title: Tencent

text: In late April 2017, Tencent announced it was preparing to launch its virtual reality headset that year.


title: Tencent

text: In September 2005, Tencent launched PaiPai.com (), a C2C auction site. In addition to PaiPai.com, Tencent launched TenPay, an online payment system similar to PayPal, which supports B2B, B2C, and C2C payments.


title: Tencent

text: In response to the dominance of the Chinese e-commerce market by Tencent competitor Alibaba Group, Tencent took great effort in its e-commerce platforms. On 10 March 2014, Tencent bought a 15 percent stake in Chinese e-commerce website JD.com Inc. by paying cash and handing over its e-commerce businesses Paipai.com, QQ Wanggou, and a stake in Yixun to JD.com, as well as purchasing a stake in e-commerce website . In accordance to this agreement, JD.com would receive exclusive access to Tencent's WeChat and MobileQQ platforms. In May 2014, JD became the first Chinese e-commerce company to be listed on the NASDAQ exchange, under its ticker 'JD'.


title: Tencent

text: On 31 December 2015, JD announced that they will stop supporting services on Paipai.com after being unable to deal with issues involving fake goods, and had integrated the Paipai.com team within its other e-commerce platforms. In a 3-month transitional period, Paipai.com would be fully shut down by 1 April 2016. JD relaunched PaiPai.com as PaiPai Second Hand () to compete alongside 58 Tongcheng's Zhuanzhuan.com, both partially owned by Tencent, against Alibaba's Xianyu in the second-hand e-commerce market.


title: Tencent

text: Tencent was reported in 2017 to be working with China's Central Bank to develop a central payments clearing platform for online payments.


title: Tencent

text: In March 2006, Tencent launched its search engine Soso.com (搜搜; to search). On 1 October 2012, it was the 33rd most visited website in the world, 11th most visited in China, as well as the 8th most visited website in South Korea, according to Alexa Internet. It was also a Chinese partner of Google, using AdWords. In September 2013, Tencent discontinued Soso.com after it invested in Sogou and replaced Soso.com with Sogou Search as its main search engine.


title: Tencent

text: In 2008, Tencent released a media player, available for free download, under the name QQ Player. Tencent also launched Tencent Traveler, a web browser based on Trident. It became the third most-visited browser in China in 2008.


title: Tencent

text: QQ Haiwai is Tencent's first venture into international real estate listings and information and is the result of a partnership with Chinese international real estate website Juwai.com. Haiwai was announced at Tencent's annual regional summit in Beijing on 21 December 2016.


title: Tencent

text: In 2017, Tencent launched its own credit score system called Tencent Credit, with a process similar to that of Sesame Credit, operated by its competitor, the Alibaba Group, through its subsidiary Ant Financial.


title: Tencent

text: Tencent has created WeChat Intelligent Healthcare, Tencent Doctorwork, and AI Medical Innovation System (AIMIS) Tencent Doctorwork has also merged with Trusted Doctors


title: Tencent

text: Tencent officially commences operations of its first insurance agency platform, WeSure Internet Insurance Ltd. (WeSure), to work with domestic insurance companies such as Ping An Insurance.


title: Tencent

text: In August 2017, Tencent released AI Medical Innovation System (AIMIS) or Miying (觅影 in Chinese), which has two core competencies: AI medical imaging and AI-assisted diagnosis. AI Medical Innovation System (AIMIS) is capable of helping doctors screen for several diseases such as diabetic retinopathy, lung cancer and esophageal cancer through its AI-assisted medical image analysis. Its AI-assisted medical diagnosis engine allows doctors to identify and estimate the risk of more than 700 diseases, improving the accuracy and efficiency of their diagnosis. The system is undergoing clinical validation in more than 100 major Chinese hospitals. It has already helped doctors read more than 100 million medical images and served nearly one million patients. Tencent's data shows that recognition accuracy reaches 90% for esophageal cancer, 97% for diabetic retinopathy and 97.2% for colorectal cancer. In general, Chinese medical institutions and companies are taking a proactive attitude toward AI. Nearly 80% of hospitals and medical enterprises plan to carry out, or have already carried out, medical AI applications, and more than 75% of hospitals believe that these applications will become popular in the future.


title: Tencent

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Tencent helped source 1.2 million protective masks for American medical staff combating the virus.


title: Tencent

text: On 27 March 2020, a co-innovation lab was launched by Tencent who will be in collaborations with Huawei in developing a cloud-based game platform by tapping into Huawei's Kunpeng processor's power to build Tencent's GameMatrix cloud game platform. Along with further exploration in the possibilities of artificial intelligence and augmented reality elements in game.


title: Tencent

text: In October 2020, Tencent's AIMIS Image Cloud was introduced. AIMIS Image Cloud was designed to help patients manage their medical images and give permission to medical professionals to access their exams and reports. The AIMIS platform supports full images on the cloud to reduce repeated exams. It can also connect medical institutions at all levels through cloud based Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS), allowing patients to take examinations in primary medical institutions and obtain expert diagnosis remotely. Doctors can conduct online consultations through Tencent real-time audio and video facilities when they encounter difficult cases and work collaboratively on images to communicate more efficiently.


title: Tencent

text: On 26 May 2020, Tencent announced it planned to invest 500 billion yuan (US$70 billion) over the next five years in new digital infrastructure, a major hi-tech initiative that would bolster Beijing's efforts to drive economic recovery in the post-coronavirus era.


title: Tencent

text: In June 2020, Tencent has unveiled plans for an urban development dubbed "Net City", a 21-million-square-foot development, equivalent in size to Monaco, in Shenzhen. It will prioritize pedestrians, green spaces and self-driving vehicles. It will include corporate offices, a school, apartments, sports facilities, parks and retail space, according to the project's architect, NBBJ.


title: Tencent

text: At the end of June 2020, Tencent has increased its direct stake in Nio to 15.1% after acquiring more of the Chinese electric vehicle maker's New York-listed shares recently. Tencent spent $10 million to buy 1.68 million American Depositary Shares earlier in the month, according to Nio's latest filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Shenzhen-based social media and entertainment conglomerate also controls another 16% stake in Nio's ADSs through three of its units.


title: Tencent

text: Tencent was the second-largest Nio shareholder in terms of voting rights after Li Bin, founder of the automaker, who held 13.8% in shares but 47% voting rights, according to a March filing by the company.


title: Tencent

text: Tencent's largest shareholder is Prosus (majority owned by Naspers), which owns 30.86% of all shares and hence is the controlling shareholder. However, Ma Huateng, co-founder of Tencent, still owns a significant stake (8.42%).


title: Tencent

text: Tencent's headquarters is currently the Tencent Binhai Mansion, also known as the Tencent Seafront Towers, which is located in Shenzhen's Nanshan District. In addition to its headquarters in Shenzhen, Tencent also has offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, and Guangzhou.


title: Tencent

text: Tencent has a unitary board consisting of Tencent co-founder, CEO, and chairman Ma Huateng, also known as Pony Ma, executive director and President of Tencent Martin Lau, non-executive directors Jacobus "Koos" Bekker and Charles Searle of Naspers, and independent non-executive directors Li Dongsheng, Iain Bruce, Ian Stone, and Yang Siushun. Tencent's governance is aided by its Strategy Department, commonly known as SD, which provides business analytics for the corporation's various divisions.


title: Tencent

text: A software development unit that has created, among others, Tencent Traveler and later versions of QQ IM, as well as some mobile software. This subsidiary is located on the Southern District of Hi-Tech Park, Shenzhen. It also holds a number of patents related to instant messaging and massively multiplayer online game gaming.


title: Tencent

text: In 2007, Tencent invested over RMB100 million in the establishment of the Tencent Research Institute, which became China's first research center dedicated to core Internet technologies. The campuses are located in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen.


title: Tencent

text: For the occasion of the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, Tencent released a mobile game titled "Clap for Xi Jinping: An Awesome Speech", in which players have 19 seconds to generate as many claps as possible for the party leader.


title: Tencent

text: In August 2019, it was reported that Tencent collaborated with the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party and the "People's Daily" to develop "patriotic games."


title: Tencent

text: In a December 2020 article in "Foreign Policy", a former senior official of the Central Intelligence Agency stated that the CIA concluded that Tencent received funding from the Ministry of State Security early on in its foundation. This was said to be a "seed investment" that was provided "when they were trying to build out the Great Firewall and the monitoring technology." Tencent denied this allegation.


title: Tencent

text: In 2021, it was reported that Tencent and Ant Group were working with the People's Bank of China to develop a digital currency.


title: Tencent

text: Many of Tencent's software and services share similarities to those of competitors, and to their The founder and chairman, Huateng "Pony" Ma, famously said, "[To] copy is not evil." A former CEO and president of SINA.com, Wang Zhidong, said, "Pony Ma is a notorious king of copying." Jack Ma of Alibaba Group stated, "The problem with Tencent is the lack of innovation; all of their products are copies."


title: Tencent

text: In 1996, an Israeli company named Mirabilis released one of the first stand alone instant messaging clients named ICQ. Three years later, Tencent released a copied version of ICQ, naming it OICQ, which stands for Open ICQ. After losing a lawsuit against AOL, which bought ICQ in 1998, for violating ICQ's intellectual property rights, Tencent released a new version of OICQ in December 2000 and rebranded it QQ. With its model of free-to-use and charging for customizing personal avatars, QQ hit 50 million users in its second year, 856 million users and at most 45.3 million synchronous users in 2008.


title: Tencent

text: During early stages of company development and expansion, Tencent has been widely accused of stealing ideas from its competitors and creating counterfeit copies of their products. Some of the criticisms aimed at Tencent in this regard are that QQ farm was a direct copy of Happy Farm, QQ dance originated from Audition Online, and that QQ speed featured gameplay highly similar to Crazyracing Kartrider.


title: Tencent

text: In a partial effort to rebuild the reputation of Tencent lost from allegations of copying, Tencent adjusted its strategy by aggressively investing in the acquisition of other companies, rather than in the replication of them. By 2020, Tencent had invested in over 800 companies across the world. During 2012 and 2019, Tencent has invested from minority stakes to majority stakes in world-wide-famous game companies such as Riot Games, Epic Games, Activision Blizzard, SuperCell, Bluehole. While aggressive acquisitions may benefit Tencent due to factors such as reduction in competition and monopolization, it may not benefit the acquired companies in terms of their growth and innovation. Colin Huang, founder of Pinduoduo, said “Tencent won't die when Pinduoduo dies, because it has tens of thousands of sons.”


title: Tencent

text: In 2015, security testing firms AV-Comparatives, AV-TEST and Virus Bulletin jointly decided to remove Tencent from their software whitelists. The Tencent products supplied for testing were found to contain optimisations that made the software appear less exploitable when benchmarked but actually provided greater scope for delivering exploits. Additionally, software settings were detrimental to end-users protection if used. Qihoo was later also accused of cheating, while Tencent was accused of actively gaming the anti-malware tests.


title: Tencent

text: Tencent's WeChat platform has been accused of blocking TikTok videos and the censorship of politically sensitive content. In April 2018, TikTok sued Tencent and accused it of spreading false and damaging information on its WeChat platform, demanding RMB 1 million in compensation and an apology. In June 2018, Tencent filed a lawsuit against Toutiao and TikTok in a Beijing court, alleging they had repeatedly defamed Tencent with negative news and damaged its reputation, seeking a nominal sum of RMB 1 in compensation and a public apology. In response, Toutiao filed a complaint the following day against Tencent for allegedly unfair competition and asking for RMB 90 million in economic losses.


title: Tencent

text: However, Tim Sweeney, the CEO and founder of Epic Games, maker of the popular game "Fortnite", tweeted that his company would never follow suit and punish people for expressing their opinions, even though Tencent is a 40% stakeholder in Epic. He emphasized, "That will never happen on my watch as the founder, CEO, and controlling shareholder," and that Epic is an American company, implying that it would not compromise an ethos of free speech in the name of currying favor with authorities in China just to try to maximize profit there.


title: Tencent

text: Later, Tencent announced it would stop broadcasting Houston Rockets NBA games in China due to a tweet made by Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets, that was supportive of Hong Kong protestors. Although Morey's tweet was hastily deleted, news of it was quickly reported all around the world, and the NBA went on to spend months attempting damage control in China.


title: Tencent

text: In December 2019, the Chinese government ordered Tencent to improve the firm's user data rules for its apps, which regulators regarded to be in violation of censorship rules.


title: Tencent

text: In January 2021, a proposed class action lawsuit was filed in California against Tencent, alleging user censorship and surveillance via WeChat.


title: Tencent

text: In November 2022, Sustainalytics downgraded Tencent to "non-compliant" with the United Nations Global Compact principles due to complicity with censorship.


title: Tencent

text: President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on 6 August 2020, one directed at TikTok and one at WeChat. The TikTok order dictated that within 45 days from its signing (20 September 2020) that it would ban transactions involving the TikTok app with ByteDance, effectively banning the TikTok app in the United States, under threat of penalty. TikTok sued Trump over the executive order, the executive order was revoked under the Biden Administration and this caused the lawsuit to be dismissed in July 2021. The order for WeChat contained the same information but targeting the WeChat app and related transactions for Tencent. In the case of ByteDance, the order would be canceled should an American company acquire it, which Microsoft had been openly spoken of, but there are unlikely any immediate buyers for Tencent in the U.S. "Los Angeles Times" reporter Sam Dean affirmed from the White House that this does not affect other facets of Tencent's ownerships in American companies such as with its video game companies.


title: Inception

text: Inception is a 2010 science fiction action film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, who also produced the film with Emma Thomas, his wife. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a professional thief who steals information by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets. He is offered a chance to have his criminal history erased as payment for the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious. The ensemble cast includes Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Elliot Page, Tom Hardy, Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, and Michael Caine.


title: Inception

text: After the 2002 completion of "Insomnia", Nolan presented to Warner Bros. a written 80-page treatment for a horror film envisioning "dream stealers," based on lucid dreaming. Deciding he needed more experience before tackling a production of this magnitude and complexity, Nolan shelved the project and instead worked on 2005's "Batman Begins", 2006's "The Prestige", and "The Dark Knight" in 2008. The treatment was revised over 6 months and was purchased by Warner in February 2009. "Inception" was filmed in six countries, beginning in Tokyo on June 19 and ending in Canada on November 22. Its official budget was $160 million, split between Warner Bros. and Legendary. Nolan's reputation and success with "The Dark Knight" helped secure the film's US$100 million in advertising expenditure.


title: Inception

text: "Inception"s premiere was held in London on July 8, 2010; it was released in both conventional and IMAX theaters beginning on July 16, 2010. "Inception" grossed over $828 million worldwide, becoming the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2010. Considered one of the best films of the 2010s, "Inception" won four Academy Awards (Best Cinematography, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects) and was nominated for four more: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Art Direction, and Best Original Score.


title: Inception

text: Cobb and Arthur are "extractors"; they perform corporate espionage using experimental dream-sharing technology to infiltrate their targets' subconscious and extract information. Their latest target, Saito, is impressed with Cobb's ability to layer multiple dreams within each other and offers to hire Cobb for the supposedly impossible job of implanting an idea into a person's subconscious; performing "inception" on Robert, the son of Saito's competitor Maurice Fischer, with the idea to dissolve his father's company. Saito promises to clear Cobb's criminal status, allowing him to return home to his children.


title: Inception

text: Cobb accepts the offer and assembles his team: a forger named Eames, a chemist named Yusuf, and a college student named Ariadne. Ariadne is tasked with designing the dream's architecture, something Cobb himself cannot do for fear of being sabotaged by a projection of his late wife Mal. Maurice dies, and the team sedates Robert into a three-layer shared dream on a plane to America. Time on each layer runs slower than the layer above, with one member staying behind on each to perform a music-synchronized "kick" to awaken dreamers on all three levels simultaneously.


title: Inception

text: The team abducts Robert in a city on the first level but is attacked by his subconscious projections. After Saito is wounded, Cobb reveals that while dying in the dream would normally awaken dreamers, Yusuf's sedatives will instead send them into "Limbo": a world of infinite subconscious. Eames impersonates Robert's godfather, Peter Browning, to introduce the idea of an alternate will to dissolve the company. Cobb tells Ariadne that he and Mal entered Limbo while experimenting with dream-sharing, experiencing fifty years in one night due to the time dilation with reality. Mal refused to return to reality, and Cobb instead performed inception on her to convince her. After waking up, Mal still believed she was dreaming. Attempting to "wake up", she committed suicide and framed Cobb to force him to do the same. Cobb fled the U.S., leaving his children behind.


title: Inception

text: Yusuf drives the team around the first level as they are sedated into the second level, a hotel dreamed by Arthur. Cobb persuades Robert that he has been kidnapped by Browning to stop the dissolution and that Cobb is a defensive projection, leading Robert yet another level deeper as part of a ruse to enter Robert's subconscious. In the third level, the team infiltrates an alpine fortress with a projection of Maurice inside, where the inception itself can be performed. However, Yusuf performs his kick too soon by driving off a bridge, forcing Arthur and Eames to improvise a new set of kicks synchronized with them hitting the water by rigging an elevator and the fortress respectively with explosives. Mal then appears and kills Robert before he can be subjected to the inception and he and Saito are lost into Limbo, forcing Cobb and Ariadne to rescue them in time for Robert's inception and Eames's kick.


title: Inception

text: Cobb makes peace with Mal's death. Ariadne kills Mal's projection and wakes Robert up with a kick. Revived into the third level, he discovers the planted idea: his dying father telling him to create something for himself. While Cobb searches for Saito in Limbo, the others ride the kicks back to reality. Cobb finds an aged Saito and reminds him of their agreement. The dreamers all awaken on the plane, and Saito makes a phone call. Arriving at L.A., Cobb passes the immigration checkpoint and his father-in-law accompanies him to his home. Cobb uses Mal's "totem" – a top that spins indefinitely in a dream – to test if he is indeed in the real world, but chooses not to observe the result and instead joins his children.


title: Inception

text: Initially, Nolan wrote an 80-page treatment about dream-stealers. Originally, Nolan had envisioned "Inception" as a horror film, but eventually wrote it as a heist film even though he found that "traditionally [they] are very deliberately superficial in emotional terms." Upon revisiting his script, he decided that basing it in that genre did not work because the story "relies so heavily on the idea of the interior state, the idea of dream and memory. I realized I needed to raise the emotional stakes."


title: Inception

text: Nolan worked on the script for nine to ten years. When he first started thinking about making the film, Nolan was influenced by "that era of movies where you had "The Matrix" (1999), you had "Dark City" (1998), you had "The Thirteenth Floor" (1999) and, to a certain extent, you had "Memento" (2000), too. They were based in the principles that the world around you might not be real."


title: Inception

text: Nolan first pitched the film to Warner Bros. in 2001, but decided that he needed more experience making large-scale films, and embarked on "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight". He soon realized that a film like "Inception" needed a large budget because "as soon as you're talking about dreams, the potential of the human mind is infinite. And so the scale of the film has to feel infinite. It has to feel like you could go anywhere by the end of the film. And it has to work on a massive scale." After making "The Dark Knight", Nolan decided to make "Inception" and spent six months completing the script. Nolan said that the key to completing the script was wondering what would happen if several people shared the same dream. "Once you remove the privacy, you've created an infinite number of alternative universes in which people can meaningfully interact, with validity, with weight, with dramatic consequences."


title: Inception

text: Nolan had been trying to work with Leonardo DiCaprio for years and met him several times, but was unable to recruit him for any of his films until "Inception". DiCaprio finally agreed because he was "intrigued by this concept—this dream-heist notion and how this character's going to unlock his dreamworld and ultimately affect his real life." He read the script and found it to be "very well written, comprehensive but you really had to have Chris in person, to try to articulate some of the things that have been swirling around his head for the last eight years." DiCaprio and Nolan spent months talking about the screenplay. Nolan took a long time re-writing the script in order "to make sure that the emotional journey of his [DiCaprio's] character was the driving force of the movie." On February 11, 2009, it was announced that Warner Bros. purchased "Inception", a spec script written by Nolan.


title: Inception

text: Principal photography began in Tokyo on June 19, 2009, with the scene in which Saito first hires Cobb during a helicopter flight over the city.


title: Inception

text: The production moved to the United Kingdom and shot in a converted airship hangar in Cardington, Bedfordshire, north of London. There, the hotel bar set which tilted 30 degrees was built. A hotel corridor was also constructed by Guy Hendrix Dyas, the production designer, Chris Corbould, the special effects supervisor, and Wally Pfister, the director of photography; it rotated a full 360 degrees to create the effect of alternate directions of gravity for scenes set during the second level of dreaming, where dream-sector physics become chaotic. The idea was inspired by a technique used in Stanley Kubrick's "" (1968). Nolan said, "I was interested in taking those ideas, techniques, and philosophies and applying them to an action scenario". The filmmakers originally planned to make the hallway only long, but as the action sequence became more elaborate, the hallway's length was increased to . The corridor was suspended along eight large concentric rings that were spaced equidistantly outside its walls and powered by two massive electric motors.


title: Inception

text: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays Arthur, spent several weeks learning to fight in a corridor that spun like "a giant hamster wheel". Nolan said of the device, "It was like some incredible torture device; we thrashed Joseph for weeks, but in the end we looked at the footage, and it looks unlike anything any of us has seen before. The rhythm of it is unique, and when you watch it, even if you know how it was done, it confuses your perceptions. It's unsettling in a wonderful way". Gordon-Levitt remembered, "it was six-day weeks of just, like, coming home at night battered ... The light fixtures on the ceiling are coming around on the floor, and you have to choose the right time to cross through them, and if you don't, you're going to fall." On July 15, 2009, filming took place at University College London for the sequences occurring inside a Paris college of architecture in the story, including the library, Flaxman Gallery and Gustav Tuck Theatre.


title: Inception

text: Filming moved to France, where they shot Cobb entering the college of architecture (the place used for the entrance was the Musée Galliera) and the pivotal scenes between Ariadne and Cobb, in a bistro (a fictional one set up at the corner of Rue César Franck and Rue Bouchut), and lastly on the Bir-Hakeim bridge. For the explosion that takes place during the bistro scene, local authorities would not allow the use of real explosives. High-pressure nitrogen was used to create the effect of a series of explosions. Pfister used six high-speed cameras to capture the sequence from different angles and make sure that they got the shot. The visual effects department enhanced the sequence, adding more destruction and flying debris. For the "Paris folding" sequence and when Ariadne "creates" the bridges, green screen and CGI were used on location.


title: Inception

text: Tangier, Morocco, doubled as Mombasa, where Cobb hires Eames and Yusuf. A foot chase was shot in the streets and alleyways of the historic medina quarter. To capture this sequence, Pfister employed a mix of hand-held camera and steadicam work. Tangier was also used as the setting for filming an important riot scene during the initial foray into Saito's mind.


title: Inception

text: Filming moved to the Los Angeles area, where some sets were built on a Warner Bros. sound stage, including the interior rooms of Saito's Japanese castle (the exterior was done on a small set built in Malibu Beach). The dining room was inspired by the historic Nijō Castle, built around 1603. These sets were inspired by a mix of Japanese architecture and Western influences.


title: Inception

text: The production staged a multi-vehicle car chase on the streets of downtown Los Angeles, which involved a freight train crashing down the middle of a street. To do this, the filmmakers configured a train engine on the chassis of a tractor trailer. The replica was made from fiberglass molds taken from authentic train parts and matched in terms of color and design. Also, the car chase was supposed to be set in the midst of a downpour, but the L.A. weather stayed typically sunny. The filmmakers set up elaborate effects (e.g., rooftop water cannons) to give the audience the impression that the weather was overcast and soggy. L.A. was also the site of the climactic scene where a Ford Econoline van runs off the Schuyler Heim Bridge in slow motion. This sequence was filmed on and off for months, with the van being shot out of a cannon, according to actor Dileep Rao. Capturing the actors suspended within the van in slow motion took a whole day to film.


title: Inception

text: Once the van landed in the water, the challenge for the actors was to avoid panic. "And when they ask you to act, it's a bit of an ask," explained Cillian Murphy. The actors had to be underwater for four to five minutes while drawing air from scuba tanks; underwater buddy breathing is shown in this sequence.


title: Inception

text: Cobb's house was in Pasadena. The hotel lobby was filmed at the CAA building in Century City. 'Limbo' was made on location in Los Angeles and Morocco, with the beach scene filmed at Palos Verdes beach with CGI buildings. N Hope St. in Los Angeles was the primary filming location for 'Limbo,' with green screen and CGI being used to create the dream landscape.


title: Inception

text: The final phase of principal photography took place in Alberta in late November 2009. The location manager discovered a temporarily closed ski resort, Fortress Mountain. An elaborate set was assembled near the top station of the Canadian chairlift, taking three months to build. The production had to wait for a huge snowstorm, which eventually arrived. The ski-chase sequence was inspired by Nolan's favorite James Bond film, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (1969): "What I liked about it that we've tried to emulate in this film is there's a tremendous balance in that movie of action and scale and romanticism and tragedy and emotion."


title: Inception

text: The film was shot primarily in the anamorphic format on 35 mm film, with key sequences filmed on 65 mm, and aerial sequences in VistaVision. Nolan did not shoot any footage with IMAX cameras as he had with "The Dark Knight". "We didn't feel that we were going to be able to shoot in IMAX because of the size of the cameras because this film given that it deals with a potentially surreal area, the nature of dreams and so forth, I wanted it to be as realistic as possible. Not be bound by the scale of those IMAX cameras, even though I love the format dearly". In addition Nolan and Pfister tested using Showscan and Super Dimension 70 as potential large-format, high-frame-rate camera systems to use for the film, but ultimately decided against either format. Sequences in slow motion were filmed on a Photo-Sonics 35 mm camera at speeds of up to 1,000 frames per second. Wally Pfister tested shooting some of these sequences using a high speed digital camera, but found the format to be too unreliable due to technical glitches. "Out of six times that we shot on the digital format, we only had one usable piece and it didn't end up in the film. Out of the six times we shot with the Photo-Sonics camera and 35 mm running through it, every single shot was in the movie." Nolan also chose not to shoot any of the film in 3D as he prefers shooting on film using prime lenses, which is not possible with 3D cameras. Nolan has also criticized the dim image that 3D projection produces, and disputes that traditional film does not allow realistic depth perception, saying "I think it's a misnomer to call it 3D versus 2D. The whole point of cinematic imagery is it's three dimensional... You know 95% of our depth cues come from occlusion, resolution, color and so forth, so the idea of calling a 2D movie a '2D movie' is a little misleading." Nolan did test converting "Inception" into 3D in post-production but decided that, while it was possible, he lacked the time to complete the conversion to a standard he was happy with. In February 2011 Jonathan Liebesman suggested that Warner Bros. were attempting a 3D conversion for Blu-ray release.


title: Inception

text: Wally Pfister gave each location and dream level a distinctive look to aid the audience's recognition of the narrative's location during the heavily crosscut portion of the film: the mountain fortress appears sterile and cool, the hotel hallways have warm hues, and the scenes in the van are more neutral.


title: Inception

text: Nolan has said that the film "deals with levels of reality, and perceptions of reality which is something I'm very interested in. It's an action film set in a contemporary world, but with a slight science-fiction bent to it," while also describing it as "very much an ensemble film structured somewhat as a heist movie. It's an action adventure that spans the globe".


title: Inception

text: For dream sequences in "Inception", Nolan used little computer-generated imagery, preferring practical effects whenever possible. Nolan said, "It's always very important to me to do as much as possible in-camera, and then, if necessary, computer graphics are very useful to build on or enhance what you have achieved physically." To this end, visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin built a miniature of the mountain fortress set and then blew it up for the film. For the fight scene that takes place in zero gravity, he used CG-based effects to "subtly bend elements like physics, space and time."


title: Inception

text: The most challenging effect was the "Limbo" city level at the end of the film, because it continually developed during production. Franklin had artists build concepts while Nolan expressed his ideal vision: "Something glacial, with clear modernist architecture, but with chunks of it breaking off into the sea like icebergs". Franklin and his team ended up with "something that looked like an iceberg version of Gotham City with water running through it." They created a basic model of a glacier and then designers created a program that added elements like roads, intersections and ravines until they had a complex, yet organic-looking, cityscape. For the Paris-folding sequence, Franklin had artists producing concept sketches and then they created rough computer animations to give them an idea of what the sequence looked like while in motion. Later during principal photography, Nolan was able to direct DiCaprio and Page based on this rough computer animation that Franklin had created. "Inception" had nearly 500 visual effects shots (in comparison, "Batman Begins" had approximately 620), which is relatively few in comparison to contemporary effects-heavy films, which can have as many as 2,000 visual effects shots.


title: Inception

text: The score for "Inception" was written by Hans Zimmer, who described his work as "a very electronic, dense score", filled with "nostalgia and sadness" to match Cobb's feelings throughout the film. The music was written simultaneously to filming, and features a guitar sound reminiscent of Ennio Morricone, played by Johnny Marr, former guitarist of the Smiths.


title: Inception

text: Édith Piaf's "Non, je ne regrette rien" ("No, I Regret Nothing") appears throughout the film, used to accurately time the dreams, and Zimmer reworked pieces of the song into cues of the score.


title: Inception

text: A was released on July 11, 2010, by Reprise Records. The majority of the score was also included in high resolution 5.1 surround sound on the second disc of the two-disc Blu-ray release. Hans Zimmer's music was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Original Score category in 2011, losing to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of "The Social Network".


title: Inception

text: In "Inception", Nolan wanted to explore "the idea of people sharing a dream space... That gives you the ability to access somebody's unconscious mind. What would that be used and abused for?" The majority of the film's plot takes place in these interconnected dream worlds. This structure creates a framework where actions in the real or dream worlds ripple across others. The dream is always in a state of production, and shifts across the levels as the characters navigate it. By contrast, the world of "The Matrix" (1999) is an authoritarian, computer-controlled one, alluding to theories of social control developed by thinkers Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard. However, according to one interpretation Nolan's world has more in common with the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.


title: Inception

text: David Denby in "The New Yorker" compared Nolan's cinematic treatment of dreams to Luis Buñuel's in "Belle de Jour" (1967) and "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972). He criticized Nolan's "literal-minded" action level sequencing compared to Buñuel, who "silently pushed us into reveries and left us alone to enjoy our wonderment, but Nolan is working on so many levels of representation at once that he has to lay in pages of dialogue just to explain what's going on." The latter captures "the peculiar malign intensity of actual dreams."


title: Inception

text: Deirdre Barrett, a dream researcher at Harvard University, said that Nolan did not get every detail accurate regarding dreams, but their illogical, rambling, disjointed plots would not make for a great thriller anyway. However, "he did get many aspects right," she said, citing the scene in which a sleeping Cobb is shoved into a full bath, and in the dream world water gushes into the windows of the building, waking him up. "That's very much how real stimuli get incorporated, and you very often wake up right after that intrusion."


title: Inception

text: Nolan himself said, "I tried to work that idea of manipulation and management of a conscious dream being a skill that these people have. Really the script is based on those common, very basic experiences and concepts, and where can those take you? And the only outlandish idea that the film presents, really, is the existence of a technology that allows you to enter and share the same dream as someone else."


title: Inception

text: Others have argued that the film is itself a metaphor for filmmaking, and that the filmgoing experience itself, images flashing before one's eyes in a darkened room, is akin to a dream. Writing in "Wired", Jonah Lehrer supported this interpretation and presented neurological evidence that brain activity is strikingly similar during film-watching and sleeping. In both, the visual cortex is highly active and the prefrontal cortex, which deals with logic, deliberate analysis, and self-awareness, is quiet. Paul argued that the experience of going to a picturehouse is itself an exercise in shared dreaming, particularly when viewing "Inception": the film's sharp cutting between scenes forces the viewer to create larger narrative arcs to stitch the pieces together. This demand of production parallel to consumption of the images, on the part of the audience is analogous to dreaming itself. As in the film's story, in a cinema one enters into the space of another's dream, in this case Nolan's, as with any work of art, one's reading of it is ultimately influenced by one's own subjective desires and subconscious. At Bir-Hakeim bridge in Paris, Ariadne creates an illusion of infinity by adding facing mirrors underneath its struts, Stephanie Dreyfus in "la Croix" asked "Is this not a strong, beautiful metaphor for the cinema and its power of illusion?"


title: Inception

text: Nolan combined elements from several different film genres into the film, notably science fiction, heist film, and film noir.


title: Inception

text: Marion Cotillard plays "Mal" Cobb, Dom Cobb's projection of his guilt over his deceased wife's suicide. As the film's main antagonist, she is a frequent, malevolent presence in his dreams. Dom is unable to control these projections of her, challenging his abilities as an extractor. Nolan described Mal as "the essence of the femme fatale", the key "noir" reference in the film. As a "classic femme fatale" her relationship with Cobb is in his mind, a manifestation of Cobb's own neurosis and fear of how little he knows about the woman he loves. DiCaprio praised Cotillard's performance saying that "she can be strong and vulnerable and hopeful and heartbreaking all in the same moment, which was perfect for all the contradictions of her character".


title: Inception

text: Nolan began with the structure of a heist movie, since exposition is an essential element of that genre, though adapted it to have a greater emotional narrative suited to the world of dreams and subconscious. As Denby described this device: "the outer shell of the story is an elaborate caper". Kristin Thompson argued that exposition was a major formal device in the film. While a traditional heist movie has a heavy dose of exposition at the beginning as the team assembles and the leader explains the plan, in "Inception" this becomes nearly continuous as the group progresses through the various levels of dreaming. Three quarters of the film, until the van begins to fall from the bridge, are devoted to explaining its plot. In this way, exposition takes precedence over characterization. The characters' relationships are created by their respective skills and roles. Ariadne, like her ancient namesake, creates the maze and guides the others through it, but also helps Cobb navigate his own subconscious, and as the sole student of dream sharing, helps the audience understand the concept of the plot.


title: Inception

text: Nolan drew inspiration from the works of Jorge Luis Borges, including "The Secret Miracle" and "The Circular Ruins", and from the films "Blade Runner" (1982) and "The Matrix" (1999). While Nolan has not confirmed this, it has also been suggested by many observers that the movie draws heavy inspiration from the 2006 animated film "Paprika".


title: Inception

text: The film cuts to the closing credits from a shot of the top apparently starting to show an ever so faint wobble, inviting speculation about whether the final sequence was reality or another dream. Nolan confirmed that the ambiguity was deliberate, saying, "I've been asked the question more times than I've ever been asked any other question about any other film I've made... What's funny to me is that people really do expect me to answer it." The film's script concludes with "Behind him, on the table, the spinning top is STILL SPINNING. And we—FADE OUT". Nolan said, "I put that cut there at the end, imposing an ambiguity from outside the film. That always felt the right ending to me—it always felt like the appropriate 'kick' to me... The real point of the scene—and this is what I tell people—is that Cobb isn't looking at the top. He's looking at his kids. He's left it behind. That's the emotional significance of the thing." Also, Michael Caine explained his interpretation of the ending, saying, "If I'm there it's real, because I'm never in the dream. I'm the guy who invented the dream."


title: Inception

text: Mark Fisher argued that "a century of cultural theory" cautions against accepting the author's interpretation as anything more than a supplementary text, and this all the more so given the theme of the instability of any one master position in Nolan's films. Therein the manipulator is often the one who ends up manipulated, and Cobb's "not caring" about whether or not his world is real may be the price of his happiness and release.


title: Inception

text: Warner Bros. spent US$100 million marketing the film. Although "Inception" was not part of an existing franchise, Sue Kroll, president of Warner's worldwide marketing, said the company believed it could gain awareness due to the strength of "Christopher Nolan as a brand". Kroll declared that "We don't have the brand equity that usually drives a big summer opening, but we have a great cast and a fresh idea from a filmmaker with a track record of making incredible movies. If you can't make those elements work, it's a sad day." The studio also tried to maintain a campaign of secrecy—as reported by the Senior VP of Interactive Marketing, Michael Tritter, "You have this movie which is going to have a pretty big built in fanbase... but you also have a movie that you are trying to keep very secret. Chris [Nolan] really likes people to see his movies in a theater and not see it all beforehand so everything that you do to market that—at least early on—is with an eye to feeding the interest to fans."


title: Inception

text: A viral marketing campaign was employed for the film. After the revelation of the first teaser trailer, in August 2009, the film's official website featured only an animation of Cobb's spinning top. In December, the top toppled over and the website opened the online game "Mind Crime", which upon completion revealed "Inception"s poster. The rest of the campaign unrolled after WonderCon in April 2010, where Warner gave away promotional T-shirts featuring the PASIV briefcase used to create the dream space, and had a QR code linking to an online manual of the device. "Mind Crime" also received a stage 2 with more resources, including a hidden trailer for the movie. More pieces of viral marketing began to surface before "Inception"s release, such as a manual filled with bizarre images and text sent to "Wired" magazine, and the online publication of posters, ads, phone applications, and strange websites all related to the film. Warner also released an online prequel comic, "Inception: The Cobol Job".


title: Inception

text: The official trailer released on May 10, 2010, through "Mind Game" was extremely well received. It featured an original piece of music, "Mind Heist", by recording artist Zack Hemsey, rather than music from the score. The trailer quickly went viral with numerous mashups copying its style, both by amateurs on sites like YouTube and by professionals on sites such as CollegeHumor. On June 7, 2010, a behind-the-scenes featurette on the film was released in HD on Yahoo! Movies.


title: Inception

text: "Inception" and its film trailers are widely credited for launching the trend throughout the 2010s in which blockbuster movie trailers repeatedly hit audiences with so-called "braam" sounds: "bassy, brassy, thunderous notes—like a foghorn on steroids—meant to impart a sense of apocalyptic momentousness". However, different composers worked on the teaser trailer, first trailer, second trailer, and film score, meaning that identifying the composer(s) responsible for that trend is a complicated task.


title: Inception

text: "Inception" was released on DVD and Blu-ray on December 3, 2010, in France, and the week after in the UK and USA (December 7, 2010). Warner Bros. also made available in the United States a limited Blu-ray edition packaged in a metal replica of the PASIV briefcase, which included extras such as a metal replica of the spinning top totem. With a production run of less than 2,000, it sold out in one weekend. "Inception" was released on 4K Blu-ray and digital copy along with other Christopher Nolan films on December 19, 2017. , the home video releases have sold over 9million units and grossed over .


title: Inception

text: In a November 2010 interview, Nolan expressed his intention to develop a video game set in the "Inception" world, working with a team of collaborators. He described it as "a longer-term proposition", referring to the medium of video games as "something I've wanted to explore".


title: Inception

text: "Inception" was re-released in theaters for its tenth anniversary, starting on August 12, 2020, in international markets and on August 21 in the U.S. The re-release was originally announced by Warner Bros. in June 2020 and scheduled for July 17, 2020, taking the original release date for Nolan's upcoming film "Tenet" after its delay to July 31 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on movie theaters. After "Tenet" was delayed again to August 12, the re-release was shifted to July 31, before setting on the August release date following a third delay.


title: Inception

text: "Inception" was released in both conventional and IMAX theaters on July 16, 2010. The film had its world premiere at Leicester Square in London on July 8, 2010. In the United States and Canada, "Inception" was released theatrically in 3,792 conventional theaters and 195 IMAX theaters. The film grossed US$21.8 million during its opening day on July 16, 2010, with midnight screenings in 1,500 locations. Overall the film made US$62.7 million and debuted at No.1 on its opening weekend. "Inception"s opening weekend gross made it the second-highest-grossing debut for a science fiction film that was not a sequel, remake or adaptation, behind "Avatar"'s US$77 million opening-weekend gross in 2009. The film held the top spot of the box office rankings in its second and third weekends, with drops of just 32% (US$42.7 million) and 36% (US$27.5 million), respectively, before dropping to second place in its fourth week, behind "The Other Guys".


title: Inception

text: "Inception" grossed US$292 million in the United States and Canada, US$56 million in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Malta and US$475 million in other countries for a total of US$823 million worldwide. Its five highest-grossing markets after the US and Canada (US$292 million) were China (US$68 million), the United Kingdom, Ireland and Malta (US$56 million), France and the Maghreb region (US$43 million), Japan (US$40 million) and South Korea (US$38 million). It was the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2010 in North America, and the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2010, behind "Toy Story 3", "Alice in Wonderland" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1". "Inception" is the third most lucrative production in Christopher Nolan's career—behind "The Dark Knight" and "The Dark Knight Rises"—and the second most for Leonardo DiCaprio—behind "Titanic".


title: Inception

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 87% based on 361 reviews, with an average rating of 8.10/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Smart, innovative, and thrilling, "Inception" is that rare summer blockbuster that succeeds viscerally as well as intellectually." Metacritic, another review aggregator, assigned the film a weighted average score of 74 out of 100, based on 42 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Inception

text: Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" called "Inception" a "wildly ingenious chess game," and concluded "the result is a knockout." Justin Chang of "Variety" praised the film as "a conceptual tour de force" and wrote, "applying a vivid sense of procedural detail to a fiendishly intricate yarn set in the labyrinth of the unconscious mind, the writer-director has devised a heist thriller for surrealists, a Jungian's "Rififi", that challenges viewers to sift through multiple layers of (un)reality." Jim Vejvoda of IGN rated the film as perfect, deeming it "a singular accomplishment from a filmmaker who has only gotten better with each film." "Relevant"'s David Roark called it Nolan's "greatest accomplishment," saying, "Visually, intellectually and emotionally, "Inception" is a masterpiece."


title: Inception

text: In its August 2010 issue, "Empire" magazine gave the film a full five stars and wrote, "it feels like Stanley Kubrick adapting the work of the great sci-fi author William Gibson [...] Nolan delivers another true original: welcome to an undiscovered country." "Entertainment Weekly"s Lisa Schwarzbaum gave the film a B+ grade and wrote, "It's a rolling explosion of images as hypnotizing and sharply angled as any in a drawing by M. C. Escher or a state-of-the-biz video game; the backwards splicing of Nolan's own "Memento" looks rudimentary by comparison." The "New York Post"s Lou Lumenick gave the film a four-star rating and wrote, "DiCaprio, who has never been better as the tortured hero, draws you in with a love story that will appeal even to non-sci-fi fans." Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" awarded the film a full four stars and said that "Inception" "is all about process, about fighting our way through enveloping sheets of reality and dream, reality within dreams, dreams without reality. It's a breathtaking juggling act." Richard Roeper, also of the "Sun-Times", gave "Inception" an "A+" score and called it "one of the best movies of the [21st] century." BBC Radio 5 Live's Mark Kermode named "Inception" as the best film of 2010, stating that ""Inception" is proof that people are not stupid, that cinema is not trash, and that it is possible for blockbusters and art to be the same thing."


title: Inception

text: Michael Phillips of the "Chicago Tribune" gave the film 3 out of 4 stars and wrote, "I found myself wishing "Inception" were weirder, further out [...] the film is Nolan's labyrinth all the way, and it's gratifying to experience a summer movie with large visual ambitions and with nothing more or less on its mind than (as Shakespeare said) a dream that hath no bottom." "TIME" magazine's Richard Corliss wrote that the film's "noble intent is to implant one man's vision in the mind of a vast audience [...] The idea of moviegoing as communal dreaming is a century old. With "Inception", viewers have a chance to see that notion get a state-of-the-art update." Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" felt that Nolan was able to blend "the best of traditional and modern filmmaking. If you're searching for smart and nervy popular entertainment, this is what it looks like."


title: Inception

text: "USA Today" Claudia Puig gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and felt that Nolan "regards his viewers as possibly smarter than they are—or at least as capable of rising to his inventive level. That's a tall order. But it's refreshing to find a director who makes us stretch, even occasionally struggle, to keep up."


title: Inception

text: Not all reviewers gave the film positive reviews. "New York" magazine's David Edelstein claimed in his review that he had "no idea what so many people are raving about. It's as if someone went into their heads while they were sleeping and planted the idea that "Inception" is a visionary masterpiece and—hold on ... Whoa! I think I get it. The movie is a metaphor for the power of delusional hype—a metaphor for itself." "The New York Observer"s Rex Reed explained that the film's development was "pretty much what we've come to expect from summer movies in general and Christopher Nolan movies in particular ... [it] doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment to me." A. O. Scott of "The New York Times" commented "there is a lot to see in "Inception", there is nothing that counts as genuine vision. Mr. Nolan's idea of the mind is too literal, too logical, and too rule-bound to allow the full measure of madness." "The New Yorker"s David Denby considered the film to "not nearly [be] as much fun as Nolan imagined it to be", concluding that ""Inception" is a stunning-looking film that gets lost in fabulous intricacies, a movie devoted to its own workings and to little else."


title: Inception

text: While some critics have tended to view the film as perfectly straightforward, and even criticize its overarching themes as "the stuff of torpid platitudes," online discussion has been much more positive. Heated debate has centered on the ambiguity of the ending, with many critics like Devin Faraci making the case that the film is self-referential and tongue-in-cheek, both a film about film-making and a dream about dreams. Other critics read "Inception" as Christian allegory and focus on the film's use of religious and water symbolism. Yet other critics, such as Kristin Thompson, see less value in the ambiguous ending of the film and more in its structure and novel method of storytelling, highlighting "Inception" as a new form of narrative that revels in "continuous exposition".


title: Inception

text: Several critics and scholars have noted the film has many striking similarities to the 2006 anime film "Paprika" by Satoshi Kon (and Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1993 novel of the same name), including plot similarities, similar scenes, and similar characters, arguing that "Inception" was influenced by "Paprika". Several sources have also noted plot similarities between the film and the 2002 Uncle Scrooge comic "The Dream of a Lifetime" by Don Rosa. The influence of Tarkovsky's "Solaris" on "Inception" was noted as well.


title: Inception

text: "Inception" appeared on over 273 critics' lists of the top ten films of 2010, being picked as number-one on at least 55 of those lists. It was the second-most-mentioned film in both the top ten lists and number-one rankings, only behind "The Social Network" along with "Toy Story 3", "True Grit", "The King's Speech", and "Black Swan" as the most critically acclaimed films of 2010. Author Stephen King placed "Inception" at #3 in his list of top 10 best movies of the year.


title: Inception

text: Critics and publications who ranked the film first for that year included Richard Roeper of the "Chicago Sun-Times", Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" (tied with "The Social Network" and "Toy Story 3"), Tasha Robinson of "The A.V. Club", "Empire" magazine, and Kirk Honeycutt of "The Hollywood Reporter".


title: Inception

text: In March 2011, the film was voted by BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 1Xtra listeners as their ninth-favorite film of all time. Producer Roger Corman cited "Inception" as an example of "great imagination and originality". It was voted as the third-best science fiction film of all time in the 2011 list "", based on a poll conducted by ABC and "People". In 2012, "Inception" was ranked the 35th-best-edited film of all time by the Motion Picture Editors Guild. In the same year, "Total Film" named it the most-rewatchable movie of all time. In 2014, "Empire" ranked "Inception" the tenth-greatest film ever made on their list of "The 301 Greatest Movies Of All Time" as voted by the magazine's readers, while "Rolling Stone" magazine named it the second-best science fiction film since the turn of the century. "Inception" was ranked 84th on "Hollywood's 100 Favorite Films", a list compiled by "The Hollywood Reporter" in 2014, surveying "Studio chiefs, Oscar winners and TV royalty". In 2016, "Inception" was voted the 51st-best film of the 21st Century by BBC, as picked by 177 film critics from around the world. The film was included in the Visual Effects Society's list of "The Most Influential Visual Effects Films of All Time". In 2019, "Total Film" named "Inception" the best film of the 2010s. Many critics and media outlets included "Inception" in their rankings of the best films of the 2010s. The film was included in "Forbes" magazine's list of "Top 150 Greatest Films of 21st Century".


title: Inception

text: In April 2014, "The Daily Telegraph" placed the title on its top ten list of the most overrated films. "Telegraph"s Tim Robey stated, "It's a criminal failing of the movie that it purports to be about people's dreams being invaded, but demonstrates no instinct at all for what a dream has ever felt like, and no flair for making us feel like we're in one, at any point." The film won an informal poll by the "Los Angeles Times" as the most overrated movie of 2010.


title: Inception

text: The film won many awards in technical categories, such as Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects, and the British Academy Film Awards for Best Production Design, Best Special Visual Effects and Best Sound. In most of its artistic nominations, such as Film, Director, and Screenplay at the Oscars, BAFTAs and Golden Globes, the film was defeated by "The Social Network" or "The King's Speech". However, the film did win the two highest honors for a science fiction or fantasy film: the 2011 Bradbury Award for best dramatic production and the 2011 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form).


title: Inception

text: Numerous pop and hip hop songs reference the film, including Common's "Blue Sky," N.E.R.D.'s "Hypnotize U," XV's "The Kick," Black Eyed Peas' "Just Can't Get Enough," Lil Wayne's "6 Foot 7 Foot," Jennifer Lopez's "On the Floor," and B.o.B's "Strange Clouds," while T.I. had "Inception"-based artwork on two of his mixtapes. An instrumental track by Joe Budden is titled "Inception." The animated series "South Park" parodies the film in the show's tenth episode of its fourteenth season, titled "Insheeption." The film was also an influence for Ariana Grande's video for "No Tears Left to Cry." "Lawnmower Dog", the second episode of the animated comedy show "Rick and Morty", parodied the film. In an episode of "The Simpsons", named "How I Wet Your Mother", the plot spoofs "Inception" with various scenes parodying moments from the film. The showrunners of the television series "The Flash" said its season 4 finale was inspired by "Inception". In February 2020, American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift released a lyric video for her single "The Man", which featured visuals bearing resemblance to the film. The song also mentions DiCaprio in its lyrics.


title: Inception

text: The film's title has been colloquialized as the suffix "-ception", which can be jokingly appended to a noun to indicate a layering, nesting, or recursion of the thing in question.


title: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (season 2)

text: "" is a Japanese anime series based on the manga series of the same title, written and illustrated by Koyoharu Gotouge. The second season adapts volumes seven to eleven (chapters 55–97) of the manga series and ran in two cours, with the first part titled Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Mugen Train Arc, a seven-episode recompilation of "Mugen Train" as featured in the , featuring new music and an all new original episode, which aired from October 10 to November 28, 2021. The second part is titled Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Entertainment District Arc which aired 11 episodes, from December 5, 2021, to February 13, 2022. The season was directed by Haruo Sotozaki, with character designs by Akira Matsushima, and animation produced by Ufotable; staff and cast from the first season and "" also returned.


text: For the "Mugen Train Arc", the opening theme is while the ending theme is , both performed by LiSA. is used as the ending theme of episode 7. For the "Entertainment District Arc", the opening theme is while the ending theme is , both performed by Aimer.


text: Aniplex of America licensed the series outside of Asia and streamed it on Funimation and Crunchyroll. Muse Communication licensed the second season in Southeast Asia and South Asia; they streamed it on iQIYI, Bilibili, WeTV, Viu, Netflix, and Disney+.


title: Stellantis

text: Stellantis N.V. is a multinational automotive manufacturing corporation formed in 2021 on the basis of a 50–50 cross-border merger between the Italian-American conglomerate Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and the French PSA Group. The company is headquartered in Amsterdam.


title: Stellantis

text: In terms of global vehicle sales in 2021, Stellantis was the world's fifth-largest automaker behind Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, and General Motors.


title: Stellantis

text: The principal activity of Stellantis is the design, development, manufacture and sale of automobiles bearing its 16 brands of Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Citroën, Dodge, DS, Fiat, Fiat Professional, Jeep, Lancia, Maserati, Mopar, Opel, Peugeot, Ram, and Vauxhall. At the time of the merger, Stellantis had approximately 300,000 employees, a presence in more than 130 countries with manufacturing facilities in 30 countries.


title: Stellantis

text: In early 2019, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) sought a merger with French automaker Renault and reached a provisional agreement with the company. However, the behaviour of the French government during negotiations led to the abandonment of the deal; "The Economist" reported that "for FCA this portended future interference". Nissan also had various concerns of the impact of the proposal on its alliance with Renault.


title: Stellantis

text: Subsequently, FCA approached Peugeot S.A. (PSA). The merger, officially agreed to in December 2019, was to create the world's fourth-largest carmaker by global vehicle sales with expected annual cost savings of €3.7 billion, or about US$4.22 billion.


title: Stellantis

text: On 21 December 2020, the European Commission announced its approval of the merger, while imposing minimal remedies to ensure competition in the sector.


title: Stellantis

text: The merger was approved on 4 January 2021 by the shareholders of both FCA and PSA, and the deal was completed on 16 January 2021. Common shares of the new company began trading on the Milan Stock Exchange and Euronext Paris on 18 January 2021 and on the New York Stock Exchange on 19 January 2021, in each case under the ticker symbol "STLA".


title: Stellantis

text: PSA merged with and into Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V., with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. as the surviving company in the merger. On 17 January 2021, the combined company was renamed Stellantis N.V. International Financial Reporting Standards, or IFRS, mandate the identification of the company acting as the acquirer and the company being acquired; Peugeot is considered the acquirer for accounting purposes, and statements reflect PSA's historical records. The filing notes the Stellantis board will have 11 directors, six from PSA and five from Fiat Chrysler. Additionally, the new company's first CEO, who is vested with the full authority to individually represent Stellantis, is Carlos Tavares, the former president of the PSA managing board, as well as former CEO of PSA Group. He will also have a five-year term as Stellantis CEO. PSA shareholders have also paid a premerger premium to FCA shareholders. However, Exor, the Agnelli family company that was the largest shareholder of FCA, will hold the largest stake in Stellantis with 14.4%. The merger agreements allow the Peugeot family to further increase its current 7.2% stake in Stellantis by up to an additional 1.5% by acquiring shares from France's state lender Bpifrance, from Dongfeng, or on the market.


title: Stellantis

text: The name "Stellantis" is exclusively used to identify the corporate entity, while group brand names and logos remain unchanged.


title: Stellantis

text: In 2021, CEO Carlos Tavares issued a challenge for the group's brands to prove themselves within a 10-year window, in exchange for much-needed investment in new models and technology.


title: Stellantis

text: The group plans to have 29 electrified vehicle models available by the end of 2021. There are four EV platforms planned to be developed by the end of the 2020s. Overall, the company announced more than €30bn will be invested by the end of 2021. A network of charging stations started in November 2021.


title: Stellantis

text: On 7 December 2021, Stellantis announced that sales of new vehicles in the third quarter of 2021 dropped due to issues related to the supply chain shortage of semiconductor chips used in their vehicles. CEO Tavares also announced an agreement with semiconductor manufacturer Foxconn to supply chips for the company and others in the automotive industry. The number of semiconductors contained in an automobile is in the thousands and this number is expected to increase in the foreseeable future. In June 2022 the company paused production at two French plants due to shortages in semiconductors.


title: Stellantis

text: In May 2022, Stellantis agreed to plead guilty to criminal conduct and pay $300 million to settle a probe into its effort to illegally conceal the amount of pollution created by its diesel-engined vehicles. The parent company of Jeep, Chrysler, and Dodge will settle a years-long probe by the United States Department of Justice into the auto maker's efforts to evade emissions requirements for more than 100,000 older models.


title: Stellantis

text: On 3 May 2022, the acquisition of the carsharing platform Share Now was announced. The acquisition was closed on 18 July 2022 and Stellantis placed Share Now's operational management under Free2Move.


title: Stellantis

text: In November 2022, Stellantis announced it had acquired the Budapest-headquartered autonomous vehicle technology company, aiMotive.


title: Stellantis

text: The executive board of Stellantis is formed by 11 members. Six members come from PSA and leading shareholders (BpiFrance, FFP), included Carlos Tavares, former CEO of PSA, and five others come from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and main shareholder (Exor).


title: Peru

text: Peru (; ; Quechua: "Piruw" ; ), officially the Republic of Peru (), is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pacific Ocean. Peru is a megadiverse country with habitats ranging from the arid plains of the Pacific coastal region in the west to the peaks of the Andes mountains extending from the north to the southeast of the country to the tropical Amazon basin rainforest in the east with the Amazon River. Peru has a population of 32 million, and its capital and largest city is Lima. At 1.28 million km (0.5 million mi), Peru is the 19th largest country in the world, and the third largest in South America.


title: Peru

text: Peruvian territory was home to several cultures during the ancient and medieval periods, and has one of the longest histories of civilization of any country, tracing its heritage back to the 10th millennium BCE. Notable pre-colonial cultures and civilizations include the Caral-Supe civilization (the earliest civilization in the Americas and considered one of the cradles of civilization,) the Nazca culture, the Wari and Tiwanaku empires, the Kingdom of Cusco, and the Inca Empire, the largest known state in the pre-Columbian Americas.


title: Peru

text: The Spanish Empire conquered the region in the 16th century and established a viceroyalty that encompassed most of its South American territories, with its capital in Lima. Higher education started in the Americas with the official establishment of the National University of San Marcos in Lima in 1551. Peru formally proclaimed independence in 1821, and following the foreign military campaigns of José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar, and the decisive battle of Ayacucho, Peru completed its independence in 1824. In the ensuing years, the country first suffered from political instability until a period of relative economic and political stability began due to the exploitation of guano. Later, the War of the Pacific (1879–1884) with Chile brought Peru to a state of crisis, from which the oligarchy seized power through the Civilista Party. In the 20th century, the country endured coups, social unrest, and internal conflicts, as well as periods of stability and economic upswing. In the 1990s, the country implemented a neoliberal economic model which is still in use to this day. As the 2000s commodities boom took place, Peru experienced a period of constant economic growth and a decrease in poverty.


title: Peru

text: The sovereign state of Peru is a representative democratic republic divided into 25 regions. Peru has a high level of human development with an upper middle income level ranking 82nd on the Human Development Index. It is one of the region's most prosperous economies with an average growth rate of 5.9% (in 2017) and it has one of the world's fastest industrial growth rates at an average of 9.6% (as of 2018). Its main economic activities include mining, manufacturing, agriculture and fishing, along with other growing sectors such as telecommunications and biotechnology. The country forms part of The Pacific Pumas, a political and economic grouping of countries along Latin America's Pacific coast that share common trends of positive growth, stable macroeconomic foundations, improved governance and an openness to global integration. Peru ranks high in social freedom; it is an active member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Pacific Alliance, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the World Trade Organization; and is considered as a middle power.


title: Peru

text: Peru has a population that includes Mestizos, Amerindians, Europeans, Africans and Asians. The main spoken language is Spanish, although a significant number of Peruvians speak Quechuan languages, Aymara, or other Indigenous languages. This mixture of cultural traditions has resulted in a wide diversity of expressions in fields such as art, cuisine, literature, and music.


title: Peru

text: The name of the country may be derived from "Birú", the name of a local ruler who lived near the Bay of San Miguel, Panama City, in the early 16th century. Spanish conquistadors, who arrived in 1522, believed this was the southernmost part of the New World. When Francisco Pizarro invaded the regions farther south, they came to be designated "Birú" or "Perú".


title: Peru

text: An alternative history is provided by the contemporary writer Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, son of an Inca princess and a conquistador. He said the name "Birú" was that of a common Amerindian who was happened upon by the crew of a ship on an exploratory mission for governor Pedro Arias Dávila and went on to relate more instances of misunderstandings due to the lack of a common language.


title: Peru

text: The Spanish Crown gave the name legal status with the 1529 "Capitulación de Toledo", which designated the newly encountered Inca Empire as the province of Peru. In 1561, the rebel Lope de Aguirre declared himself the "Prince" of an independent Peru, which was cut short by his arrest and execution. Under Spanish rule, the country adopted the denomination "Viceroyalty of Peru", which became the "Peruvian Republic" after its independence until 1979, adopting its current name of "Republic of Peru".


title: Peru

text: The earliest evidences of human presence in Peruvian territory have been dated to approximately 12,500 BCE in the Huaca Prieta settlement. Andean societies were based on agriculture, using techniques such as irrigation and terracing; camelid husbandry and fishing were also important. Organization relied on reciprocity and redistribution because these societies had no notion of market or money. The oldest known complex society in Peru, the Caral/Norte Chico civilization, flourished along the coast of the Pacific Ocean between 3,000 and 1,800 BCE. These early developments were followed by archaeological cultures that developed mostly around the coastal and Andean regions throughout Peru. The Cupisnique culture which flourished from around 1000 to 200 BCE along what is now Peru's Pacific coast was an example of early pre-Inca culture.


title: Peru

text: The Chavín culture that developed from 1500 to 300 BCE was probably more of a religious than a political phenomenon, with their religious center in Chavín de Huantar. After the decline of the Chavin culture around the beginning of the 1st century CE, a series of localized and specialized cultures rose and fell, both on the coast and in the highlands, during the next thousand years. On the coast, these included the civilizations of the Paracas, Nazca, Wari, and the more outstanding Chimu and Moche.


title: Peru

text: The Moche, who reached their apogee in the first millennium CE, were renowned for their irrigation system which fertilized their arid terrain, their sophisticated ceramic pottery, their lofty buildings, and clever metalwork. The Chimu were the great city builders of pre-Inca civilization; as a loose confederation of walled cities scattered along the coast of northern Peru, the Chimu flourished from about 1140 to 1450. Their capital was at Chan Chan outside of modern-day Trujillo. In the highlands, both the Tiahuanaco culture, near Lake Titicaca in both Peru and Bolivia, and the Wari culture, near the present-day city of Ayacucho, developed large urban settlements and wide-ranging state systems between 500 and 1000 CE.In the 15th century, the Incas emerged as a powerful state which, in the span of a century, formed the largest empire in the pre-Columbian Americas with their capital in Cusco. The Incas of Cusco originally represented one of the small and relatively minor ethnic groups, the Quechuas. Gradually, as early as the thirteenth century, they began to expand and incorporate their neighbors. Inca expansion was slow until about the middle of the fifteenth century, when the pace of conquest began to accelerate, particularly under the rule of the emperor Pachacuti. Under his rule and that of his son, Topa Inca Yupanqui, the Incas came to control most of the Andean region, with a population of 9 to 16 million inhabitants under their rule. Pachacuti also promulgated a comprehensive code of laws to govern his far-flung empire, while consolidating his absolute temporal and spiritual authority as the God of the Sun who ruled from a magnificently rebuilt Cusco. From 1438 to 1533, the Incas used a variety of methods, from conquest to peaceful assimilation, to incorporate a large portion of western South America, centered on the Andean mountain ranges, from southern Colombia to northern Chile, between the Pacific Ocean in the west and the Amazon rainforest in the east. The official language of the empire was Quechua, although hundreds of local languages and dialects were spoken. The Inca referred to their empire as "Tawantinsuyu" which can be translated as "The Four Regions" or "The Four United Provinces." Many local forms of worship persisted in the empire, most of them concerning local sacred "Huacas", but the Inca leadership encouraged the worship of Inti, the sun god and imposed its sovereignty above other cults such as that of Pachamama. The Incas considered their King, the Sapa Inca, to be the "child of the sun."


title: Peru

text: Atahualpa (also Atahuallpa), the last Sapa Inca, became emperor when he defeated and executed his older half-brother Huáscar in a civil war sparked by the death of their father, Inca Huayna Capac. In December 1532, a party of "conquistadors" (supported by the Chankas, Huancas, Cañaris and Chachapoyas as Indian auxiliaries) led by Francisco Pizarro defeated and captured the Inca Emperor Atahualpa in the Battle of Cajamarca. The Spanish conquest of Peru was one of the most important campaigns in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. After years of preliminary exploration and military conflicts, it was the first step in a long campaign that took decades of fighting but ended in Spanish victory and colonization of the region known as the Viceroyalty of Peru with its capital at Lima, which was then known as "La Ciudad de los Reyes" (The City of Kings). The conquest of Peru led to spin-off campaigns throughout the viceroyalty as well as expeditions towards the Amazon Basin as in the case of Spanish efforts to quell Amerindian resistance. The last Inca resistance was suppressed when the Spaniards annihilated the Neo-Inca State in Vilcabamba in 1572.


title: Peru

text: The Indigenous population dramatically collapsed overwhelmingly due to epidemic diseases introduced by the Spanish as well as exploitation and socio-economic change. Viceroy Francisco de Toledo reorganized the country in the 1570s with gold and silver mining as its main economic activity and Amerindian forced labor as its primary workforce. With the discovery of the great silver and gold lodes at Potosí (present-day Bolivia) and Huancavelica, the viceroyalty flourished as an important provider of mineral resources. Peruvian bullion provided revenue for the Spanish Crown and fueled a complex trade network that extended as far as Europe and the Philippines. The commercial and population exchanges between Latin America and Asia undergone via the Manila Galleons transiting through Acapulco, had Callao at Peru as the furthest endpoint of the trade route in the Americas. In relation to this, Don Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera, governor of Panama was also responsible for settling Zamboanga City in the Philippines, which now speak a Spanish Creole by employing Peruvian soldiers and colonists. Because of lack of available workforce, African slaves were added to the labor population. The expansion of a colonial administrative apparatus and bureaucracy paralleled the economic reorganization. With the conquest started the spread of Christianity in South America; most people were forcefully converted to Catholicism, with Spanish clerics believing like Puritan divines of English colonies later that the Native Peoples "had been corrupted by the Devil, who was working "through them to frustrate" their foundations. It only took a generation to convert the population. They built churches in every city and replaced some of the Inca temples with churches, such as the Coricancha in the city of Cusco. The church employed the Inquisition, making use of torture to ensure that newly converted Catholics did not stray to other religions or beliefs, and monastery schools, educating girls, especially of the Inca nobility and upper class, "until they were old enough either to profess [to become a nun] or to leave the monastery and assume the role ('estado') in the Christian society that their fathers planned to erect" in Peru. Peruvian Catholicism follows the syncretism found in many Latin American countries, in which religious native rituals have been integrated with Christian celebrations. In this endeavor, the church came to play an important role in the acculturation of the Natives, drawing them into the cultural orbit of the Spanish settlers.


title: Peru

text: By the 18th century, declining silver production and economic diversification greatly diminished royal income. In response, the Crown enacted the Bourbon Reforms, a series of edicts that increased taxes and partitioned the Viceroyalty. The new laws provoked Túpac Amaru II's rebellion and other revolts, all of which were suppressed. As a result of these and other changes, the Spaniards and their creole successors came to monopolize control over the land, seizing many of the best lands abandoned by the massive native depopulation. However, the Spanish did not resist the Portuguese expansion of Brazil across the meridian. The Treaty of Tordesillas was rendered meaningless between 1580 and 1640 while Spain controlled Portugal. The need to ease communication and trade with Spain led to the split of the viceroyalty and the creation of new viceroyalties of New Granada and Rio de la Plata at the expense of the territories that formed the Viceroyalty of Peru; this reduced the power, prominence and importance of Lima as the viceroyal capital and shifted the lucrative Andean trade to Buenos Aires and Bogotá, while the fall of the mining and textile production accelerated the progressive decay of the Viceroyalty of Peru.


title: Peru

text: Eventually, the viceroyalty would dissolve, as with much of the Spanish empire, when challenged by national independence movements at the beginning of the nineteenth century. These movements led to the formation of the majority of modern-day countries of South America in the territories that at one point or another had constituted the Viceroyalty of Peru. The conquest and colony brought a mix of cultures and ethnicities that did not exist before the Spanish conquered the Peruvian territory. Even though many of the Inca traditions were lost or diluted, new customs, traditions and knowledge were added, creating a rich mixed Peruvian culture. Two of the most important Indigenous rebellions against the Spanish were that of Juan Santos Atahualpa in 1742, and Rebellion of Túpac Amaru II in 1780 around the highlands near Cuzco.


title: Peru

text: In the early 19th century, while most South American nations were swept by wars of independence, Peru remained a royalist stronghold. As the elite vacillated between emancipation and loyalty to the Spanish Monarchy, independence was achieved only after the occupation by military campaigns of José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar.


title: Peru

text: The economic crises, the loss of power of Spain in Europe, the war of independence in North America, and Native uprisings all contributed to a favorable climate to the development of emancipation ideas among the C"riollo" population in South America. However, the Criollo oligarchy in Peru enjoyed privileges and remained loyal to the Spanish Crown. The liberation movement started in Argentina where autonomous juntas were created as a result of the loss of authority of the Spanish government over its colonies.


title: Peru

text: After fighting for the independence of the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata, José de San Martín created the Army of the Andes and crossed the Andes in 21 days. Once in Chile, he joined forces with Chilean army General Bernardo O'Higgins and liberated the country in the battles of Chacabuco and Maipú in 1818. On 7 September 1820, a fleet of eight warships arrived in the port of Paracas under the command of General José de San Martin and Thomas Cochrane, who was serving in the Chilean Navy. Immediately on 26 October, they took control of the town of Pisco. San Martin settled in Huacho on 12 November, where he established his headquarters while Cochrane sailed north and blockaded the port of Callao in Lima. At the same time in the north, Guayaquil was occupied by rebel forces under the command of Gregorio Escobedo. Because Peru was the stronghold of the Spanish government in South America, San Martin's strategy to liberate Peru was to use diplomacy. He sent representatives to Lima urging the Viceroy that Peru be granted independence, however, all negotiations proved unsuccessful.


title: Peru

text: The Viceroy of Peru, Joaquín de la Pazuela named José de la Serna commander-in-chief of the loyalist army to protect Lima from the threatened invasion by San Martin. On 29 January, de la Serna organized a coup against de la Pazuela, which was recognized by Spain and he was named Viceroy of Peru. This internal power struggle contributed to the success of the liberating army. To avoid a military confrontation, San Martin met the newly appointed viceroy, José de la Serna, and proposed to create a constitutional monarchy, a proposal that was turned down. De la Serna abandoned the city, and on 12 July 1821, San Martin occupied Lima and declared Peruvian independence on 28 July 1821. He created the first Peruvian flag. Upper Peru (Bolivia) remained as a Spanish stronghold until the army of Simón Bolívar liberated it three years later. José de San Martin was declared Protector of Peru. Peruvian national identity was forged during this period, as Bolivarian projects for a Latin American Confederation floundered and a union with Bolivia proved ephemeral.


title: Peru

text: Simon Bolivar launched his campaign from the north, liberating the Viceroyalty of New Granada in the Battles of Carabobo in 1821 and Pichincha a year later. In July 1822, Bolivar and San Martin gathered in the Guayaquil Conference. Bolivar was left in charge of fully liberating Peru while San Martin retired from politics after the first parliament was assembled. The newly founded Peruvian Congress named Bolivar dictator of Peru, giving him the power to organize the military.


title: Peru

text: With the help of Antonio José de Sucre, they defeated the larger Spanish army in the Battle of Junín on 6 August 1824 and the decisive Battle of Ayacucho on 9 December of the same year, consolidating the independence of Peru and Alto Peru. Alto Peru was later established as Bolivia. During the early years of the Republic, endemic struggles for power between military leaders caused political instability.


title: Peru

text: From the 1840s to the 1860s, Peru enjoyed a period of stability under the presidency of Ramón Castilla, through increased state revenues from guano exports. However, by the 1870s, these resources had been depleted, the country was heavily indebted, and political in-fighting was again on the rise. Peru embarked on a railroad-building program that helped but also bankrupted the country.


title: Peru

text: In 1879, Peru entered the War of the Pacific which lasted until 1884. Bolivia invoked its alliance with Peru against Chile. The Peruvian Government tried to mediate the dispute by sending a diplomatic team to negotiate with the Chilean government, but the committee concluded that war was inevitable. Chile declared war on 5 April 1879. Almost five years of war ended with the loss of the department of Tarapacá and the provinces of Tacna and Arica, in the Atacama region. Two outstanding military leaders throughout the war were Francisco Bolognesi and Miguel Grau. Originally Chile committed to a referendum for the cities of Arica and Tacna to be held years later, to self determine their national affiliation. However, Chile refused to apply the Treaty, and neither of the countries could determine the statutory framework. After the War of the Pacific, an extraordinary effort of rebuilding began. The government started to initiate a number of social and economic reforms to recover from the damage of the war. Political stability was achieved only in the early 1900s.


title: Peru

text: Internal struggles after the war were followed by a period of stability under the Civilista Party, which lasted until the onset of the authoritarian regime of Augusto B. Leguía. The Great Depression caused the downfall of Leguía, renewed political turmoil, and the emergence of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA). The rivalry between this organization and a coalition of the elite and the military defined Peruvian politics for the following three decades. A final peace treaty in 1929, signed between Peru and Chile called the Treaty of Lima, returned Tacna to Peru. Between 1932 and 1933, Peru was engulfed in a year-long war with Colombia over a territorial dispute involving the Amazonas Department and its capital Leticia.


title: Peru

text: Later, in 1941, Peru and Ecuador fought the Ecuadorian–Peruvian War, after which the Rio Protocol sought to formalize the boundary between those two countries. In a military coup on 29 October 1948, General Manuel A. Odría became president. Odría's presidency was known as the "Ochenio". He came down hard on APRA, momentarily pleasing the oligarchy and all others on the right, but followed a populist course that won him great favor with the poor and lower classes. A thriving economy allowed him to indulge in expensive but crowd-pleasing social policies. At the same time, however, civil rights were severely restricted and corruption was rampant throughout his regime. Odría was succeeded by Manuel Prado Ugarteche. However, widespread allegations of fraud prompted the Peruvian military to depose Prado and install a military junta, via a coup d'état led by Ricardo Pérez Godoy. Godoy ran a short transitional government and held new elections in 1963, which were won by Fernando Belaúnde Terry who assumed presidency until 1968. Belaúnde was recognized for his commitment to the democratic process.


title: Peru

text: On October 3, 1968, another coup d'état led by a group of officers led by General Juan Velasco Alvarado brought the army to power with the aim of applying a doctrine of "social progress and integral development", nationalist and reformist, influenced by the CEPAL theses on dependence and underdevelopment. Six days after the golpe, Velasco proceeded to nationalize the "International Petroleum Corporation" (IPC), the North American company that exploited Peruvian oil, and then launched a reform of the state apparatus, an agrarian reform. It was the biggest agrarian reform ever undertaken in Latin America: it abolished the latifunda system and modernized agriculture through a more equitable redistribution of land (90% of the peasants formed cooperatives or agricultural societies of social interest). Land was to be owned by those who cultivated it, and large landowners were expropriated. The only large properties allowed were cooperatives. Between 1969 and 1976, 325,000 families received land from the state with an average size of 73.6 acres. The "revolutionary government" also planned massive investments in education, elevated the Quechua language – spoken by nearly half the population but hitherto despised by the authorities – to a status equivalent to that of Spanish and established equal rights for natural children. Peru wished to free itself from any dependence and carried out a third-world foreign policy. The United States responded with commercial, economic and diplomatic pressure. In 1973, Peru seemed to triumph over the financial blockade imposed by Washington by negotiating a loan from the International Development Bank to finance its agricultural and mining development policy. The relations with Chile became very tense after the coup d'état of the general Pinochet. General Edgardo Mercado Jarrin (Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the Army) and Admiral Guillermo Faura Gaig (Minister of the Navy) both escaped assassination attempts within weeks of each other. In 1975, General Francisco Morales Bermúdez Cerruti seized power and broke with the policies of his predecessor. His regime occasionally participated in Operation Condor in collaboration with other American military dictatorships.


title: Peru

text: Peru engaged in a two week long conflict with Ecuador during the Paquisha War in early 1981 as a result of territorial dispute between the two countries. The economic policy President Alan García distanced Peru from international markets further, resulting in lower foreign investment in the country. After the country experienced chronic inflation, the Peruvian currency, the sol, was replaced by the "Inti" in mid-1985, which itself was later replaced by the nuevo sol in July 1991, at which time the new sol had a cumulative value of one billion old soles. The per capita annual income of Peruvians fell to $720 (below the level of 1960) and Peru's GDP dropped 20% at which national reserves were a negative $900 million. The economic turbulence of the time acerbated social tensions in Peru and partly contributed to the rise of violent rebel rural insurgent movements, like Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and MRTA, which caused great havoc throughout the country. The Shining Path had appeared in the universities in the 1970s. These students, many of them from peasant backgrounds, then returned to their communities and organized local party committees. The abandonment by the state of certain rural regions favored the establishment of the party. In June 1979, demonstrations for free education were severely repressed by the army: 18 people were killed according to the official report, but non-governmental estimates put the death toll at several dozen. This event led to a radicalization of political protests in the countryside and eventually to the outbreak of armed struggle. After the beginning of the armed struggle, the new recruits of the Shining Path were generally peasants with little political background, rather than truly political militants.


title: Peru

text: The Peruvian armed forces grew frustrated with the inability of the García administration to handle the nation's crises and drafted Plan Verde – which involved the genocide of impoverished and indigenous Peruvians, the control or censorship of the media in Peru and the establishment of a neoliberal economy controlled by a military junta in Peru – as an effort to overthrow his government. Alberto Fujimori assumed the presidency in 1990 and according to Rospigliosi, the head of the National Intelligence Service (SIN) General Edwin “Cucharita” Díaz and Vladimiro Montesinos played a key role with making President Fujimori abide by the military's demands while "an understanding was established between Fujimori, Montesinos and some of the military officers" involved in Plan Verde prior to Fujimori's inauguration. Fujimori would go on to adopt many of the policies outlined in Plan Verde. Fujimori's policies, prescribed by Hernando de Soto, led to the immediate suffering of poor Peruvians who saw unregulated prices increase rapidly, with those living in poverty seeing prices increase so much that they could no longer afford food. De Soto advocated for the collapse of Peru's society, with the economist saying that a civil crisis was necessary to support the policies of Fujimori. These drastic measures caused inflation to drop from 7,650% in 1990 to 139% in 1991 and 57% in 1992.


title: Peru

text: Due to his controversial governance, Fujimori faced opposition to his reform efforts and utilized coup proposals from Plan Verde, dissolving Congress, suspending the judiciary, arresting several opposition leaders and assuming full powers in the "auto-golpe" ("self-coup") of 5 April 1992. He then revised the constitution; called new congressional elections; and implemented substantial economic reform, including privatization of numerous state-owned companies, creation of an investment-friendly climate, and sound management of the economy. Fujimori's administration was dogged by insurgent groups, most notably the Sendero Luminoso (also called the Shining Path), who carried out terrorist campaigns across the country throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Fujimori cracked down on the insurgents and was successful in largely quelling them by the late 1990s, but the fight was marred by atrocities committed by both the Peruvian security forces and the insurgents: the Barrios Altos massacre and La Cantuta massacre by Government paramilitary groups, and the bombings of Tarata and Frecuencia Latina by Sendero Luminoso. Those incidents subsequently came to symbolize the human rights violations committed in the last years of violence. His Programa Nacional de Población – an implementation of one of Plan Verde's proposals for the "total extermination" of impoverished Peruvians that would possibly be sympathetic to insurgent groups – also resulted with the forced sterilization of at least 300,000 poor and indigenous women.