Re: Inception vs. Paprika controversy , 開始対パプリカ論争

I have a theory—and it’s just a theory, so please do argue against it—that mainstream viewers don’t want to see unrecognizable universes. They want sci-fi and fantasy, sure, but they’re more inclined to watch something in which the unknown enters the known world. Robots and aliens among us, not humans on other worlds and in strange and distant futures. Even with “The Matrix,” to which “Scott Pilgrim” has been likened, the fantasy world was in context the world we’re familiar with, and Neo was an outsider who’d come to it/us from the unfamiliar “real” space. Surely most of the fans of that film prefer the scenes in which a super-powered Keanu Reeves is doing magical things in “our” universe, even if it’s a false one, rather than the scenes outside the Matrix in that dark, dystopic “reality.”

The same can be argued for why “Inception” was more popular. One of my main issues with that movie is that it isn’t surreal enough, but for the majority of moviegoers this was likely a popular factor. The dream worlds in “Inception” looked like our real world for the most part, and fantasy occurred in this “realistic” space instead of there being “realistic” people in a fantasy space. Had “Inception” really been like the comparable anime film “Paprika,” with its spectacularly bizarre dreamscapes, I don’t think it would have fared so well.