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*SPOILERS* Inception Thread of Dreaming a Little Bigger
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OrangeGrayBlue
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I am very pleased with the way Nolan dealt with the dream world. I think the movie would have deduced itself into a psych-based Day After Tomorrow or 2012 if it had put too much emphasis on each dreamer's ability to manipulate the world around them. I think that the rule of only changing things upon necessity was important in keeping a balance between the craziness of what was going on (such as the zero-g fight scene) as well as the plot and the way the characters were dealing with it. I feel that Inception would have turned into a very typical sort of blockbuster if "You mustn't be afraid to dream of a bigger gun" turned into "You mustn't be afraid to erect a mountain in the middle of the city." I completely believe that Nolan struck a great balance between showing glossy shit when needed (bending city, infinite mirrors, zero-g fight, etc) and keeping a focus on the heart of the story. I can understand the desire to see more dream-like imagery, but I feel like it would have cheapened the overall result of the film.
dustytruly said:
It depends on how you got there, I think. Cobb and Mal consciously knew they were in Limbo when they were there, for most of the time. They went to Limbo deliberately and adventurously, by delving deeper and deeper into their subconscious. By the time they got there, they could essentially live as gods, as Cobb said. 50 years later, Mal begins to believe in the illusion, but Cobb is still well-aware that it's a fake reality and by that point wants to leave it. That's when the first inception happens.
Saito didn't know he was in Limbo because he died in a dream while heavily sedated, and became lost in his own subconscious. He didn't purposefully go and "visit" Limbo, so he had no anchor to the real world, like Cobb and Mal did with the totem. Cobb at the end had to remind/convince him of what was happening.
Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real?
BTW, so many people seem to be wondering why the car rolling over didn't wake anyone up... I thought it was kind of obvious... they were all wearing seatbelts. A van rolling while staying on the ground has a constant shift in momentum. A slap or a jerk can not wake up someone as they demonstrated. There needs to be a distinct moment of losing equilibrium due to a falling sensation... a roll is not a fall - it won't produce a change to zero-G - it is just being jerked around.
dustytruly
Member
ehh, i like hearing everyone's perspective.. it's an interesting movieJexhius said:
dustytruly
Member
ok... another question... since they wouldn't kill themselves in the 1st level dream, because they were afraid they'd fall into limbo, then is it safe to assume they spent the full week in the 1st level until the sedative wore off?
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
dustytruly said:
Yes. Either that or they dreamt up a space ship and hid in the moon!
In all seriousness, the only way they can get away with it is by spending the full week in the 1st level until the sedatives wear off. We are not sure whether this all happened with or without Fischer by their side.
BboyDubC said:
I think the reason the kick wasn't working was due to the sedative - Yusuf said that a purposeful side effect of his sedative is that it affects your inner ear so that the kick doesn't work on you.
That's why they were all so afraid of dying in their dreams at that point. Unlike in normal circumstances, dying then would have sent them to Limbo (like what happened to Saito) instead of back to the real world.
Presumably at the end, they're able to be kicked back up the dream layers and back to reality because the sedative has worn off. Cobb himself was never kicked back up and drowned in the van in level 1 because he never started the chain of kicks for himself, like Ariadne did when she jumped off the building. Cobb hung around so he could search for Saito.
Blader5489 said:
Weak. So a free-fall in the van = complete loss of gravity in the hotel level =...avalanche in 3rd level? I mean, I know that's what happened, it's just inconsistent. Oh well, it probably wouldn't have been as compelling to watch another no-gravity level anyway, with them all floating around in the snow. In the end I preferred having just the hotel level being awesome like that.
Messypandas
Member
Mal wanted to ignore the fact that Limbo was a dream, thats why she locked her totem in the safe. Cobb opens the safe and begins spinning the totem so the next time she opens it and sees the totem still spinning she remembers that its a dream. Thats the Inception.
Btw did anyone else think the blonde women Eames posed as had seriously freaky eyes?
And watching these posted Matrix clips again is seriously depressing. I don't how the Wakoskis fucked up the sequels so badly.
Btw did anyone else think the blonde women Eames posed as had seriously freaky eyes?
And watching these posted Matrix clips again is seriously depressing. I don't how the Wakoskis fucked up the sequels so badly.
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
Yackie said:
Think of it as noise. I blow a vuvuzela right in your ear and your ears will be ringing for a day, I blow it outside your room and you will curse me for being a shit disturber. I blow it outside your home and chances are you won't even hear it at all.
Them being in gravity is the same as them being in a plane. A turbulence here and there will change small details but unless you see the plane do a barrel roll, there will not be an affect.
OrangeGrayBlue
Member
Zeliard said:
No, exact opposite. The sedative keeps inner ear functions intact so that a kick WILL work. They had to stay for a week assuming that their would be no kick. When the militarized projections showed up they had to improvise and coordinate a way to make a chain-reaction of well-timed kicks which was not the original plan. They synchronized their kicks with the music as a way to kick themselves back up the dream levels in quick succession as a last-minute plan to avoid getting killed fighting off projections for a week.
Messypandas said:
This part confused me. The final scenes with Mal and Cobb, they talked about growing old together.
Here's my understanding of what the narrative laid out as the chain of events
-Cobb meets Mal, they both fall in love.
-Cobb/Mal experiments with dreaming. Mal doesn't take
-Cobb plant's the idea that they can kill themselves in their dreams to wake up
-Both commit suicide by the train tracks.
-Once they both 'wake' Mal begins to think even their real world is a dream
-Cobb tries to explain that it is not
-Mal refuses to believe it and kills herself, framing Cobb in the process and setting off the chain of events.
What I can't fit into my understanding
-In which dream did they grow old together?
-The spinning top in Mal's 'hidden place'.
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
luoapp said:
No, but it's not hard to think I guess. They did explain that each totem reacts differently whether it be the weight or the way it reacts.
I guess the dice would always roll one particular number in the dream world. The chess piece will not topple over or will only topple over in a certain manner, or maybe the weight of it will be different.
Deku said:
- Limbo is where they grew old. From what I understand, you don't need to die to reach Limbo. You just need to drop down a certain layers of dreamscape.
- The spinning top was the only way they could know that they are in a dream. She hid the top so they would eventually forget this fact. When Cobb found out the top, he realized that it would not topple over thus they are in a dream. That led him to plant the idea in Mal's head that "Death is the only escape".
shagg_187 said:
Then wouldn't the complete loss of gravity on the hotel level be inconsistent with that explanation? The loss of gravity due to the free-fall in the van shouldn't also equal a complete loss of gravity on the hotel?
Edit:
dustytruly said:
I was wondering about the time thing too. So it was 10hrs in the real world = 1 week on the first level = 6 months on the 2nd level = 10 years in the third? So did all of this time actually pass in all of the levels? They could pass off that 1 week went by in the city level, they just didnt show it all. But 6 months in the hotel and 10 years in the snow level? What is going on here?
Edit#:2
Ok I think I just answered the time thing for myself. I guess if the full week did pass, they woulndt have to spend the entire 6 months/10 years in the other levels. There would be less time left until the kick.
BobsRevenge
I do not avoid women, GAF, but I do deny them my essence.
If I had been drinking milk when I read this I wouldn't be able to type this reply. I'd have milk all over my keyboard.Miguel said:
Puns are so amazing. :lol
Deku said:
The "dream" was Limbo. They were able to spend a lifetime there while only an extremely short amount of time passed in the real world. Unlike most who go to Limbo in the context of the film's story, Cobb and Mal purposefully went there, and so were able to control it consciously (think lucid dreaming).
When Mal hides the spinning totem away, she is basically saying that she has accepted Limbo as her new reality. She ultimately loses sight of what's real and what isn't. That's why Cobb then has to use inception to plant the idea in her head that they're in a fake place.
OrangeGrayBlue
Member
Yackie said:
They made a new plan. The ten years was assuming they just waited for the sedative to wear off and then woke up naturally. Once the military projections showed up, they came up with the kick-chain plan that got them out sooner than originally intended.
brianjones
Member
Osietra said:
ugh.. tom hardy is great in it but that's one of the worst films i've seen in recent memory.
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
Yackie said:
I think of it as a derivative graph, specifically speed/acceleration since this is what gravity technically is calculated as: When you are moving at an unvarying increasing speed, your acceleration is constant; when you are at a constant speed your acceleration is zero.
When the van falls down at a constant speed, it changes the shift in gravity in the hotel and increasing it from 9.8m/s to eventually zero. The gravity for that particular state of dream is now a constant and not shifting. Since the gravity for that particular dream state is constant, there is no gravity change in the layer within that dream.
Messypandas
Member
Deku said:
They were projections of themselves in Limbo. Whilst they don't psychically look older they remained there 50 years. Leo likened themselves to 'old souls' and said they had grew old together (thats when we see the old hands joining) and so hadn't deprived anything from Mal. Since we know Cobb and Mal looked young while lying on the tracks, i'm guessing it was just Cobb imagining how they would have looked old whilst they were in Limbo togther.
i'm not sure what you mean by the second point.
Messypandas
Member
what puzzles me, is how he convinced her the idea was original. Inception only worked if you can't trace the genesis of it, but Cobb started the spinning top for her not the otehr way round
John Harker
Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
Reposting since I think it's become relevant again, also expanded slightly.
When we saw young Cobb and Mal living together in Limbo, we were looking at it through Mal's perspective. When they showed them old together in Limbo, that was Cobb's - that was him ready to leave. He realized they had been there 50 years, that they had grown old together like he promised, and he was ready to accept that and move on. She was not, her denial kept them young in her mind. Cobb never fulfilled his promise to her, they never grew old together - she refused to accept this, and locked the secret deep inside her since she didn't want to accept it, didn't want to leave their world, or grow old, etc. It was very Memento-esque
As for the ending regarding Cobb and Saito - there was never any doubt that Cobb and Saito would wake up from Limbo.
You can't actually become 'trapt' in a dream - whether it's the timer going off, a death, or a kick, you're consciousness will always return to your waking body. The real danger though is your minds inability to grasp that the world you are in is a dream or is reality. That's the main fear, by entering Limbo you are so far into the sub-conscious, so far down from reality you can become unhinged and your mind "drowns" in it. Upon waking, if you haven't accepted Limbo as false, your mind can become scrambled and confused. This ultimately happened to Mal, her own refusual to see her Limbo world as false, by locking away the truth, and then in reality due to Cobb's inception that everything she sees is false.
Cobbs main fear is, if this happens to Saito, he'd forget his favor and not call in to the US Gov't to repeal his crimes. So at the end, what you need to ask yourself is, do you believe Cobb was able to convince himself Limbo was false before he woke?
What we don't see is, there was a significant amount of time that passed for Cobb from when Ellen Page left him in Limbo. He didn't instantly wash up on that beach. You'll notice he looks worn out, roughed up, confused. He was starving - why would he need to eat in a dream? That's a body function, not a mental one. Yet he was devouring the food Saito offered him. He had in fact become unhinged. If you listen to the dialogue in that scene from Cobb, he himself doesn't know what he's doing there - at least initially. He's forgotten his mission. In this sense, when he and Saito finally meet in Limbo, it's profoundly important for both of them. They've become each others Constants. They have become the others totems, and the shared promise between him: Saito swore he'd help Cobb in reality. He lived his life with this subconscious, nagging regret that he wasn't able to fulfill this promise.
So whether or not Saito killed himself and Cobb with the gun at the end is irrelevant. Once the others wake up they would wake up Saito and Cobb, or the timer went off, or whatever. The question is, did Cobb 'awaken'? I believe that yes, he did. Before that scene ends, you hear Cobb repeat words Saito had said to him in life, and you see realization dawn on him that yes, he did in fact come here to kill Saito. He was being grounded again, now that he found his Constant, his totem. They NEEDED each other to mentally escape Limbo: prior to that they were both lost in it.
Dream ends - by natural or suicide - and both of their minds are intact.
edit:
A note on what I mean by Constant. Cobb explained that the totem must be sacred to the individual, you shouldn't let someone else hold it, or know about it, or it would lose it's property of being a unique, personal link to reality. The top began to fall apart for Cobb as that totem. Saito saw it in reality. In Level 3, he explained to Ellen Page where he got it from, its purpose and meaning to him. It no longer became his totem, it's unique meaning to him was lost after that. It was just an object. That's how he became unhinged in Limbo. The only real, solid, unique link to reality anymore was Saito. It wasn't till they finally met up and discussed, and saw each other and recalled their shared experiences, were they able to connect and realize they were in a dream. Just in time too, since shortly after this dawning they woke up.
When we saw young Cobb and Mal living together in Limbo, we were looking at it through Mal's perspective. When they showed them old together in Limbo, that was Cobb's - that was him ready to leave. He realized they had been there 50 years, that they had grown old together like he promised, and he was ready to accept that and move on. She was not, her denial kept them young in her mind. Cobb never fulfilled his promise to her, they never grew old together - she refused to accept this, and locked the secret deep inside her since she didn't want to accept it, didn't want to leave their world, or grow old, etc. It was very Memento-esque
Remember Sammy Jenkins? The scene in the mental hospital, where that flash goes by and you see who REALLY is sitting in that wheel chair?
As for the ending regarding Cobb and Saito - there was never any doubt that Cobb and Saito would wake up from Limbo.
You can't actually become 'trapt' in a dream - whether it's the timer going off, a death, or a kick, you're consciousness will always return to your waking body. The real danger though is your minds inability to grasp that the world you are in is a dream or is reality. That's the main fear, by entering Limbo you are so far into the sub-conscious, so far down from reality you can become unhinged and your mind "drowns" in it. Upon waking, if you haven't accepted Limbo as false, your mind can become scrambled and confused. This ultimately happened to Mal, her own refusual to see her Limbo world as false, by locking away the truth, and then in reality due to Cobb's inception that everything she sees is false.
Cobbs main fear is, if this happens to Saito, he'd forget his favor and not call in to the US Gov't to repeal his crimes. So at the end, what you need to ask yourself is, do you believe Cobb was able to convince himself Limbo was false before he woke?
What we don't see is, there was a significant amount of time that passed for Cobb from when Ellen Page left him in Limbo. He didn't instantly wash up on that beach. You'll notice he looks worn out, roughed up, confused. He was starving - why would he need to eat in a dream? That's a body function, not a mental one. Yet he was devouring the food Saito offered him. He had in fact become unhinged. If you listen to the dialogue in that scene from Cobb, he himself doesn't know what he's doing there - at least initially. He's forgotten his mission. In this sense, when he and Saito finally meet in Limbo, it's profoundly important for both of them. They've become each others Constants. They have become the others totems, and the shared promise between him: Saito swore he'd help Cobb in reality. He lived his life with this subconscious, nagging regret that he wasn't able to fulfill this promise.
So whether or not Saito killed himself and Cobb with the gun at the end is irrelevant. Once the others wake up they would wake up Saito and Cobb, or the timer went off, or whatever. The question is, did Cobb 'awaken'? I believe that yes, he did. Before that scene ends, you hear Cobb repeat words Saito had said to him in life, and you see realization dawn on him that yes, he did in fact come here to kill Saito. He was being grounded again, now that he found his Constant, his totem. They NEEDED each other to mentally escape Limbo: prior to that they were both lost in it.
Dream ends - by natural or suicide - and both of their minds are intact.
edit:
A note on what I mean by Constant. Cobb explained that the totem must be sacred to the individual, you shouldn't let someone else hold it, or know about it, or it would lose it's property of being a unique, personal link to reality. The top began to fall apart for Cobb as that totem. Saito saw it in reality. In Level 3, he explained to Ellen Page where he got it from, its purpose and meaning to him. It no longer became his totem, it's unique meaning to him was lost after that. It was just an object. That's how he became unhinged in Limbo. The only real, solid, unique link to reality anymore was Saito. It wasn't till they finally met up and discussed, and saw each other and recalled their shared experiences, were they able to connect and realize they were in a dream. Just in time too, since shortly after this dawning they woke up.
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
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Deku said:
Cobb coming home has equal but opposite answers so everyone can interpret that differently but the 'real' Mal indeed commit suicide since they were not dreaming anymore and were awake. I think Cobb did come home due the various reasoning:
1. He would need to recreate the entire plane landing, the perfect projections of his associates in the plane, the turning of events, people at airport, etc etc. As stated during the movie, Cobb has lost the touch of dreaming and is not capable of dreaming about anything else other than the emotional nightmare that he has been holding on to.
2. The damn top wobbled! I don't believe the whole "the van hit the bottom of the ocean and that is why the top wobbled a bit" since there is no layer of dream between Limbo and reality as all the other dreams collapsed when Arthur and Eames woke up.
3. As previously stated, according to the casting bill there were two extra children hired and both of them were 2 yrs older than his actual kids, thus stating that Cobb was out of the country for 2 years. I don't believe that he was ready to see his kids just cause he moved on and accepted that Mal was a fragment of his dreams since that was the only thing in his head.
Zeliard said:
I brought it up earlier but it seemed like killing his wife against her will and then offing himself would have been a much easier alternative to Inception. And if he was worried about resentment, he could have done it unknowingly to her or simply staged an "accident".
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
Trivia: Nolan's first movie "Following" has a character named Cobb, who ["Following" spoilers] is a
Coincidence? I think not!!
smart thief working for a very dangerous man and tries to manipulate others into doing what he would want to do. All of this while sacrificing the life of the woman that he loves.
Coincidence? I think not!!
BobsRevenge
I do not avoid women, GAF, but I do deny them my essence.
He could've "accidentally" dropped a house on her head.harSon said:
I mean, if he knows for a fact its a dream, why would she care how he kills her after they wake? Wouldn't she just be happy?
Future PhaZe
Member
I enjoyed the flick, but it didn't go as far as it could have. It had such an interesting premise that could have spawned at least a sequel but they limited themselves quite a bit.
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
BobsRevenge said:
No. They have to be convinced that it's a dream and would willingly end their dream life, cause dropping a house on them and waking them up abruptly would seriously fuck with their head.
BobsRevenge
I do not avoid women, GAF, but I do deny them my essence.
The way I initially interpreted it is that she didn't open it up. It was enough for him to put it into her subconscious spinning. Even if it was locked away she would've been aware of it on some level, right? He planted the physical idea that the top wouldn't stop spinning. I figured that the top didn't stop spinning in her subconscious when they got back to reality, which is why she still felt like it wasn't real.Miguel said:
edit: Dropping a house on your head to end a dream would not seriously mess with your head! When was the last time you woke up from a fucked up nightmare? How long did it take you to get over that? Like, what... 5 minutes? I think she'd be happy after the initial shock. I don't see how dropping a house on her head would lead to any lasting psychological issues. It certainly would've been cleaner than an inception.
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
Dark FaZe said:
Nolan doesn't do sequels for his concept movies.
GitarooMan
Member
But I don't think he thought the effect would last into the real world and thus just maybe thought it was softest way to "wake her up."harSon said:
Messypandas
Member
Zeliard said:Good post John Harker.
Think of Lost, did we?I did. :lol
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
BobsRevenge said:
When was the last time you dreamt for 50 years and having a house dropped in your head only to realize that those 50 years were completely bullshit?
BobsRevenge
I do not avoid women, GAF, but I do deny them my essence.
I assume I would've forgotten about 80% by the time I woke up. So that leaves, what... 15 years (I'm not good at math, that might not even be close) of memories? That's not sooooo bad.shagg_187 said:When was the last time you dreamt for 50 years and having a house dropped in your head only to realize that those 50 years were completely bullshit?
Then factor in the forgetting that happens over the course of living 50 years. Like, 98%. So, 2% of the 50 years, then 20% of that is remembered. I dunno, so she'll legit remember about five months of it. No biggie.
Charmicarmicat
Banned
So I don't normally rant about negative reviews but the Independent on Sunday reviewer gave it the worst marks possible, with some really stupid reasons. Mainly that 1) It was too confusing and said he 'couldn't even begin to explain the Mr. Charles concept', which I could probably explain in about 4 lines to someone who hadn't seen the film, and 2) The dream parts weren't dreamlike enough, which is sort of THE POINT so the subjects don't get suspicious, even going so far as to have a character berated for not creating a carpet well enough so the subject suspects he is in a dream. Sorry for this but it really annoyed me, can you tell? :lol
Awesome Animals
Member
shagg_187 said:
Well and since Mal lost her grip on reality, she could feel that reality itself was a dream, as she had in the movie. Simply waking her up may not have been enough, especially as it was evidenced that the inception worked too well on her. I hope that makes sense, it does in my head. But I think the key is her idea of reality was limbo, and simply waking up may not have been enough.
Charmicarmicat said:
I noticed some reviews similar to that, or it could have been The Independent. There are always going to be negative reviews because there is always going to be a critic who goes against the grain trying to get attention (which we are sufficing). What I have discovered with film critics is to find consistency with three or four reviewers and go with them. Example being; Roger Ebert can suck it. I cannot stand his reviews.
Charmicarmicat said:
There was certainly no reason not to utilize the dream space more once they enacted the Mr. Charles concept though. Fischer was already aware of the fact that he was dreaming at that point, so it shouldn't have mattered if they made their mission a bit earlier and twist the landscape to their advantage.
SmokingBarrelX said:
This scenario is much stronger than the whole "Inception" aspect that Nolan decided to go with. It would have given the limbo state some much needed endangerment. As it stands now, it was Cobb's inserting of an idea and not the limbo state itself that ultimately ruined his wife. Cobb claims that limbo in itself is detrimental to the mind, but nothing within the film backs this notion. If he were to have simply forced her out of limbo by force, the guilt angle would still be in place as well, considering it would have been his impetuous decision that forced her out before she was mentally prepared to do so.
Awesome Animals
Member
harSon said:
But I think the goal of the spinning top was because Leo didn't realize how strong Inceptions were, and he wasn't sure how else to convince her to kill herself. I think the thought was that if he suddenly killed her without her realizing she would have never gotten grip on reality, whereas by creating this inception he thought she would snap into reality and accept it. He didn't anticipate the inception would penetrate her mind as much as it did.
SmokingBarrelX said:
Yeah, he planted the idea of 'waking' up from the dream, in the subconcious when they were both in Limbo to get her to leave that place.
Except he didn't realize that the seed he planted grew into a virus and once both were awake, she still thought she needed to kill herself.
First half of the film detailed the difficulty of inception. 2nd half shows how he did it.
So his first inception, on his own wife, was an accident. Saito's question of whether it could be done or not was in that 'experimental' context. Even Arthur didn't know, when he kept trying to pull Cobb away from the Helicopter in Tokyo.
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