A great movie, very predictable, but that didn't stop me from enjoying it.

When I got home I felt like playing Psychonauts, great game that.

 

So I just had to come out from under my rock for this. Why is the general consensus that Cobb is in reality at the end of the movie? That seems entirely too optimistic for DLP. I'm not saying that the whole thing is a dream from the beginning, that would make the movie pointless. They're in reality till they go under in the plane. Cobb just never comes out.

When Cobb's schooling Ariadne on dreams, remember how he tells her to think about how she got there? He says that in dreams you just spontaneously appear somewhere without knowing how you got there.

So think back to the scene where Cobb meets Saito in limbo. The last shot is of Saito reaching for the gun and then all of a sudden Cobb is waking up on the plane. That's kinda suspicious.

Also Cobb is losing touch with reality throughout the movie. The only things that keep him grounded are the totem and not remembering the faces of his kids. That's why he looks away when the projections of his kids turn around when he's talking to Mal in limbo.

In the end Cobb spins the top but he sees his kids faces and goes to them before the top stops spinning. I pretty sure that means that he doesn't care whether its reality or not anymore. Why would that matter if he wasn't dreaming?

And of course the top is still spinning, if just wobbles to fuck with you.

Nolan doesn't make happy endings, think about his other movies. Everything works out too perfectly for Cobb. When the sedative runs out back in reality he's gonna wake up with his brain fried from experiencing a few centuries in a few hours. At least he's stuck in a good dream till then.

tl;dr Watch the movie again, its not a happy ending

 

I believe the ending to be a dream however I haven't came around to thinking if it was a dream from the beginning or not.

When Cobb spins the top initially he wants to confirm whether he is in a dream or not. Before he can confirm that he looks at his children and realizes that he doesn't give a fuck anymore, maybe he is too tired to fight again or can not wait any longer to meet his kids. Therefore, when he accepts this dream as his reality the result is observed in his totem. Because in your dream your totem acts the way you want it too.

This is also the reason for why he refused to look at his children when they went after Fischer in limbo and Mal called out their names. He thought he would be confused between limbo and reality if he saw his kids.

 

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1939332
It's a dream within a dream within an incomprehensible clusterf*ck. Within a dream.

 

To all those who believe Cobb ended up in reality. Think of one time in the entire film when a character was pictured arriving somewhere, especially Cobb. If you look back you'll notice that every single time they switch scenes it's to another that is already half way through. No beginnings, no arrivals, just jumping into the middle of a dr-scene.

 

Plenty of other films do the same, just to keep the pacing. It is a good point, but it's not something that would completely invalidate any other interpretation.

There's plenty of evidence to support Cobb being stuck in a dream. There's also plenty of evidence that he's truly awake. It's really a matter of what you prefer to believe, in this case.

I personally believe that he did end up in reality, because I think it wraps up the story nicely, and gives Cobb's character progression a good sense of closure. But I can understand why people would think otherwise.

 

As Sion Revan said plenty of movies do the same.

Personally, I think Cobb was in the real world (because if he wasn't then one would think his wife would come back to dream to tell him that) and also ended back in it (mostly because I like happy endings).

 

Still, in the context of a film where not remembering how you got to someplace is talked about frequently... It's a pretty huge hint, in my opinion.

 

But every other time the spin-top was shown in a dream it didn't wobble. It wobbled at the end - why would something that could never fall over wobble unless it could actually fall over?

 

I disagree.

If the entire thing is a dream then from her perspective Cobb will wake up in a few minutes. So why would she need to go in after him? You see for her it may be a matter of minutes while for him it can be 100 years. There's the discrepancy. We don't know the how many levels Mal and Cobb went down together. If the entire movie was a dream then there is no reason why there can't be more then 4 dream levels, who knows, maybe Mal and Cobb went down twenty levels.

 

There is also the fact that Cobb had his wedding ring off in the final scene, while at the other times it was there all the time. It may be unintentional, but it may also show that he's moved past Mal and has escaped limbo and put it behind him.

Don't ask me how I noticed. I just did because my friend told me to "Pay attention to all the small details as they are important."

 

Mostly because he doesn't know he is dreaming, so he could never escape. But forget about it - she could also wake him up from the real world, be it with a water or something else and I doubt she wouldn't do it as a first thing when she woke up. Unless she thought it's next level of a dream and killed herself again.

 

Your confusing something here. What the movie implied was that you can spend say 1,000,000 years in Limbo and still wake up in RL at the time you meant to. Remember Saito spent 50+ years in limbo and still woke up at the same time as all the other people who didn't dream nearly as long as he did. So we can assume that the time dilation effects caused by Limbo are very very high. Who knows maybe if Cobb and Mal spent an inordinate amount of time in Limbo instead of offing themselves, they would have woken up to the next level naturally.

She probably did kill herself again for the next level since the time dilation experienced by Cobb is too vast for him to just be one level deep.

 

But Cobb isn't in Limbo, even if he is still dreaming as his wife suggested. Beside it was probably more than a year since Cobb's wife death, so even with time dilation effect it should be enough time in real world for her to wake him up. And I think it would be first thing she would do, because it makes sense that, never mind if she was in real world or just level up in dreams, she would try and help her husband.

But as much as I respect Nolan, I think some people are trying too hard with interpretation of the Inception and it is just like we see it - Cobb was in the real world and he might not came back to it.

Also, I have a question, because it's not clear for me. The kick needs to be level above from where you are in a dream, yes? Then what was a point of explosives in the mountain fortress? And how killing herself/jumping from the tower let Ariadne to went level above?

 

Yea you may be right.

Although I did read a theory that stated that Cobb never left Limbo throughout the entire movie. Weird stuff.

Now I have a big urge to read some good quality Inception fanfiction. A pity that it's mostly badly written slash.

 

A point toward the reality side of things: the actors that play his kids at the end, while wearing the same clothes as earlier, are actually two years older than the kids from earlier. I think this is a pretty clear message (for the in-depth viewer) that it was meant to be reality.

That said, I have a problem with the totem of the spinning top. The totems of other characters work because only they know their weight etc. But everyone knows spinning tops shouldn't spin forever - meaning that it should fall over, even in a dream. That just annoyed me a little.

Lastly, just a possible super mind-fuck. Lets say he was in a dream and Mal got to reality. Maybe in that reality the kids were dead or something similiar, so she used her knowledge of the totem that is now Cobb's (as the totem is only fool-proof, even if I'm wrong in the para above, when no-one else knows about it) to convince him that it is reality so he won't have to experience the kids being dead. Maybe it was a 'last act' by her before she commits suicide in actual reality. I don't know, just a random little thought that popped into my head. No evidence for it whatsoever, but it would be kind of cool.

 

Watched the Movie.
It sucks.
End of story. :banana:

 

I read your post.
It sucked.
End of story.

I watched the movie about a week after it was released and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The ending and general path of the story was predictable but it was made well enough that I wasn't facepalming at some moments. Once again though, some director just had to add another Japanese influence. Reminded me back in Sherlock Holmes with the completely unneeded kimono scene.

 

I thought about this and realized that Saito touched his totem when they were in limbo which would have rendered it useless...or would it?

 

The point of no one touching the totem is so no one else knows its balance. If he returned to reality it wouldn't matter. What reason would Saito (who just got saved from Limbo mind you) have to trap him in a dream he thought was reality?