Bobby Ewing, I presume, from Dallas: Bobby Ewing - Wikipedia
That must mean I’m dreaming right now, as I post this.
I’m just going to add one tiny thing right now: I loved that it was Joseph Gordon Levitt who was levitating. 
Saw Inception for a second time tonight. I haven’t read this whole thread yet so I’m not sure if this has been covered, but one thing that stood out on second viewing was the foreshadowing of Cobb’s and Mal’s “death” (aka: awakening) from limbo by laying on the train tracks.
I’ll start with one of the later incidents first, because it was obvious in retrospect, even after my first viewing of the movie: the train that runs into the car carrying Cobb and Ariadne in the first dream level. Though when I first saw it, I thought it might be part of Fischer’s defense mechanism from his training against extraction, because it shows up at the same time as the armed men who attack them all. But once we learn later how Cobb and Mal ended their lives in limbo, it seemed likely that the train was Cobb’s subconscious getting the better of him.
Also fairly obvious is the train dialogue spoken by Mal (and said to Mal by Cobb in the flashback to the tracks in limbo): “You’re waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You can’t be sure where it will take you. But it doesn’t matter - because we’ll be together.”
Going back to near the beginning of the movie: The initial extraction heist we see is performed while Cobb, Arthur, Nash, and Saito (the target) are asleep on a train. As the extraction team awakens and splits up, Cobb mentions that he is getting off at the next stop and Arthur questions why he doesn’t just stay on until they get to their final destination. Cobb replies, “I don’t like trains.” A fairly meaningless statement at that point in the story, and on first viewing I had forgotten all about it by the time of the scene on the train tracks in limbo. But on second viewing it stands out because you know what the significance is.
And another one that barely registered on first viewing, but took on more significance this time was when Ariadne sees Cobb jacked in to the dreaming equipment by himself and she connects herself and sneaks into his dream. When she and Cobb are together in the elevator and he is showing her how the different “floors” represent different memories of his, they pass by one “floor” and you get a very brief glimpse of an outdoor, exterior shot of a train speeding by.
Another thing I noticed this time that I didn’t catch the first time is that when they used the musical cue to signal an upcoming kick for the dreamers, the person monitoring the sleepers only had to put the headphones on the person whose dream the rest of them are in. For example, when the dreamers are in the snowy mountains, Arthur (in the next level up–the hotel) has only put the headphones on the sleeping Eames, because he is the one whose dream they are in at that point. But all of the other dreamers on the mountain hear the music also. You can also see this at the beginning extraction on the train. The boy monitoring them only puts headphones on the sleeping Nash, but both Nash and Arthur hear the music in the apartment.
I’m sure they outright stated that the train was part of Cobb’s subconscious, not Fischer’s. Ariadne mentioned it when the train was past them.
No, it isn’t outright stated. One of the other guys asked Ariadne why the train was there (she’s the Architect) and she says she has no idea, she didn’t put it there. Cobb looks especially shaken (Ariadne perhaps gives him a questioning look) and we do know at that point that he is not completely in control of his subconscous and that the train is likely his fault, but we don’t know about his suicide-by-train with Mal yet so the reason it’s there isn’t glaringly obvious until later.
The *reason *Cobb added the train isn’t obvious at that point, but it’s pretty clear, even on a first viewing, it’s of Cobb’s doing and has nothing to do with Fischer.
Only just seen the movie, and only read the thread to this point, so apologies if this has been adequately dealt with, but:
I disagree that it was that horrible an act. Yes, it’s a unique intrusion, but the inception they created succeeds because it is cathartic for Fischer - he accepts the idea they plant because it helps him heal and deal with his father issues, it’s therapeutic. I think that despite the intrusion, inception would only *really *work if it was *actually *an idea you had in your own subconscious, anyway. I don’t think you could plant, say, the idea for a new machine in there, it would be too foreign.
Yeah, Paradox is a bitch - I wonder if Nolan or someone else ever played Mage: The Ascension?
Saw it last weekend. I don’t think it struck me as really having the depth a lot of you are seeing. It just struck me as essentially a heist film with a scifi premise and a frustrating, to my mind, tacked-on damage to the main character.
Since being widowed, I really notice how often widowhood is a sort of stand-in for pain and emotional damage without there really being much to it other than a shorthand for “Yo, he’s fucked up”/“Yo, he’s like so deep.”
The top at the end doesn’t behave in either of the ways we’ve been told the top behaves, so it’s less that the movie leaves an ambiguity than that the rules change. Honestly, that change completely takes away any interest I have in delving deeper.
But it was a neat concept, slickly and glibly packaged.
I just saw the film last night (I know, I’m late to the game). I made my way through this thread and I didn’t see the following questions answered.
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During the scene with Cobb and Mal putting their heads on the tracks – Cobb gives her the “you’re waiting for a train” speech and she says something to Cobb just before the train hits. Does anyone remember what she said?
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The aging confused me a little. At one point, Cobb says that he and Mal spent 50 years in Limbo, and they grew old together – we even see a flashback of them as an elderly couple. However, when they kill themselves to get out of Limbo, they are young. Shouldn’t they have been old? Or did they make themselves young again once both Cobb and Mal realized they were dreaming?
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Speaking of which, it seems that Cobb realized they were dreaming but Mal did not – which is why he put the inception in her head with the spinning top. But wouldn’t it have been simpler for Cobb just to kill her? Two thoughts. First, perhaps he couldn’t bring himself to kill her, even in a dream. Seems a bit wishy-washy – plus, he was fine with helping her kill herself. Second, perhaps he was worried that she’d be mad at him once they woke up. She probably would, but it seems like she’d forgive him, especially since they apparently had kids in the real world.
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Minor question – during the hotel dream, it wasn’t clear to me whether the version of Tom Berenger who showed up in Fischer’s hotel room was the Forger, or was Fischer’s projection of Tom (who the Forger and Saito met earlier). Does anyone know? I can’t recall if both the Forger and Tom Berenger were in that hotel room together.
Thanks!
Is it?
When I watched Inception the second time, I made sure to pay attention to Cobb’s wedding band. But in the last scene, it seems Nolan purposely had Leo hide his left hand from view so we couldn’t spot whether or not he was wearing the ring. When he spins the top with his right hand, he puts his left hand on the back of a chair – we miss his fingers.
Or did I miss another shot that showed his ring-less finger?
I think that was just either how Dom chose to remember it, or was a cheat for the audience so they did not get what had happened during the first flashback.
He had a hard enough time shooting her in Fischer’s dream, which he *knew *was dream, so yeah I think it was just a combination of what you thought. After all they thought Limbo was real for 50 years, it’d be pretty hard for him to shoot here then, the “what if” factor was probably too strong. Though of course, perhaps killing her would have made things easier back in the real world, as she never would have had the inception that caused her to believe reality was a dream. I’m sure that’s a factor that contributed to Dom’s guilt over what happened.
The version of Browning in the hotel room is Fisher’s projection based on the Browning he met in the warehouse (which was really Eames) while being kidnapped.
Saw it today.
Loved it, have to get the DVD to see it again.
Amazing movie and the best I’ve seen in awhile.
My wife and I, without hearing any spoilers, definitely saw the top begin to wobble like it would stop soon. I think it’s real, but I do agree it is open to interpretation.
Another “just saw it today” joining in. And apologies because I haven’t read all six pages and may have missed this issue already being dealt with.
I don’t see the ending as ambiguous. The top was spinning. It seems silly to me to speculate that it was going to fall down and Nolan decided to cut away before it happened. So Cobb is still in a dream at the end (and as others have pointed out there are numerous clues to that conclusion.)
I think that the real enactor was Ariadne. She had been sent in to rescue Cobb from his dream. She was playing “Mr Charles” to him. Otherwise it seems unusual that Cobb, who had been keeping his secrets so long, opened up so readily to her. The whole inception scenario was just a ploy to break through to Cobb - Saito and Fischer were as much a part of the act as Arthur and the Eames.
can somebody explain to me how you can kick yourself from the same dream level? you can’t right? you have to be kicked from above? i mean, otherwise, every time you fell down in a dream you would wake up, right? isn’t this a weird little plot hole?
a plot hole that starts to unravel and changes this movie, imo, from a masterpiece to the realm of just “pretty good” ?
This was my impression, as well. It’s a fun, sci-fi heist film with a nice bit of noir thrown in. By no means did I think it was a bad film. But, I don’t think there’s a lot of mystery or depth there. The last scene with the top spinning (and his unaged children) was exactly the same as the last scene of The Wrestler, where they cut off a moment too soon, to leave you wondering. But doing that like that is essentially a cliche. It doesn’t actually make the movie deep by not telling you the answer, because at no point in the movie before that was the question asked. There was never any ambiguity of what the story we were supposed to be buying into was. It doesn’t matter whether the top-level of reality from which he embarked onto the big heist was reality or a dream because everything in the story acts like it’s real. Certainly it’s theoretically possible that it’s a dream setting but that didn’t factor into the story until the very last scene.
Throwing in a an ambiguous scene at the end only works as depth if there was ambiguous scenes at the start, middle, and end. Tacking one on at the end is just a cheep way of making your film seem a touch artsy.
Just saw it tonight, and a couple thoughts (apologies if this has been covered in teh previous pages)
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The reason for the whole four-plex of dreams struck me as rather hollow. One rich guy wanted to break up the power of another rich guy. All that risk and self discovery and facing of demons was just so the younger Fischer would break up his father’s conglomerate. Now, that’s probably what this tech would be used for in real life, but it seemed empty. And Fischer’s revelation with the pinwheel might have been just a plant, so that might not even be meaningful.
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I liked the movie up until the 3rd dram sequence with the"winter fort"setting. For some reason that really got a :rolleyes: from me. It seemed so overly ridiculous, like some 12 year old’s GI Joe fantasy with the skiers pulled by snowmobiles and the various snow tanks and what not. What on earth was the cause of that setting?
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Speaking of that scene, it really needed some editing, along with the other shootout scenes. The point is that Fischer had been trained to resist this type of invasion. Fine, a few armed guards make that clear. The battle scenes just seemed to go on and on, with the requisite “bad guys can’t hit anything” issue added in. It threatened to detract from the main plot and point, I thought.
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Was Saito old at the end because he was stuck in limbo and didn’t know it? Then Cobb came to get him and he realized what happened and shot himself to escape? Otherwise, why didn’t he just off himself much earlier?
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I think this is a movie to be experienced and not overanalyzed. I’d bet a number of plot holes pop up if you look too close.
I thought there was probably a good movie in here, but it needs some fat trimmed. Off to read the rest of the thread, and see how many of my comments have been addressed.
I skipped the middle bulk of this thread, but I don’t believe this has been mentioned. Some trivia.
Hans Zimmer incorporated part of Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien into his theme for Inception. I got the soundtrack, listened to every song, and couldn’t hear anything. Then I came across this!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVkQ0C4qDvM
just sharing the video with anyone who hasn’t seen it yet!
According to an audio interview I listened to, this was Nolan’s intent as well – to create an escapist summer flick. I do really enjoy discussing this film in particular, but I also do reach a point where I just want to forget about the world for a few hours and enjoy the movie.
That setting was specifically supposed to seem dreamlike, so that Fischer knew that he was operating in a fictional place for certain and buys into the tale that they’re invading someone else’s dream. They also needed to make it a secure place, since people put their secrets in secure places. A fortress with a vault in the middle is the greatest guarantee that you’ll get the ultimate secret. They just didn’t expect for there to be so many forces guarding it.
Can you specify an instance where this happened? I can’t think of one.
You can die in one dream level to wake up in a higher level*. One way of dying is to jump off a building, like Ariadne did when she and Cobb went to get Fischer from limbo. She wasn’t giving herself a “kick.” She was committing suicide in order to wake up in the mountain hospital**. From there, when the hospital began to crumble, she got to the next higher level (the hotel) by either “dying” as the hospital fell on top of her or from the kick that Arthur instigated by dropping the hotel elevator. Simultaneously, the van hitting the water was the kick that woke the people in the hotel elevator up in the van. We aren’t shown the next step but, presumably, they hung around in that level until the sedatives had worn off enough that they could wake up to reality (the airplane).
So each kick that you saw was actually affecting the people in the next level down. Since the kicks all happened simultaneously, it may have appeared that they were kicking themselves from the same dream level, but they weren’t. They were kicking the next level down and at the same time they were being kicked by the next level up.
At least that’s how I understand it.
*Excepting, of course, the situation they faced with the deep sedation which is why Saito went to limbo when he eventually “died” from the injury he received in the first dream level.
**Actually, I guess you could argue that committing suicide or getting killed in the dream is like giving yourself a kick. That’s not a plot hole at all, though, as it is explained pretty clearly within the movie as one of the “rules” of dreaming.