8 ms·

Inception isn't science fiction (spoilers)

56 points by samstokes 16y ago

adelevie 16y ago
The best interpretation I've seen is that the entire movie is an allegory about movie-making. The "shared dream" is very analogous to a movie. Stokes' interpretation doesn't look deep enough. He attempts to figure out what is really happening before, after, or even during the movie. I find more use in interpretations that try and figure out what something means and what the underlying message the writer/director is making (if any). Stokes focuses too much on plot and not enough on meaning. Reminds me of people who think the Six Sense is awesome (pretty much everyone) because of its amazing plot twist. But that's all it really had--not too much meaning. A movie worth analyzing shouldn't just stand on plot alone. Thankfully Inception has both an awesome plot and some decently profound meaning.
- Tycho 16y ago
  But where does Cobb's rampant guilt and Fischer's paternal reconciliation fit into this metaphor for filmmaking? And what does it tell us about filmmaking that would make this worthwhile? I think it's safer to say the concepts of creation and inspiration are common to dream making and filmmaking and leave it at that.
  - adelevie 16y ago
    http://chud.com/articles/articles/24477/1/NEVER-WAKE-UP-THE-MEANING-AND-SECRET-OF-INCEPTION/Page1.html http://chud.com/articles/articles/24477/1/NEVER-WAKE-UP-THE-... Not that these excerpts really do the analysis justice, but: >Except that this is exactly what Nolan is arguing against. The film is a metaphor for the way that Nolan as a director works, and what he's ultimately saying is that the catharsis found in a dream is as real as the catharsis found in a movie is as real as the catharsis found in life. Inception is about making movies, and cinema is the shared dream that truly interests the director. >The whole film being a dream isn't a cop out or a waste of time, but an ultimate expression of the film's themes and meaning. It's all fake. But it's all very, very real. And that's something every single movie lover understands implicitly and completely. To answer your question more directly, the familial issues in the plot are a vehicle for emotion. These emotions are just as real in a dream as they are in a movie, as they are in real life (to borrow from the analysis' phrasing).
    - Tycho 16y ago
      Hmmm I read the analysis and I don't think it's all that meaningful: just like numerous other films Inception has some themes which it explores (regret, guilt, grieving/loss). If the exploration is insightful enough, then the audience can learn from it. Is Mighty Ducks a metaphor for filmmaking because emotions are just as real in a hockey match as they are in a movie, as they are in real life? The film touches on some ideas like the intoxicating power of the imagination but I think saying the whole film's a metaphor for filmmaking goes a bit far and the evidence is stacked against his analysis.
      - waterlesscloud 16y ago
        I dunno. There are enough references to other films, blatant and subtle, that it makes me wonder.
- barrkel 16y ago
  I thought it was a rather pointless puzzle. I'm lost as to the profound meaning you're alluding to; is it doubting reality, that it may be a dream, etc.? That's a long way short of original, and besides, it was done much better recently by The Matrix. The plot, however, was clearly less than awesome, with much of it seemingly existing to justify special effects and repetitive fight scenes, providing cheap tension. (The same could of course be said of The Matrix.) The whole concept of Inception, of course, is unremarkable. Ad-men have been putting ideas in people's heads for some time with quite a degree of sophistication, and magicians have been doing similar for far longer; done well, marks are fooled by both without realizing how or when. Reading the movie as an allegory of movie-making I think is a stretch. There are matching elements, in particular, not changing the world too much or provoking antagonism; but the whole plot theme of father / child guilt is rather out of place, as is the recursive breaking into of fortresses.
  - eru 16y ago
    The one thing that I liked about the movie was the absence of white and black morality. There's no villain, and the protagonist's aren't good guys either.
- samstokes 16y ago
  +1. I think I did look beyond just the plot (after all, I suggested none of the plot actually happened), but agreed, it adds an extra dimension to consider the message of the film as well as the themes it explores.
- chc 16y ago
  One thing I learned as a film major is that there's a subset of film critics who will believe every good movie (especially one with any theme of "creation") is a metaphor for moviemaking. Infertile couple? It's about the director's struggles with the movie studio. Mad scientist genetically engineers a monster? That's clearly how the director feels about his creations once they're in the public eye. These critics are right sometimes, but I think there's a large element of "When the only tool you have is a hammer…" at work as well.
  - nprincigalli 16y ago
    Likewise, there are moviegoers for which every good movie is a metaphor for the entrepreneur's saga! :)
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
muhfuhkuh 16y ago
The best interpretation I've thought of after watching it (and talking with my wife for hours after) was that Saito is the architect and he wanted to get back at Cobol Industries twofold: 1) By getting Cobb to convince Fisher Jr. to feel like his daddy loved him and wanted him to be his own man and dissolve the business to start his own empire and 2) Get back at Cobb for trying to steal his secrets for Cobol by _incepting_ the little seed of "you want to go back home to your kids" in his head and making that his obsessive ends to justify all means. Saito, meanwhile, was willing to wait the dream equivalent of _eighty years_ to exact this revenge. Then, as DiCaprio fulfills his promise and gets Saito in his 80-year Limbo, Saito fulfills his promise, architects a layer where Cobb does reunite with his still-young-as-Cobb-remembers-them children, and the spinning totem wobbles but doesn't actually fall, then the "I N C E P T I O N" credits roll, because Saito ran the inception on Cobb. Ta-da!
- adelevie 16y ago
  I hope this was meant to be funny :)
  - muhfuhkuh 16y ago
    Nope, and the fact that you don't dispute it with anything but a smiley leads me to believe that you believe my belief. I N C E P T I O N
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- Dunbar 16y ago
  I'm not sure that the Inception on Fisher Jr. ever actually occurs, as I doubt that Cobb ever escaped Saito's dream from the beginning. It is suggested in the movie that the subconscious attacks the architect of the dream first. In the beginning of the movie the last we see of the first architect is him being bundled away by Saito's goons. Saito then crafts an excuse for Cobb to end up at peace, lost in his own subconscious. The Saito living in limbo could be a projection in the same way that Fisher Jr. creates a projection of the guy the forger was mimicking.
Tycho 16y ago
No no no... "inception" happens when they plant an idea inside a safe/vault inside someone's dream (inside someone's dream, inside someone's dream), rather than extracting one. Cobb doesn't undergo inception, he just works out his problems as the plot develops with some help from Ariadne. Why? Because it would be a dull and empty plot if all these characters were brought together simply to perform a job. Furthermore the film makes clear that Cobb learns to reject he projection of his wife, so it makes no sense for him to then embrace projected children instead at the end. The children represent reality not just in physicality but in the emotional truth that underscores the film. That's why he spins the top then ignores it soon as his children appear - they're a more certain anchor for reality.
- mberning 16y ago
  The safe doesn't have any special significance. What is significant is that Cobb takes the totem which is at rest and puts it in motion. Presumably when Mal goes back to retrieve her totem she finds it to be spinning, thus causing her to question which reality is real. She could have stored it in a cardboard box, it would have made little difference.
  - Tycho 16y ago
    I believe you are mistaken. The film never shows Mal returning to the safe to find the top (why would she?). The safe is part of her mind which, if you will, contains the IsReality boolean variable. Cobb changes the IsReality variable by finding its location. Then it's possible for him to convince her that they should kill themselves and wake up. But inadvertently he destroyed her mind because subconsciously this switch had been flipped. Of course the safe had special significance! Safes were of crucial importance throughout the film. (you might ask yourself why it wasn't in just a cardboard box)
    - Unseelie 16y ago
      Mal had to come back and see the top. Inception is about showing things to people in such a manner that they cannot link it back to you, that they feel it is their own. Cob claims that you don't affect the mind by murdering projections, so why should you be able to affect the mind by changing the physical projections? The dreamworld, even limbo, is not the subconscious, its a representation of the subconscious, and a one way camera. If it were not, inception would be much easier. You could just initiate a deep dream and change the environment: there'd be no need for the team to go through the danger of the third level, where two of them died (And didn't expect to be able to resurect)
harlowja 16y ago
Obligatory code that runs the plot. http://github.com/karthick18/inception http://github.com/karthick18/inception
pbw 16y ago
"And then he woke up" is the ending to every 5th graders first ambitious story. I don't buy it. I did think the little dream machine in the movie looked like game console. You and several of your friends slide in the IV to play a round of, what exactly? I thought the movie portrayed a pretty decent game already, just getting from one level to the next. More: http://www.kmeme.com/2010/07/inception-game.html http://www.kmeme.com/2010/07/inception-game.html
cobralibre 16y ago
As a meditation on the way in which our creations are inexorably haunted by the personal, Inception works. As a movie about dreams, it's a missed opportunity. We find dreams compelling because they're profoundly uncanny in a way that we can never fully express; and I think most people would agree that when we dream there is a loss of agency, that dreams simply unfold before us. But there's hardly anything dreamlike about the movie at all, unless you're a lucid dreamer. Inception models a dream as a location rather than as a series of emotionally charged impressions, and it employs a Hollywoodesque narrative grammar rather than dream-logic. It's essentially a heist movie. Another way to put it is that when I was watching the movie, I kept thinking, "That's so not real." Which is a funny way to respond to a movie about dreams. I hate to be that guy, but I think you're better off reading something like Kafka's "The Judgment" or maybe even watching a good horror movie.
- philwelch 16y ago
  From Fischer's perspective there is the loss of agency and helplessness, the series of emotionally charged impressions. But fundamentally the absurdity of dreams is not well shown, and the resemblance to lucid dreams is if anything fitting from the perspectives of those who are dreaming lucidly.
- samstokes 16y ago
  +1 but doesn't reflect my experience. > when we dream there is a loss of agency, that dreams simply unfold before us I never feel that way while dreaming, even though when I wake I realise I was basically on rails the whole time. The closest I've experienced to this is that sometimes in my dreams I am simultaneously reading a book and a character in the book - as the former I am a passive observer, as the latter I (feel as if I) have agency. > unless you're a lucid dreamer Inception is explicitly inspired by lucid dreaming (the concept of the totem is very similar to a trick people use to train themselves to dream lucidly). However, even though I've only once or twice had a lucid dream, I found a lot about the film reminded me of dreaming in general.
  - eru 16y ago
    I have some experience with lucid dreaming. And the movie is nice entertainment, but real dreams don't work that way. Even lucid dreams. First: Dream time is approximately real time. (There have been studies to confirm this. Exercise to the reader: How would you design such a study? (Drop me an email if you want to know how the scientist did it.)) Second, you can tell you are in a dream, if: (a) Flipping a light switch doesn't work, strangely your dream imagination can't cope with rapid changes of illumination. (b) Gravity works strange. Try jumping up and down. When you can stay airborne for more than a second you are probably dreaming. (c) If, in general, strange things happen. There are some more signs that you find in dreams. Fortunately, habbits you have in reality carry over into dreams. So if you make it a habbit to check for dream signs in real life, you will probably check them in your dreams too, and recognize that you are dreaming. Enjoy! (Although I often feel the urge to wake up, once I realize that I am dreaming. It takes a while to resist it.)
apsurd 16y ago
Still reading but, first and foremost, I think the opposite of his conclusion on what the ending meant is more obvious. It was clearly about to fall over ... =)
- carterschonwald 16y ago
  i second this sentiment (though the metaphor for film making interpretation is also quite nice.). by this interpretation (the straightforward naive one), Inception is likely the best "hard"/logically consistent science fiction film to have characters that are very engaging and well realized of the past half decade. If you've not seen Inception yet, fix that soon!
  - megablast 16y ago
    I really liked inception, but felt that the character development wasn't there. All the characters except Cobb exist only superficially, as if they are just dream projections. We never find out what anyone else wants, why they are coming along on this mad scheme. Still a great movie.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
- sabat 16y ago
  I "third" this sentiment. This was Nolan teasing us a little bit, but at the very last second, the top was starting to fall over. The true indication that this was reality is in Cobb's ability to see his children's faces.
sabat 16y ago
Fun ideas, but this is over-analysis. The movie is as it appears to be. There is no justification for taking a minor aspect of the plot (that the dream-sharing device is only briefly explained) and using it to concoct a whole new layer underlying the movie. The spinning top at the end is a red herring -- it's Christopher Nolan having a little fun with us. The true indication of what happened, that Cobb has reached reality, is in his ability to see his children's faces at last. That's the give-away.
- waterlesscloud 16y ago
  I think the ending is several things at once, which is why I like it. One, it's a red herring as you say, though I'd put a slightly different spin on it. Cobb has chosen his reality, he's had his catharsis and made a very intentional decision to let Mal go. That's true regardless of if the ending is a dream or not. Two, it's an intentional denial of catharsis for the audience. It's a setup without a payoff, tension without release. Here's the interesting part about that- the audiences I've seen it with provide their own physical catharsis, their own reality-based relief of tension, by laughter or by applause. These physical reactions both release the real physical tension that has built in their bodies and also returns them to the real world, outside of the filmic dream. Three, it captures the feeling of a certain kind of dream. How many times have you dreamed of almost having the answer, of almost knowing something you want to know...and then abruptly waking up? Yes, exactly. It's the best ending shot to a movie in quite a long while.
  - barrkel 16y ago
    My personal catharsis was a grunt of "hmph". For a split second I considered the "question" of the spinning top - is this real or not - then noticed that I didn't care, that it was a banal and uninteresting question, because the question relied on its very existence for its interestingness, as either answer - it's a dream, or it's the final reality - were both cop-outs, were both unsatisfying and cheaply done. "It's all a dream" is the most childish of story resolutions, while the idyllic literal interpretation of the shown ending is unacceptably saccharine for something purporting to be adult entertainment. As to feeling that you have the answer in a dream, that's down to the extreme suspension of disbelief the dozing mind is capable of. That suspension was something that a movie allegedly about dreams hardly ever brought up. If some character can dream up bigger guns, and another character a freight train in a city street, then why not more? And why are the defensive projections of the dream's owner so tame, merely human, when they could potentially be changing the whole world? And if being weightless at one level creates weightlessness in the next level down, why isn't it transitive? And wouldn't dreaming that the entire building / local area / whatever starts accelerating skywards at 9.8 meters per second per second restore gravity? Why can't that manipulation be used as "the kick"? Seems like a simpler manipulation than what the architect was up to.
klenwell 16y ago
The it's-all-a-dream interpretation is the only one that makes sense from a science-fiction point-of-view, however unsatisfying it is from an artistic perspective. The slightly wobbling top at the end points, rather overtly, to the real answer: it's meant to be ambiguous. That said: WTF? We've got to bring down a company on the verge of being The Most Powerful Corporation in the World. So let's use this highly radical, unproven and improbable, voodoo-science inception approach. Oh, and by the way, we have to plant a mole within the highest ranks of the multinational beast within the next, say, two weeks, so we can get valuable information that is necessary to penetrate and manipulate the fragile psyche of our target. Cut-scene: it's done. This is logic that only makes sense within the context of a dream. The sort of dream Coleridge, or Rube Goldberg, would have. Science generally favors the application of Occam's Razor: buy the airline and crash the damn plane with the kid on it. Or just send in the ninjas. The ensuing infighting among the various executive factions vying for the top spot after junior is offed will ensure that any plans Acme Energy Inc had for world domination are put off course indefinitely. Inception was entertaining. But Memento was the more philosophically interesting film. That's a film that truly merited this kind of philosophical scrutiny. Remember Sammy Jankis.
- wlievens 16y ago
  There have been plenty of (non-aweful) movies with more unprobably plots than that, that weren't in a dream of any kind. I think that stating that the entire plot is a dream just because the main plot is not realistic is akin to denying the film's right to being science fiction!
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
edanm 16y ago
If you enjoyed this film and interpretation, I really recommend watching The Prestige, then reading the following: SPOILER ALERT The Prestige has a much better "alternative ending" theory, because it is not well known and very unexpected. The Prestige ends with all the questions supposedly answered, i.e. the twin thing, the machine that Tesla made, etc. Except that, there is one alternative: the machine never existed! Throughout the entire film, Michael Caine's character keeps insisting that there is only one way to do a transportation act, and that is with a lookalike. We already know that Hugh Jackman's character has a lookalike. We also never see more than one "replica" of Hugh Jackman. The only time we actually see replicas being created is during the memories written down by Hugh Jackman, except, they could be fake! In short, it's possible that Christopher Nolan has managed to fool pretty much every audience of The Prestige into believing in Science Fiction, when there is a perfectly logical explanation for the entire film that doesn't require magical explanations. But like the film repeatedly says, "Audiences want to be fooled".
- ubernostrum 16y ago
  Except not really; the novel it's adapted from doesn't leave any opportunity for ambiguity, and even in the film, as Jackman's character dies Christian Bale walks past the rows and rows of tanks holding the dead duplicates. If there were never any real duplicates and the whole thing was faked, there's no explanation for those tanks to be there.
  - gwern 16y ago
    Indeed; my first thought was the bodies. Likewise, if there aren't hundreds of clones, the poignancy of the whole 'paying the price' theme is lost. One twin's death is less tragic than knowingly inflicting hundreds of drowning deaths on oneself. On the other hand, the parent's post illustrates how easily the film could be changed into a different interpretation, one which is arguably better. (This isn't quite as good as the reinterpretation of _The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya_ in which Kyon is God, since it requires some changes in the movie, but then, it requires much less careful analysis to prove it.)
  - edanm 16y ago
dan00 16y ago
In a way it's funny if people over-analyse a movie. If they put more meaning into the movie than the director has intended. Why just can't the reality shown in Inception be the reality, and the spinning top at the end just a gag, in the way that the director doesn't show us long enough the spinning top to see, if it falls or not? So the spinning top at the end could be seen as an encouragement to think about your own reality.
Ardit20 16y ago
That is quite a literary interpretation. I think the dream expresses much deeper truths through the metaphors. The ending ends that way because the producers clearly wanted us to question as to which is reality. Remember when he says do not create places from reality into dreams as that is the best way to lose which is reality and which is a dream. Also, when he meets his older self and tells him he has to jump. That indicates that the "reality" on which the film begins is not really reality, that his wife was probably right. But how can she be right when the spinner does stop spinning and yet in the end when we are brought to the same reality it does not stop spinning? This contradiction is supposed to be there as it communicates this entire confusion as to which is reality and which is an illusion we have created for ourselves. Speaking of its applicability to the real world it speaks of brainwashing, propaganda, and formation of our own perceptions, how we can through them create a different reality and be lost in there, yet also struggle to find the real truth. The film, through the metaphor, communicates perfectly this entire confusion and it ends with such contradiction because ultimately we as humans and our thinking can not acquire perfection as to what is truth. We are blind in the end to inconsistencies within our illusions, hence the always spinning spinner. Its a good film, but in the end I think it is really rubbish. The subject is awesome, but it does not go deep enough. The ending is too subtle. There probably should have been some sort of almighty intervention like in the ending of Don Juan for it to become a classic. To allure in the end that there are great forces out there which we depend on and only through taking a leap of faith in ourself can we acquire reality.
- Tycho 16y ago
  The spinning top at the end is not meant to make you question the reality, it's meant to question your reasons for believing he's in reality and find a more satisfying/compelling reason. Whether a top spins or not is an unsatisfying answer to any deep question - the reunion with his children is more meaningful. I think we all know we are not dreaming at this moment for a myriad of reasons, but the strongest is probably that other people seem real to an extent that you'd never get in dreams. I'm starting to repeat myself now in this thread so I better check out (...before I become an old man, filled with regret...).
- eru 16y ago
chopsueyar 16y ago
Well, this would explain why nobody is floating around in the snow mountain fortress.
dejb 16y ago
Surely all or most of these interpretations have been considered by the director and have been actively and deliberately intertwined into the story. The budget was $160 million so think of how many startup ideas could be funded with 10% of this amount. So it's easy then to imagine a team of geniuses working to plant the seeds for all these interpretations and ideas in our heads. That, coupled with the art of convincing somebody to fund the movie, is Inception.
- chc 16y ago
  I really doubt a "team of geniuses" collaborated to "plant the seeds for all these interpretations and ideas in our heads." For one, that isn't how movies are generally made and seems like a pretty boring way to approach making a movie like inception. For another, there's no "team of geniuses" credited — just Christopher Nolan.
simonjoe 16y ago
The author is a moron. This movie is amazing, but it's also insanely straightforward. It doesn't require that kind of analysis; almost nothing does. I'm growing increasingly disheartened at the blogosphere simply because it gives people as stupid as this author a way for even stupider people to reinforce his bad behaviors.

56 points by samstokes 16y ago

The best interpretation I've seen is that the entire movie is an allegory about movie-making. The "shared dream" is very analogous to a movie. Stokes' interpretation doesn't look deep enough. He attempts to figure out what is really happening before, after, or even during the movie. I find more use in interpretations that try and figure out what something means and what the underlying message the writer/director is making (if any). Stokes focuses too much on plot and not enough on meaning. Reminds me of people who think the Six Sense is awesome (pretty much everyone) because of its amazing plot twist. But that's all it really had--not too much meaning. A movie worth analyzing shouldn't just stand on plot alone. Thankfully Inception has both an awesome plot and some decently profound meaning.

Tycho 16y ago
But where does Cobb's rampant guilt and Fischer's paternal reconciliation fit into this metaphor for filmmaking? And what does it tell us about filmmaking that would make this worthwhile? I think it's safer to say the concepts of creation and inspiration are common to dream making and filmmaking and leave it at that.
- adelevie 16y ago
  http://chud.com/articles/articles/24477/1/NEVER-WAKE-UP-THE-MEANING-AND-SECRET-OF-INCEPTION/Page1.html http://chud.com/articles/articles/24477/1/NEVER-WAKE-UP-THE-... Not that these excerpts really do the analysis justice, but: >Except that this is exactly what Nolan is arguing against. The film is a metaphor for the way that Nolan as a director works, and what he's ultimately saying is that the catharsis found in a dream is as real as the catharsis found in a movie is as real as the catharsis found in life. Inception is about making movies, and cinema is the shared dream that truly interests the director. >The whole film being a dream isn't a cop out or a waste of time, but an ultimate expression of the film's themes and meaning. It's all fake. But it's all very, very real. And that's something every single movie lover understands implicitly and completely. To answer your question more directly, the familial issues in the plot are a vehicle for emotion. These emotions are just as real in a dream as they are in a movie, as they are in real life (to borrow from the analysis' phrasing).
  - Tycho 16y ago
    Hmmm I read the analysis and I don't think it's all that meaningful: just like numerous other films Inception has some themes which it explores (regret, guilt, grieving/loss). If the exploration is insightful enough, then the audience can learn from it. Is Mighty Ducks a metaphor for filmmaking because emotions are just as real in a hockey match as they are in a movie, as they are in real life? The film touches on some ideas like the intoxicating power of the imagination but I think saying the whole film's a metaphor for filmmaking goes a bit far and the evidence is stacked against his analysis.
    - waterlesscloud 16y ago
      I dunno. There are enough references to other films, blatant and subtle, that it makes me wonder.
barrkel 16y ago
I thought it was a rather pointless puzzle. I'm lost as to the profound meaning you're alluding to; is it doubting reality, that it may be a dream, etc.? That's a long way short of original, and besides, it was done much better recently by The Matrix. The plot, however, was clearly less than awesome, with much of it seemingly existing to justify special effects and repetitive fight scenes, providing cheap tension. (The same could of course be said of The Matrix.) The whole concept of Inception, of course, is unremarkable. Ad-men have been putting ideas in people's heads for some time with quite a degree of sophistication, and magicians have been doing similar for far longer; done well, marks are fooled by both without realizing how or when. Reading the movie as an allegory of movie-making I think is a stretch. There are matching elements, in particular, not changing the world too much or provoking antagonism; but the whole plot theme of father / child guilt is rather out of place, as is the recursive breaking into of fortresses.
- eru 16y ago
  The one thing that I liked about the movie was the absence of white and black morality. There's no villain, and the protagonist's aren't good guys either.
samstokes 16y ago
+1. I think I did look beyond just the plot (after all, I suggested none of the plot actually happened), but agreed, it adds an extra dimension to consider the message of the film as well as the themes it explores.
chc 16y ago
One thing I learned as a film major is that there's a subset of film critics who will believe every good movie (especially one with any theme of "creation") is a metaphor for moviemaking. Infertile couple? It's about the director's struggles with the movie studio. Mad scientist genetically engineers a monster? That's clearly how the director feels about his creations once they're in the public eye. These critics are right sometimes, but I think there's a large element of "When the only tool you have is a hammer…" at work as well.
- nprincigalli 16y ago
  Likewise, there are moviegoers for which every good movie is a metaphor for the entrepreneur's saga! :)

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

muhfuhkuh 16y ago

The best interpretation I've thought of after watching it (and talking with my wife for hours after) was that Saito is the architect and he wanted to get back at Cobol Industries twofold: 1) By getting Cobb to convince Fisher Jr. to feel like his daddy loved him and wanted him to be his own man and dissolve the business to start his own empire and 2) Get back at Cobb for trying to steal his secrets for Cobol by _incepting_ the little seed of "you want to go back home to your kids" in his head and making that his obsessive ends to justify all means. Saito, meanwhile, was willing to wait the dream equivalent of _eighty years_ to exact this revenge. Then, as DiCaprio fulfills his promise and gets Saito in his 80-year Limbo, Saito fulfills his promise, architects a layer where Cobb does reunite with his still-young-as-Cobb-remembers-them children, and the spinning totem wobbles but doesn't actually fall, then the "I N C E P T I O N" credits roll, because Saito ran the inception on Cobb. Ta-da!

adelevie 16y ago
I hope this was meant to be funny :)
- muhfuhkuh 16y ago
  Nope, and the fact that you don't dispute it with anything but a smiley leads me to believe that you believe my belief. I N C E P T I O N
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
Dunbar 16y ago
I'm not sure that the Inception on Fisher Jr. ever actually occurs, as I doubt that Cobb ever escaped Saito's dream from the beginning. It is suggested in the movie that the subconscious attacks the architect of the dream first. In the beginning of the movie the last we see of the first architect is him being bundled away by Saito's goons. Saito then crafts an excuse for Cobb to end up at peace, lost in his own subconscious. The Saito living in limbo could be a projection in the same way that Fisher Jr. creates a projection of the guy the forger was mimicking.

Tycho 16y ago

No no no... "inception" happens when they plant an idea inside a safe/vault inside someone's dream (inside someone's dream, inside someone's dream), rather than extracting one. Cobb doesn't undergo inception, he just works out his problems as the plot develops with some help from Ariadne. Why? Because it would be a dull and empty plot if all these characters were brought together simply to perform a job. Furthermore the film makes clear that Cobb learns to reject he projection of his wife, so it makes no sense for him to then embrace projected children instead at the end. The children represent reality not just in physicality but in the emotional truth that underscores the film. That's why he spins the top then ignores it soon as his children appear - they're a more certain anchor for reality.

mberning 16y ago
The safe doesn't have any special significance. What is significant is that Cobb takes the totem which is at rest and puts it in motion. Presumably when Mal goes back to retrieve her totem she finds it to be spinning, thus causing her to question which reality is real. She could have stored it in a cardboard box, it would have made little difference.
- Tycho 16y ago
  I believe you are mistaken. The film never shows Mal returning to the safe to find the top (why would she?). The safe is part of her mind which, if you will, contains the IsReality boolean variable. Cobb changes the IsReality variable by finding its location. Then it's possible for him to convince her that they should kill themselves and wake up. But inadvertently he destroyed her mind because subconsciously this switch had been flipped. Of course the safe had special significance! Safes were of crucial importance throughout the film. (you might ask yourself why it wasn't in just a cardboard box)
  - Unseelie 16y ago
    Mal had to come back and see the top. Inception is about showing things to people in such a manner that they cannot link it back to you, that they feel it is their own. Cob claims that you don't affect the mind by murdering projections, so why should you be able to affect the mind by changing the physical projections? The dreamworld, even limbo, is not the subconscious, its a representation of the subconscious, and a one way camera. If it were not, inception would be much easier. You could just initiate a deep dream and change the environment: there'd be no need for the team to go through the danger of the third level, where two of them died (And didn't expect to be able to resurect)

harlowja 16y ago

Obligatory code that runs the plot. http://github.com/karthick18/inception http://github.com/karthick18/inception

pbw 16y ago

"And then he woke up" is the ending to every 5th graders first ambitious story. I don't buy it. I did think the little dream machine in the movie looked like game console. You and several of your friends slide in the IV to play a round of, what exactly? I thought the movie portrayed a pretty decent game already, just getting from one level to the next. More: http://www.kmeme.com/2010/07/inception-game.html http://www.kmeme.com/2010/07/inception-game.html

cobralibre 16y ago

As a meditation on the way in which our creations are inexorably haunted by the personal, Inception works. As a movie about dreams, it's a missed opportunity. We find dreams compelling because they're profoundly uncanny in a way that we can never fully express; and I think most people would agree that when we dream there is a loss of agency, that dreams simply unfold before us. But there's hardly anything dreamlike about the movie at all, unless you're a lucid dreamer. Inception models a dream as a location rather than as a series of emotionally charged impressions, and it employs a Hollywoodesque narrative grammar rather than dream-logic. It's essentially a heist movie. Another way to put it is that when I was watching the movie, I kept thinking, "That's so not real." Which is a funny way to respond to a movie about dreams. I hate to be that guy, but I think you're better off reading something like Kafka's "The Judgment" or maybe even watching a good horror movie.

philwelch 16y ago
From Fischer's perspective there is the loss of agency and helplessness, the series of emotionally charged impressions. But fundamentally the absurdity of dreams is not well shown, and the resemblance to lucid dreams is if anything fitting from the perspectives of those who are dreaming lucidly.
samstokes 16y ago
+1 but doesn't reflect my experience. > when we dream there is a loss of agency, that dreams simply unfold before us I never feel that way while dreaming, even though when I wake I realise I was basically on rails the whole time. The closest I've experienced to this is that sometimes in my dreams I am simultaneously reading a book and a character in the book - as the former I am a passive observer, as the latter I (feel as if I) have agency. > unless you're a lucid dreamer Inception is explicitly inspired by lucid dreaming (the concept of the totem is very similar to a trick people use to train themselves to dream lucidly). However, even though I've only once or twice had a lucid dream, I found a lot about the film reminded me of dreaming in general.
- eru 16y ago
  I have some experience with lucid dreaming. And the movie is nice entertainment, but real dreams don't work that way. Even lucid dreams. First: Dream time is approximately real time. (There have been studies to confirm this. Exercise to the reader: How would you design such a study? (Drop me an email if you want to know how the scientist did it.)) Second, you can tell you are in a dream, if: (a) Flipping a light switch doesn't work, strangely your dream imagination can't cope with rapid changes of illumination. (b) Gravity works strange. Try jumping up and down. When you can stay airborne for more than a second you are probably dreaming. (c) If, in general, strange things happen. There are some more signs that you find in dreams. Fortunately, habbits you have in reality carry over into dreams. So if you make it a habbit to check for dream signs in real life, you will probably check them in your dreams too, and recognize that you are dreaming. Enjoy! (Although I often feel the urge to wake up, once I realize that I am dreaming. It takes a while to resist it.)

apsurd 16y ago

Still reading but, first and foremost, I think the opposite of his conclusion on what the ending meant is more obvious. It was clearly about to fall over ... =)

carterschonwald 16y ago
i second this sentiment (though the metaphor for film making interpretation is also quite nice.). by this interpretation (the straightforward naive one), Inception is likely the best "hard"/logically consistent science fiction film to have characters that are very engaging and well realized of the past half decade. If you've not seen Inception yet, fix that soon!
- megablast 16y ago
  I really liked inception, but felt that the character development wasn't there. All the characters except Cobb exist only superficially, as if they are just dream projections. We never find out what anyone else wants, why they are coming along on this mad scheme. Still a great movie.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
sabat 16y ago
I "third" this sentiment. This was Nolan teasing us a little bit, but at the very last second, the top was starting to fall over. The true indication that this was reality is in Cobb's ability to see his children's faces.

sabat 16y ago

Fun ideas, but this is over-analysis. The movie is as it appears to be. There is no justification for taking a minor aspect of the plot (that the dream-sharing device is only briefly explained) and using it to concoct a whole new layer underlying the movie. The spinning top at the end is a red herring -- it's Christopher Nolan having a little fun with us. The true indication of what happened, that Cobb has reached reality, is in his ability to see his children's faces at last. That's the give-away.

waterlesscloud 16y ago
I think the ending is several things at once, which is why I like it. One, it's a red herring as you say, though I'd put a slightly different spin on it. Cobb has chosen his reality, he's had his catharsis and made a very intentional decision to let Mal go. That's true regardless of if the ending is a dream or not. Two, it's an intentional denial of catharsis for the audience. It's a setup without a payoff, tension without release. Here's the interesting part about that- the audiences I've seen it with provide their own physical catharsis, their own reality-based relief of tension, by laughter or by applause. These physical reactions both release the real physical tension that has built in their bodies and also returns them to the real world, outside of the filmic dream. Three, it captures the feeling of a certain kind of dream. How many times have you dreamed of almost having the answer, of almost knowing something you want to know...and then abruptly waking up? Yes, exactly. It's the best ending shot to a movie in quite a long while.
- barrkel 16y ago
  My personal catharsis was a grunt of "hmph". For a split second I considered the "question" of the spinning top - is this real or not - then noticed that I didn't care, that it was a banal and uninteresting question, because the question relied on its very existence for its interestingness, as either answer - it's a dream, or it's the final reality - were both cop-outs, were both unsatisfying and cheaply done. "It's all a dream" is the most childish of story resolutions, while the idyllic literal interpretation of the shown ending is unacceptably saccharine for something purporting to be adult entertainment. As to feeling that you have the answer in a dream, that's down to the extreme suspension of disbelief the dozing mind is capable of. That suspension was something that a movie allegedly about dreams hardly ever brought up. If some character can dream up bigger guns, and another character a freight train in a city street, then why not more? And why are the defensive projections of the dream's owner so tame, merely human, when they could potentially be changing the whole world? And if being weightless at one level creates weightlessness in the next level down, why isn't it transitive? And wouldn't dreaming that the entire building / local area / whatever starts accelerating skywards at 9.8 meters per second per second restore gravity? Why can't that manipulation be used as "the kick"? Seems like a simpler manipulation than what the architect was up to.

klenwell 16y ago

The it's-all-a-dream interpretation is the only one that makes sense from a science-fiction point-of-view, however unsatisfying it is from an artistic perspective. The slightly wobbling top at the end points, rather overtly, to the real answer: it's meant to be ambiguous. That said: WTF? We've got to bring down a company on the verge of being The Most Powerful Corporation in the World. So let's use this highly radical, unproven and improbable, voodoo-science inception approach. Oh, and by the way, we have to plant a mole within the highest ranks of the multinational beast within the next, say, two weeks, so we can get valuable information that is necessary to penetrate and manipulate the fragile psyche of our target. Cut-scene: it's done. This is logic that only makes sense within the context of a dream. The sort of dream Coleridge, or Rube Goldberg, would have. Science generally favors the application of Occam's Razor: buy the airline and crash the damn plane with the kid on it. Or just send in the ninjas. The ensuing infighting among the various executive factions vying for the top spot after junior is offed will ensure that any plans Acme Energy Inc had for world domination are put off course indefinitely. Inception was entertaining. But Memento was the more philosophically interesting film. That's a film that truly merited this kind of philosophical scrutiny. Remember Sammy Jankis.

wlievens 16y ago
There have been plenty of (non-aweful) movies with more unprobably plots than that, that weren't in a dream of any kind. I think that stating that the entire plot is a dream just because the main plot is not realistic is akin to denying the film's right to being science fiction!
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

edanm 16y ago

If you enjoyed this film and interpretation, I really recommend watching The Prestige, then reading the following: SPOILER ALERT The Prestige has a much better "alternative ending" theory, because it is not well known and very unexpected. The Prestige ends with all the questions supposedly answered, i.e. the twin thing, the machine that Tesla made, etc. Except that, there is one alternative: the machine never existed! Throughout the entire film, Michael Caine's character keeps insisting that there is only one way to do a transportation act, and that is with a lookalike. We already know that Hugh Jackman's character has a lookalike. We also never see more than one "replica" of Hugh Jackman. The only time we actually see replicas being created is during the memories written down by Hugh Jackman, except, they could be fake! In short, it's possible that Christopher Nolan has managed to fool pretty much every audience of The Prestige into believing in Science Fiction, when there is a perfectly logical explanation for the entire film that doesn't require magical explanations. But like the film repeatedly says, "Audiences want to be fooled".

ubernostrum 16y ago
Except not really; the novel it's adapted from doesn't leave any opportunity for ambiguity, and even in the film, as Jackman's character dies Christian Bale walks past the rows and rows of tanks holding the dead duplicates. If there were never any real duplicates and the whole thing was faked, there's no explanation for those tanks to be there.
- gwern 16y ago
  Indeed; my first thought was the bodies. Likewise, if there aren't hundreds of clones, the poignancy of the whole 'paying the price' theme is lost. One twin's death is less tragic than knowingly inflicting hundreds of drowning deaths on oneself. On the other hand, the parent's post illustrates how easily the film could be changed into a different interpretation, one which is arguably better. (This isn't quite as good as the reinterpretation of _The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya_ in which Kyon is God, since it requires some changes in the movie, but then, it requires much less careful analysis to prove it.)
- edanm 16y ago

dan00 16y ago

In a way it's funny if people over-analyse a movie. If they put more meaning into the movie than the director has intended. Why just can't the reality shown in Inception be the reality, and the spinning top at the end just a gag, in the way that the director doesn't show us long enough the spinning top to see, if it falls or not? So the spinning top at the end could be seen as an encouragement to think about your own reality.

Ardit20 16y ago

That is quite a literary interpretation. I think the dream expresses much deeper truths through the metaphors. The ending ends that way because the producers clearly wanted us to question as to which is reality. Remember when he says do not create places from reality into dreams as that is the best way to lose which is reality and which is a dream. Also, when he meets his older self and tells him he has to jump. That indicates that the "reality" on which the film begins is not really reality, that his wife was probably right. But how can she be right when the spinner does stop spinning and yet in the end when we are brought to the same reality it does not stop spinning? This contradiction is supposed to be there as it communicates this entire confusion as to which is reality and which is an illusion we have created for ourselves. Speaking of its applicability to the real world it speaks of brainwashing, propaganda, and formation of our own perceptions, how we can through them create a different reality and be lost in there, yet also struggle to find the real truth. The film, through the metaphor, communicates perfectly this entire confusion and it ends with such contradiction because ultimately we as humans and our thinking can not acquire perfection as to what is truth. We are blind in the end to inconsistencies within our illusions, hence the always spinning spinner. Its a good film, but in the end I think it is really rubbish. The subject is awesome, but it does not go deep enough. The ending is too subtle. There probably should have been some sort of almighty intervention like in the ending of Don Juan for it to become a classic. To allure in the end that there are great forces out there which we depend on and only through taking a leap of faith in ourself can we acquire reality.

Tycho 16y ago
The spinning top at the end is not meant to make you question the reality, it's meant to question your reasons for believing he's in reality and find a more satisfying/compelling reason. Whether a top spins or not is an unsatisfying answer to any deep question - the reunion with his children is more meaningful. I think we all know we are not dreaming at this moment for a myriad of reasons, but the strongest is probably that other people seem real to an extent that you'd never get in dreams. I'm starting to repeat myself now in this thread so I better check out (...before I become an old man, filled with regret...).
eru 16y ago

chopsueyar 16y ago

Well, this would explain why nobody is floating around in the snow mountain fortress.

dejb 16y ago

Surely all or most of these interpretations have been considered by the director and have been actively and deliberately intertwined into the story. The budget was $160 million so think of how many startup ideas could be funded with 10% of this amount. So it's easy then to imagine a team of geniuses working to plant the seeds for all these interpretations and ideas in our heads. That, coupled with the art of convincing somebody to fund the movie, is Inception.

chc 16y ago
I really doubt a "team of geniuses" collaborated to "plant the seeds for all these interpretations and ideas in our heads." For one, that isn't how movies are generally made and seems like a pretty boring way to approach making a movie like inception. For another, there's no "team of geniuses" credited — just Christopher Nolan.

simonjoe 16y ago

The author is a moron. This movie is amazing, but it's also insanely straightforward. It doesn't require that kind of analysis; almost nothing does. I'm growing increasingly disheartened at the blogosphere simply because it gives people as stupid as this author a way for even stupider people to reinforce his bad behaviors.