war film such as The Guns of Navarone, the
heist or situation of the impossible mission
often becomes a silent antagonist. Or as
Nolan explains, "They usually focus on a
character who's in the way of the obstacle
and try to give that person a little more rea-
son to hate them, but they're not true an-
tagonists." He upped the ante with Inception
and returned to the concept of a protagonist
being his own worst antagonist (like he did
human psyche and internalizing its struggles
with itself.
sona buried deep in their unconscious,
known as the animus and the anima. Thus,
Cobb's construct of his deceased wife, the
aptly named Mal -- the film's antagonist --
is someone who is embedded in his dreams
and is also a function not only of his own
consciousness but also of his anima, which
again shows just how unreliable and dan-
gerous the landscape of Cobb's plans and
self," Nolan says. "It's a huge leap to make.
For me, it was important to set her up as an
antagonist for the audience, right from the
get-go, that she be a femme fatale. She's very
mysterious. She's very aggressive at times.
She's quite frightening, but she's also very
desirable -- he clearly loves her. So with that
antagonist relationship, it felt like what
we're doing is taking a film noir trope that
I've always enjoyed tremendously to its log-
ical conclusion about who this person is and
about what they represent."
much spoiler information to run with the
July/August 2010 cover story of Inception,
which hit the stands a week before the film
creativescreenwriting.com to learn how you
can digitally download that issue). Yet, now
that the film is on Blu-Ray and DVD, Mr.
shared -- so. loyal reader, here's just a little
bit more about the antagonist from one of
this year's most original films (spoiler alert!):
Phoenix may have given the riskiest per-
formance of the year in this pseudo-doc-
umentary about his decision to quit
acting and begin a hip-hop career, but
tured mess. He and director Casey Af-
fleck should have learned something
from the team behind Borat, who pre-
pared Sacha Baron Cohen before send-
with comedy gold. Instead, they seemed
to be making things up on the go, and
the record of their experiment is excru-
ciating to watch.
Secret Sunshine
The Kids Are All Right
Tiny Furniture
Greenberg
Blue Valentine
Inception
Black Swan
The King's Speech
Four Lions
Buried
Inception
The King's Speech
Black Swan
The Kids Are All Right
Easy A
Four Lions
Inception
Black Swan
Africa United
Skeletons
Easy A
The King's Speech
Black Swan
The Last Exorcism
Buried
The Social Network
How to Train Your Dragon
Rabbit Hole
Never Let Me Go
I Love You Phillip Morris
Winter's Bone
The Social Network
127 Hours
I Love You Philip Morris
Toy Story 3
Toy Story 3
The Social Network
The Town
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Winter's Bone
The Social Network
Never Let Me Go
Shutter Island
Nowhere Boy
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Winter's Bone
The Town
I Love You Phillip Morris
The Way Back
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World