Why Inception Should Have Become a Franchise

Hollywood doesn't like losing money. When a movie becomes a hit, it's a whole lot safer to repackage it and sell it back to you again and again than to take a chance on something original. As studios keep mining franchises to death, the sequels either recycle the same basic story or move so far from the original concept that they lose what made it compelling. But there's one movie that arguably had more franchise potential than almost anything Hollywood has ever produced, and it was left unexplored after a single adventure: Christopher Nolan's Inception.

Inception is one of the most original blockbusters of the 21st century. It created an extraordinary world, established an incredibly elaborate set of rules, and opened the door to seemingly limitless storytelling possibilities. The question is whether a sequel would have ruined what made the original special, or whether Nolan built the foundation for one of Hollywood's greatest franchises and left all that potential on the table. I think it's the second.

Most blockbuster premises only work once, and Nolan left Inception alone

Blockbusters typically get greenlit because they have a great premise. A dinosaur theme park where the dinosaurs escape and start eating the tourists. A killer robot sent back in time to kill the future leader of humanity's resistance against the machines. Three friends who wake up after a bachelor party with no memory of the night before and must piece together what happened to find their missing friend. All great ideas. The problem is that these premises are usually designed to work once. How many killer robots can you keep sending back in time? How many times can dinosaurs escape a theme park?

The simple truth is that not every great movie is meant to become a franchise, and perhaps Nolan realized this himself. After finishing Inception, he did something Hollywood rarely does after a hit: he left it alone. I have to hand it to him. It's genuinely admirable that he resisted the temptation to turn it into yet another Hollywood franchise. He told the story he wanted to tell, gave us an ending people are still debating more than 15 years later, and moved on. In an industry constantly trying to squeeze every last dollar out of its most successful movies, that's refreshing.

Nolan imagined Inception as a world where many other stories could take place

Even by his own admission, Nolan has always said he imagined Inception as a world where many other stories could take place. When he first began writing it, he conceived it as a horror film before it eventually evolved into a heist film. Think about the potential there. Imagine a psychological horror film about someone trapped inside another person's nightmare, completely unable to tell what's real and what isn't. Or a spy thriller about rival intelligence agencies infiltrating people's dreams to steal classified information. Or a murder mystery where detectives enter a suspect's subconscious to solve the case. The possibilities are truly endless.

It's worth noting, though, that Leonardo DiCaprio's story as Cobb is finished. The whole point of Inception was that he was trying to get home to his children, and by the end of the film he finally does. Whether it's a dream or not doesn't matter, because the point is that Cobb has stopped caring. Bringing him back for another adventure and undermining that iconic and still hotly debated ending is a nonstarter. Instead, a sequel should introduce an entirely new cast and explore another corner of this universe in a completely different genre, with the only common denominator being the world Nolan created.

Dream sharing in Inception is a technology with a whole industry behind it

Think about how enormous the world of Inception is. Dream sharing isn't some supernatural ability only Cobb possesses. It's a technology that already supports an entire underground industry. There are professional extractors who steal corporate secrets, architects who construct elaborate dream environments, chemists who develop specialized sedatives, and experts who train people to defend their subconscious against intruders. The first film barely scratched the surface of what any of that means.

That's what makes Inception so different from something like Jurassic Park or Terminator. Those franchises have to keep finding new ways to recreate or reinvent the original premise. Inception's premise isn't simply a group of thieves breaking into someone's dream. That's just one story taking place in a much larger world. The technology is the premise, and what you could do with it is practically limitless.

A sequel could skip the exposition that slows the original down

The reason Nolan changed Inception from a horror film to a heist film is that he needed a way to explain its rules, and heist movies are one of the few genres where explaining an elaborate plan is part of the entertainment. Consider how much of the first half is spent explaining how this universe works. Cobb recruits Ariadne, who is essentially our surrogate as he teaches her, and us, everything about dream sharing. We learn how architects construct dreams, how projections populate them, what happens when you realize you're dreaming, how time moves differently depending on the level, and how a kick wakes you up.

Then there are the totems, extraction, inception, limbo, militarized subconscious defenses, and an entirely different set of rules once the team starts using powerful sedatives. It's an enormous amount of information, and it's necessary, because otherwise we'd have no idea what is happening. The first time through, it works, since you're learning about this fascinating world alongside Ariadne. But on the second, third or fourth time, you already know what a kick is, what happens in limbo, and what happens if you die in a dream. You're sitting through exposition explaining things you already understand, and as a result, on repeat, the movie can become a bit of a snooze.

A sequel wouldn't have to deal with any of that. The audience already understands the rules, so you don't need another character spending half the movie learning how dream sharing works. You can introduce a new group of characters, establish their objective, and dive straight into the story. All the groundwork Nolan spent two and a half hours laying is already there, so later films could build on it rather than starting from scratch.

Nolan never had to direct the sequels himself

It's worth acknowledging that Nolan has never been particularly interested in making the same film twice. When he rebooted Batman, his intention was to direct the first film, establish the character and his world, and then hand the franchise to another filmmaker. It was only after the film became a hit, and he became interested in exploring the Joker, that he decided to return for The Dark Knight. Even then, he didn't jump straight in. He went off and made The Prestige first. And after The Dark Knight, rather than finishing the trilogy right away, he went off yet again and made Inception.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Nolan wanted to keep challenging himself rather than spend his entire career playing in the same sandbox. To be fair, had he spent the next decade making Inception sequels, we may never have gotten Interstellar, Oppenheimer or The Odyssey. But that doesn't mean Inception couldn't have continued without him. His original approach to Batman shows exactly how it could have worked. He could have stayed on as a producer, developed the stories or simply approved them, and handed the films to other directors.

This approach has worked before. George Lucas didn't direct The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi. He developed the stories, oversaw the productions, and hired Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand to direct them, and both films expanded the world Lucas created. With Inception, different filmmakers could bring entirely different styles, stories and ideas while still operating within Nolan's rules. That's the beauty of it. Nolan didn't have to direct Inception 2, 3, 4 and 5. He'd already done the hard part: he created the universe, established its rules, and introduced an entire industry operating within it.

Nolan loves Fast and Furious, a franchise that outgrew its premise

What's especially interesting is that Nolan is a huge fan of the Fast and Furious franchise. Fast and Furious started as a relatively straightforward movie about an undercover cop infiltrating a gang of street racers suspected of hijacking trucks. Ten films later, it has become a globetrotting action franchise where the street racers are essentially an elite team of international spies, stopping terrorists, recovering stolen nuclear weapons, taking down a nuclear submarine, and eventually sending two of their own into space in a car. It has moved so far beyond its original premise that it barely resembles the movie that started it all, and Nolan loves it.

Yet with Inception, Nolan created a universe with far more storytelling possibilities than a movie about illegal street racing, and somehow his universe only got one film. I certainly wouldn't want Inception to follow Fast and Furious into increasingly ridiculous territory. But Nolan clearly appreciates how a franchise can evolve beyond its original premise and develop an elaborate mythology of its own. So imagine what Inception could have become if he'd given other filmmakers the same opportunity to expand its world.

What Cobb's team did to Fischer points to a sequel told from the victim's side

There's another fascinating aspect of Inception that I think deserves exploring. When you stop and think about what Cobb and his team accomplish, it's disturbing. We spend the entire movie rooting for them to pull off the heist, escape limbo and get Cobb home to his children. But look at what they do to Fischer. They exploit his complicated relationship with his dying father, manufacture an intensely personal emotional experience, and convince him that breaking up his father's business empire is his own idea.

The truly disturbing part is that Fischer has no idea any of this happened. He gets off the plane believing he's had a profound emotional breakthrough with his father, when the entire experience was engineered by corporate mercenaries hired by his father's biggest competitor. Cobb gets a happy ending, but what happened to Fischer? Now imagine a sequel from the opposite perspective. Instead of extractors planting an idea, we follow someone who begins to suspect an idea has been planted in their own head. Maybe they made a decision that changed their life, only to discover somebody else stood to benefit. Or they notice inconsistencies in their memories suggesting an experience they believe was real never happened.

As they investigate, they discover that somebody may have entered their subconscious and manipulated them into doing something they otherwise never would have done. How horrifying would that be? How do you prove somebody manipulated your subconscious when you can't trust your own memories? How do you know which thoughts are yours? Suddenly you have a psychological thriller about someone questioning everything they believe, desperately trying to uncover who manipulated them and why. It's the exact same technology from a different angle. In the first film, we break into somebody's subconscious. In the sequel, we're the victim trying to figure out who broke into ours.

That is a completely different movie, but it shows how much potential this concept holds without bringing back Cobb, recreating the original heist or undermining its ending. So while it's commendable that Nolan never made any sequels to Inception, if there was ever a movie that could have justified an entire franchise, I think this was it. In this instance, perhaps he should take his own advice: "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling."