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Among the many dreamscapes in Christopher Nolan’s new sci-fi flick “Inception,” one of the most memorable is the image of a chic modern hotel that defies the rules of gravity. At one point, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Arthur careens down hallways that shift and turn upside down; at another, he fights an array of armed men in zero-gravity rooms, bouncing off walls and ceilings like a martial-artist-cum-astronaut. Comparisons to “The Matrix” are inevitable, but what makes these sequences unique is that few computer effects were used.

“There’s always a way to do things with computer imagery, but I don’t think it would create the same effect,” says special effects supervisor Chris Corbould, who also collaborated with Nolan on “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight.” “This way, you get the impact of it, as they’re colliding with the bed, hitting the light fittings, going across to hit the walls. You really gain the energy of it, with [the actors] struggling to keep their wits about them.”

To pull off the scenes, multiple hotel sets were constructed in a converted airship hanger north of London, most notably, a more than 100-foot hotel corridor that was able to rotate 360 degrees with the help of eight concentric rings, 30-feet in diameter, which surrounded the set. Capable of spinning up to eight revolutions per minute, the centripetal hallway was powered by two giant 225-kilowatt electric motors (the equivalent of two new Mercedes S350 V-6 engines). Working with stunt coordinator Tom Struthers, another “Dark Knight” veteran, Gordon-Levitt and the other stuntmen rehearsed within the rotating sets for over two weeks.

To create the effect of zero gravity, several other sets were constructed: vertical sets; horizontal sets; upside down sets; at the same time, the “weightless” actors were hung on wires, or supported by rigid poles like big Popsicle sticks, or even laid down in fiberglass molds built to fit their bodies.

“All these combinations were used,” explains Corbould. “So just as the audience feels like it’s getting to know how it’s done, all of a sudden the technique changes, which then blows that theory out the window.”

According to Corbould, the hotel scenes alone took about a month to complete, not to mention the many weeks of tests they undertook to get the effects right. “At the time, it was a real slog,” he admits. “Working with Chris is always so difficult,” he adds. “He extracts every creative juice out of you and throws it in the film.”

One particular challenge for the sequence was a scene in which Arthur takes five weightless sleeping bodies, wraps a chord around them, and floats them down the hall into an elevator. “How did we do it?” Corbould asks. “Chris has sworn ourselves to secrecy on that one.”

I also hate the Departed, and for the most part I hate people who liked it.