Action-thriller imperatives override and crush Inception’s puzzle-narrative complexities

Evidence

Rather than picking up pace and ramping up the metaphysical complexity, the film rushes towards its disappointing denouement. The elaborate set-up involving the ‘dream architect’ Ariadne is summarily abandoned, as she is told to forget the labyrinth and ‘find the most direct route through.’ When Ariadne and the film accede to these demands, it as if the imperatives of the action thriller have crashed through the intricacies of Nolan’s puzzle narrative with all the subtlety of the freight train that erupts into the cityscape in an earlier scene. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 524

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: The metaphor - genre demands crashing through an elaborate conceptual set-up like a freight train - could seed a story about a rigid system whose rules are violently overridden by the plot engine.