As many would already know, the movie Dream Scenario, the movie in which we follow the story of a middle-aged professor who loves ants, Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage), starts popping up in everyone’s dreams for seemingly no reason. It’s quite an interesting concept, given how the nature of the plot gives the film the liberty to get as creative as they want with it. And then you throw Nicolas Cage in there, and you have a recipe for complete unpredictability. Famous for his range of acting and the decisions the man makes off-screen, this movie is a must-watch for all the Cage fans who have not watched the film already.
Dream Scenario Introduces The Problem Of A Conflicting Success
Dream Scenario tells the story of a professor who wants to write and get his book published. He’s been writing this book for years now. Then, the moment he gets his moment of fame from everyone due to the dream scenario, it becomes quite interesting how a university professor that no one had even heard the name of was giving live interviews about the phenomenon on international news outlets. He starts getting approached by big companies for photos, signatures, and even brand deals.
Everything is seemingly working out great for him. He’s getting all the recognition he always wished for. However, he is still troubled. This is where the conflict comes in. A man feels the power of fame and thinks it is at his command. Paul Matthews wished once more that all the fame he had received could be directed toward what he was most passionate about. He does not want to be known as the “guy who shows up in everyone’s dreams” but as the man who wrote a fantastic book about ants.
What Happens When You Look At A Gift Horse In The Mouth?
Not only did he wish that his fame was for his knowledge about the world of ants, but he also wished to be known as a more memorable person altogether. The dream scenario that Paul faced had another interesting phenomenon within its already bizarre nature. Whenever anyone saw the professor in their dreams, he was a bystander. A witness. An odd NPC at best.
This rattled his ego, and everyone dreamed of him as just a person who does nothing and just exists for the sake of it. All it took was one person to tell him she had dreamed of him doing something else, so he decided to study further what could have caused that change in the dream scenario. He was desperate for anyone to see him as anything other than just an unimportant and benign use of space.
This caused everything to change. This is what happens when you look at a gift horse in the mouth. Due to Paul’s interest and actions to try and change his neutral status in everything, he never thought about the consequences of meddling with a phenomenon that he never understood in the first place.
He started to hunt, scare, torture and murder people in their dreams. After that, he tried to mould the dream scenario to fit his ego of not being seen as the “guy who does nothing”.
The Negative Side Of Fame
People started to fear him even after they woke up from their nightmares. They would not go near him. He became an untouchable in the modern society. His property was violated, his family was disturbed, and his right to normality was ripped apart. The only action he could take was to lay low.
The company he decided to partner with advised him to stay off the radar completely. He should not even try to explain that it is not his fault and that apologising for it would be a blunder in the face of whatever reputation he still held. Still, he decided to stand up for himself when he finally faced himself in a nightmare in the basement of his boss, where he slept when his own family did not want his presence anywhere near them anymore.
He tried to explain how he is a victim of the dream scenario as much as the next person is, but that only enraged the masses into pushing him further down the rabbit hole of hate. The only option that seemed to yield any form of a positive result was when he decided to publish his book, which was now changed to the topic of the man who invaded everyone’s dreams rather than his research on ants. He had to sacrifice his only wish to get back to some form of “normal”.
A Man Caged By His Fame
By the end of the movie, Paul Matthews was left with nothing. His family separated from him. His job, on a break. His peace was utterly shattered. The man became a legend and then a myth that people would still fear. His last iota of mental peace lay when he slept and managed to enter the dreams of his now-separated wife, where they danced, and he wished that this was the reality rather than just a dream.
A24 made a philosophical banger of a movie and made sure they cast the only actor whose fame is of a similar fluctuating nature. With Nicolas Cage, he either smashes it out of the park or buries the movie entirely. There is no in-between; I leave it up to you to decide whether you want to watch the film or sleep on it.
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