Someone commented on my list of Avatar comparisons last week noting that such a practice could be done with any movie. He/She is correct, though it doesn’t really matter since the point of that exercise was to respond to the certain expectation that came with that film’s hype that it would be unlike anything we’ve seen before. With the teaser for Christopher Nolan’s Inception, however, the similar claims of derivation are simply a normal thing we film bloggers to do trailers, particularly those that give us little clue as to what their movie is about.

But deep in our hearts, we all trust Nolan, right? We don’t think he’d make a movie that people would say is just like The Matrix or Identity or Fight Club or Jurassic Park or whatever. Just like the illusionists in The Prestige and also like Batman, I guess, Nolan has a lot up his sleeve. The fact that nobody knows anything about the plot of Inception makes its trailer even more cryptic than it would seem otherwise to just the regular moviegoer who doesn’t follow script reviews and production developments. I wish I knew so little about Avatar — and about pretty much any upcoming movie, for that matter.

Check out what the film blogs are saying about the new Inception trailer after the jump.

• Beaks at Aint It Cool News says about this trailer pretty much what I had wished I could have said about the Avatar trailer:
  

  Thus far, all we know about Christopher Nolan’s INCEPTION is that it is a contemporary science-fiction thriller “set inside the architecture of the mind.” This might be frustratingly vague for some, but it’s good enough for me. All I need to know is that one of the world’s most talented filmmakers is hard at work shooting a brainy sci-fi flick on a $200 million budget…

• Kristopher Tapley at In Contention celebrates the vagueness of the trailer:
  

  In fact, it reminds me of a time when trailers did what they were originally supposed to do: pique a viewer’s interest without giving away the plot.  And that’s what this discombobulated series of images and sounds does.  In fact, I almost wish I didn’t know as much about the plot as I do, because the disorienting action sequence at the tail end of the trailer makes a certain kind of sense that it wouldn’t make if I knew nothing, making the “WTF” moment that much more resonant.

• Erik Davis at SciFi Squad also celebrates the lack of known plot details:
  

  This, I think, is a good thing — too many movies are ruined too far in advance these days, and so for this to hit the teaser trailer stage without a somewhat meaty synopsis having already been revealed, that, well, is a pretty cool thing.

• Mike Sampson at JoBlo.com is also glad the trailer is so vague, claiming it beats the weekend’s other new trailers for Avatar and Wolfman:
  

  …Christopher Nolan’s INCEPTION teaser, is online today and strangely is my favorite of the bunch. Primarily because we still have no real idea what this movie is about and trying to figure it all out with the footage we have in this teaser is part of the fun.

• Graeme McMillan at i09 isn’t sure if the Matrix similarities are a disappointment:
  

  This is, of course, just a teaser, but it does its job - We’re curious to see what’s behind the seemingly random images (One of which is repeated on the movie’s just-launched official site), and wondering whether or not we’re feeling underwhelmed by being reminded of The Matrix so much.

• Sean at Film Junk is interested in the film because of the Matrix vibe:
  

  As I mentioned on the podcast, there are definite echoes of The Matrix here, and since we know it’s supposed to be a sci-fi action film, it seems that the mind will likely serve a surreal battlefield where anything goes. Count me in.

• Chris Hewitt at Empire is also turned on by the Matrix similarities:
  

  It’s pretty damned impressive, and slightly reminiscent of The Matrix in its trippy, free-floating, gravity-defying style, and it’s not at all what we were expecting. We still haven’t the foggiest about what’s actually going on here, but there’s no doubt that it’s going to be cool. Very cool.

• Neil Miller at Film School Rejects has faith in Nolan and in a particular scene spotlighted in the trailer, even if it is Matrix-like:
  

  He’s a great storyteller who is following the second highest grossing film of all-time with an aggressive science fiction pic. And at this point, it’s impossible to judge this movie based on less than a minute of actual footage. But I will say this: that fight scene in the hallway looks pretty cool.

• Adam Rosenberg at MTV Movies Blog wonders if the film will be as game-changing as The Matrix:
  

  I’ve got to say, I get a very “Matrix” vibe off of this trailer. I mean that in a good way; “Inception” doesn’t look like “The Matrix,” it just makes me recall the initial sense of wonderment I felt at seeing the first teaser.

  Does anyone remember those first teases, before anyone knew a thing about what the Wachowski bros were cooking? What we had was this visually compelling assortment of quick shots, filled with action and all sorts of fancy CG effects. No one knew anything about red pills or blue pills or robot masters or anything of the sort.

• Kyle Buchanan at Movieline was more reminded of another, earlier film than he was of The Matrix:
  

  In particular, how ballsy clever interesting for the teaser to include as one of its few images a direct lift from Jurassic [Park]’s own trailer, which made simple use of a disturbed glass of water. Here, instead of the water reflecting the impact tremor of a nearby T-Rex, it’s tilting upward as though coaxed by the gimbal in Leonardo DiCaprio’s mind. We knew that DiCaprio was playing a rich and powerful CEO, but who could have guessed his fortune was derived from such a novel new take in the sippy cup?

• Lane Brown at Vulture brings up comparisons to one of Nolan’s own films and also to Fight Club:
  

  Plus, there are a bunch of Dark Knight–style aerial shots of a city, indicating that Nolan’s love of helicopter rides has not abated. The tagline (”Your mind is the scene of the crime”) makes us a little worried that this will be one of those films in which, at the end, the good guy turns out to also be the bad guy.

• Eugene Novikov at Cinematical sees another derivation, but he’s not at all concerned:
  

  My immediate instinct was to think of the John Cusack/James Mangold thriller Identity, which I quite liked but would rather not see again, if you get me. But suffice it to say I am not worried that Inception will be a retread.

• Gabe at Videogum likens the movie to Vanilla Sky, The Matrix, Minority Report and Dark City before attempting to guess the actual premise of the film:
  

  But if they’re not going to tell us what this movie is about, we are going to have to make it up. I love making it up! SO, Inception is about a man named Brian (get it? SPOOKY ANAGRAMS!) who is a special agent for the CIA’s Mind Crimes Division who has to go deeper into his own mind than he ever tried before, via Mind Helicopter, to investigate the murder of a Mind Hotel Concierge. But then he wakes up and it had all just been a Dream Crime.

• Krystal Clark at ScreenCrave also tries to figure out what’s going on:
  

  From what I can tell Leonardo DiCaprio’s character seems to be under a lot of stress. I caught a glimpse of Joseph Gordon-Levitt literally bouncing off the walls, and Cillian Murphy being carried off of a helicopter ramp by a couple of suited men. What’s going on here? I think that’s the whole point. I will admit that I am intrigued.

• Mark at I Watch Stuff tells us what he hopes the movie is not about:
  

  Just so long as the mind being the scene of the crime doesn’t mean some Fantastic Voyage scenario where Leonardo DiCaprio is shrinking himself down to the side of a brain cell to literally enter a criminal’s head and find the clues to solve a murder.

  Ah, who am I kidding? I would love that movie.

• Katey Rich at Cinema Blend focuses on deciphering one particular scene:
  

  The longest scene — just a few seconds– is of a truly awesome fight sequence, in which two people are fighting in a hallway that seems to have lost contact with gravity. One of the fighters appears to be Joseph Gordon-Levitt, while the other might be DiCaprio– or, for all we know, is Ellen Page.That scene is what sells the teaser for me, a vague promise of what’s to come, something weighty and awesome befitting the director of The Dark Knight.

• Ross Miller at ScreenRant also wants to know what’s going on in that scene:
  

  What the hell is going on in that hallway?! It looks like they’re in a hallway that is either being turned on some sort of swivel, or the gravity has been removed/lessened. With all this talk of entering dreams and being, “set within the architecture of the mind,” I wouldn’t be surprised if that was some sort of Matrix style fight sequence dreamt by Leonardo DiCaprio’s character. And what’s with that weird silver spinning top (which can also be found on the film’s official website)? I could go on and on with the questions…

• The Playlist has some of the more interesting detective work going on with this trailer:
  

  First off the man fighting Leonardo DiCaprio in the “Matrix“-style fight is definitely Joseph Gordon-Levitt so we can assume that makes him a villain? Is it Leo he’s fighting? It’s hard to tell. And the man dragged away from the plane as DiCaprio’s character looks on, appears to be Cillian Murphy Lukas Haas.

  Something odd. Note this screen-cap with Gordon-Levitt and this one too. He’s clearly fighting a black man, but when you cut to other clips of them fighting, it’s clearly two white men. What’s up with that? Another clue of what happens within the film possibly? Strange to think considering so far there are no major African-American actors in the film that we know of.

• Renn Brown at CHUD.com notes that even when we see the whole film it might not be the easiest to understand:
  

  True to his tradition of minimal teaser trailers, Nolan has revealed about a dozen shots- most of which imply gravity will be doing weird shit. Reliance on the ever-rising-strings aside, the trailer is creepy and interesting, and does its job well enough.

  If the maze logo is any indication, Nolan has made his biggest puzzle movie yet.

• Anne Thompson at Thompson on Hollywood agrees that a film like this may have no rules:
  

  Everything is genre these days. This looks like Matrix meets Shutter Island, which also stars DiCaprio. The scary thing about mind-movies—anything can happen, you don’t know what the rules of reality are.

• Alex Billington at FirstShowing points out something that makes me wonder if even Nolan knows the whole story yet (or that he could still change the rules if he wants to):
  

  …an awesome teaser, especially for a project we’ve known nothing about until now. This hasn’t even finished shooting yet either, they’re still working in Paris, which makes it even more exciting to see.

• Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere gets the last word for having the only real concern for this movie, a concern that is hardly worth having regarding the difference in size between Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page:
  

  His head is at least 50% larger than hers. Look at them! He could pick her up and carry her under his arm like one of those stuffed Jack Skellington dolls. Page is a very fine actress — nobody’s talking about her emoting here — but she’s obviously in the same size realm as the superb Peter Dinklage (who easily gave the best performance in Sidney Lumet’s Find Me Guilty), Billy Barty, Mickey Rooney and Danny DeVito.

Now check out the puzzling trailer: