Inception ***SPOILER THREAD***

[chanesaw]

I thought it was a great ending. It was supposed to make you wonder and draw your own conclusion.

[PRBronco]

Regarding the "the whole movie is his dream" theory: Can someone help me remember, when he's on the phone with his kids, and he has his gun and top on the table, he spins the top. Do we actually see it stop spinning? I can't get this movie out of my head!

[DHallblows]

Originally Posted by PRBronco

Regarding the "the whole movie is his dream" theory: Can someone help me remember, when he's on the phone with his kids, and he has his gun and top on the table, he spins the top. Do we actually see it stop spinning? I can't get this movie out of my head!

I think I remember hearing it fall, but his arm moves by it so maybe he knocked it over. I don't know for sure. I may have made that whole part up...I wasn't paying that close of attention to it at that point because it was early on and we didn't know what the top was for.

[v2micca]

Originally Posted by PRBronco

Regarding the "the whole movie is his dream" theory: Can someone help me remember, when he's on the phone with his kids, and he has his gun and top on the table, he spins the top. Do we actually see it stop spinning? I can't get this movie out of my head!

I remember that scene because the second time through it made more sense to me. The top stops spinning, after which he safeties the gun and puts it down. I took it to mean that the Cobb was doing a self check to see if he was in reality or the dream. If the top had kept spinning, he would have shot himself to wake up.

Here is the thing about Nolan, as a director, he tends to be honest. If one of the characters tells the audience something during an exposition scene, then Nolan will stick with it. For this reason, I tend to discard the notion that the entire movie takes place in a dream. The entire scene with the totems is specifically meant to establish the rules for what is and is not reality. Also, Nolan seems to take great pains to establish how the characters arrived at each scene that takes place in reality, even if it is only a couple of lines of dialog. This plays along with the theme he introduces early on in the film that you never really remember how a dream starts. A lot of the dream sequences start in media res, suddenly throwing the characters into a new setting. But the scenes set in reality have a set up, explaining how they got there.

[Rulon Velvet Jones]

I agree. I don't think Nolan or his brother are the sort to cop out a movie that took 8 years to put together with a "fake dream" ending. If anything, Cobb would eventually spin the top on his own and figure out where he is.

[Rulon Velvet Jones]

Also, did Nolan manage to plant the idea in your mind that the whole thing might have been a dream?

Sound familiar?

[chickennob2]

Originally Posted by Killericon

At least 5 people in the theatre I was in groaned at that. Loudly. What a cop-out.

Favorite part of the movie: during the previews, people seemed interested in the Devil trailer. But halfway through, when they mentioned it was an M Night Shyamalan film, the entire theater groaned. It was hilarious!

[PRBronco]

Originally Posted by v2micca

I remember that scene because the second time through it made more sense to me. The top stops spinning, after which he safeties the gun and puts it down. I took it to mean that the Cobb was doing a self check to see if he was in reality or the dream. If the top had kept spinning, he would have shot himself to wake up.

Here is the thing about Nolan, as a director, he tends to be honest. If one of the characters tells the audience something during an exposition scene, then Nolan will stick with it. For this reason, I tend to discard the notion that the entire movie takes place in a dream. The entire scene with the totems is specifically meant to establish the rules for what is and is not reality. Also, Nolan seems to take great pains to establish how the characters arrived at each scene that takes place in reality, even if it is only a couple of lines of dialog. This plays along with the theme he introduces early on in the film that you never really remember how a dream starts. A lot of the dream sequences start in media res, suddenly throwing the characters into a new setting. But the scenes set in reality have a set up, explaining how they got there.

Ahh, that makes good sense, thanks. I can rest a little easier now

[ColoradoDarin]

Originally Posted by McRulon McVelvet McJones

Also, did Nolan manage to plant the idea in your mind that the whole thing might have been a dream?

Sound familiar?

duuuuuuuuuude


Mind = blown.

[Rulon Velvet Jones]

And if that was Cobb's "limbo" would it have taken him forever to build something to that level of detail?

[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.

[v2micca]

Originally Posted by Lomax

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.

When they reach the second level, they let Fischer know he is dreaming but manage to convince him that they are manifestations of his own subconscious. Doing so allows them to throw Fischer's actual subconscious off of the trail and prevent them from keying in on them as quickly. Any Mass manipulation of the dream on their part from that point on would key Fisher's subconscious back on them and probably alert Fischer consciously to their ruse. Remember, Arthur didn't like the Mr. Charles gambit specifically because it drew too much attention to them in the first place. The more attention on the team, the more careful they had to be about manipulating dream space.

Originally Posted by Lomax

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?

Its not much of a stretch to assume he made arrangements for Miles to meet him in L.A. They had plenty of time to plan this job out. The children looking the same as they did in the dream is odd, but can also be explained as a quirk of Cobb's mind projecting their age onto them within his dream space. Also, it was not Saito's Limbo. It was simply Limbo. As described in the film Limbo was a plane of raw unformed subconscious space. A sort of baseline universal consciousness shared by all sentient beings in that universe. They establish that Cobb and Mal had been the only people to spend any significant time there, prior to Saito falling into Limbo. Thus, anyone in limbo would come across the remnants of the world that Cobb and Mal had created. As for how Saito and Cobb got out at the end of the movie, Saito picks up Cobb's gun after seeing that the top spins indefinitely and we cut to the airplane. Do the math.

Originally Posted by Lomax

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?

Cobb's subconscious was following him around because he is losing it. The others even state that if they had realized how little control Cobb had over his own demons they would have never agreed to accompany him into the dream. If other members of the team had started losing their grip on reality, elements of their subconscious would have started manifesting as well, as we saw with Saito in limbo.

Originally Posted by Lomax

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.

Yeah, I can't really get behind this one.

[Taco John]

Originally Posted by v2micca

A lot of the dream sequences start in media res, suddenly throwing the characters into a new setting. But the scenes set in reality have a set up, explaining how they got there.

There is no explanation for how he got to Michael Caine's office. Or where that office even is. He just shows up there, wherever it is. Is it in the states?

[v2micca]

Originally Posted by Taco John

There is no explanation for how he got to Michael Caine's office. Or where that office even is. He just shows up there, wherever it is. Is it in the states?

Miles office is in Paris. Cobb specifically states that he is headed to Paris to find a new architect. There are establishing shots of the downtown area outside the university before he enters and finds Miles in his Lecture hall.

[Lomax]

Originally Posted by v2micca

When they reach the second level, they let Fischer know he is dreaming but manage to convince him that they are manifestations of his own subconscious. Doing so allows them to throw Fischer's actual subconscious off of the trail and prevent them from keying in on them as quickly. Any Mass manipulation of the dream on their part from that point on would key Fisher's subconscious back on them and probably alert Fischer consciously to their ruse. Remember, Arthur didn't like the Mr. Charles gambit specifically because it drew too much attention to them in the first place. The more attention on the team, the more careful they had to be about manipulating dream space.

I guess I missed the part where they tried to tell him that they are his subconscious. But once they are being attacked, there's no reason they can't bend reality to whatever they want to keep themselves safe.

Its not much of a stretch to assume he made arrangements for Miles to meet him in L.A. They had plenty of time to plan this job out. The children looking the same as they did in the dream is odd, but can also be explained as a quirk of Cobb's mind projecting their age onto them within his dream space.

That's a pretty big stretch. He projected their age, clothes and position in his dream space? Sounds like we need a new rule or special ability to make that plausible...

Also, it was not Saito's Limbo. It was simply Limbo. As described in the film Limbo was a plane of raw unformed subconscious space. A sort of baseline universal consciousness shared by all sentient beings in that universe. They establish that Cobb and Mal had been the only people to spend any significant time there, prior to Saito falling into Limbo. Thus, anyone in limbo would come across the remnants of the world that Cobb and Mal had created. As for how Saito and Cobb got out at the end of the movie, Saito picks up Cobb's gun after seeing that the top spins indefinitely and we cut to the airplane. Do the math.

You've done a good job explaining things. I think the point is, there are rules upon rules upon rules and it all seems sort of hodgepodge after a while. Like where Fischer goes to limbo and they needed a way to get him back to the compound, what do you know, they can just defib him back into the dream as if he was in cardiac arrest!

There's an old rule about "suspensions of disbelief". After a while, you wear down the audience with new special rules for this and that makebelieve convention that your audience stops buying it.

[v2micca]

Originally Posted by Lomax

That's a pretty big stretch. He projected their age, clothes and position in his dream space? Sounds like we need a new rule or special ability to make that plausible...

Yes, it is a stretch and the appearance of his children in the final scene is one of the more convincing arguments that he is still existing in the dream space by the end of the film. That whole scene in fact has a dream like quality to it. The other, and less satisfying, explanation is that Nolan simply wanted to use a familiar refrain from the film that the audience would immediately recognize while simultaneously creating a scene that could allow doubt.

Originally Posted by Lomax

You've done a good job explaining things. I think the point is, there are rules upon rules upon rules and it all seems sort of hodgepodge after a while. Like where Fischer goes to limbo and they needed a way to get him back to the compound, what do you know, they can just defib him back into the dream as if he was in cardiac arrest!

There's an old rule about "suspensions of disbelief". After a while, you wear down the audience with new special rules for this and that makebelieve convention that your audience stops buying it.

Or as I like to call it, the Star Trek techno-babble corollary. Yes, the rules, within rules, within rules can get a little onerous to follow. But, its like introducing a complete neophyte to the game of football. You aren't going to start them out by explaining illegal formation rules, or illegible receiver down-field rules. You start them with the simplest concept, advance the ball down the field. Then you start filling them in as you go on the events that seem to contradict the simpler mechanics of the game.

[Rohirrim]

The psychologist is a dead guy.

[v2micca]

For those interested, I found this graph over at Time magazine which really does a good job of breaking down the various levels within the movie.

[Killericon]

The snow fortress scene was filmed in Kananaskis, near Calgary. I used to Ski Instruct there.

[Lomax]

Originally Posted by v2micca

For those interested, I found this graph over at Time magazine which really does a good job of breaking down the various levels within the movie.

A nice diagram, but flawed, I think. I'm pretty sure all 3 levels were dreamed by Fischer. Certainly 2 and 3 were. They had to avoid Fischer's projection of Browning in 2, and they tricked Fischer into taking them deeper into his subconscious in 3.

Also there shouldn't be a kick on the lowest level. The kick is always one level up. The Hotel kick pulls them out of the snow compound, the van hitting the water pulls them out of the Hotel.

[Killericon]

Originally Posted by Lomax

A nice diagram, but flawed, I think. I'm pretty sure all 3 levels were dreamed by Fischer. Certainly 2 and 3 were. They had to avoid Fischer's projection of Browning in 2, and they tricked Fischer into taking them deeper into his subconscious in 3.

Also there shouldn't be a kick on the lowest level. The kick is always one level up. The Hotel kick pulls them out of the snow compound, the van hitting the water pulls them out of the Hotel.

And shooting themselves/jumping off the building kicked them out of limbo.

I think you're right about Fischer Jr. dreaming the first 3 levels, though. That's why there was security, plus that was the entire point of the mission, to get deep into his subconscious.

Also, I looked, and the Mountain scene was shot at an old ski hill I used to go to called Fortress that's been abandoned for a while. They actually built that thing.







It was all on public land.

[v2micca]

Originally Posted by Lomax

A nice diagram, but flawed, I think. I'm pretty sure all 3 levels were dreamed by Fischer. Certainly 2 and 3 were. They had to avoid Fischer's projection of Browning in 2, and they tricked Fischer into taking them deeper into his subconscious in 3.

Also there shouldn't be a kick on the lowest level. The kick is always one level up. The Hotel kick pulls them out of the snow compound, the van hitting the water pulls them out of the Hotel.

Actually, I think the diagram is correct. Fischer wouldn't be the dreamer for any of the worlds as he was the subject. The Dreamer creates the world based on the design given to them by the architect. The subject is then brought into the world so they can fill it with their subconscious. Cobb covers this when he runs the training workshop with Ariadne. During the planning stages, Cobb tells her that she will have to teach the levels to the dreamers and you see her doing this in the background with various members of the the team.

Lines of dialog in the movie also seem to support this graph. In the initial level, someone makes a snarky quip to Yusuf that he drank to much champagne, indicating that the inclement weather was a subconscious projection of Yusuf's need to go to the bathroom and that he was thus the dreamer for that level. Arthur indicates that he is the dreamer in level two when he explains to Ariadne that Fischer's subconscious was looking for the dreamer as he became aware of the dream. He then macks on Ariadne. In the third level, Ariadne states that Eames added an access shaft into the facility that would allow quick access, thus indicating that Eames was the dreamer.

Plus, it remains consistent with the logic that the dreamer of each level would have to stay behind to maintain the structure of the dream as the rest of the team advanced to the next level.

[PRBronco]

Originally Posted by v2micca

Actually, I think the diagram is correct. Fischer wouldn't be the dreamer for any of the worlds as he was the subject. The Dreamer creates the world based on the design given to them by the architect. The subject is then brought into the world so they can fill it with their subconscious. Cobb covers this when he runs the training workshop with Ariadne. During the planning stages, Cobb tells her that she will have to teach the levels to the dreamers and you see her doing this in the background with various members of the the team.

Lines of dialog in the movie also seem to support this graph. In the initial level, someone makes a snarky quip to Yusuf that he drank to much champagne, indicating that the inclement weather was a subconscious projection of Yusuf's need to go to the bathroom and that he was thus the dreamer for that level. Arthur indicates that he is the dreamer in level two when he explains to Ariadne that Fischer's subconscious was looking for the dreamer as he became aware of the dream. He then macks on Ariadne. In the third level, Ariadne states that Eames added an access shaft into the facility that would allow quick access, thus indicating that Eames was the dreamer.

Plus, it remains consistent with the logic that the dreamer of each level would have to stay behind to maintain the structure of the dream as the rest of the team advanced to the next level.

Awesome explanations.

So when Ariadne throws Fischer off the building in Limbo, and then jumps off herself, that's just to kill themselves in case the snow fortress explosion doesn't kick them out of Limbo?

[Chris]

If you could be in a dream where the Broncos won the Superbowl every year, would you stay there?

[Ray_Lewis'_Victim]

When Fischer Jr. Wakes up on the plane, why doesn't he recognize that "hey, these are the guys that were f***ing with me in my dream, maybe I should take some sort of notice, or at least acknowledge that something weird happened. Maybe I shouldn't make this crazy life decision based on that kind of dream"