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End of Inception decoded [video]
- gavanwoolery 13y agoPersonally was not a big fan (hard to say that without sounding snooty) - the movie was mostly entertaining but was kind of pop-corn sci fi masquerading as deep sci fi. Too many plot holes filled with arbitrary mechanics. Edit: it may have been over my head, but I think it is perhaps in a movie's favor to be very clear in its purpose (without necessarily bludgeoning you with it)?
- snitko 13y agoThis explanation of Inception changed my opinion completely http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ginQNMiRu2w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ginQNMiRu2w
- gavanwoolery 13y agoThanks - I was not even aware people went into this much analysis of the movie. :)
- _mulder_ 13y agoGreat link.. This is really interesting. Reminds me of one of the original Matrix Essays about it's symbolism, religious imagery, chance, subtle references to philosophy, etc. There are too many Matrix essays now for me to find it again... sadly.
- StandardFuture 13y agoThis REALLY needs to be upvoted. This is drastically better than the analysis in the OP.
- ksrm 13y agoThis is brilliant!
- alternize 13y agobrilliant, thanks!
- frezik 13y agoI've tended towards criticism from the opposite direction (which can also apply to The Matrix). Its philosophical underpinnings have been done by other works of fiction to greater depth, but those stories tend to be impenetrable for most people, much more so than either Inception or The Matrix were. See Ghost in the Shell or Neuromancer, for example. Or even Nolan's own Memento. Putting it in a more easily-digestible form is a useful thing to do, which tends to blunt this line of criticism. There are some philosophy professors who really appreciate these movies, because they provided nice reference points that their students already know about, making it much easier to teach certain concepts.
- gburnett 13y agoEqually there are philosophy professors who don't appreciate it. One class that I was a member of was warned that our professor had not seen The Matrix and, given the number of essays that referred to it, never wanted to see it or read about it ever again.
- homosaur 13y agoI appreciate that sentiment. The Matrix is certainly interesting, but it's one of those things high schoolers use as a jumping off point and it is very trite and cliche. It's a lot like Ayn Rand actually, it's not that it's objectively worthless, but it's Twinkie pop philosophy that people are exhausted grading papers of.
- gavanwoolery 13y agoGreat insight! I think my main gripe with the movie is that it kind of gets caught up in its own net of contrived mechanics -- for example, here are some of them: http://movieplotholes.com/inception.html http://movieplotholes.com/inception.html
- jonnathanson 13y agoMemento is really the best lens through which to view Inception. The former was the more metaphysically mind-fucky, intellectually and emotionally jarring experience. The latter is the more visually spectacular, but shallower variation on a similar theme. For what it's worth, I enjoyed the idea of Inception a great deal. Part of me really wants to love the movie. But it's hard for me to love it when I've seen Memento do the same thing so much more deftly, with such a smaller budget, given a lot more constraints. Memento is Nolan the filmmaker, and Inception is Nolan the movie director. I enjoy both, and I'm not saying Inception is without its originalities or its merits. But I can't call it a masterpiece; it's disjointed and incoherent in a way that smacks of excess. I dig your analogy, but I am not sure it's 100% warranted in this case, given that Nolan made both movies. It would be one thing if the Wachowskis both wrote Neuromancer and made The Matrix. But they didn't. They made The Matrix as an action movie that just happened to have some metaphysical underpinnings. They didn't make a philosophical piece that happened to have great action sequences. The movie is pretty clear about where it stands on that spectrum, and most fans who are honest with themselves about why they like the movie will admit they like it for the fight scenes. (As a mental test, replace the computer-simulation plot device with any similar construct: dreams, alternate dimensions, etc. -- and everything else about the movie holds up just fine.) With Inception, I can't tell where Nolan stands. Is it a thought piece with cool special effects, or a special-effects piece with deep thoughts? As much as we might rush to categorize it as the former, I'm not so sure. Trying to be the latter gets in the way of the former. Nolan tries to have his cake and eat it, too, and he's not entirely successful at either. What results is a beautiful, haunting, provocative, but flawed movie.
- drzaiusapelord 13y agoIts also one of those movies where if the technology actually existed, it would be so valuable, it couldn't be made illegal or made limited. It would instantly be democratized. It would have uses in pretty much every human endeavor and be the ultimate gaming and recreational environment. Essentially, it would be lucid dreaming and world building on demand. I think the idea that it would be held down by the world's governments is more than a little simplistic. Heck, the world's governments can't keep pot or data dumps from whistle blowers off the streets, let alone something like this.
- michaelfeathers 13y agoTruest thing I've read today. I think we continually underestimate how transformative technology is. It moves faster than politics and once there's a positive impact foothold, it's hard to roll it back. The dangerous time for any tech is when it invokes fear before or at release.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoCounterpoint - nuclear power. (granted it started with the bomb, "fear", moved to free energy "to cheap to meter" (foothold), to fear again.
- michaelfeathers 13y agoTrue. Great example.
- raverbashing 13y agoI see the tech/sci-fi part of Inception to be like the "unobtainium" in Avatar. It's merely a plot device to make the story work around it. It could have been something else, like something similar to Tron or The Matrix, or maybe a magical background, but it needed the "multiplayer, multilevel thoughts" one way or another for the story.
- thaumasiotes 13y agoI would have respected the "unobtainium" in Avatar more if they had called it something other than "unobtainium".
- dagw 13y agoWhat's wrong with "unobtainium"? The term wasn't invented for the movie, but has been used in engineering since at least the 70's. I thought it was a nice touch.
- ambler0 13y agoThe reason it sounded stupid in the movie is because it was the name of the actual element that they were mining. The historical use of the word that you mention is for hypothetical things, e.g. in thought experiments. From Wikipedia: "In engineering, fiction, and thought experiments, unobtainium is any fictional, extremely rare, costly, or impossible material, or (less commonly) device needed to fulfill a given design for a given application. The properties of any particular unobtainium depend on the intended use. For example, a pulley made of unobtainium might be massless and frictionless; however, if used in a nuclear rocket, unobtainium would be light, strong at high temperatures, and resistant to radiation damage. The concept of unobtainium is often applied flippantly or humorously." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtainium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtainium
- gknoy 13y agoI took it to mean that the geek character in the movie was deliberately dumbing things down for the person he was explaining to, out of disdain for their position. He was basically saying, "This is the most valuable substance in the universe, and we can only get it here" in as bluntly and impossible-to-misunderstand way as he could. It wasn't in the context of "Quick, pass me that bar of unobtanium!", or other in-universe common-usage (a la "midichlorians"), but rather a deliberate simplification. ("What do we mine here? __important shit__! Now leave me alone and go back to your useless sociology experiment while I do something important!")
- carlob 13y agoNothing snotty about not liking Inception. I for one didn't like it at all. I agree that it borrows concepts from deep scifi but it painstakingly explains everything to you so that you lose the mind bending effect of deep scifi. Then there is also the god-awful performance of Cotillard.
- Tyrannosaurs 13y agoThe way I look at it is that I saw it when I had a small child and was somewhat sleep deprived. In that state I enjoyed it and found it pleasantly thought provoking but that's not to suggest it was a massively clever film as there were days back then when I found tying my shoe laces pleasantly thought provoking.
- vidar 13y agoAlready covered in http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/07/the_ultimate_explanation_of_in.html http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/07/the_ultimate_explanat...
- epaga 13y ago"What matters isn't whether the top stopped spinning; what matters is that Cobb didn't bother to find out." Exactly.
- ScotterC 13y agoThat's the TL/DR/didn't watch I was looking for
- kapitalx 13y agoTL;DR from the video is: When dreaming he is wearing a ring, when awake he is not. In final scene he isn't wearing a ring, therefore he is awake.
- simonebrunozzi 13y agoNew acronym: TL/DR/DW :)
- Walkman 13y agoWith Christopher Nolan own words: “The important thing is that Cobb’s not looking at the top. He doesn’t care.” http://collider.com/inception-christopher-nolan-explains/ http://collider.com/inception-christopher-nolan-explains/
- kybernetikos 13y agoThe whole point of the ending is that Cobb does not care about whether he is in reality or not, as long as he is with his children. To search for clues as to whether it's one or the other is to miss the point.
- jkscm 13y agoNot at all. Nolan let DiCaprio wear the ring with an intent. It is at least part of his message.
- leokun 13y agoNo, it could also mean he simply let go of his wife, whether dreaming or not.
- emhs 13y agoPost-catharsis, pre-wake, in Limbo to get Saito, he has the ring. If letting go of Mal got rid of the ring, it wouldn't be there on him in Limbo.
- Tyrannosaurs 13y agoThe two aren't necessarily incompatible though are they? Whether Cobb cares or not he's still somewhere. Or you can look at it that there are two endings depending on what you're looking for - certainty or something other.
- homosaur 13y agoI feel that is largely Nolan's intent, that Cobb has chosen experience over memory and guilt whether that experience is truly real or not.
- Packeteer 13y agoI think so too. Regardless of the idea that Cobb let go of his wife and reunited with his children or not, that ring symbolizes the intent to the viewer with much more directness. Using the ring as an indicator allows someone to nit pick that he may be wearing the ring in that scene and that something happened between the airport and the car ride home. Using the fact that he didn't care to verify solidifies the real result... he's given up fighting.
- dabernathy89 13y agoThey aren't the first ones to have noted this.
- MasterScrat 13y agoAlso, this came out a while ago...
- adamb_ 13y agoCinefile article at THE TOP of HN. Love it.
- nicholassmith 13y agoThat was a real common theory around the time of the movies release, something I noticed on my second (or third) run through it. The bigger tell is that it's not his totem to start with, it belongs to Mal and as is pointed out you have to have something unique to you, something only you could know. I don't think it ever actually reveals what Cobb uses for his.
- undershirt 13y agoI was beginning to wonder if it was just Hans Zimmer's score that masterfully carried my emotions at the end. But too jarring was the theme of exploring the depths of a shared psyche with your wife in an absolute, limitless world, then losing everything in yourself from a single mistake. The dream mechanism was a wonderful way of taking you from the sublime to the very feeling of hell. Very glad to have read this subtle message from the director! A masterpiece in my mind.
- gabemart 13y agoThe idea of Cobb's wedding ring as his totem has been discussed publicly as early as July 2010 [1], the month of the film's release. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/Inception/comments/cvk2i/is_cobbs_ring_his_actual_totem/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Inception/comments/cvk2i/is_cobbs_ri...
- baby 13y agoExactly, why posting this 3 years after? It has been brought up again and again for many years...
- _mulder_ 13y agoObligatory XKCD. This was all new to me. http://xkcd.com/1053/ http://xkcd.com/1053/
- voyou 13y agoOr possibly: http://xkcd.com/606/ http://xkcd.com/606/
- Jtsummers 13y agoHow about a relevant SMBC: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3106 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3106
- baby 13y agoI agree, and I don't usually post mean things under a repost. But this article had sense when inception was still in theater and all the hype was about the movie. It's not something really important, or amazing, or... years after it now became just another trivia about a movie. But I'm glad some people can hear about it for the first time anyway.
- aredington 13y agoThe ring is still ambiguous. It is never characterized properly as a totem (Cobb never uses it awake, that we see). If you interpret it as a symbolic representation of his mental affiliation with Mal, then: a) At the end of the movie he is awake, and he really meets his children. The lack of the ring is consistent with all available evidence prior to this point because he only has the ring on when he is asleep. b) At the end of the movie he has successfully escaped Limbo twice. Cobb has mastered his own psyche; he has achieved closure on Mal's death; he has finally embraced in his own mind that the Mal in the dream is just a ghost, and can be in the dream without the ring. He can dream again without Mal invading from his subconscious.
- AnonJ 13y agoThis explanation is not totally convincing. The main issue is the OP actually just referred to very few scenes, while there is no proof that throughout all scenes this difference remained consistent. A more plausible explanation would be Nolan initially intended to use such a mechanism, but later decided to leave it out. However, since some of the scenes of the movie were already filmed, the ring could not be changed. It's obvious that Nolan put the spinning scene because he deliberately wanted to leave an equivocate ending. It's possible that in the beginning that wasn't his idea, and he changed it halfway through the movie. But what's clear is the ending was intended to be equivocate. He would not let such a vague "ring" mechanism co-exist with the spinning scene. That's far too strenuous.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- gr3yh47 13y agoYou state your view as though it's obvious, yet it is far more contrived of an explanation and is predicated on the idea that Nolan would change his mind about the ring and NOT fix it throughout, which seems so unlike him
- PhilipDaineko 13y agothe ring could disappear because he finally realized that she died, hence it does not mean he is in the reality.
- ryangripp 13y agoI watched this movie about 13 times in the theaters---and finally someone figured it out! Way to go!
- talles 13y ago13 times? Wow, you REALLY liked it eh
- adamb_ 13y agoI must ask... What compelled you to watch a movie THAT many times in such a short period?
- ryangripp 13y agoI would say the first three times were because I enjoyed the movie so much the other ten: I was obsessed with trying to figure out the ending.
- sarreph 13y agoIt only took him 26 playthroughs (66 hours), but by Jove did he figure it out!
- sidcool 13y agoI read somewhere that his totem itself was flawed. For example, others totems had something different; a loaded dice. In dream, the dice would act normally, in reality it won't, that's the way to differentiate reality. Cobb's totem would topple in dream as well as in reality. That's something I read and wondered.
- mrcactu5 13y agoA kind of Stone-Age version of Inception is "La Vida Es Sueño" by Pedro Calderón de la Barca written in 1635. http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_vida_es_sue%C3%B1o http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_vida_es_sue%C3%B1o It is a 3-act play where the Prince of Poland, Segismundo was imprisoned since birth due to a bad prediction by astrologers that he would be evil. However, Rosaura and Clarín arrange for his release. Nace el ave, y con las galas que le dan belleza suma, apenas es flor de pluma o ramillete con alas, cuando las etéreas salas corta con velocidad, negándose a la piedad del nido que deja en calma; ¿y teniendo yo más alma, tengo menos libertad? Essentially that birds are free to fly around in the sky and naturally look beautiful. So why do I with more "soul" have less freedom ? In Act 2, Segismundo contemplates his freedom and his relief turns into outrage. Indeed he rapes a women, throws a man over a cliff and murders another one. In the 3rd act he is captured and thrown back in chains - the astrologers' prediction has been fulfilled. -------------------------- Inception certainly takes this several iterations further putting dream inside dream inside dream. Yet, metaphysical questions of whather you are awake or dreaming have been around...
- huhtenberg 13y agoWasn't the whole film a dream? How else could Sato buy an airline on a whim?
- MichaelGG 13y agoMore importantly: The near-richest guy in the world, who hates flying commercially, just gives up. Instead of, chartering a private flight, he flies commercial and is visibly upset. He pouts and acts all annoyed. Obviously from that point on they were all dreaming.
- talles 13y ago"since the movie came out 3 years ago" wow 3 years already?
- albemuth 13y agoAnd babies born in Y2k are teens now
- dsego 13y agoHere's a google talk by Kyle Johnson that discusses different interpretations of the film: 'Inception and Philosophy' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ginQNMiRu2w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ginQNMiRu2w
- pavanlimo 13y agoAll those who think Inception should be considered as just another cool action flick must watch this video.
- ebbv 13y agoInception was a pretty good movie but people treating it like it's some deep, super-complicated work of genius makes me worry about them.
- aufreak3 13y agoIf the ring indeed indicates dream/reality, why does Cobb bother to spin the top .. since he already knows whether he's wearing the ring or not? .. or did he take off his ring even in his dream by that point?
- emhs 13y agoDoes Cobb know the ring indicates dream/reality?
- pearjuice 13y agoHalf of the stuff surrounding Inception is thought up by conspirasists.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jjjeffrey 13y agoDid anyone else find Inception to be basically straightforward (though interesting and enjoyable) with an insignificant binary question at the end? There certainly may be more depth than I'm seeing, but there wasn't anything that made me need to wonder why anything happened the way it happened. As mentioned in the thread already, Momento's the one that isn't straightforward. I'm not intentionally trolling---I suppose I probably am missing something. There just wasn't anything obviously confusing on the movie's surface for me.