Inception (DISCUSSION THREAD) *SPOILERS*

[filth]

This is the discussion thread for inception. We will discuss the topics in the movie without spoiler tags, if you want to go and explain how great the movie was go to this thread http://www.revscene.net/forums/inception-t587197.html





How did Leo officially bring himself and the japanese guy back to reality? Also since the ending is questionable, SAY if they WERENT back in reality, how would Leo go into his 6th dimension dream when he was eating with the old Japanese guy?

[2damaxmr2]

No they were in the limbo. Because Watanabe died in the 3rd level. They knew the drug was about to wear off (In real life) So you only need to kill your self to wake up. If you are still hooked up with the machine then you need the kick to wake up from the dreamworld.

[mkchoi0801]

There's one thing i don't get about totems. The weighted die and the unstable chess piece both make sense. For example, the weighted die would always land on a certain number, say 6. If he was in someone else's dream, the die might land on a different number and he would realize that he's in someone's dream. But the top, the dreamer's subconscious would think that it would fall anyways, so what's the point of having a normal top as his totem? Unless he rigged the top so that it keeps spinning for a ridiculously long time, I don't understand how it can be 'unique' for him to judge reality.

[TheNewGirl]

The totem still he only knows the feel of (he and Mol actually). They're the only ones who have ever touched it so they're the only ones who could manufacture it in a way that would "feel right" so to speak. That was the whole point, the spinning is just their projection onto it of how it should be - something only they can control in their own dream.

They never came back to the "real" world at the end. Leo's character wanted to stay in the dream. It kind of implies that he would live out his time there and probably if he ever woke up he'd be all brain scrambled.

Actually the whole thing begs the question if he ever really woke up from his first jaunt into limbo at all or if the whole thing was a dream from start to finish and his wife really is the one who woke up.

It kinda reminds me of that illusion with the dancer that's spinning, some people see her going to the left, some people see her going to the right and if you concentrate hard enough you can make her seem to go either way. In Inception at first glance it looks like Mol was drawing him into the dream while Ellen Paige's char was the voice of reality BUT if you look at it from a differant angle it could be that that Mol was the voice of reality and Ellen Paige's character was lulling him deeper into the illusion.

[Kaolinite]

^ you cant really tell if he did end up in reality in the end. in his dreams he never got to see his kids faces because he forgot what they look like. at the very end, he sees their faces and if it was a dream he wouldnt..so that kinda shows hes in the real world.

but.. his kids never aged, were wearing the same clothes and were doing the exact same thing as his dreams... although 5 minutes of "real time" is 1 hour of a dream.. so he could have just been away for like a month.

i saw another persons comment where he said at the beginning of the movie ( in the dream ) he was wearing a wedding ring...every scene that was a dream he was wearing it and parts that were reality he was not. the very end of the movie he was not wearing the wedding ring...so doesnt that also show it must be reality.

one thing i didnt get was when everyone woke up in the car except for leo ( 2nd level ) they all left and leo must have drowned..which would send him into limbo.. also everyone just appears awake in the plane out of nowhere so they must have skipped some time.

[wc19]

I didn't get how the limbo worked, maybe I didn't hear it properly in the movie.

I thought you only go into limbo when the sedatives were still working so technically in the first level and if they used the sleeping drugs aka the other levels than you would just need a kick or kill yourself to wake up? Didn't make sense to me how Leo and the girl can go into limbo just by using the sleeping drugs at the bottom level where as watanabe went into limbo because he died in the first level.

[Jsunu]

Originally Posted by wc19

I didn't get how the limbo worked, maybe I didn't hear it properly in the movie.

I thought you only go into limbo when the sedatives were still working so technically in the first level and if they used the sleeping drugs aka the other levels than you would just need a kick or kill yourself to wake up? Didn't make sense to me how Leo and the girl can go into limbo just by using the sleeping drugs at the bottom level where as watanabe went into limbo because he died in the first level.

Actually they went deeper into Leo's limbo since he was already there prior. What you see in the 4th level is his crumbling world that he had created with his wife that was previously empty dream space. Now the real question is how did leo enter saito's limbo?

Here a link with an extensive discussion on the movie:
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Incep...eam-19615.html

And here is a link with the interview of the guy who made the sedatives in the movie:
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment...o_answers.html

Both links bring interesting debates on the topic.

[kchan]

did anyone catch what Mal said right before she got hit by the train in the dream?

[illicitstylz]

Originally Posted by kchan

did anyone catch what Mal said right before she got hit by the train in the dream?

" so we can be together "

or something to that extent.

Originally Posted by http://www.cinematical.com/2010/07/19/dissecting-inception-six-interpretations-and-five-plot-holes/

Interpretation 1: All of Inception is a dream.
(Note: This is the Inception theory to which I subscribe.)

We are never once shown reality. Every frame of Inception is a dream. Whose dream? My money is on Cobb, though it is conceivable that Cobb is simply the subject and that he is in someone else's dream (see Interpretation 3 and 4 below).

There are a number of key elements throughout the film - lines of dialog shared amongst the characters (Mal and Saito both tell Cobb to take a "leap of faith", Cobb predicts what Saito will say in limbo), acceptance of improbable events during segments of "reality" (Saito saving Cobb in Mombasa) - that support the notion that everything is a dream, but for me it all comes down to a simple question: What is our totem? We learn very early on that the one unimpeachable way to know whether or not you're in a dream world or the real world is to test your totem; an item whose behavior only a single individual can identify and predict. In the case of Cobb, it's his wife's spinning top. Arthur's is a single loaded dice. Ariadne's is a precisely weighted chess piece. But what is the audience's totem?

What event in Inception is the audience aware of that no one else can know? There isn't one. There's no point in which reality is clearly and unimpeachably established. The film opens in a dream sequence (Saito's limbo) before transitioning to another dream sequence (Saito's dinner party), which then slides into another dream (Saito's secret apartment). The characters supposedly awaken from that last dream sequence aboard a Japanese train, this presumably being our first glance at reality, but one must ask how the characters arrived from the apartment to the train. There's no visual transition; no shot of "tunneling" from one reality to another. One second we're one place, a second later we're somewhere else, but can you remember how we got there? No, because we're never shown it; we're never shown the awakening process that bridges the two. And not being able to identify specifically how you got from point A to point B is clearly established within the film as a sign that you are in a dream.

That transition, if it existed, would be the audience's totem; it would be the one thing we can cling to, whose behavior we can understand intimately and always predict. By not giving the audience a totem of their own, Nolan has flat out made it impossible to ever anchor any portion of the film as being real versus being a dream.

Now, that's not to say that the movie is ruined if everything is a dream. It doesn't negate the emotional breakthrough that Cobb goes through, which is ultimately what the film is about. In fact, everything being a dream is the ace up Inception'ssleeve: if it's all a fantasy, then there can be no plot holes; the lack of deep characterizations for anyone other than Cobb can be chalked up to the fact that they are all his projections and thus do not require rich histories or distinguishable character arcs. It's basically a catch-all safety net for any complaints registered against Inception's narrative.

[hal0g0dv2]

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[rsx]

When Cobb was sitting in the hotel room gun in hand waiting for the totem to stop spinning, did it stop?

[hal0g0dv2]

^ yes

[Slifer]

So in a limbo you will grow old alone right? Then how come in Saito's limbo, his bodyguards were there?

[Fafine]

^ they grow old with everyone... they showed a scene where he and his wife was old with white hair and walking together. his bodyguards are projections just like how his wife had their kid projections when they were in limbo

[LUUUUUUUU]

Best Movie EVAR!

[LUUUUUUUU]

YouTube

[Ulic Qel-Droma]

there is another theory that cobb himself was the one being incepted.

here it is

Dom Cobb was the SUBJECT throughout the whole movie. And at the end of the movie was the only time he was acctually awake. The clues are obvious once you realize that he was the subject and not Fisher.
Dom Cobb even said in one scene, the only way I can get to see my kids again is if I get back to the real world. At that scene the architect ran into the elevator real fast so he didn’t realize that he was being incepted.
There was no Cobol or Cobal however you spell it.. This whole plan was a setup to plant an idea in Dom’s head so that he could realize what the real world was. The person behind the idea was Michael Caine’s character, thats why he was at the airport. The real extractor was Saito.
It’s obvious he was in a dream throughout the whole movie. And they said that the totum was so that you knew that you were never in someone elses dream, not reality. Thats why when he went to the indian guys place he went to sleep and woke up in a someone elses dream. Thats why he never got to spin the totum in the bathroom.
Another thing.. Dom never got attacked throughout the whole movie, because he was the subject! Everybody else was getting attacked. Especially in the scene when the train came crashing through the middle of the street. Do you remember Dom being attacted in that scene? I didn’t think so.
There were flashbacks of Dom in the real world, but the Inception started when the so called “cobolt guy” told him that it was now or never, and gave him airplane tickets. Rember, there is no cobolt and that guy was part of the team in performing the inception on Dom. This explains why the kids are in the same spot when he got home wearing the same clothes. Because he was only asleep for a few hours.
Dom realized they planted the inception on him when he arrived back to find Saito sitting at the table an old man, the Dom says with a bewildered look on his face, I’ve come to remind you something, that this world wasn’t real. Thats when he realized he had the inception done to him. As he awoke on the plane you see everybody sitting there with a smile on their face knowing that they just did it to him, otherwise Fisher would have been like, you were in my dream and you and you were there and you were there! Right?
Think about all of the clues given to us. Its actually obvious if we pay attention a little harder. And about the top, it clearly started wobbling and no it did not start spinning again before the movie went to black.

the only thing that doesn't make sense now is why the leaders of two super powers of the world help incept him and risk limbo (and by super power i mean they're fucking more powerful than governments themselves).

unless they wern't super powers, and scare crow and the last samurai dude were just forgers as well and acted as if they were super powers.

i duno.

the other thing is totems. i've been studying lucid dreaming and dreams for a while. Totems only work in that movie because only YOU (the owner of the totem) knows how it works, and you can go into OTHER people's dreams. but a totem would never work in your own dream in real life, because you know the totem's secret (it's weighted funny, it falls over one side, it spins forever...etc whatever it may be). A totem in your own dream would work however it wanted to. but it would only work the way you wanted it to work if it were someone else's dream.

Cobb could be very well stuck in a dream still at the end. cuz his totem, would always fall over, in his own dream.

[clowe]

Did any of you guys see it in IMAX? If so, do you think it's worth it to see it in IMAX over the regular one?

[Presto]

^^^
It's not a film that needs to be seen in IMAX, but it would certainly enhance the experience. I saw it in the normal theater, and it blasted my mind.

[rice cooker]

Originally Posted by clowe

Did any of you guys see it in IMAX? If so, do you think it's worth it to see it in IMAX over the regular one?

its already blurry enough on a regular screen let alone imax screen

[JLASA]

Originally Posted by Presto

^^^
It's not a film that needs to be seen in IMAX, but it would certainly enhance the experience. I saw it in the normal theater, and it blasted my mind.

agreed....good thread...these theories are tough because they made the plot so it was possible for all this discussion about what the facts are.....i personally thing he was still in the limbo at the end and wasn't in the real world.

[JKam]

There's another theory that he's in his fathers dream and that's why he can see his kids' faces, they're projected by the grandfather.

[-EuroRSN-]

man this movie fucked me up... cant imagine what i would think if i was baked!

[FN-2199]

After reading everything in this thread, my mind is blown even further. All the theories are mixing me up!
Or... that's what they want me to believe..

[DanHibiki]

Originally Posted by JKam

There's another theory that he's in his fathers dream and that's why he can see his kids' faces, they're projected by the grandfather.

But ur allowed to bring ur own projections into other people's dreams so he could easily have seen their faces.