Inception is to The Matrix as...

  A lot of people seem to like Inception. Many of them are very smart. I don't get why they like it. I found it disappointing.
  I really wanted to like it. I need a movie like The Matrix, which was one of the most inspiring movies of all-time, a movie I still quote, more than ten years after it came out.
  But Inception is to The Matrix as Dan Quayle is to Jack Kennedy. Inception is actually worse. Try this out. Inception is Fat Albert and The Matrix is Jack Kennedy. Hey hey hey!
  Inception is a sloppy movie that gives great trailer. Think about it. All the great visuals in Inception are in the trailers. After the great visuals, what is there? A plot so grandiose and sloppy that the characters spend half the dialog explaining how it works. Okay that could be interesting. But it's not.
    The Matrix does a fair amount of that too, but with such style.
    Morpheus asks Neo if he wants the Red Pill or the Blue Pill. He even explains the difference. And he tells the truth, but says Neo won't understand for quite some time. True. And neither will we. Even though, after enough watching, I wonder why I didn't get it the first time. Really says something about perceptions.
    Then the question of whether Neo is The One or not. They play such a fun game with us about that. Esp with The Oracle who gets one of the best lines in movie history (which I won't spoil, I have at least one friend who hasn't seen the movie, believe it or not).
    Nothing wrong with a complex world that requires the user to be oriented. But how it is explained pretty much determines whether the movie is entertaining or if it drags on.
    I like Leonardo DiCaprio. But man he was so much more fun to watch in The Departed, and that was a movie on many levels, but it was crafted by a genius in his prime, Scorcese. It deserved all its awards.
    You can tell who's a genius or not by who the compare him to. With Nolan they wonder if he's the next Stanley Kubrick. With Scorcese, they don't. He's simply the one and only Scorcese. That's how genius works, imho.
  I had the feeling of being in a movie theater watching a long boring movie, enjoying the air conditioning and popcorn. Thinking about what I'd do when I got back to work. Believe me, nothing like that happened the first time I watched The Matrix. Or the second, or third, or fourth, or fifth. I could watch it again right now and still love every line of dialog. Inception? Maybe it had two or three ideas that made you think. The rest of it was slop.
  Okay so let me put my stake in the ground. David Weinberger says it's going to be nominated in 12 categories and win most of them.
  I say Inception is Avatar. It won't win any of the big awards. If it's the best movie of 2010 it's going to be a very very very bad year.