[Movie] Inception - Page 8

My opinion is that it was reality. He didn't even ignore everyone that he was working with... After pulling a job like that successfully there should be very little to say. They all acknowledged each other (DiCaprio's character especially) in the airport. There was not much to be said.

As for whether or not he can set up a kick, no he can't. You're talking about setting a kick inside his dream, but a kick is used for the actual body who is doing the dreaming. If he wanted to set up a kick he'd have to set it up from car in the water from level one, and even then he couldn't because he'd be asleep, so he'd have to set up the kick from the airplane, but he can't, get it?

Now, that brings to my opinion in why I think it's reality. Surely, if he was still dreaming, the other people would have continued to kick him for him to wake up. However, the whole concept of time being slower and whatnot while dreaming just adds to the confusion.

Nolan created a great plot and it was deeper than we originally knew. There is virtually no way to prove whether or not the last scene was reality or if he's still dreaming. You can argue, but it's too deep.

I applaude Nolan.

Well he would have had to set up the kick prior to going into the dream so we never know. Maybe he could try killing himself like his wife, heh.

I've got a question though. Whats the point of having the totem if he can alter his subconscious to accept the dream as reality? Doesn't it defeat the purpose? I thought the totem was put in place to help the person realize that they are in a dream even if they perceive it as reality.

You're right about the totem part. I think it just serves to help in smaller dreams, ones that aren't as in-depth as the one Cobb's character may or may not be in.

What the heck is the actual setup of an extraction/inception? The Architect pre-builds a maze-like dream world in order to give the intruders a home-field knowledge advantage (and maze holds off a projection attack). And I assume the Architect imposes that dream state on the subject (via the magical machine) and everyone on the team gets to participate along. Then they can "kick" everyone out of the dream using a variety of methods, like dying, falling/dropping, and dunking in water. But they explain that the subject gets to populate the world with people he/she knows, okay that's cool, but then how come in the big office building we see flashes of Cobb's kids in the hallways which are presumably his memories/subconscious/projections? Do the other dreamers participating in the dream get to throw their own memories/projections in the mix? I don't think so..?

Okay: TOTEM is really confusing for me. So I understand that it's a unique item that only one person knows about, examples are the top, the weighted die, and the (weighted) Bishop piece. So if you're a subject and you're getting extracted by someone else, they can't re-create that exact same thing, and thus when you pull it out and perform the "totem test", you can tell if you're in a dream state or not. If you spin the top in a dream, it doesn't fall (defies reality physics) - but in reality it falls. If you drop the die in a dream, lets say it falls with equal probability - but in reality it's weighted so it falls predominantly on one number.But HOLD ON - what's the connection between the totem in reality, where it's on your person, and in the dream, where it's also on your person!? Why do the two always have to happen, i.e. why do you always have your totem? Why can't you simply dream up your totem but make the mistake of giving it the properties it would have in reality, e.g. in a dream, you imagine, for whatever reason, the top falling? How then would you tell the difference between reality and dream? In Saito's dream at the beginning when he's an old man, he spins the top and it doesn't fall - but it's HIS dream/limbo state, as evidenced by the consistent layout of his dream structure (asian type building); who is determining the end state of the top; Saito or the slightly confused Cobb version? Please clear this up for me!

I don't understand how people are saying it was a mind fuck? What was mind fucking about it? Literally everything was clearly laid out and explained. The only ambiguity in the movie at all was the end - and I thought that was the worst part. It seemed so forced and pretentious on the part of Nolan that I just couldn't take it seriously.

I saw that shit coming from a mile away and I was really hoping he wouldn't go there. That was like the rat in the Departed all over again, it bugged the hell out of me. I would have liked it a lot better if there was a different ending, maybe he wakes up with his wife and kids to find out that actually the entire movie was just a crazy dream, that would've been fun. But nope, we get the annoying symbolism, the top spinning.. "OMG IS IT GONNA FALL, IS THIS REAL?!?!?!!?!!!!" ... womp womp

The best thing about the movie was Cobb's inner conflict, and the inception idea at all. The rest of it was a TON of filler (and by ton I mean about 2 hours, because we only spend about 30 minutes actually focusing on Cobb even though I feel like he's supposed to be the focal point) and some pretty uninteresting action sequences.

And I also thought they were getting needlessly complex just for the sake of trying to make the audience go "OMG WOW WHATS HAPPENINGGGGGGGGGG" (which obviously happened)... They go into a dream, then go into another dream, then go into a dream of a guy who's dreaming and pretending to be another guy, etc ... was all this really necessary?

Why was that Russian guy the only person who could just dopplegang someone else? Couldn't someone have just dopplegang'd the guy's dad from the beginning, given that end lecture, and skipped the whole fucking 1.5 hours in between point A to point B? You really only needed to plant that idea (accomplished right as they went into the dream), then have someone pretend to be the dad to give that last recognition, and bam.. problem solved.

Overall, meh.. I liked it but I was just bummed out about all the hype. This is avatar all over again for me.

Now my thoughts:

So first off I think the top ending was a little cheap, I guess I wanted some more closure but that's just how I am with movies. Otherwise I was engrossed the entire movie. I had to consciously think about each level and I mumbled do myself what level they were on in each scene so I didn't lose track. This made the movie unique from any other viewing experience I've ever had.

I think that the top says whether you're dreaming or not, no questions asked. I think the dialogue earlier in the movie declared that. So Nolan just left it there to bring up the obvious question of whether it was a dream or not, and then subsequently left it unanswerable.

I thought it was a little unbelievable that your brain could conjour up 50 years worth of imaginations and simulated living, in hours of real time. Your brain just doesn't have the processing power to do that. Then again the movie bought into the whole "You only use a small part of your brain" plot point.

But yeah this movie was great, I'll def see it again. The special effects were top notch. The choreography for fight scenes was epic and the plot/characters were believable and unique. What more could you ask for in a movie?

This movie really required a good budget to suspend my disbelief; it was very well done. I wish they had delved more into Ted being an old soul, that seemed rather important. Instead, it was just, "oh yea I've lived 70-80ish years.

The ending is open ended in that Nolan is trying to let the viewer decide, and what the viewer decides says a lot about their personality. The optimists will say reality, the pessimists will say dream. I thought the ending was reality - not once did the top wobble in his dreams and yet it was wobbling at the end. Plus I like a happy ending. Overall the story was well explained and reasonably straightforward to follow (though still made u think), except for the openness of the ending.

My only criticism of the movie was that there were too many gun shooting scenes for my liking (especially in the arctic level), but I guess it is a summer flick and my friend sitting next to me was complaining that there wasn't enough action..so to each their own.

none of us say it is a mindfuck because we couldn't follow it. I followed it perfectly. I understand the plot thoroughly. It was a mindfuck IMO in the sense that sometimes you start to question what's real and what isn't. The ending is the mindfuck. Xeris, you may think it was the worst part of the movie, but I guess you're just not into it. That was the mindfuck for a lot of people. There's no need to attempt or seem like you're dismissing people's opinions on it being a mindfuck.

We get the plot, we weren't lost, it just takes a lot of thought at the end because of the open-ended scene.

Here is my problem with the top as a totem:

The whole point of a totem is to make an object with a unique characteristic known only to you, this way nobody else will be able to recreate the totem and trick you into thinking you are in the real world.

It was fairly well known that the top was Leo's totem throughout the movie. The top would spin forever in the dream world and fall in the real one, this was the secret of the top and known only to leo. If somebody were to recreate this top, logically they would create a top that falls, because that's what tops do. This defeats the whole purpose of the totem for Leo as pretty much anyone could replicate the top, as the weird thing about it was that it kept spinning.

The top behaves normally in the real world, and is unique in the dream, while both the bishop and the die would behave oddly in the real world signaling their bearers that they are currently grounded in reality. The top seems completely backwards and unusable as a totem to keep him grounded (possibly demonstrating that the whole thing is some dream of leo's?).

Am I missing something or did this seem weird to anyone else?