“Inception” – the Further Adventures of Scrooge McDuck?

As of this writing Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” has grossed over 370 million dollars at the US Box Office, and is being adored by the public and hailed by the critics, with a rating of 87% percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Of course whenever a succes soars high, accusations of plagiarism appear, as an alternative to the more traditional (and/ or legitimate) criticisms of a work.

In this particular instance, an uncanny number og similarities have been found between a story from a 2002 issue of “The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck” and the plot of “Inception”.

A lot of elements a similar. The device used for dream invasion, the idea of information extraction itself (in the comic it’s the combination for McDuck’s Money Bin, to absolutely noones surprise), the idea that a fall kicks you out of a dream, noises in the waking world being implemented into the dream and finally the shifting landscapes where a dreamer has no real consistency.

Yes, all these things appear as important points in Inception. But what I think people are forgetting here, or are perhaps unaware of in the first place, is that these ideas are paramount to dream psychology in the first place. How many times have you implemented the sound of your alarm clock, or some other noise into the dream because you just didn’t want to wake up? Have you never woken up just after dreaming that you fell?

Does this mean that I think the similarities are coincidental? I really can’t tell, but I think they are. I do however, think that it is worth mentioning that at least one iconic film scene was taken from a Scrooge McDuck comic. The scene in question is from “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, in particular the one where Indiana Jones flees from a rolling boulder.

All this however, does nothing to ease the fact that Nolan was previously accused of ripping of the French New Wave Classic “Last year at Marienbad”. I find myself unable to comment on these similarities however, seeing as how I’ve not seen the latter movie. Perhaps a blank that needs to be filled in later?

Source: The Geeks of Doom

And if you wish to view the comic with your own eyes: It can be done right here.