20 Greatest Summer Blockbusters Ever Made
12. Inception (2010)
RottenTomatoes Score: 86% (8.1/10)
Box Office: $825.5 million
Why It's Awesome: Often cited by some as a spiritual successor of sorts to The Matrix. Christopher Nolan's follow-up to The Dark Knight bears many similar hallmarks: it's super-smart, deals with existential issues, and features ground-breaking, mind-boggling action sequences.
Few directors could have made head or tail of such a complex web of ideas, namely the dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream (within-a-dream-within-a-dream) concept, yet the result is one of the most intellectually ambitious and startlingly original action films ever made.
Viewers certainly need to pay attention to understand every minute detail of Inception's logic, yet patient, switched-on audiences will find a ton to marvel at, and that's without even talking about the standard of the visual effects, cinematography, editing (which somehow was snubbed for an Oscar nomination), Hans Zimmer's score, and almost every performance in the movie.
Nolan's films are often criticised for being emotionally cold, yet Inception felt like a significant step forward for the writer-director, taking humanist ideas of family and transposing them onto zero-gravity hallway fights, James Bond-style ski chases and so on.
Plus, isn't that ending just wonderfully infuriating?