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

Wow...I have to admit that for all of the hype it got it certainly lived up to it. Unreal.

ETA: No pun intended.

Over the last 5-6 years I'd say Leo has been about as good as it gets.

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Was the top going to stop spinning right before the credits

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thus the awesomeness of the ending

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James Berardinelli is the best critic out there.

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Truth.

I just got out of the movie, and I have to say that it's almost rendered me speechless. Very very rarely do movies draw me in as this movie did. I can tell now why this screenplay took Chris 10 years to perfect. There is so much care and attention to detail going on in almost every facet of this film. Chris, with this film in my opinion, has placed himself in the pantheon of some of the best modern architects of film and story in the last 20-30 years. He deserves it. What he has created with Inception is far beyond what most anyone is producing. I have to applaud Warner Brothers for making this film happen. My mind is still trapped in one or all of those levels of dream state. I had become disenfranchised with the theater experience. Inception renewed my faith that every once in a while it's worth it to pay the ticket, sit in a darkened theater and lose yourself for a few hours. Awash in and held close by story and character. Bravo Mr. Nolan

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conclusion. Quite clearly, Nolan intended there to be ambiguity there, or else he wouldn't have made such a sharp cut to the credits. It's similar to Tarantino's reluctance to state unequivocally what is in Marcellus Wallace's briefcase; it's up for the viewer to offer his or her own interpretation.

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Disagree. Comparison btw pulp fiction and this movie don't work IMO.

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The Pulp Fiction briefcase is used here as a paradigm

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It's a McGuffin.

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The point of the totem is not necessarily to test whether it is a dream or reality, the point is to test whether or not someone is being manipulated by an extractor.

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After Ariadne forged her totem (the chess piece), she walked into the corner of the workshop where Dom was working on the dream machine. He came over, asked if he could hold her totem, and she said he couldn't.

Dom said that she was learning fast, and Ariadne said totems were a great idea, proceeded to ask Dom if it was his idea, and then she said, "It's a great way to keep track of reality."

So, the response the totem gives will tell the owner whether or not they are in someone else's dream, which may or may not be under siege by an extractor.

And there is one huge inconsistency that I can't stop thinking about -

Level 4 was clearly limbo. After Fisher was shot, Ariadne and Dom decide to go and get him. It was established earlier in the film that limbo could be accessed through two means - if you voluntarily go deep enough, and subsequently "lose yourself", as did Dom and Mal, or if you die while heavily sedated.

It was also established in the garage in the first dream that limbo was a subconscious abyss, and that the only sense of structure that would be present would be from someone who had been there before - in this case, the only person was Dom.

Thus, when Fisher died, he entered into the limbo that Mal and Dom built and persisted in for 50 years. Dom and Ariadne voluntarily enter this state to retrieve him.

Once they awake on the shore, the fact that this is limbo is further reaffirmed by Ariadne asking Dom all of those questions about the structures, such as, "you built all of this?" As they were walking towards Dom and Mal's old apartment, it was clear from the dialogue, as well as the old structures where Dom and Mal used to live, that this was indeed limbo.

So, they finally make it to the apartment, and find Mal. Dom sits down at the table with her, and starts telling her how he first performed inception on her.

---> Here's the problem - at this time, Saito was still alive in the hospital in level 3. Dom had already been in limbo for some time before Saito died.

Before jumping off the building, Mal tells Dom to "find him and bring him back (Saito)".


We then get back to the scene that the film opened with. Dom hasn't aged one bit, while Saito has aged considerably (40+ years), yet Dom had been in limbo for a longer period of time than Saito.


There are also a few inconsistencies with the kicks - are they performed internally within a level to push the dreamer back a level, or does the kick need to be initiated at a level above the dreamers level to bring them to that level? There are instances of both in the film.