The following post deals with the ending of Inception, and the post as well as subsequent comments will likely result in SPOILERS, so you are warned.
Much discussion about the ending of Inception has been taking place all over the intarwebs and to settle it all, co-creator of Lost Damon Lindelof offers up his point of view.
The questions all revolve around the final moments that show the top continuing to spin on the table, and the question lies – Will the top stop spinning now? Or keep going eternally?
/Film shares a Twitter update by Lindeloff that answers everything and nothing:
There is a THIRD possibility — It neither stopped… nor kept spinning. the story ended before either could happen. Discuss.
I prefer to let Sheldon explain it all for me. Consider Schroedinger’s Cat.
So like what Lindeloff says, the top is neither spinning, nor is it not spinning. Until they open the box to find out for sure.
Yeah, I’m deep and shiznit yo!
While we normally delete spoilers for the sake of readers who have not seen the film, this topic of discussion will allow it.
totems are used to realise if they are in SOMEONE’S dream or not…basically totem does not work in ur own dream…because..u can control ur dream..if cobb wants he can spin the top forever or just make it topple in his dream unless he gives attention to it…i mean, if he doesn give attention, it will spin forever..cause before losing attention his subsconcious knows that its spinning and subsconcious will keep it spining unless he wants it topple down..which exactly happens in the movie…when cobb does reallity chek in reallity, the top topples cause he wants it to topple but in the end he spins the top and doesn give attention to it..which why his subsconcious keeps it spinning perfectly saying the whole movie was cobb’s dream…and that explains too why mal keeps interfering in the other dreams…because too many dreams make it unstable for cobb…and he loses control over subsconcoius which why his subsconcious keeps interfering.
i think the film ends in reality and thats because dicaprio had as his totem his children.he was just keeping mal’s totem for sentimental reasons and thats why in the last scene he doesnt stay to see if it falls or still spins.he doesnt actually care to see because it was never his totem so it was never a proof of being in a dream or not.in this scene his kids show their faces for the first time and that means he returned in reality.in his dreams they never show their faces and that is a proof for him that he’s dreaming.by not seeing their faces he is never confused about reality and always knows he’s in a dream.
The Inception was made to Cobb. The inception of the film is the moment when the seed was left in his mind. He then believes he is dreaming since the beginning which then make he finally believes that when he woke up in the plane he is in the reality. The Architect (Ariadne) is the key. She is a lot more skilled than Cobb, she knows how to manage gravity (so the totem) and made Cobb and all spectator believe that the inception mission to Fischer was the reality. Observe also that Ariadne learned a lot about Cobb’s psychology and Limbo, she is the only one allowed or that had succeeded to enter his Limbo so whenever she got that she would be able to architect the “reality” Cobb was looking for.
I’m confused why my posts keep getting deleted… but basically the link I posted earlier talked about how an indicator of whether Cobb was in reality or not was his ring.
EVERY inception scene had Cobb with his ring. Whenever he was ‘under’ he always had his ring on. However, whenever he was awake he didn’t have it on. The top falling over – albeit, conveniently – could have been a red herring from Nolan.
The children at the end were also different ages, if you look at the casting list. The clothing could have just been a coincidence. The fact is, they were older (check out the cast listing).
That’s basically the gist of what I posted earlier. Ty – over and out.
Because you keep posting links.
The commenting rules are very clear that posting links will result in comments being removed. The spam filter automatically discards posts with links in them.
I have a different view here, regarding the ending….
In the last level… where he goes to his wife to confront her… he is stabbed and his wife is shot by the other lady…. to come out of that level… the other lady jumps off the building… but he remains there with his wife… remember they lay down on floor together… I feel there he goes into another level deep… and in that level he dreams that he wakes up in the plane and has completed his job, so saito, makes a call for him to get immigration…. but when he reaches home… it is revealed to us that it is infact a dream because that top never falls…
Another reason to support the above conclusion is, remember in the drowning van, everyone is shown to wake up except for cobb… if he never woke up in van… he would have never got out of sleep in plane… and from the last level he is directly shown to be awake in the plane… and not the intermediate levels…. so thats possible only if he himself dreams about waking up in the plane……
Well… just may be… its just my point of view…
A part of the movie that has got me confused is about Cobb and his wife growing old together while they were in Limbo. When ever she appears she always says to him ‘do you remember when you asked me to marry you, and you said you had a dream that we will grow old together.’ In the final sceen when he revistits the limbo he and his wife had created, he says to her ‘we did’. So why is it that when he talks about getting her out of limbo initially where they lie on the rail tracks they are young? How did that happen? Have I missed something. Even if the entire movie is a dream, this still doesnt make any sence.
I think you are onto something. I must watch this movie again its so frustrating to me. I feel like I missed so much because truthfully just as I accept my dreams as I am dreaming them, I accepted the “reality” that is compromised of Cobb and his team trying to perform inception on fischer. If I would have adopted the viewpoint that Cobb could have quite possibly been dreaming I feel like I would have caught a lot more events and strange occurences that indicate we are always watching a dream world.
Regardless there most likely will be no solid answer, and we all have to accept that. Its still fun to think about…
The whole movie is a dream except for the last few minutes. The top level of the dream is the one containing the old man, and Cobb wakes from it on the plane. In reality Cobb is neither a criminal nor an extractor, the whole idea of entering other people’s dreams doesn’t exist in reality, and he was never exiled from the States. The children haven’t aged because it was only in his dream that he was separated from them for years. The dream incorporates real people (his neighbours on the plane, his father) in fantastic roles, as dreams do. The final shot of the spinning top is a message to the audience that we are now, finally, in reality.
I thought for sure that the end was a dream because the kids never aged, however, after reading Octony’s interpretation that the whole movie is a dream until the very end, I agree with that. Cobb drifts in and out of reality explaining how that happens always crediting his wife – who apparently killed herself. The totem in his dream was hers and she was the dream expert who eventually couldn’t tell the difference between reality and the dream. If he really was in a limbo state as his subconscious state believes than either he stays in limbo or awakes – not dream he is coming home to his kids. Also, there is no equipment on the plane when he wakes up on the plane and his friends/the people in the airport act as if they don’t know him. Because they don’t! They just shared a plane ride and they were the last people he saw before he began his elaborate dream. The totem was his wife’s (and he only dreamt it meant something to him) that is why when he came home to the kids he spun it and could care less if it stopped.
How did DiCaprio’s character come up with the knowledge that Saito would make the phone call, before waking up?
If following Octany’s theory (which to me, makes sense), the phone call from Saito on the plane doesn’t have to mean anything. No words were said by Saito after they awoke on the plane, so it could have just been some random guy on a plane making a phone call to his mom or something.
I think the ending must’ve been a dream because it is weird how the kids hadn’t aged at all and were wearing the same clothes that he sees in his dreams.
Cobb was the mark not Fisher. Cobb’s father or father in law hired the dream team of saito to do the inception on Cobb to get him back to reality.
Just a thought, what if the spinning top was an idea planted in Cobbs mind? He thinks it tells him when he is dreaming or not but maybe it doesn’t at all. It’s a little odd that his totem is something that he initially finds in a dream. I’ll have to go back and watch this movie a again I think. My initial impression is that it’s all a dream regardless of what the totem indicates.
That is a great point because his “wife” did create the totem.
Right, if you remember, Arthur tells Ariadne that people make the totems themselves so they know whether or not they have come out of the dream state. Then Ariadne is told that Cobb’s totem was originall Mal’s – that always bothered me, because if he adopted Mal’s totem then how would he ever know if he was out of the dream state or not, since he did not make the totem himself?
I agree that it definitely could have been a dream after the chemist’s basement, but I only have one problem with that.
If in the dreams the projections continuously chase and hunt down Cobb, as the authorities do, then why would they stop after one phone call from Saito? If they were projections neither Saito nor Cobb could stop them. The only thing Saito could stop are authorities, which means that there are no projections chasing him, and the final scene is real.
I think the clothes and appearance were done in order to promote the ambiguity.Or maybe they were in the same position as before in order to emphasize that now Cobb can make up for his previous mistakes. However I don’t think we’ve ever been told how long Cobb has been fleeing. If it was only for a year or so, the appearance of his kids wouldn’t change all that much.
Who knows? However I sleep more soundly at night thinking that Cobb is finally happy in the real world.
I don’t believe that the ENTIRE movie was a dream, because it does show the top fall over quite a few times so he can see he isn’t dreaming anymore.
However I do agree with Roderick in that Cobb hadn’t woken up after he went to dreaming at the chemist’s. After he woke himself when he saw his wife, which was just only after a couple of seconds (how did he manage to do that with such powerful sedatives?) he goes to the washroom to splash water on his face and spin his top, however he conveniently knocks it off the counter before we can see it stop and he never spins it again in that ‘world/dream’. So the rest of the movie was a dream if only to help Cobb deal with his guilt kind of like another level where he trapped his memories.
Some other things that made me think it was a dream was how did his father know to be at the airport waiting for him? How did he get from the airport to the house so quickly (it never shows the transition)? And why were his children unaged and wearing the exact same clothes?
It never occurred to you that that a pro like Cobb wouldn’t have made arrangements to be picked up at the airport?
Cobb never get out of his dream in the end. But he indeed living in the real world prior to the project
The entire movie is a dream. Cobb never really returned to reality when he “kicked” himself and his wife in the train tracks. Remember they went 3 levels deep and got lost in “Limbo”. How does he know that he went all 3 levels back up with that “kick” and not just the 2nd level. I think that when he planted the seed of thought on his wife that their Limbo world is unreal, he unconsciously planted the thought on himself and he believed it so much that the first world that got him out of Limbo, he embraced right away as real. His wife didn’t and knew she had to go another level up and wanted that other kick by jumping off the ledge (remember the feeling of falling). Also why is she across on the other building?
As for his wife being real or not – maybe the wife that appears in his missions to double cross him is his real wife, coming back down to his dream to wake him up by screwing with his “perfect world” of spies and missions that he created. The other wives are Cobb’s creations specially the ones in the mult-level world he created. Remember also that Cobb was a great Architect, so he could create a believable world for himself based off of actual memories.
What i dont understand is if he was in a dream stae that could age him and his wife a lifetime, why wouldnt he go into limbo after death? According to the logic of the movie if he died by the train he should have went deeper into limbo. But maybe i missed something.
Then how do u explain their totems all working, if the whole movie is a dream?
As much as I would like to believe that Dom did indeed escape the dream, I don’t believe he did. His kids were wearing the exact same clothes at the end of the movie that they wear in each of his little flashbacks and memories. Plus they never aged. Maybe the whole movie was a dream. Or her simply never escaped the final dream. Or he dreamed the whole thing in The Chemist’s basement. Hell if I know……
Does anyone think that Cobb’s wife is real? I’ve seen the film twice now and I still can’t figure out if Cobb’s wife and children are actually real. We may need to consider the fact that the whole film could be a dream.
So, is the question to us whether we believe Cobb is stuck in the dream state or not?
I choose to believe he’s out of the dream state. Reason being, Saito got old. If they were still in the dream, Saito would still be younger, possibly even would’ve been killed by the Sub Cons.
I was under the impression that Cobb was away for a long time. His kids however, did not get any older.
In the real world that wouldn’t make any sense, but if you were dreaming it might not be so apparent.
When they found the Chemist and went to their basement where people went to sleep, Cobb went into the dream state and the memories of his wife made him “wake back up” or so we think. He splashes the water on his face in the bathroom and spins his spindle. But was interrupted and he knocked the spindle on the ground. We didn’t get to see whether his spindle would have kept spinning or not. I believe if he didn’t knock it over, it would have kept spinning.
I believe thats when Cobb went into the dream state, and the rest of the movie was in his dream.
good thought, but they explain in the movie that time in the dream world is much longer than in reality. Each level they go under (dreams within dreams, etc) time goes on longer. So, cobb and his wife were dreaming for maybe hours or whatever but the dream lasted 50 years.
But i mean he went to a life of crime after he had to leave the US. I believe Satio(spelling?) said that he “fell off” from being the the criminal that he was. So he should have been a criminal in the world that he percieved to be real for a good amount of time before all of that happened. but his children remained the same age.
Listen, plain and simple, he’s still dreaming. his kids are the exact same age and they are wearing the exact same clothes from his dream. boom. and Christopher Nolan is not one to just miss details like that.