex story structure of Inception (see trailer here), in which the actor claimed the film has “multiple narratives simultaneously”.” What does that mean? I have no clue. Then on Thursday, during the Warner Bros. presentation at the ShoWest convention in Las Vegas, Christopher Nolan came on stage in front of several hundred journalists and theater exhibitors to reveal several minutes of brand new footage for his upcoming mysterious summer blockbuster.

As you all know very well, Nolan is notorious for the cloud of secrecy and mystery he drapes over his films before they are released. At ShoWest he only only gave the attendees a taste of what is to come in the form of an “extended trailer” that featured A LOT of new footage, but still kept mum on the specifics of the plot. He did say that Inception is a “grand-scale action film” and confirmed some plot details to MTV:

So with the “grand-scale action film” and “no limits” revealing by Nolan, lets get to some of the specific imagery that other bloggers experienced during his presentation of the footage.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what El Guapo at Latino Review recalled seeing:

Leonardo and Ellen Page walking down a long hallway.

A scene with Joseph Gordon-Levitt telling Ken Watanabe about what it is Leonardo does.

Another scene that looked like something out of a Modern Warfare game. Guys dressed in white military outfits battling on a snow capped mountaintop. One scene showed Ken in military gear tossing a grenade through a window.

Another scene with Leo in a car filled with water.

The last shot showed an entire city collapsing into the ocean.

Guys in military outfits battling on a mountain top? An entire city collapsing into an ocean? Now the reported $200 million budget makes a lot more sense. Still not convinced that Inception is going to be a monstrous action film that will re-define Hollywood blockbusters? Okay. Check out what Katey Rich at CinemaBlend had to say about what she had witnessed:

While the selected footage he showed off revealed very little about the story, and exactly what’s causing all the amazing visuals and fight scenes, it was all stunning. Almost too much to process, really– the minute I started scrawling notes about people falling down snowy mountains, it was on to a scene of Joseph Gordon-Levitt floating in zero gravity and tying up a bunch of corpses.

Holy shit! I mean just try and picture that last sentence: “Joseph Gordon-Levitt floating in zero gravity and tying up a bunch of corpses.” I mean, I can’t even wrap my head around how awesome that will look in IMAX.

And “what about the dialogue?” you maybe asking. ComingSoon was jotting notes down on what the actors were saying to each other during the footage. Here’s their recap:

The footage started with Leo cocking a gun and his voiceover saying, “There’s one thing you should know about me. An inception is an idea that’s like a virus, it’s highly contagious. The small seed of an idea can grow to define or destroy you.”

What follows are eerie visuals with people floating and the ethereal string chords build, as we see Leo sitting at a table in an ornately adorned room explaining to Ken Watanabe and Joseph Gordon-Levitt hat they do:

“In the dream state, your consciousness defenses lower,” he tells them. “It makes your thoughts vulnerable to theft, called extraction. So you can actually train your subconscious to defend itself from the most skilled extractor.” Watanabe asks how he knows that to which Leo replies, “Because I AM the best extractor.”

It then gets into a mission with some interaction between the three characters talking about it with Leo telling them that they won’t just need a good thief, but a forger. Throughout, we see a few shots of Marion Cotillard and Cillian Murphy, and we may have seen Tom Hardy, but honestly, we’re not sure what he looks like when not dolled up as Charlie Bronson! In one scene, Leonardo yells at Joseph Gordon-Levitt about him not being prepared to take a job, and we see some action as the field agents. Some of the more striking visuals are those on snowy mountains similar to the Tibet scenes from Batman Begins with lots of agents driving around on snowmobiles.

Another voiceover says something like, “Dreams feel real while we’re in them, it’s only when we wake up that we realize we’re actually strangling” – not quite sure about the last part because the strings were getting more intense as the footage continued. Leo tells someone, “We specialize in a very specific type of security, subconscious security.”

“You talking about dreams?” he’s asked in return.

After the tagline of “Your Mind is the Scene of the Crime” comes on screen, we’re introduced to Michael Caine’s character who seems to be a recruiter for Leo’s team. He tells Ellen Page’s character, “If you have a couple months, Mr. Cartwright has a job he would like to discuss with you.”

Ellen Page asks, “Are you work placement?”

And then we see some of the crazy visuals of buildings falling over and crumbling into water similar to the first trailer, and it ends with Leo saying, “Not exactly.”

I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!! Son of a bitch I need to see this IMMEDIATELY! No word on when a new trailer will be released. If I were a betting man, I’d say on May 7th in front of Iron Man 2. That is the biggest film that comes out before Inception, and if you remember, the third trailer for The Dark Knight debuted attached to Iron Man back in 2008, so I would assume Warner Bros. would follow the same schedule. Inception opens everywhere July 16.

What Do You Think? Discuss.