[Lomax]

Originally Posted by OCBronco

You're correct, you don't have real organs that get damaged in the dream. Just the same, it can seem to you as if your organs have been damaged. It's no trouble at all to dream that you have cut your hand off with a chainsaw and feel pain from it. The appearance is not real, but nevertheless you feel pain. I don't see how this is problematic.

Physiologically, there's a difference between pain and system failure. Saito wasn't just experiencing pain. He was going through the physiological signs of blood loss. If there is no blood, how can he be experiencing blood loss and all of the symptoms that go with it? Again, virtual body mechanics, virtual watches and relative time, all perfectly simulated? Just doesn't seem very "dream-like".

Ellen is the architect for the dream, and given the film's logic, she could manipulate all the features of the dream world if she wanted to. However, if she did so, it would alert Fischer to a much deeper problem. You want Fischer to think that the story you've told him is entirely consistent, so you keep the world as convincing as possible so that his subconscious doesn't get more agitated than it already is.

What problem would that be? He already knows he's dreaming. He already knows that Cobb's team are dream specialists. Bending reality to protect them doesn't seem like it would be an issue. And they were already under attack, I don't think his subconscious could get much more agitated than attacking them with guns. The sequence teaching Ellen not to bend reality seemed like a setup that went nowhere.

I'm not sure what the alternative would be. What do you have in mind?

Eternal Sunshine did a pretty good job of it. Flatliners also comes to mind. Again, this seemed more Matrix-like. As if computers were dreaming the sequences, not living, psychological beings.

As I mentioned in a different post, I think there are three or four legitimate possibilities at the end of the film. Just as in Total Recall, the film ends before we can find out which one is correct. I don't see this as a problem, myself.

Are they really legitimate possibilities? If so, can you map them out for me?

Here's how I see it:

Literal interpretation: He's earned his freedom. Saito is awakened from limbo. He goes home, meets his father, sees his kids.

Problems: Why was his father waiting at home? Why did his kids look exactly the same as they did in his previous dreams? How have they not aged at all, when the implication is that he's been on the run for years? Why were his dream elements in Saito's limbo? Why were his dream elements following him around in other people's dreams? How did Saito get out of Limbo? How did Cobb get out?

Alternate ending: He somehow got out of Limbo and wakes up in another dream state. You never know whether Saito is saved.

Problem: Why were his dream elements in Saito's limbo? Why were his dream elements following him around in other people's dreams?

Neverending Dream: Mal was right, and they woke up inside of a dream, which she had to kill herself to wake up from. He created the entire reality about Saito and Fischer as a coping mechanism. Cobb is still sleeping, refusing to awake from his reality.

Problem: If Cobb was dreaming the whole movie, why don't Mal or his kids show up when he's supposed to be awake? Why does his Totem topple during the awake sequences?

All of these problems lead people to come up with alternate alternates, which leads people to just throw out guesses like darts. Maybe someone stole his totem, and engineered his dream? Maybe the final dream sequence was a setup to get him to deal with his guilt? None of these possibilities seem to work without having holes punched in them, which makes the whole thing seem half-baked. I could be wrong, so feel free to clarify for me.

It seems to me that they kept adding elements to clean up holes in the plot, and ended up weighing down the "science" of the dreams with too much junk. Architects, limbo, totems, subconscious projections, defibs, kicks, extraction, inception it all feels like they're trying to get things in there to fix plot holes and end up bogging it down and creating more questions.

For example, there's really no clear explanation of how you actually get out of Limbo or what it is. They needed to use a defib on Fischer. But Cobb and Mal woke up on their own. So which is it? If killing yourself in Limbo doesn't wake you up, then what does? Can you only get there if you're sedated? If you age in limbo, as Saito does, will you eventually die? It's all very confusing, and the more rules they add, the more convoluted it gets.