[SPOILERS!] Inception

[NickThissen]

First of all, here's a huge:

SPOILER ALERT!!!

I'm serious, if you have not watched the movie yet, don't read the rest of this thread, but go see it instead. It's a very good movie, you won't be disappointed.




Anyway, if you're still reading by now, you must have seen the film. There's one thing I don't understand about it.

In the very first dream level, the one where they encounter a freight train in the middle of the street and are put to sleep in the white van (driven by the chemist).

As soon as Dom warns everyone that they cannot kill themselves to wake up (if they do they end up in limbo), he explains that he wants the job done as quickly as possible. Because Fisher's mind is armed against extractors (like them) it is putting up a fight, and he says that he does not expect anyone to live for a week.

The week comes from the fact that they have their timer (on the airplane, in reality) set to just under 10 hours, which translates to 10*20 = 200 hours or just over 8 days. So they would spend 8 days in level 1 at most, if they let the timer run out. Multiply by 20 again, and they would spend about 23 weeks in level 2 (the hotel), and about 9 years in level 3 (the snowy mountain). Obviously do not want to spend 9 years in their dreams, so they construct a series of 'kicks' to wake them up as soon as they finished the job.

But: there is no kick in the airplane. In the airplane, they are just going to let the time run out. 10 hours, which translates to 8 days in the first level.


So, at the end of the movie, they have just succeeded their job and everyone (except Dom and Saito) was awakened by the kicks. But they awoke in the first dream level, not into reality.

Here comes the crucial part I don't understand... Dom said he does not want to spend a week in level 1 as he thinks they will all get killed and sent to limbo. But, how does he plan to leave level 1, assuming everything went correctly? They have just awakened, and assuming this is still the first day (in their dreams), then they still have a week to go in this level, with nothing to wake them up! There is no kick mechanism in the airplane, so they are forced to spend the week in level 1...



1. Why did they not get killed?
2. Assuming they somehow managed to survive Fisher's defenses for a week, why did Dom say he doesn't want to spend a week in level 1, knowing that they have no choice? There is no kick in reality, the only option is to sit it out...


Anyone can shed some light on this? It's the only point I still don't understand. It took quite some reading to understand the rest, it's quite complicated, but this just seems like a mistake even.

[mendhak]

That might be deliberate.

When they wake up in the airplane, there weren't any wires attached to them. They just woke up.
The movie also doesn't show Cobb waking his way up from limbo to snowland to hotel to airplane.

So I'm thinking that from the moment the old dude reaches for the gun (and it's not shown what happens there) is Cobb's own dream where he has recreated the perfect world where he can go back, he's allowed past immigration, old dude makes the phone call and he sees the face of his children.

Also I don't think the top stops spinning... it went on pretty long.

[abhijit]

That might be deliberate.



Also I don't think the top stops spinning... it went on pretty long.

I think they did that for a sequel.

[mendhak]

Oh come on. It was a pretty good movie, a self contained story.

Do you really think Hollywood would attempt to milk a somewhat successful movie purely for the intent of generating more cash?

You know what, don't answer that

[mendhak]

Another thing I need to point out - Cobb's totem is completely invalid. At first, we are told that he spins it to see that it does fall over. That's fine, but we later find out that the totem used to belong to his wife.

Also remember that a totem only belongs to one person and you're not supposed to touch the other person's totem, right?

But there's Cobb with his wife's totem, so... you get the idea.

[NickThissen]

That might be deliberate.

When they wake up in the airplane, there weren't any wires attached to them. They just woke up.
The movie also doesn't show Cobb waking his way up from limbo to snowland to hotel to airplane.

So I'm thinking that from the moment the old dude reaches for the gun (and it's not shown what happens there) is Cobb's own dream where he has recreated the perfect world where he can go back, he's allowed past immigration, old dude makes the phone call and he sees the face of his children.

Also I don't think the top stops spinning... it went on pretty long.

I know they did that deliberately, there was no kick in the airplane so they had to wait for the time to run out in order to wake up (dying in the dream was not an option because you get sent to limbo due to the heavy sedative).

What I don't understand is why Cobb tells them that he doesn't expect anyone to live a week long in the first dream (because of the defenses). Why would he say that, if he knows that they have no chance, that there is no kick and that they MUST wait it out? Doesn't make sense. They used this as an 'excuse' to go on with the plan even though they ran into the unexpected defenses. Dying was not an option (limbo), and waiting it out wasn't an option either (defenses would kill them). But there is no alternative as there is no kick, so they had to wait it out...


I in fact don't think that Cobb is still dreaming. I think he is actually in reality at the end. The details are a bit hazy, as the movie jumps around quite a lot in the final part (where Cobb is in limbo). It jumps from Mal's appartment to him waking up on the beach again and then it jumps from the scene with the old Saito to waking up in the airplane suddenly.

The first jump can be explained by three possibilities:
1. It is still the same 'dream' (limbo), and the movie simply omitted the details that happened between him leaving Mal's appartment and arriving at the old guy's place.
2. It is a dream, and you can never remember how you got to somewhere! They even mention this several times. He is just suddenly at the old guy's place without explanation: which is common in a dream. He just doesn't realize that it is strange (he is dreaming).
3. Mal killed Dom in her appartment. If you die in Limbo you end up either a level higher, or multiple levels higher, we don't know. But: in all those levels (the exploding snow fortress, the crashing elevator and the sinking van), there is an immediate danger of Dom dying AGAIN! So what if he was killed by Mal in limbo, woke up in either of these dreams (or all of them?), got killed again nearly instantly, and went back to limbo! Only in a different place (the old guy's place). In the meanwhile, time in Limbo has progressed MUCH further than time for him, so Saito is now a very old man (he has been in limbo for quite a while, he dies in the snow fortress) while he hasn't aged at all.

I think either option 2 or 3 is the most likely.

Then, Saito and Dom shoot themselves in Limbo and end up in any of the other levels. Possibly the danger has passed in those levels (not sure about this) and they can wait them out to wake up again. Perhaps they have spent another few years in either of those dreams, nobody mentions anything about that after they wake up (they don't speak at all), but I think they are truly back to reality and they are not still dreaming.

Another argument for that I think is this... If Dom was still dreaming when he 'woke up' in the plane, then how did he know about the plane? Why did he dream about the plane? I don't think Ariadne designed that as part of the dream, so it doesn't make sense that he would dream about it.

Another thing I need to point out - Cobb's totem is completely invalid. At first, we are told that he spins it to see that it does fall over. That's fine, but we later find out that the totem used to belong to his wife.

Also remember that a totem only belongs to one person and you're not supposed to touch the other person's totem, right?

But there's Cobb with his wife's totem, so... you get the idea.

Cobb only took the totem after his wife died. He made it his. Also, he used the totem to plant the idea into his wife's head that they were still dreaming! He opened her safe, took the totem and let it spin. Because they were dreaming, it kept spinning forever. When Mal opened the safe (possibly years later) and saw the totem spinning, she knew that she was dreaming, and this idea did not come from anyone except herself believing in her totem: inception accomplished.

[mar_zim]

INCEPTION

[mar_zim]

And also try watching Primer http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/ it is much more complicated than Inception.

[NickThissen]

INCEPTION

That's not inception, that's dreaming.

[mar_zim]

Thanks, now I know.

Seriously though I haven't seen the movie and I just read some reviews. I thought it's about a dream.

[abhijit]

Thanks, now I know.

Seriously though I haven't seen the movie and I just read some reviews. I thought it's about a dream.

You hit the nail on the head. The spoiler is "It is a dream".

[NickThissen]

It is about dreaming but not normal dreaming. Without spoiling anything, the movie is about people called 'extractors'. They sedate a person of interest, make him dream using some kind of chemical (they can design the dream themselves) and then join his dream. They know they are in someone's dream, but the subject doesn't. He is dreaming, and even though the strangest things happen (within boundaries), in your dream you never realize that something is strange. Only after you wake up do you realize "wait... *** just happened".

The point is this: even though the extractors can design the dream, the subject (person that is dreaming) fills it with his consciousness. The people in the dream are all projections of his consciousness. This allows the extractors to extract (steal) information from the subject that he would normally keep to himself. They can do this, for example, by suggesting to the subject that he has a safe place (literally a safe would work). The subject's brain automatically fills that safe with the information that he is trying to keep safe. The extractors open the safe: and voila: they just stole the information.

Now, in the movie, they take this one step further. Instead of stealing an idea or information, they intend to plant an idea in someone's head. This is called inception. This usually does not work; you cannot simply walk up to the subject in his dream and tell him the idea. If you do that, the subject will always know that it was YOU who suggested the idea (even though he thought it was only a dream) and he will not develop the idea as his own. This makes inception extremely difficult. They try to accomplish it in the end by having multiple levels of dreams: a dream in a dream in a dream. This allows them to let the subject figure the idea out on his own, as if it came from himself, rather then from the extractors. Only then will the idea 'stick'.


I thought it was a really good film. Everything pieces together very nicely, and it even fits with reality. When you are dreaming, sometimes your dream seems to last AGES even though you have only been asleep for a short while! (This happens to me quite a lot when I'm tired and reading a book or something. I'll fall asleep, dream some very long dream, then wake up to find it's only 20 minutes later or something). In the dream, time is slowed down by about a factor 20. So if only 1 hour passed in the real world, the subject (and extractors) who are dreaming will experience a 20 hour dream. This is used to their advantage in the movie. They enter another dream in the first dream and time is multiplied by 20 again, and then again. Ultimately they could have spent 10 YEARS in their dreams while only having spent 10 hours in reality.

Another very good plot point is the 'kick'. This is also a real thing, you must know it. You are dreaming, and suddenly you twitch or 'kick' (it's called a sleep twitch or something) and wake up. It usually feels as if you are falling right before you wake up. They use this in the movie to wake people up: they literally drop them, and they feel the 'kick' and wake up.

[NickThissen]

You hit the nail on the head. The spoiler is "It is a dream".

You mean the whole movie was a dream? I don't think so. Why do you think that? The spinning top at the end didn't fall... YET. It was wobbling and could easily have fallen really soon. But the producer kept it ambiguous: he wants you to make your own choice. The point is this: Cobbs doesn't CARE whether he is dreaming anymore. He spins the top, then sees his children for the first time in god knows how many years (possibly nearly 100 counting the years he spent in limbo and other dreams!) and he leaves the top without looking whether it is still spinning or not.

[abhijit]

You mean the whole movie was a dream? I don't think so. Why do you think that? The spinning top at the end didn't fall... YET. It was wobbling and could easily have fallen really soon. But the producer kept it ambiguous: he wants you to make your own choice. The point is this: Cobbs doesn't CARE whether he is dreaming anymore. He spins the top, then sees his children for the first time in god knows how many years (possibly nearly 100 counting the years he spent in limbo and other dreams!) and he leaves the top without looking whether it is still spinning or not.

Not the entire movie. The part where the three level dreams start and then they move to a fourth level. Then they wake up in an airplane. That part of the movie is a dream.

I will let the sequel prove me right or wrong.

[NickThissen]

Ok, so the last part where he wakes up in the airplane, goes home and sees his children again is a dream according to you? Possibly. But it could just as easily be reality. The movie simply does not determine that for us; you are to determine it for yourself. Cobb doesn't care, that's the point.

[chris128]

I thought it was a really good movie as well but there were quite a few bits I didnt really understand... might get it on DVD when it comes out and have another watch

[mendhak]

The first jump can be explained by three possibilities:
1. It is still the same 'dream' (limbo), and the movie simply omitted the details that happened between him leaving Mal's appartment and arriving at the old guy's place.
2. It is a dream, and you can never remember how you got to somewhere! They even mention this several times. He is just suddenly at the old guy's place without explanation: which is common in a dream. He just doesn't realize that it is strange (he is dreaming).
3. Mal killed Dom in her appartment. If you die in Limbo you end up either a level higher, or multiple levels higher, we don't know. But: in all those levels (the exploding snow fortress, the crashing elevator and the sinking van), there is an immediate danger of Dom dying AGAIN! So what if he was killed by Mal in limbo, woke up in either of these dreams (or all of them?), got killed again nearly instantly, and went back to limbo! Only in a different place (the old guy's place). In the meanwhile, time in Limbo has progressed MUCH further than time for him, so Saito is now a very old man (he has been in limbo for quite a while, he dies in the snow fortress) while he hasn't aged at all.

Hmm, interesting. I'd go for 1 or 2, but 2 could also be applied to the 'waking up' - couldn't his own mind create the world of the airplane?

BUT... another thing to note - do you remember the scene where Mal kills herself? Cobb walks into the hotel room, there's furniture and glass everywhere. He walks to the window and Mal is sitting on the ledge of the opposite building. How did she get there? It's usually in a dream that you'd see something a bit weird like that. But because that incident takes place in Cobb's "reality", I'm thinking that there's a possibility that the whole thing, right from start to finish, was a dream.

I mentioned the totem thing earlier as it is related to this - because even though he got the totem from his wife, he really should be using his own totem that he made himself. Using a totem created by another person makes it tampered, since the totem merely becomes another part of the dream, therefore making it useless for him to know if he's dreaming or not, so it could very well be that his reality is a dream.

[chris128]

BUT... another thing to note - do you remember the scene where Mal kills herself? Cobb walks into the hotel room, there's furniture and glass everywhere. He walks to the window and Mal is sitting on the ledge of the opposite building. How did she get there? It's usually in a dream that you'd see something a bit weird like that.

I thought that! I thought it was so blatantly odd that she had magically got across to the other window ledge that it must get explained... but it never did.

[NickThissen]

I thought that was weird too, but at the time I thought it was simply because Cobb could otherwise easily stop her from jumping. The conversation they were having was quite important (so they couldn't have let her jump as soon as Cobb walked in) so they had to find a way to make sure that Cobb couldn't stop her.

[chris128]

Yeah thats my theory for it but in a film like this it seems a bit of a poor excuse to do something totally unexplainable

[SambaNeko]

I read a post somewhere that Cobb is never seen in the real world wearing his wedding ring, whereas in the dreams, he's always wearing it and it is deliberately shown, and that it (or its absence) is his true totem. At the end of the movie, he's not wearing it.

Whether or not that's valid, I don't think he's trapped in a dream at the end; I think the wobbly top was just tacked on as a weak "what if." I don't think there was enough supporting evidence to conclude that the end is still a dream.