I think a great post-credits tag would show Fischer outside the airport, deep in thought, waiting for a taxi. A passer-by recognizes him and says, “Hey, Fischer. Sorry about your dad. But I’m glad you’re keeping his empire intact.”
Fischer: “Actually, I’m thinking about breaking up the whole thing and leaving it all to go off on my own.”
Passer-by: “What? Are you crazy? And lose out on that huge inheritance?”
Fischer: “Hey, you’re right. What was I thinking? Screw that; I’ll keep the corporation together and still be my own man! Thanks, pal.”
Also, to follow up on my previous thread (and after seeing it again tonight), I’m more convinced than ever that **Inception[/B
represents Christopher Nolan’s own dream.
Another piece of evidence supporting this theory is an odd line that Ellen Page says during the final shoot-out in the snow. She says something like, We’ll escape and do this and blah blah blah and “you blow up the hospital.” Huh? In what universe would anyone consider that snowy mountainous fortress a “hospital.” Yes, I understand that Fischer Sr. is lying on his deathbed inside a huge vault but, still, I think that is an odd word choice.
But I do remember someone famously blowing up a hospital in a recent movie. Nolan’s The Dark Knight.
Also, I didn’t notice this but my friend said he recognized at least a few of the characters from Inception’s various shoot-outs as some of the passengers waiting to be cleared through customs during the final scenes. Hmmm…
I actually can not shake the image of an alternate ending to the Wizard of Oz.
After Dorothy reports her crazy dream, uncle Henry steps to another room that has a steam punk style dream machine, Uncle Henry passes a 50$ bill to a lady that is next to the machine. She looks suspiciously like Glinda the Witch of the North…
The top fell, because he is not in limbo. Limbo was with the Japanese dude. If he intended to limbo-up a dream world for himself with his kids, he wouldn’t have bothered to seek out the Japanese dude to honor their agreement.
Also, we know exactly what happened with Leonardo and Mal in the hotel after Juno left. He killed himself, because the next scene is him going to limbo to find Japanese dude. The only way he could have gone to limbo was by dying in the dream.
I don’t know how Leonardo and the Japanese dude got out of limbo. The implication was that the time it would take to wake them up in the real world would translate to an eternity in limbo, so they could never actually leave. I also don’t know why the heir-kid and Juno were able to bring themselves up a level by falling from a lower level. Why couldn’t they have all just made themselves fall to wake back up in the real world? They made elaborate plans based on the idea you can only go from a lower level to a higher level if you fell down from the HIGHER level dream.
Really, it wasn’t until I came in this topic that I heard people saying that the final level wasn’t limbo, which seems to go against everything that was said in the movie. I don’t know why there would be a level that looks EXACTLY like limbo, but it’s not limbo.
I thought this too at first until it dawned on me that the scene(s) had two different outcomes so it had to be a different event. He had to meet Saito in the real world to be hired - ending of the opening scene. My guess is that Cobb recreated the meeting to help jog Saito’s memory that he’s in a dream (limbo).
It had been referred to as a hospital from the beginning of the plan. The fact that it was also a snowfortress was certainly a surprise, but that’s what it was.
Two different scenes. Cobb meets old Saito. Saito says something about the totem. Next scene takes place in the past at their first meeting in Saito’s dream.
Might have been the same tea house since it came from Saito’s head.
Just saw Inception for the third time last night. One of the best movies I’ve ever seen. I’ve been a bit obsessed with it. Want to throw my take on it out here. The ending was not at all ambiguous. The spin top was not Cobb’s totem. The whole totem thing was simply a brilliant (and very effective) misdirection. Many posts ago, Meatros mentioned Cobb’s wedding band. Good catch, Meatros! That band was the audience’s totem…wedding band on = Cobb was in a dream; wedding band off = Cobb was in reality. See the movie again: it holds up.
Presumably, they committed suicide. Same as how Mal & Dom got out of Limbo the first time, when they were killed by the train. They are shown holding a gun sitting at the table in Limbo, and then next scene they are back on the airplane.
I saw this movie tonight, LOVED it! Didn’t find it hard to follow at all, and had no trouble telling who was whom during the snow fight scenes. About halfway through I had pretty much suspected that the final shot would be of the top spinning, though I didn’t know which way they’d take it. I do agree that there were several things in the real world that had definite dream-like elements, Cobb barely squeezing through the narrow opening between the walls especially. I did have the feeling several times that the big reveal would be that the whole film was a Cobb’s dream while he was stuck in Limbo, I don’t know if that’s true or not. It’s obviously meant to be ambiguous and is something that can not be known for certain either way.
It opened here a week or so ago, and we watched it last weekend. Very good, and not much to add. Would like to see it a second time, but we plan to wait for the DVD.
One question of mine does not have anything to do with the movie’s mysteries, but I wonder if US Immigration has changed their procedure. Toward the end, Immigration at LAX stamps Cobb’s passport and says “Welcome home.” Now, US Immigration has never stamped my passport when I left or entered. They just check my name on their computer, then hand it back to me. It has been five years since my last visit to the US; does Immigration do that now in Americans’ passports, or was that just for a movie effect?
Saw it today and loved it. I liked the fact that Nolan stole all the elements of a stock standard caper movie, wrapped it up in some mumbo-jumbo, added a romantic element and managed to get away with it all.
Mysterious opening. Flashback. A test, a demonstration of the skills involved, a deal is struck. The head guy recruits his crew and we get to see their skills. Why shades of Danny Ocean the guy running the operation is keeping secrets from the crew. Things go wrong, they have to pull a scam that has a name. Their futures are at risk and now the crew know that the main man caused this. Who can save them all? Why the main man and the girl of course.
What a hoot that the girl is Ariadne - you know helped Theseus by giving him red wool so that he could find his way out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth, eloped with him and was abandoned while she was asleep.
I think the last shot was sheer genius, for the timing alone. He spins the top, the camera cuts away, the camera returns and, oh shit no the top is still spinning…that means…wobble…
I was also impressed, in retrospect, with how clever the shorts were. They made me really eager to see the movie but allowed me to see it without much idea of what was going on. However, as it unfolded, you could see how all the fantastic (in both senses of the word) visuals, served to tell the story.
I’m leaning this way myself. There are some compelling arguments for the theory that Cobb is the subject and not the extractor. I’m going to have to buy this movie when it comes out.
Stephe96’s theory that the whole film is a dream (Nolan’s?) is interesting, but I think this may just be Nolan making allusions, not necessarily relevant to the plot.
I really liked the movie - I agree that it’s not really a mindfuck like people have been saying, just an action movie with an unusual premise. I enjoyed Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s hotel fight scene where the gravity keeps changing, but I think it would have had more impact if it had been more relevant to the plot, rather than him just fighting a random security projection to get back to the room.
The ending is definitely supposed to be ambiguous. I don’t understand why the top spins “normally” when Cobb is watching it, and then starts spinning perfectly after he looks away. If it’s Cobb’s dream, the top shouldn’t exist while he’s not watching it, shouldn’t it? So either he’s not dreaming, and it’s wobbling, or someone else is dreaming.
Could it be Mal? If she faked her death by convincing Cobb that his dream of her death was reality, then she is free to go around messing with Cobb’s heists because she doesn’t like inception. (Still mad at Cobb for invading her own dreams, maybe?)
However I prefer thinking of the final scene as either reality, or maybe Cobb’s dream representing his expectations as he dozes on the plane on the way back, after the heist is complete.
My interpretation of the story is that Ariadne is the real hero. It’s her curiosity that saves Cobb, and therefore the whole inception, in the end. She chooses the pawn as her totem but she is anything but a pawn - she’s the only one who is in control throughout the entire heist, having designed the levels and being the only one with full knowledge of the layouts. As well as Cobb’s history with Mal.
Great movie! I finally saw this movie this past Thursday and I’ve been thinking about inception and the multi-layered aspect of it since. It’s the sign of a well made movie that can make so many people argue many different points while still having some basis in the film.
Regarding Cobb’s age in the end when he’s in limbo with Saito - my boyfriend thought it was because he wasn’t yet in limbo during the 4th layer with Mal, but that he entered limbo when the kick occurred and he didn’t wake up in the 2nd layer. During the van in the water scene, everybody gets out except for Cobb, who drowns. At this point, he’s dead and he washes up on the shores of Saito’s limbo. Hence, he gets to limbo later than Saito and the disparity in their age.
I thought the ending itself, was Nolan instilling an inception in our mind about the division (or lack thereof) between the dream state and reality. It would have been too obvious to make us question our own reality, but throughout the movie, he planted seeds of doubt to make us question the reality of Cobb’s world. I think there was a point during the heist where the characters mentioned that inception is tricky because it all depends on the state of mind and the beliefs of the person involved in the inception. This is especially relevant since our belief that Cobb is in reality or a dream state is based on how Nolan’s inception worked on us throughout the film and what clues we picked up on individually. Throughout the layers of dreams, he dropped hints for both sides of the argument - the children’s age, the wobbly top, the dreamlike feel. The ending has to be ambiguous for the viewer’s mind to take over and make the idea their own. This works so well that people on both sides can argue with conviction that their interpretation is right, because Nolan’s inception has worked.
Well, that’s sort of my point. Many of the allusions appear to come from (or could come from) Nolan’s own life and films. And, after all, as the writer-director, he did ‘dream up’ the plot of Inception in the first place.
Just thought of another one: a backwards-running watch? Memento, anyone?
