10 "Important" Movie Characters Who Were Mere Plot Devices

10. Arthur - Inception

Inception combined the tense thrillers we've come to expect from Christopher Nolan with enough psycho-babble and jargon to choke a cat. As amazingly entertaining an experience as it was, there was an awful lot of explanation to fit in to its run time while maintaining the pace of the plot. Ideally this could have been done with subtle cues from the world or various characters' experiences of dream thievery. Of course, this is not what happened in the end. Enter Joseph Gordon Levitt's character: Arthur. His entire purpose within the movie is to explain what is happening, what has happened and even what is going to happen. He is an endless well of information and spends ninety percent of his time on screen acting as a universe glossary. Sure, Ellen Page needs to learn about this Inception malarkey, as do the audience, but his character is never elevated beyond the level of tour guide. Some may take issue with this and point to the fight scene that looked like it was taking place in a Jamiroquai music video as Arthur doing more than exposition delivery. To this, all I can say is that it wasn't the character that made it interesting - the sequence could have had any of the other team members in it and would have looked as dramatic and edgy. He doesn't have the tortured past of Cobb or the cheeky British whimsy of Eames. As such, he's relegated to the bottom of the characterization pile becoming a glorified narrator.