The Great Inception Debate: Alive? Dead? Both?

Loved it. I think you are probably right about the whole thing being a dream.

I need to watch it again, but heres my thought process:
1: They were in a drug induced sleep, which supposedly if you die in, you are done for.
2: As you pointed out, it doesn’t look as though he could have made it out of limbo. even if he kicked himself out, he still would have needed to make it back to Ellen Page’s mountain scene, (which she had already left), get back to the hotel (which 30 Rock dude had already kicked out of), and survived drowning in the car. Either way dude is in permanent limbo now.
3: I forget, but I think it showed the kids at then end of the movie… and they were still the SAME AGE. if he has been out of their lives for as long as the movie seemed to indicate, definitely a dream.
4: He put the top down in the first place and abandoned it. The only other person I recall abandoning their item in reality or in a dream was Mal when she locked it up. He subconsciously abandoned it.
5:Going back to my bullets 1 and 2 above, and what you hinted at in your writeup above, if the ONLY way to get to that third level of dreams is to be drugged (as the movie indicates), and if you die while drugged you are screwed (need to be kicked), getting run over by a train while in limbo would mess you up bad

Sorry to write an article on Steven’s article, but this all has me thinking.

One last point: When it showed him and Mal getting run over by the train, they were both young. The movie seemed to indicate elsewhere that they aged while in the dream…. so what does that mean?
I think it may indicate that Cobb has not only been in limbo for a while, he has died while in that state more than once.

The more I think about this movie the less I like it. I’ve only seen it once and perhaps my issues with it will be resolved upon further viewing. I could probably go on and on, but I’ll hold back to stuff contained in this post.
1.) Leading up to the final cut I was positive that it was more than likely a dream for two reasons, he didn’t spin the top soon after he woke up, like he had been doing the entire movie and the children appeared not to have aged, despite the fact that he’d been gone for years. I say was positive because at the last second I’m 99% sure I saw it wobble before it cut to black.
2.) You say you never see Cobb traveling anywhere. Not true. In the first half of the movie, after they depart from the helicopter Cobb and Arthur board a charter plane and are shown talking on the plane on their way to Paris. Also, there’s the 10 hour flight to LA. Most film makers won’t force you to sit through entire plane rides.
3.) Why would his comrades show concern for him on the plane? They knew what he was trying to do, they seem happy that he got out when everyone looks at him but they can’t seem overjoyed because they have to play it cool as to not raise the suspicion of Robert.
4.) We don’t see him de-plane because do you really want to sit around for a half an hour while they wait to get off? He goes through security with obvious tension, but makes it through because Saido made the call. If you want to make the point that the plane was still a dream, that isn’t the way to do it. I think a more interesting question to ask is one I can’t quite recall the answer too, were Saido and Cobb still hooked up the machine when they woke up? I don’t think they were but I’m not certain. If they weren’t Cobb and Saido couldn’t have woken from a shared dream together.

I have a lot more things, some nit picky, such as the amount of time Arthur had to engineer the kick in the Hotel (if 5 minutes = 1hr dream time, and assuming that it takes a very generous 30 seconds for a car to fall into the water, he should have had 6 minutes, he had a lot more), if you were weightless in the car, you were weightless in the hotel, therefore shouldn’t it reason that if you were weightless in the hotel you should have been weightless in the Arctic snow fortress? In the second half of the movie why were Cobb and Ellen Page the only one’s that knew about the Mal problem? Earlier in the movie Arthur seemed to be very aware of it. And one far less nitpicky, one pretty central to the plot, why did Cobb feel the need to plant the idea in Mal’s head? If he wanted to go home wouldn’t it have been easier and safer to just shoot her, or tie her to the railroad tracks or use any other means?

@Adamc: re your last paragraph; remember that the conversion of 5 minutes to an hour is for a first level dream. I dont know that the conversion remains 5 to 1 for each subsequent dream-level.
perhaps the fact that gravity existed for the mountain but not the hotel had something to do with the fact that they flat out told the target it was a dream in the hotel. Once they reached the mountain level, command of the dream was back under control. (remember that the target never seemed to be aware of changes in physics or gravity in the dream until it was pointed out to them)

I’m surprised that nobody has yet drawn the parallel to Leonardo DiCaprio’s PREVIOUS movie, “Shutter Island”, which also messed with the question of what’s real vs. what’s only in your mind.

He also fiddles with perceptions — tho in grittily realistic settings — in “Catch Me If You Can”, “Body of Lies”, and “The Departed”. Also check out “Blood Diamond” if you haven’t seen it.

This guy is sure piling up an amazing body of work, just like Christopher Nolan.

PS: Like Adam, I too saw the top wobble just before the final cut to black. But by then Cobb was no longer there to see it. If a tree falls in the woods …

Schrödinger’s cat, anyone?

doubleang, small detail. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was on 3rd Rock from the Sun..a long time ago. Not 30 Rock.

@doubleang the 5min =1hr dream time is only right for the first level of dream time. The deeper you go, the more time you have. That’s why Cobb and Mal could essentially go down to limbo and spend 50 years there and growing old whilst still being able to wake up and have an hour past.

Like Adam and richardsrussell i, too saw the top wobble but then they cut to Cobb and kids and then cut back and it wobbled and then cut to black.

I too, think its a dream because of that and also because of the kids who never aged. Didn’t in one of the dream states did Cobb – do the top and it fell over?

LOL I definitely came to the same conclusion while on the train ride back from seeing the film last night: this was entirely Cobb’s dream. And I can see, if we were to go further than that, the reasoning behind ‘extraction’ and ‘inception’ all being a kind of ruse Cobb’s subconscious came up with to make his dream make sense, but if to keep with the plot of “Inception”, with the planting of an idea being able to change the thought of the person’s dream (I’m not saying it right, but whatever) then what if Ariadne was the inception Cobb needed to get him to confront Mal and finally overcome his guilt?? If so, who planted Ariadne in Cobb’s mind? Was it the Grandfather (Michael Caine)???

@angeldemusic: yah, typo obviously ;)

@NicolaPrigg: TObviously the time differences are exponential; which was my point. I was responding to the previous poster because even though they are exponential, I dont know that the 5 to 1 rule holds up for each level of the dream, ie dream level 1 to dream level 2 as well as it does for reality to dream level 1

i think the greatest evidence pointing to it ALL being a dreams is the phrase ‘leap of faith’. Saito uses it as a sales point to Cobb to convince him to take the inception job. Later, we see Mal using the phrase as a sales point to get Cobb to jump with her.
This would suggest that both characters are subconsciousness creations of Cobb, and are simply re-purposing lines of dialogue as they are projections not capable of creating their own words.

I also noted the point made above that Cobb’s kids had not aged since his “memory” of his departure.

Steven stated the following in his original post:

“The most obvious evidence for me is pure physics. You can’t actually go into people’s dreams. That’s not physically possible. So aren’t we already in the realm of a la la land – a dream-based fantasy concept? The kind of thing we would come up with … in our dreams?”

Let me take that further. It makes little sense to me that someone like Robert Fischer Jr. would be concerned enough about the risk of extraction and have the means to “militarize” his subconscious… and then board a public air flight without any bodyguards. In the same way, why would Saito be on that train without escort? If people of power were aware of this method, there’s no way they would expose themselves physically in the way Cobb’s team required.

That, along, with much of what’s been stated above, leads me to believe it’s all in Cobb’s mind.

I liked the movie although I thought that it was over-hyped.

BTW, I think that the whole thing was a dream for Dom but I don’t really care if I am right or wrong. I was glad that I finally woke up.

another point is when Cobb enters the opium type sleeping den, he nods off using the chemicals. He has a quick trip and is immediately awake. He uses the bathroom, spins his totem, but is interrupted. The totem falls off the sink ledge, we never see it stop spinning, but are made to believe it has, instead of spinning forever. Maybe at this point he has entered a dream and doesn’t return.

I think the totem is completely a tool of misdirection. The totem, by Cobb’s own admission, belonged first and foremost to Mal.

As Cobb believed (and would project), Mal understood the toppling of the totem to indicate reality.

So the idea that the totem indicated reality by falling over was not his own; it originally belonged to Mal. Therefore it was not a legitimate ground for reality, because it was not that pure raw inspiration he mentioned to Ariadne as a basis for anchoring oneself to reality.

Just as Browning’s shade reflected Eames’ tampering, so would Mal’s shade, or rather, the SHADE of Mal’s TOTEM be influenced by Cobb’s perception of reality, not reality itself.

Whatever state Cobb perceived Mal to perceive to be reality would cause the top to fall. The actual basis of reality had nothing to do with it.

I for one like to think of it as a tragic romance. Cobb and Mal trying to get out of their dream and back to reality. Only, Cobb was fooled along the way into thinking that the dream was reality, while Mal went on to the real world.

Either way, the mere fact that we can come up with so many different theories shows the amazing ability of Christopher Nolan to create deep and complex stories. This movie seems to require more viewings.

Or maybe, the grandfather (Michael Caine) is aware that Cobb will never be able to come back to reality, so the least he can do is make the dream that Cobb perceives to be reality a pleasant one.

In this case, Michael Caine introduces Ariadne to help Cobb solve the crisis that plagues his subconscious world (the conflict with his wife).

Also, we can never assume that we truly know any of the characters. Just like the shade of Browning can be influenced and changed based on what the subconscious dreamer perceives, so too could Ariadne, Eames, Arthur, or Ken Watanabe be shades acting out what Cobb believes them to believe.

Do we ever learn anything about Ariadne except that she’s a student? There was little to no character development or background info on any character except Cobb. They all seemed to eagerly join a Cobb centered universe.

Hmm… I need to get back to work. Thinking about Inception is going to get me fired.

Further to Atheis4′s point:

“The totem, by Cobb’s own admission, belonged first and foremost to Mal.”

I just had a similar thought. I suspect that the “children” are actually Cobb’s totem. He had borrowed (stolen?) Mal’s totem, and leaves it behind when he reconnects with his own.

Another thing I’ve been considering is all the “rules” established for the dream reality. If you’re hurt in the dream, you feel pain in real life. If you die in the dream, you wake up. Well, not if you’re in a drug-induced sleep, because then you go to limbo. And you can’t get out of limbo. But sometimes you can if you really, really want to. Oh, and have your special totem that tells you whether you’re in a dream, but don’t let anyone else touch it.

Why would a dream reality be defined by such rules? Isn’t the point that reality is mutable, subject to the mind and perceptions of the dreamer? If so, then aren’t these just the rules of Cobb’s dream? It would follow then that all of this is in Cobb’s mind.

I think Nolan’s genius was to make the movie ambiguous enough that you could watch it a hundred different times and come out the other end with a hundred different theories about what did or didn’t happen. That way, we’re injected into the same state of mind that haunts Cobb from the beginning: Is he dreaming? Is he not? I doubt even Nolan has the answer – he probably buried his own totem from the beginning. That’s where the genius comes in: writing/directing without a firm resolution on where the story will take you.

So, with all that ambiguity, we project our own hopes, dreams, and expectations onto the movie itself. It’s like a cinematic Rorschach.

I believe it was all a dream from beginning to end. I came to this conclusion from Mal’s speech in the last scene with her and Cobb. She tell’s him point-blank to think, what makes more sense, that all of this craziness with inception/extraction, projections with guns, etc, is all a subconscious manifestation, or it’s really happening. I feel that Nolan’s deliberate choice to not explain the mechanics of how this dream-travelling works goes hand in hand with that. We actually have no reason to believe what’s happening on screen is actually happening. Btw, I’ve had this very conversation a bunch of times this weekend, and there are more tid bits that add to this conclusion but by far that’s the biggest for me. Oh, and I loved it!

@doubleang: In one of your post you talk about Cobb & Mal always looking young in Limbo. Near the end they do cut to an image of their holding hands on the tracks (I think it may be the 2nd or 3rd time we see that image), but the last time it’s clearly the hands of an elderly couple. I think the reason that the younger versions of the characters were always shown, is that’s how Cobb automatically thinks of Mal, in her prime. But when forced to confront his guilt (of his using Inception on her), he also stops remembering the past in their primes but how they actually were (does that make sense?).

@stephenhope

re: “It makes little sense to me that someone like Robert Fischer Jr. would be concerned enough about the risk of extraction and have the means to “militarize” his subconscious…”

but it’s all happening in his dream. not while he is conscious. this is all believable when you’re dreaming. would you agree that in that in dream state, the idea of subconscious security would seem absolutely believable? as is every other out of this world consequence in the movie… while dreaming, we don’t know what truth is. when Cobb is having this conversation with ken watanabe’s character at the very beginning- about “specializing in a very specific type of security”- this is all happening in ken watanabe’s 2nd level dream state.
cobb doesn’t sell his services as an extractor to anyone while they are awake. it’s in dreamland.

Correcting a misconception of Inception. The rules established: If you die in a dream, you wake up. Except in this instance because of the chemicals used to share the dream cuts off that avenue of waking up. Now if you die, you wind up in limbo where you lose yourself.

However, once you’re in limbo, it is possible to wake up directly to the real world if you die, regardless of the chemicals use. Remember, that’s how Cobb and Mal first made it back. The trains smooshes their heads in limbo and the wake up directly to the waking reality without having to go through each intervening dream level in between.

If Fischer waking up cuts all the bridges/intervening dream levels, then how does limbo still exist? Because limbo is your own subconcious/4th dream level. The Japanese castle with Saito was his limbo. The house and the confrontation with Mal was Cobb’s Limbo. They would have continued without Fisher and explains how its possible to wake from limbo/level 4 directly to waking reality, because those intervening levels are now gone.

@dktrk: or maybe they planted all these ideas in our mind but made them ambiguous enough so we think we created the theories. INCEPTION!

@Stephenhope: I think the rules of the dream could be constructions of Cobb; they are justifications more than anything. Cobb’s mind is attempting to place the same restrictions/urgency of the real world onto his dream. If you look at the “rules” of dreaming, they seem very similar to the “rules” of reality.

Think about it. You feel pain in the dreams and if you die you disappear to another existence (afterlife). They even call it purgatory. Each time they delved deeper, the consequences of their actions resembled the real world consequences of death and pain.

@jayhawkda: How can we be sure that when the train hits them they woke up in reality. they may have woken up in another dream state like Ariadne, Eames, or Arthur climbing the “ladder” of dream states in the final scene.

@adamcs95

re: if you were weightless in the car, you were weightless in the hotel, therefore shouldn’t it reason that if you were weightless in the hotel you should have been weightless in the Arctic snow fortress?

no. this is exactly why you need one kick per level, and only feel the kick linked to that sub-subconscious.
otherwise, a kick out of level 1 or 2 should wake you up to consciousness. but it doesn’t. it would defeat the purpose of simultaneous kicks and kicks out of dreams within dreams. physicality is only linked to the newly entered state.
same reason why they had to play the “warning music” each time for each level…
i think. makes sense to me, at least.

I think a lot of us are still a little confused as to how the mechanics of dream sharing works in the movie. My interpretation of it is:

Cobb and his crew do not enter other peoples dreams, they bring them into their dream world. That is why Ariadne’s job as The Architect is so important. Fisher’s subconscious knows immediately that they are in a foreign environment and begins to fight, but Fisher himself does not realize that he is dreaming and also does not realize that he is in someone else’s dream.

Ariadne designs what the dreams are going to look like in reality, and then shows each of the dreamers what their level is going to look like. The reason that Cobb doesn’t want to know specifics is so that when the projection of Mal inevitably shows up she will not know anything about where they are because Cobb does not know.

The first level where they kidnap Fisher is Yusuf’s dream. We know this because when they first arrive it is raining and Yusuf remarks that he has to pee, and because he is the one that stays behind to drive the van.

The second level, the hotel, is Arthur’s dream. Again, we know this because he is the one that has to stay behind.

The third level, the alpine fortress, is Eames’ dream (I think, although it could also be Fisher’s).

As for the ending, well I don’t think it really matters if the top falls or not. The last shot is Nolan performing Inception on us, and I’d say that he succeeded.

Somewhere, John Nash has this all mapped out with key points connected by color-coded strands of yarn.

WOW.

ALL I CAN SAY IS I LOVED THIS MOVIE.

BUT DID YOU ALL WATCH TO THE VERY END CREDITS???

COBB’S TOTEM FALLS DOWN.

Congratulations are in order for this article. After 6 months, the article “18 Android Apps To Get You Started”‘s #1 most read position has finally been usurped.

And man, this movie must have been a nightmare for the editors. Trying to keep all four narrative strands to play out properly while trying to keep the time conversions in mind.

How about this…what if WE are the ones who are dreaming?

“But why the hell would killing yourself in limbo land wake you up in reality? And at the end of the movie, he’s not even in his own limbo land; he’s in the businessman’s. So when Fischer wakes up, cancelling out all the dreams, how could Cobb possibly make his way back to the airplane? All the highways have been cut. The dreams are done. Game over.”

Killing yourself in limbo only brings you back if you are able to realize that you’re only dreaming. This is why Mal hiding her totem is significant, because she wanted to make it so that she could let go of reality. When Cobb went to see Saito at the end, he had to convince Saito that he was dreaming, and then they both used the gun to kill themselves in limbo and bring themselves back.

As for not being in his own limbo land, Cobb’s subconscious has been inserting itself in every dream throughout the movie, from Mal showing up in the beginning, to his kids showing up in the hotel, etc., so Saito’s limbo adopts at least a portion of Cobb’s limbo once Cobb gets there. He finally let Mal go, so it wasn’t as catastrophic, but it still happened.

As for Cobb (and Saito) making it all the back even though all the highways had been cut off, it’s simple: Just like he and Mal were able to get back, he and Saito were able to get back. As long as Fischer hadn’t woke up yet in the real world, they didn’t need to make all the different stops on the way up. They were jolted straight out of limbo and into the real world.

That also answers the question about how they could leave Cobb’s body in the river and he could still jump past that dream state and back into the real world.

I think it was all real. It could definitely be a dream, and based on the pacing of the movie, we’re not given a whole lot to ground us in reality to begin with. That’s mostly Nolan’s style (very similar to Dark Knight and The Prestige, sort of a meld of the two), but could be relevant to the theme in this case. But I don’t think any of the points you bring up prove anything, one way or the other. They are all easily explained in the context of the film.

The spinning top is a plot device to keep us thinking about the movie, doing exactly what we’re doing right now. I am not reading too much into it.

I think the whole movie was a dream – just a plain old one-man dream. Cobb fell asleep on a plane before the movie started with all these strangers around him and his brain concocted this entire story while he was sleeping there – casting his seatmates in lead roles. The reason everyone just smiled as they got off the plane is that they simply didn’t know each other. Cobb probably hadn’t been home for awhile, maybe on a long business trip, and he missed his kids. In fact, his wife may not even be dead – I half expected her to be there when he walked outside to greet the kids!

Ok, i’ve read through some of the theories you guys have posted, and I still think I have an original idea of what is going on in this movie. If someone else has posted something similar and I missed it then I am sorry, but here goes.

The movie is titled “Inception” so I have to believe that this is the main theme of the movie. I’m assuming that they have actually discovered the technology to do the things that the movies says, whereas some of you are assuming that its impossible and Leo is dreaming the whole time.

I believe that there are several clues that can lead to the following train of thought.

Ok… first, my theory. I believe that in the beginning of the movie, Cobb and his team were actually on a real mission to extract something from Saito.
Saito has obviously already been trained in dream security or whatever that Cobb’s team was pretending to offer him. I think that Cobb’s projection of Mal somehow gave Saito all the information that he needed to turn the tables on Cobb.

I then think that Saito somehow took Cobb deeper into dreamland and tricked him into thinking that they are on the same team, much as Cobb did with Fischer.

Ok, clues that lead me to this kind of thinking…
Cobb states several times throughout the movie, including the opening few minutes that the worst parasite is an “idea”… even the tiniest idea can stick with you forever and grow on you like a parasite.

we then learn that to “incept” an idea into someone you have to use a very very basic idea… that has an emotional attachment to the subject.

so… How what is the idea that saito incepts Cobb with?
saito: I can remove all charges against you and get you home to your family with just one “phone call”…
cobb: how do i know that you can do that
saito: it doesn’t matter… just know that i can.

from here on… that idea is growing like a parasite in cobb’s head… so much so that he is willing to do anything to make it happen… including shooting Mal and finally “letting go” of the memories of her, and staying in limbo state just to save Saito.

Also, to explain the teetering top at the end of the movie…
We learn that everyone is very protective of their TOTEMS… they wont let anyone else touch them.

But… in the beginning of the movie Cobb is being carried in to where “old” Saito is by two men. They bring Cobb to the table and say that he was carrying nothing but a gun and “this”… his totem.

They touched it and if memory serves correctly Saito picks it up when he says… “I have seen one of these before.”

So now that Saito knows about Cobb’s totem, it will no longer have the same effect… “keep spinning in dreams”
at least… thats what I gathered from watching the movie.

I may be completely off base here, but at least its a new different type of thinking, and I know there will undoubtedly be some holes in my theory that people can pick on… but anyway, my 2 cents, and…

LET THE DEBATE CONTINUE!!!

okay here’s my question. if it’s all a dream then why do we see the other story lines progressing while Cobb is sleeping. when you dream you don’t dream other story lines. it’s just you.

@supes2k1 I totally agree with u!!
I think it’s all real and Cobb actually made it back to his children. Nolan has indirectly explained that.

You can always wake up from limbo if you realize u are dreaming and then kill yourself in limbo. Cobb knew that because he’d tried it before with Mal. Cobb also knew that what would happen if you die in limbo without knowing that you are dreaming. He said you will become vegetable and will never wake up again.

As Cobb knew he could always come back so he decided not to go back with Ariadne but instead stay in limbo to find and bring Saito back with him. And when he met Saito and made Saito believe he’s dreaming Saito then reached for the gun. Although the scene changed but That implied that he gunned himself and (maybe) Cobb down (or just him and Cobb awoke as Saito awoke since Cobb’s in Saito dream).

Moreover the spinning totem at the end was wobbling. If you are dreaming the spinning totem will never wobble just like when Cobb spun Mal’s totem. So this also implied that he’s got back to reality.

However, there are still 3 points I don’t have clear answers. First is why Cobb children still dressed the same and did not age? From my opinion I think the similar clothing is just coincident and they don’t look older because Cobb’s left for not so long. It seemed long because all he’s been doing is dreaming.

Second is did Fisher remember everything after he woke up? When Cobb and Fisher eyes met in the airport I don’t know what that implies. This is because everyone seemed to remember what happened in the dreams and if Fisher remembered why he reacted like nothing had happened when he saw Cobb.

The last one is how did Cobb get into Saito limbo? in order to do that he has to come back to Eames’ snowy dream and find Saito body (Since he died there) and use the machine to inject himself into Saito’s dream just like what he did with Fisher when Fisher died. I don’t remember anything mentioning how Cobb got there. Maybe there was something in the begining that I missed since I was enjoying my popcorn and wasn’t actually watching the movie.

@DANIEL HUNTLEY I’m gonna go watch the movie again to confirm this. :)

Ok, there are a lot of signs that seem to tell us it was all a dream.. But if the totem falls over then he’s awake right? Yes. Does the totem fall over multiple times in the movie? Yes. This whole thing could not have possibly been a dream, or it would keep spinning every single time.

—Here come a bunch of “what if’s”—

Also, say this all was a dream. Mal killed herself, so she should have woken up, next to Cobb, right? If she wanted him to come with her so badly, then why didn’t she wake him up once she entered reality?? Because it was real life, and she died.

The ONLY way he is dreaming is if absolutely everything in the movie is a dream and him and Mal never went into limbo in the first place, Mal is alive, he never fled the US, etc. Then there is no totem, its just a figment of his dream, so it has no control over anything. Then every single concept such as extraction and inception is dreamt up. This would mean that he will wake up to a very real, completely normal world soon. BUT, that is very unlikely, because it is not possible to have a dream that lasts for so long (he grew old in limbo remember?) He would have to be in a coma or something. Hrmmmm.
If this is true, then everything is peachy because he will be back with his family when he wakes up.

—The “what if’s” are over, its safe.—

You can believe what you want to believe, but I think its pretty obvious that he is in the real world at the end. Thank you guys for the interesting debate (:

ps: It doesn’t really matter if he is still dreaming or not, or if the whole movie was a dream, because every ending turns out happily. Think about it, If the “what if’s” are true, then he will wake up with his family. Happy. If its still a dream, at least its a good dream. Happy. If he is in the real world, he has finally accepted the loss of his wife, and he is reunited with his children. Happy. :D
Ok i’m done now. Byebye

I apologize, the “what if’s” start at the 3rd paragraph. (:

I loved the movie and the fact that even after it was over it left me with some stuff to discuss with my friends and think about. Just like Memento and the Prestige, Nolan is definitely cementing himself as one of my favorite authors.

Can’t be a dream:

If this is a dream them everything is from Cobbs perspective.

The vault closes and the only characters in the vault are Fischer Son and Fischer Father. Both are locked in an emotional struggle which forms no aspect of Cobbs preoccupations in his own narrative of guilt over his Wife’s passing. The son has a revelation in this scene that is unrelated to any concerns addressed by Cobb during the story.

If it is actually Cobb in the Vault, addressing his father, then why is he addressing such an important emotional issue when that same issue is not a preoccupation at any other point during the movie for Cobb himself. If it were a dream, every iteration of Fischer would also be Cobb. Which is way other thinking things.

Taken at face value, it is not a dream. And it is a more entertaining experience that it turns out not to be a dream.

Though his kids not aging was either sloppy, or deliberate because Nolan felt having older kids might disrupt the emotional closing of the film.

So after seeing it again tonight I’ve come to the conclusion that everything that happened happened and that Cobb was not dreaming the whole thing.

I would argue that the top is not Cobb’s totem, his kids are. Whenever Cobb sees his kids, he does not see their faces. It is only at the end when his kids finally turn around, indicating that he is not dreaming. When he is confronting Mal in limbo, he could have seen his child’s faces, but he turned away because he did not want to lose track of reality the way that Mal did.

I think that the top is more symbolic than anything. The top belonged to Mal, and Cobb continues to carry it around with him just as he carries the guilt over what he caused Mal to do. When he walks away from the top at the end it is because he has let go of his guilt.

@jeia56: it seemed to me that he had an opportunity to see his children while in Limbo. Remember when Mal called the children, and Cobb shielded his eyes? I would say they are less a totem, and more something that threatens to drag him away from reality

I saw a 7:20 showing, came home, digested some, read all this post and all its comments, and finally arrived at an essay-length conclusion on how it all went down and why. I firmly believe that this is what happened, but of course I wrote it all after midnight, so maybe the morning will make me realize how dumb I’m being. Anyway, here goes:

Dom is alive and in reality.

The top’s continued spinning is there to remind us of the theme that the movie explores (the nature of dreaming in relation to reality) but it falls over.

Clearly, purgatory can be escaped directly to the highest existing dream level, without intermediary dream levels, by acknowledging that one is in a dream and then dying within purgatory. We see this happen to Dom and Mal in the flashback. It can be presumed that there were no remaining dream levels between purgatory and the real world when they made their excursion, due to there only being two of them.

When Fischer enters purgatory, it is simply a beach. As soon as Dom begins sharing his dream, Dom enters Fischer’s purgatory and turns it to the remnants of his own, because it is shared and Dom is the only one with something to share. It is composed of his subconscious memories of the time spent there with Mal.

Fischer and Ariadne are pulled back into the third layer, leaving Dom to find Saito. (Incidentally, the destruction of the city has little to do with the van falling into the water. It is caused mainly by Dom’s subconscious losing its desire to go back to this dreamstate with the memory of Mal. It his governed by his subconcious, after all.) However, Dom has just been stabbed in the chest, and he knows that he’s in a dream. He’s going to die in purgatory and wake up… to the highest existing dream level, which is in the sunken van, because Yusuf is still dreaming.

In this dream, he dies again from drowning, which, since he is still sedated in reality, will send him back to purgatory. In this brief top-level time, Saito has had fifty years or more to mold purgatory to his thoughts, and Dom no longer has the baggage that would cause his city to spring up again. This explains why Dom rolls up on the beach again, instead of finding Saito by wandering around the dead city – he left purgatory and came back.

Up in the plane, Yusuf has stopped dreaming and all but Dom and Saito have been disconnected from the machine. When Dom finally convinces Saito to kill the two of them in purgatory, they wake up. Fischer suspects nothing because, honestly, if you watched Inception in your sleep, how much of it would you remember? The rest of the team plays it cool because they don’t want him to suspect anything. Saito clears everything up, Grandpa meets him at the airport, and he gets home.

As for the ages of the kids, their pose and their clothes, we have seen (in the first Dom/Mal/train scene) that Dom’s perceptions and memories can affect the way that things appear on screen. His memories made Mal and himself younger on screen the first time, and his memory of re-watching the unhappy regret memory again and again now changes what he sees when he first sees his children again. He doesn’t see them as they really are, probably about a year older and in different clothes, he sees them as that memory, but complete and happy and with faces. He sees himself finally resolving his regret. And perhaps this is the reason the top symbolically continues spinning until the end of the movie, because he, in his euphoria, is ‘dreaming’ that this is reality. Or perhaps it’s because he has dreamt this memory so many times that he perceives it as dreaming now that it’s real. Or perhaps it’s any of a dozen thematic things, or probably all of them at once. Inception is really a piece of literature, and that last shot is its final, reflective line that completes the story not on a plot level, but on a thematic level. And the theme is always open to interpretation.

But not, I think, the plot. The fact that he washes up on the beach of Saito’s personal purgatory indicates to me that the sequence of events I describe is the way it went down.

I think saying “Its impossible to go into people’s dreams” is a cop out in a movie about doing so. Nolan obviously believed it was OK for magicians to clone themselves using Tesla Coils (sorry for the spoiler). I don’t see how this is any more of a stretch. The movie was inferentially written both ways. If Cobb made it out of Limbo once without a kick from “upwards”, then he could do it again and again and again.

We know its possible to alter dreams with your minds because they do it all the time in limbo, with a bigger gun, reconstructing the cities. etc.

There’s so much that goes on off camera, that I think its impossible to really believe 100% in either option. There’s always the chance he did or didn’t make it out. While I would hope he did, the real point is that he was able to accept the reality he was in. And that’s far more important. Because that whole “what if this is a dream” works anywhere.

The moment you are born you can’t be sure you exist in the “ultimate reality.” Do you remember getting there? Aristotle’s Cave. You are forced to accept your surroundings or nothing matters. Same with Cobb. He needed to get past his past (an entire world he had to leave behind, like a dream). Its in that movement you’ll find the ultimate point of the movie.

You were duped with a Prestige. ;)

The whole film is not a dream since we see different character perpectives without Cobbs being present. From Arthur to that-Juno-girl Ariadne.

Just think about it, we never dream anything without us being present to witness the dream unfold. we are never an omnipresent on our dreams only omnipotent. :D

I for one believe that he is awake and back in reality. A lot of people ask if that is the case then why didn’t his children ever age? His children never aged because since Cobb’s job, “extraction/inception” keeps him from reality most of the time; 5 minutes = 1 hour etc, his children wouldn’t have aged much. Especially going into all of those limbos. Another reason why he is back in reality is because throughout the movie he never sees their faces when they turn around. Had be been dreaming then he shouldn’t have seen their faces. One thing that might throw all this off is if his children are still wearing the same clothes as every time he saw them in his dream. If that’s the case then I would think that maybe it is still a dream. I don’t remember if they were.

I really don’t think the whole thing was Cobb’s dream, because if it were, wouldn’t Cobb’s sub-conscience have attacked his team and not look at him in the bar scene when Fisher is looking at him like how they did to Ellen Page’s character.

Another thing I pondered was that his team’s mission was to incept Cobb all along. To plant an idea that removed Cobb’s guilt for Mal’s death since Cobb’s sub-conscience keeps interfering with each extraction/inception he’s in. I’m sure his other teams have problems, how come none of their minds get in the mix? However, wouldn’t Cobb willingly have let them do that? Maybe not, because Cobb was witnessed to the dangers of inception- Mal committing suicide. Again he voices his concerns with inception when he asks Saido his intentions with Fisher. Inception is, “like a virus, infecting it’s hosts”.

I have to also agree with an earlier comment on Fisher. If he had defensive training against extraction, where are his body-guards, how come he couldn’t distinguish between dreams like Saido did with the carpet. If Fisher has a bigger company and could potentially become a “super-power” of energy, how come he is not as skilled as Saido. Surely Fisher has the financials for this type of knowledge and skill.

The main thing that is wrong with this movie is it is a movie! Questions we are asking have the potential to be plot holes in the movie itself. That is the danger of leaving a movie for the audience to decide. A lot like Eyes Wide Shut. For this reason audiences may not like the movie. For example the whole Cobb being in places without the audience seeing how he got there; i don’t wanna spend 20 minutes watching someone enter and get off a plane. Was that done to cut time for the movie or is it really a dream?

The movie does have some originality to it, and does beg for more insight. Over-all I liked it, but I might have done things a little differently.

However, with all of these questions there is still evidence to suggest that Cobb is in fact back in reality. As I said earlier.

i like the idea of the whole thing being a dream and i’ve thought that it is a possibility.

i’m going to share my opinion – you definitely do not have to agree with it. here’s just some food for thought about the ending (in case the whole movie wasn’t a dream). it doesn’t matter if the top keeps spinning because the top was not cobb’s totem… it was mal’s! i know people have mentioned this before. therefore the top spinning at the end isn’t necessarily relevant. i think that cobb’s totem is his children’s faces. in his “dreams” he can never see them, they are gone before he has the chance.

furthermore, i personally do not think he would have chosen a life of fantasy again… if he were to do so why not stay with mal and the children in the climactic scene where he is making his “choice”. *note* he turns away his face when mal calls the children – clever tactic on nolan’s part to confuse audience members thinking like me.

final verdict: he really is home because he can finally see the faces of his totem: his children. agree or not, nolan did a fantastic job with this movie… i loved it!

You realize that the headline of this story is already a big spoiler, right? I saw it listed last week, before I saw the movie.

“that spinning McGuffin” never stops spinning during the movie…ever!!

The first time he uses it, he knocks it off the counter because he thinks he sees his wifes reflection in the mirror.

The 2nd time he spins it infront of Ellen (she gorgeous) Page but the camera just moves away.

forever dreaming!!!

I love you Ellen

@gunnonc
You said: However, there are still 3 points I don’t have clear answers. First is why Cobb children still dressed the same and did not age? From my opinion I think the similar clothing is just coincident and they don’t look older because Cobb’s left for not so long./quote

After seeing the movie several times, I’m 100% certain that the daughter does NOT have on the same clothes at the end. Throughout the movie, she was wearing a pink dress. Pay attention to the top of the dress, near the shoulders. It’s solid pink. At the end of the movie, she is still wearing a pink dress, but it has spaghetti straps, and underneath is a white shirt. Definitely a different dress.

I’m convinced this was a clever trick by Nolan to make us think that the kids were wearing the same clothes, when in fact, they aren’t. Nolan has performed Inception with this film, and done a magnificent job.

“So the idea that the totem indicated reality by falling over was not his own; it originally belonged to Mal. Therefore it was not a legitimate ground for reality, because it was not that pure raw inspiration he mentioned to Ariadne as a basis for anchoring oneself to reality.”

Well Cobb said it would defeat the purpose!! If the person knew what the weight feel etc. was they could refabricate it in the dream they create!! but only the ones who know the exact demensions of the object so for instance mal is dead…..she cant fabricate a dream with that object in it so it doesnt matter that she knows what it is like.

And also even if that is incorrect she doesn’t exist anymore so really no one really does know what his totem is…

Plus i do believe it was a dream from minute one…and the reason for his totem falling over sometimes from the beginning was because mal created that concept of the falling top in the dream level that Cobb thought was reality so whereas he thinks its reality because it topples its really just level one and then he created that life in his subconscious…

And the reason that the dude was weightless in the hotel was because the car was in freefall!! the car was not weightless. While the rest of the bodies he was taking care of were just not in motion. therefore they were not weightless in the snowy bunker level. Their bodies in the previous level were just motionless. Ill explain it easier for the retards.
The car jiggles -> The bodies in the car jiggle
the bodies in the car jiggle -> the dream inside the bodies jiggle
while the car is in free fall the bodies are in mid air basically therefore the bodies in the dream are floating therefore they are NOT jiggling therefore the snow dream does NOT jiggle. Man lotsa typin there aha.

And this all cant be called a dream from the beginning because inception and extraction does not exist!! It isn’t La La Land as the original poster said. There are sci-fi movies you know

…..that was alot easier to understand in my head…….

1. In the ending Cobb is still in a dream.

2. When Mal and Cobb killed themselves to wake up from the 50 year dream, they only went one level up.

3. To have a 50 year dream you would have to be several levels deep.

4. Mal knew this and tried to convince Cobb. Cobb lost track of how deep they were.

5. Mal killed herself and went another level up. She is not dead.

6. Cobb believed she was dead and she was not. She only went up one more level.

7. Cobb’s reality is a dream. There was no Cobalt company after him. Everyone in the movie were Cobb’s projections. He was alone in the dream that he thought was reality.

8. In some cases I believe Mal went back down in the dreams to convince Cobb again. “You know were to find me. You know what you have to do.”

9. Upon returning home, the kids are in the same pose, same clothes, and have not aged a bit. Cobb had been gone several years by this time.

10. How did the father know that Cobb would be on that flight AND that his charges would have been fixed. He was in Paris remember.

11. How would a foreign Japanese business man just make one phone call and have charges dropped in a matter of minutes. Yeah right?

12. The Mombasa fight scene was way to dream-like, Cobalt agents comming out of no-where and the narrow escape was all to dream-like.

13. If Mal is still alive and staring at Cobb’s sleeping body, you would think she would be able to “kick” Cobb out of the dream. However, he is many levels deep and the kick needs to come from the bottom up. He is trapped.

14. The top not falling over or falling over is irrelevant. It is not his Totem. He abandoned his real totem and picked up Mal’s after she died. Believing he was in reality, he started using it.

15. Cobb is trapped in a dream that he believe is reality. Mal was right and is alive with the real kids in reality.

@JasonGarland:
“…

8. In some cases I believe Mal went back down in the dreams to convince Cobb again. “You know were to find me. You know what you have to do.”

9. Upon returning home, the kids are in the same pose, same clothes, and have not aged a bit. Cobb had been gone several years by this time.

…”

To your first point, as Cobb told Mal in Limbo, he can’t imagine her completely. If Mal had really been entering his dreams over and over again, telling him that he needed to wake up, she would have had more complexity to her. It would have really been Mal, not just a shadow of her, as Cobb said. After all that time, he would have recognized her as his wife, not just a projection of his wife.

To your second point, watch carefully throughout the movie. The kids are not wearing the same clothes at the end. Specifically the daughter, her dress is different. You have to look closely to catch it, but the dress is certainly different. I’m 100% sure of that.

Furthermore, we don’t know how long it’s been that Cobb has been gone. We’re never given a timeline. To assume that’ it’s been “several years” is out of bounds.

I finally saw the film, and reading through the comments, I don’t think we can make a compelling argument for both sides. Both have valid points but neither one is definitave.

I first thought he was dreaming the whole thing, the phrase ‘leap of faith’ appears often, and we know it means something to Cobb, something passed on through his subconscious.
Also, we never see his totem. I don’t believe he is foolish enough to discard his own, but we never see him use it and it has already been said that Mal’s totem is affected by his perception of reality.
As for limbo, I don’t think normal dream rules apply. Someone said it is a place of raw dream power, so I think it exists somewhere parallel to the dream levels, meaning one kick could be enough to awaken those trapped there.

If toppling of the top denotes reality then he WAS in reality in various scenes as the top did topple.We don’t see the top topple in the end , it just wobbles. So it seems he dies 3 layers down and gets left in limbo. And it would seem his raw infinite subconscious will leave him in limbo till his brain turns to scrambled eggs. THE END

I would hate it if it was all cobbs dream and if it was really his dream then he would be in every scene you wouldnt see arthur alone in the hotel or that dude driving it just cant be all a dream

when fischer finally wakes up from the dream in the plane, why isnt he surprised to see saido sitting right next to him?
i mean, here’s the owner of a global conglomerate, equipped with defences against extraction.. he flies an airline that’s ownened by his biggest competitor.. he has a strange dream, then wakes up to find his competitor sitting right next to him.. and he doesnt suspect anything?
pretty dumb businessman, i’d say

You guys are for getting something When they were in the last dream the architect told leo to go and wake the asian he had died in a deep sleep so he had to go deeper and remind him where he would wake up If he couldnt come back why did she tell him to go find him