Reposting edited version. Reasons why I think the ending is real. (aka
why I don't have an Imagination). In a Premise > Rebuttal format.
1) The whole movie is a dream
Problems:
-God excuse: it can be used to explain anything. Something doesn't fit, it's just the dream
-The painstaking logic of them waking up on the top layer (Tokyo/Mombasa/Paris/747) seems to serve no purpose if it was all a dream.
-The weirdness doesn't extend to the top layer of this dream. But why?
- Why does Cobb have any motivations at all if his wife never committed suicide ?
-Who is the dreamer?
-If this mega-dream is being dreamed, there are too many moving parts. When Chris Nolan painstaking shows, not only a lack of weirdness on his top level reality, but the limits of the dreams the protagonists go into. (missing details, closed loops, etc.)
-The arc of the story is about Cobb, his guilt for planting the 'inception' of the idea that they can kill themselves in their paradise of Limbo (which he tired of) to go back to their real lives. In the process, he plants a virus in her brain that consumed her and made her kill herself in pursuit of a higher 'reality'. The movie is really about Cobb understanding where his reality is, his wife not understanding it, and finally his redemption as he vanquishes his guilt. If it was all a dream, there is no meaning to this motivation. Why should we care.
2) The 2nd half is a dream but not the first (aka Cobb never woke up in Mombasa)
Problems:
- The trip to Mombasa was not the first half, but the first third of the film. Nothing much is known about dreams and almost no narrative has been revealed. All the dream logic, have yet to be explained.
- Cobb dreaming the last two thirds of the film places all the important narrative and exposition in his dream.
-It fails to explain how the first third, with Saito in his castle, is neatly circled and tied up in the last act of the movie as Cobb revisits Saito in Limbo
-If it was Cobb dreaming, everyone else must be his projections (we only see Cobb go under)
- If all or many of his characters were his projections, he would have exceeded the levels of dreaming later established. Generally, either the entire dream logic is false or nothing happened.
- From a narrative point of view, this would be like ending a movie in the first act before anything is explained or achieved, as everything else is simply dreamed and not real. There is no functional point for the arbitrary ending other than the fact that it was a convenient point for proponents of 'it ended with a dream theory' to place their marker. Any later and their theory runs into other problems. (see #3)
3) Cobb remained in the real world until the final mission in the 747 where he failed and remained in Limbo, dreaming the ending (aka The Top didn't stop spinning argument)
Problems:
-Top very clearly wobbled. A spinning object that wobbles is slowing down, not maintaining its speed
-We saw the top wobble in a similar fashion from a long take, the very first time we see Cobb spin the top.
-Wobbling =! falling (it's claimed the top fell which created the wobbling sound. The top fell perhaps due to the van hitting the ocean floor - more on this later)
-The dream logic clearly establishes the layers of dream. Reality > Yusuf > Arthur > Fisher > Eames > Limbo.
- Cobb/Ariadne/Fischer all reached Limbo and Limbo was where he met Saito to become young men again, presumably either waking up or killing themselves in that dream to wake up.
-There is no further floor below limbo. The motivation of dying in Limbo as established earlier in the film's narrative with Cobb and Mal committing suicide on the train tracks is to return all the way up to reality.
3a)The kids didn't age and wore the same clothes therefore it must be a dream.
-There's little poof Cobb was away for a very long time
-Cobb is unable to see the faces of his kids in all of his dreams, including his constructed 'secret' dream filled with 'memories'. He sees their faces in the ending, and immediately walks away, confident he was back in reality. The top has lost its value as a totem.
*IMDB cast list has 2 versions of the children. With James aged 20 months and Phillipa aged 3 years. The faces of Phillipa we see at the ending is the Phillipa aged 5
-It's likely he was away for 2 years.
3b) The Van hitting the river floor caused the top to wobble
-If Cobb remained in Limbo (lvl 5) his body, what happened to the van in the 1st dream (lvl2) should have no effect on his reality. As the dream logic explains that only the physics of what is happening to the body on the level prior affects the experiences of the dream one level down
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Note: It was correctly pointed out that events significant enough can travel down multiple layers. This is shown in the 'kick' of the Van hitting the guardrail triggering the avalanche 2 layers down, but this seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Zero-G/tilting produced in Arthur's dream did not travel down to the ice fortress.
-If Cobb woke up all the day to reality (lvl1) but it is posited this is in fact still a dream, then whatever event that caused the top to wobble must have occurred one level up (level0) , a level we never saw and was never discussed in the film.
Random Bits:
Themes in Inception that steer me away from 'ending as a dream' or 'movie as a dream'
1) Dreaming as an addiction:
-The sleeping den in Yusuf's Mombasa hospice is for those who seek to 'wake up'. Reality has become to them an intolerable dream they need to escape from.
- Mal was similarly addicted and succeeded in remaining in Limbo until Cobb convinced her to wake up. Once in reality, she felt the same desire to escape, but with the illusion shattered, she is unable to consider going back to dreaming as a substitute. Mal decides to kill herself to truly 'wake up'
- Cobb is unable to dream due to the ghosts that haunt him or possible excessive use of dreaming to fight his inner demons.
-There ultimately is a reality that is inadequate for all these people.
2) Knowing reality as opposed to forgetting reality
- The characters sometimes 'forget' they are in a dream and require another character to 'right' them. Cobb momentarily forgets in the Ice fortress when he hesitates before shooting Mal. This require totems
- In Limbo, Saito/Cobb become each other's totems, completing a similar exchange they had previously. Saito has forgotten who he was waiting for (Cobb); and Cobb has forgotten the words they spoke.
-This leads to the final shot. . He initially spun the top to 'check' but Seeing his kids confirmed his reality. There was no need to use the top. He knew.They are his real totems.
