No Inception did not rip off Paprika

I've been hearing people confidently spewing this accusation for years and I finally got around to watching Paprika recently, and what do you know? The similarities are superficial at worst.

Let's start with the premise: accessing dreams using technology. Both films are structured around this concept but it's hardly a unique idea. The exploration of dreams has been covered in multiple media for decades, it's ignorant to imply Paprika is the originator of this idea. Dreamscape, a movie that came out before the source material of Paprika was even written, is about a psychic working with a bunch of government scientists to enter people's dreams with the intention of healing their trauma or assassinating them. Sound familiar? I guess Paprika ripped off Dreamscape right? Freddy Kreuger was hopping around in dreams before Paprika was released. I'd even say The Matrix explores a similar concept but with a virtual simulation instead of dreams. Not only that, both Inception and Paprika explore this concept in vastly different ways: Inception is a heist movie with an almost mechanical approach to its exploration of dreams while Paprika is more of a psychological thriller that heavily leans into the surreal. Both of them also have different rules on how the dreams and tech work with Inception having a more rigid guide on how to access and navigate dreams while in Paprika they are almost non-existent.

Now onto the scenes that Nolan apparently "stole." The Hallway Scene. I can't for the love of god understand where this comparison comes. In Paprika the hallway warps and collapses echoing the character's mental state while in Inception the hallway is simply rotating because of the van crashing in an upper dream level. Visually they are completely different. Is it simply because both scenes feature a man running in a hallway?? The Breaking Glass/Mirror. In Inception Ariadne touches the reflective mirror and it shatters. In Paprika, Paprika comes across an already crumbling seemingly transparent wall of glass which she touches then passes through to access another section of the dream. Again, two completely different scenes. The Elevator. This is perhaps the strongest similarity of the three but even then there are still differences. The elevator in Paprika ascends, acting as a transition through different surreal film-inspired scenarios before we reach the detective's recurring dream about a murder. In Inception the elevator descends as we travelling through Cobb's memories before we reach his darkest and most repressed memory, his wife's death. There's a million differences between both movies but people stick to a handful of flimsy "similarities" to justify a claim that makes no sense.

Nolan himself said he had been working on the film for a decade. Even if we were to assume he actually "stole" some elements from Paprika, art borrows and builds on what came before. Filmmakers reference other works in their art all the time. To restrict ideas or methods of creative expressions in art to their progenitors is inherently anti-art. Satoshi Kon himself has been influenced by others. Movies ironically play an important role in Paprika with Kon drawing a parallel between them and dreams. The movie literally contains references to Tarzan, From Russia With Love, Roman Holiday and even the director Akira Kurosawa. So for people to turn around and start policing art is honestly quite hilarious. I don't even think the people doing this are doing it with the intention of championing art but because of: fetishization of eastern media, Nolan hate, rooting for the underdog against big bad hollywood.

And lastly, "there is no such thing as an original idea," "there is nothing new under the sun." Sometimes multiple people have the same idea, coincidences happen. I want to highlight a recent case of plagiarism (that I think is still ongoing) levelled against the movie Together. The creators of Better Half accused creators of Together of blatantly ripping them off because both movies feature couples being joined by a mysterious force. And, here's the kicker, the creators of Better Half had already pitched the idea to the Together team before they released their movie. It's obvious they stole the idea right? Well... the writer of Together had completed a draft and registered it with the WGA in 2019 before Better Half was even pitched.