There have been a lot of superlatives thrown around in regards to Inception, with many seeming to think it’s a game changing masterpiece that will alter how Hollywood works forever. However while that may be going a little far, it will hopefully cause studios to have a bit more confidence in smart films.
In the meantime it’s mind-bending visuals and ideas are causing a few problems for movie that were planning to do similar things, but now feel that they can’t for fear of being called copycats. For example, director Matthew Vaughn has revealed they’ve had to rewrite the X-Men: First Class screenplay to avoid similarities.
He told the LA Times that, “I saw Inception, which I loved. But my heart sank when I saw that a few of the ideas we had were up [on the screen]. So it’s either leave it in and look as if you’re copying or change things. We completely ripped out about 12 pages of the script and the storyboards.”
The alterations were mainly caused because a fight involving Professor X (James McAvoy) and some other mutants was to going to be presented with spinning rooms and other physics-bending imagery, which were visions that Vaughn felt came too close to signature moments in Inception.
With so much memorable imagery in Inception, it’s likely that while there are some director desperately trying to remove anything that might be seen as copying Nolan’s films, there are probably just as many taking inspiration and adding them in. Vaughn’s probably got the right idea, but don’t be surprised if in the next couple of years we see plenty of movies that have a bit of an Inception visual vibe.