re: Official "Inception" Thread (***SPOILERS***)

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The story is not as complex as people make it out to be

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Or maybe it is. That's the beauty of this film. I am pretty sure that during the 10 years that Nolan took to polish this story off. I am sure he did a fair amount of research into dreams and dream analysis. Hell half the names of the characters are taken from the esoteric.

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He get's shite done, things Cobb can't do or won't do anymore.

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Again, I don't think they would've included the scene of him needing Eames help to pick the guy off the roof if this was the case.

Also, Arthur failed to properly background check Fischer, which caused quite a clusterfrick. These may not be major flaws in Arthur's character, but would be if he was supposed to be portrayed as the main "hero".

I don't think Arthur is portrayed anymore a hero than any of the other characters.

There's just too much evidence at the end in support of reality - he sees his children faces, Miles is there, no wedding ring, the wobbling of the totem.

Not to mention the entire 2.5+ hour development of Cobb as a character, where he grew to finally overcome his subconscious, free himself from guilt, performed a masterful inception...only to be thrown back into a dream?

I'm not going to discredit all of this simply because of a 3 second spot at the end of the film where the top begins to wobble, and then prematurely cuts away to the black screen.

It's funny, though. Nolan employed a similar concept in The Prestige, and he did something similar here. He essentially performed a pseudo-inception on the audience, driving us to question the true reality of the final scene.

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I don't think they would've included the scene of him needing Eames help to pick the guy off the roof if this was the case

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Who said he needed Eames help shooting the guy off the roof? Eames had a bigger weapon and reminded him not to restrict himself while projecting what tools he could use to fight with. It seemed more like they were pressed for time, and Eames used a bigger gun to speed up the process

But think about what Eames did,

Level 1 - Cleared the assailant from the roof so they could get out of the garage without being shot.

He impersonated Browning, and extracted and planted the necessary information to Fisher's subconscious.

Level 2 - Distracts Fisher, allowing Mr. Charles (Dom) time to arrive before security is all over them.

Level 3 - Draws the entire army at the hospital away, allowing Saito and Fisher undisturbed entry into the hospital. He later goes on to take out most of the enemies.

He plants the needed charges on the hospital.

He revives Fisher.

He then completes the inception of the idea, using the information Fisher gave him in level 1(that his father was "disappointed"...), and converting that into a positive emotion - "I was disappointed you tried to be like me". He then put the pinwheel in the safe, ensuring that the idea would stick by making Fisher realize that his father did pay attention to the picture, and loved him all along, but could never openly express this love to him.

To me, Eames is THE hero of the entire operation.

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As we all know, Hero's are never perfect. Besides It has more to do with Cobb's projection of his own heroic side in the manifestation of Arthur, than any real concrete hero role. All the supporting team had bits of Cobb's psyche projected into their realizations

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If the whole film was a dream, then that means our knowledge of totems is completely inaccurate, since our presumed knowledge of how they operate came from a dream by Cobb. Such information would be altered in a way that would be fitting for him to get back home.

Yet, Nolan ends the film with the spinning totem that begins to wobble, indicating that he wants the audience to question, for a minute, whether the final scene is a dream or reality.

Which means the rules we were taught regarding the totems was indeed accurate, and that they do in fact topple when the owner is in reality. Since Dom used his totem multiple times in the first half of the film and it toppled, we can say that the entire film most certainly was not a dream.

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Ariadne was privy to the specifics of Cobb's totem and very well could have worked the specific physics of that totem into her architecture of the world she built

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But your argument is that the entire film was Cobb's dream. He used the totem multiple times before he even met Ariadne, and it fell.

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how do you know it Cobb's dream specifically?

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That's your argument, is it not?

Who do you believe is the dreamer?

Either way, if you look at the chronology of the dream, his totem toppled before someone (Ariadne) knew its properties.

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They are too many signs that point to the ending was reality.


These are facts:

1. Cobb remembered how he got to the house, if it was a dream, he would have just appeared there.
2. the kids were older than they were in his dreams.
3. The ring like the poster just stated.
4. The top wobbles, and you can hear a noise when it fades to black, that is the top falling over.

Also you can add to the fact that the whole entire character of Cobb's nature was to GET OUT OF THE DREAM WORLD AND BACK TO REALITY.

These are facts:

1. Starting with him and Mal that he wants to get out of Limbo and back to reality.
2. He won't look at his kids in the dream world because he knows they aren't real and will just encourage him to stay.
3. He's doing the whole job to get back to his real kids.
4. He lets go of Mal because she isn't real and a shade of his real wife.
5. During the entire movie its against his entire character to accept this fake dream world reality.

So at the end he accepts the fake kids and fake reality? In my opinion HELLZ NO.

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I agree with pretty much all of this, except this part:

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2. He won't look at his kids in the dream world because he knows they aren't real and will just encourage him to stay.

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The end was him finally being able to see his kids' faces because he actually was seeing them IRL. The entire movie flashes back to the day when he took this secret job, and he wishes he'd have called out to his kids, but he didn't because he had to leave right then, and he regretted that because he never got to see their faces one last time before he left for good. It's not like he didn't know what his own kids' faces looked like...he just kept thinking back to that day and regretting not getting one last look at them.

IMO, the whole premise of the movie was him getting back to his old life again and being able to get back into the U.S. and be with his kids. The limbo scene with him and Mal was his way of finally letting her go. I assume that after he did that, she would no longer haunt/sabotage his dreams. It was closure (finally) for him in relation to Mal (BTW, I thought it was "Moll").

I didn't notice the wedding ring thing, nor did I hear the top falling at the end...those are both things I'm gonna look for next time I watch it.