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Besides movies like The Matrix and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Christopher Nolan‘s Inception managed to dream-steal a couple key plot points from some comics as well. I Watch Stuff found this old Scrooge McDuck cartoon that has our titular duck hooked up to a dream machine with a bunch of baddies that are sharing his subconscious in order to steal his fortune.
But how about Neil Gaiman‘s Sandman series, which early on presents the concept of “eternal waking“, a curse in which one is stuck in a state of waking up from a dream, only to find themselves still dreaming and waking up from that dream…etc, etc, etc. Both Scrooge McDuck comics and the Sandman, it goes without saying, made a hell of a lot more sense than Inception.
Have you noticed any other major influences for Inception? At this point, our tally is almost too high to count.
I was thinking Inception also ripped off the Philip K Dick Novel, Ubik.
Change the locations Africa – Moon, stealing ideas using dreams as opposed to Telepathy , you get the idea and yes huge stealing from Paprika and there you have it Inception. Also Ubik was meant to go into production at round the same time as Inception and one of the names mooted about to direct Ubik was Chris Nolan.
If you want to take it a step further there is a Tim Robbins movie from 1990 titled Jacobs Ladder that travels the same train tracks. You can’t really blame anyone for copying material though, we all sample previously original material and grow our own ideas from its soil.
There is also a movie called eXistenZ from the late nineties that I would definitely consider watching. It follows a very similar confusing dream state plot line. It also follows the same train of thought that you really can’t tell what is and isn’t real.
Can’t believe you forgot PAPRIKA – watch that, the similarities are BIG AS HELL. (hallways, plot, breaking mirror). Nolan even cited Paprika as an influence, and he said Ariadne was inspired by the main character of Paprika.