Originally Posted by nikita92

oh sorry also - the ending seems real becasue of how the whole team was looking at him..like when they were at customs, when he woke up on the flight etc...as if their whole plan worked out and they got him out of limbo..cuz like they all had these sneaky smiles on at the end of the movie, like everything worked acording to plan ..? hmmm..

Good point. I'd thought it was possible the whole movie was a dream too. But the only thing is... if the first scene in the airplane was a dream, why would he wake into the airplane? Shouldn't reality not be continuous with the dream?

Originally Posted by Isabel

I LOVED this movie.

SPOILERS BELOW - highlight

I don't know about you guys, but when I watched it, the last scene with the wobbling spin top, EVERYONE in the audience let out an in sync groan/sigh when the movie just ended - no topple! Lol it was hilarious, everyone was holding their breath. But I personally think he's still dreaming. For one, don't you think it was important he pass through each of the dream states? I mean, Adriadne's (Ellen Page) eyes opened successively in each dream, from the snowy alps, to the hotel to the van in the water. Cobb skipped straight through from the 5th layer (which I'm assuming was his own dream, right? He wasn't still in the 4th layer, cause then how would he wash up on the sea again? But then maybe it was Saito's dream, because there were his guards (projections?)) to the wake state. Just seemed a bit off...

And someone mentioned the aging of the kids. I think they'd be older because even though time passes slower in the dream state, I got the feeling that a lot of time passed even in the wake state - maybe they were purposely vague about that. So yeah, I think the kids should have been older.

But Saito, he would be the same age when he woke up. If the anasthetic turns 5 'real' minutes into 10 years in the third level, the 4th (or 5th) level would be about as many needed to get Saito that old. So yeah, I guess very little time has passed in reality.

One thing that seemed off though is why was Saito so old while Cobb was still young?


SPOILERS END

Well, Cobb and Saito would've been able to come up through all of the dream layers once they had released themselves from "limbo" (ie, suicide via Cobb's handgun) since they both had "died" in all the previous layers - all that would remain would be to leave the 4th layer. Also, killing yourself always works as a method of waking yourself up from a dream regardless of how many dream layers there are- the problem is, if you go too deep into your (or someone else's) subconsciousness's dream layers, you won't remember to kill yourself since you'll think your dream is the real world! And if you don't come to realize that you are dreaming (or, on this extreme end of the dreaming spectrum, "in limbo"), you'll go insane, and that's what Cobb's team feared. [EDIT: If you died in, say, dream layer 1, you'd go to the deepest dream layer of your subconsciousness (in the movie's case, dream layer 4), and then all you'd have to do would be to die again and you'd be booted back to reality. Remembering to do this is the hard part!]

As I quoted from another forum in my earlier post, Saito is older than Cobb because he was immediately lost in the 4th dream layer, thereby entering the "limbo" state. Cobb, on the other hand, was aware that he was still dreaming, having experienced "limbo" before in a dream layer of comparable subconscious "deepness" with Mal, and therefore did not enter the "limbo" state. So even though Cobb entered the 4th dream layer before Saito, he remained a young man, whereas Saito, fully unaware that he was still dreaming (thus in "limbo"), became an old man - Saito perceived the 4th dream layer to be real, so he perceived the passage of time as real and thus aged.

The best way to wrap your head around this is that "limbo" is not a place or a dream layer itself, but rather a state of mind in which one cannot distinguish between the dream world and the real world. From what I understand of the rules of this movie, "limbo" could happen in any dream layer, but it is just more likely to happen in a subconsciously "lower" dream layer because 1) time is extremely amplified, causing one's hold on reality to be eroded by the lengthy passage of time, and 2) the deeper one goes into the dream layers, the harder it becomes to distinguish between what is dreamt and what is real, due to the engrossing complexity of a subconsciously "low" dream layer (I believe Cobb says this sometime in the movie)


(Side-note: "Limbo" was also a fear of Cobb's team because in order for even the possibility of entering the "limbo" state to arise, a person would have to go very deep into their subconsciousness - that is, they would have to go through several dream layers. In order to do so, they would need a very powerful sedative, and so it is impossible to "kick" someone out of "limbo" since they would be unreceptive to all exterior influences (such as being dropped into a tub of water). Accordingly, the only way to escape "limbo" is to use the fall-back mechanism of killing yourself, but how do you do that if you can't remember that you're dreaming? Again, that's why "limbo" was a reaaaal scary thing. )


I hope that helped!

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1939234

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1939234

OMG ROFL That's exactly what my theatre sounded like. And LOL @ the guy talking at the end. XD

Originally Posted by Entropy

Discuss.

Spoilers ahead. Chad, can we get spoiler tags now?

First, the ending. Highlight to read.



The most obvious question: what really happened in the end? Open to interpretation, or can we look for clues to tell us the real answer?

On one hand, we have the revelation of the children's faces, which I was pleasantly surprised to find out weren't demonic, especially since I had been holding my bladder for the latter 90 minutes of the movie and any kind of shock would have caused me to let it go. On the other hand, the children didn't seem to have aged (despite not being explicitly told how long Leo was gone for as far as I know) and I interpreted the top's spinning as indefinite despite the minor wobbling.

Thoughts?

Spoilers end here.

I was in the exact same situation wrt to both the demonic bit and because I drank too much Coke.

Can somebody explain the free fall concept to me?
Arthur turns to the Architect and tells her that they can't fall when there's no gravity.
And then, when he sees them suspended in mid air, he wonders (out loud) "How can I make you fall when there's no gravity?" which makes sense.

A. I understand it's a dream and gravity can "disappear" but isn't free fall when Fg and only Fg is acting on an body? So what does he mean by "free fall without gravity"?

Quote:
The same free-fall feeling was transmitted to the second stage, creating an ala anti-gravity situation.
http://greenteamovie.blogspo t.com/...explained.html

Please bear with me here, perhaps my Physics is just a bit rusty

Originally Posted by goodnews.inc

Can somebody explain the free fall concept to me?
Arthur turns to the Architect and tells her that they can't fall when there's no gravity.
And then, when he sees them suspended in mid air, he wonders (out loud) "How can I make you fall when there's no gravity?" which makes sense.

A. I understand it's a dream and gravity can "disappear" but isn't free fall when Fg and only Fg is acting on an body? So what does he mean by "free fall without gravity"?

Quote:
The same free-fall feeling was transmitted to the second stage, creating an ala anti-gravity situation.
http://greenteamovie.blogspo t.com/...explained.html

Please bear with me here, perhaps my Physics is just a bit rusty

Ya, I think they kinda fuddled the meaning of "free-falling"; essentially what they meant was that free-falling would create the sensation of zero-gravity (like the weightlessness felt in the Vomit Comet), and since the sedative they were using to go into deeper dream layers allowed for the inner-ear to be left unaffected, they would feel the sensation of zero-gravity both in the van and in the dream layer below (ie, the hotel). So really it wasn't true zero-gravity - just the sensation of zero-gravity. (Judging by your Major, I think you probably have a much more complete understanding of this than I do )

What I don't get is why it didn't affect the lower dream layers as well.....I guess a snow-mountain-fortress, and the surrounding tonnes of snow and ice, in zero-gravity would be way too complicated to film?

I have a friend who is a film student and it's sometimes hard to watch movies with him since he makes all these comments on how the lighting or current camera angle is bad and etc.
As an engineering student I think it's kinda funny how we science-related students are commenting on how something in a movie isn't possible in terms of physics. I do it as well at times. Sometimes I think in my head "wtf?! that's not possible...".
Anyways, it's just funny that what we're studying is slowing making its way into what we do for fun.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1939123


even more inception poking...


there are a couple of valid points like how saito and the other dude didn't reconize each other

Read this:

http://www.cinematical.com/2010/07/1...ve-plot-holes/

He brings out a lot of interesting points.

There's a lot of things wrong with Inception but plot holes is not one I'm worrying about too much

Originally Posted by syan9184

Read this:

http://www.cinematical.com/2010/07/1...ve-plot-holes/

He brings out a lot of interesting points.

He really only mentions 2 plot holes - the lack of weightlessness in the 3rd dream layer and Fischer not recognizing Saito. The other 3 are actually subtlety explained by the movie (see my other 2 posts above).

But Fischer not recognizing Saito isn't necessarily a plot hole - it could be possible that they have never met (not ALL businessmen know each other). It's just a slight implausibility, not a definitive impossibility. It also seems ridiculous that someone would criticize a movie on such an inconsequential point (it would be like saying "Why aren't the aliens in Avatar green-skinned? They live in a forest....")

He also didn't mention Cobb's lack of a wedding ring as evidence of reality at the end of the movie in his final interpretation of Inception.

I love how seriously we're discussing a movie here! Kudos to Nolan for making something we can discuss so much about! Brilliant piece of cinema!