Thread: *Official* Inception Ending Movie Debate

Lol everyone needs to read this post. Your ideas are interesting.

That is the overpowering brilliant irony in the play, we all took this idea at the ending and went wild with it. We were a successful demonstration of real life inception.. without even dreaming!
the totem falls in the end if you actually stay for the credits. its another idea to ploy people to stay longer so they watch the credits and other criteria subject thus subject to more publicity.

Originally Posted by stevegold87

How did he got to the beach at first is always unknown.

That's pretty much the biggest mystery in the movie. There is evidence that the first time they show Cobb and Saito in Limbo is not the same instance as the second time.[/quote]

2) Cobb could have made his last world as well. He was the most brilliant architect ever.

It was never said that Cobb was the most brilliant architect ever. The only thing that's said is that he's the most skilled extractor.

It is really weird that the child are in the same exact position and wearing the same clothes like all his dreams, why would they wear the same clothes after 2 years and play at the exact same location he thought?

That's another mindfuck thrown into the movie. I could understand the yard being the kids' favorite place to play, but their clothes being almost the same is something that will really throw you off (though I think the girl's dress is a darker shade of red/pink. It's hard to tell, with the quality of my copy of the movie. The most telling thing, though, is that the children actually are a bit older. The boy looks about as old as the little girl did, in his visions, and the little girl is definitely older than she was before.

We never know how the asian guy and Cobb got back to the plane, it is very unclear if when the asian is old he killed him and killed himself. We have no proof of that or whatso ever.

Hardly any theory behind the movie has any concrete "proof", but it is implied, because the only way to get out of Limbo - as is stated - is to die. The entire scene is set up to give us the idea that they are back in reality, especially when it comes to the timing over the other team members already being awake before Saito and Cobb wake up.

Remember guys the totem is useless if the dream was his own (front what I heard of other post) so we dont really care if it falls or not.

I don't think that it was ever implied (in the movie) that the totem is useless if the dream is his own. The only thing that is said is that the totem lets you know if you are dreaming or not. But if you are in someone else's dream, and that person has touched your totem, they know how to make it behave as if you were in reality.

I really think the one thing you all may be missing is that Christopher Nolan made the ending the way it is on purpose. He wants to give you just enough evidence to argue both sides. Everyone is correct! There is just not enough empirical or rational data to prove it one way or the other, because all of the information is given to you by the director. You get to make up the ending. I don't even think Chris knows what the ending is. He wants it to be both, to create exactly this dialogue. I've seen it twice, and there is just enough evidence to argue both sides very well. I smiled at the end. Brilliance!

My ending is that the top falls. But what is important to me, is that Cobb doesn't care anymore. He has already seen there faces, and that makes it his reality, real or not.

We (or at least I) understand that the movie was made to be ambiguous, but - as crafty as it is - I think that having a completely unresolved movie would render the entire project pretty pointless - as stories go. I think there is an overwhelming mountain of evidence that the ending is reality. At least, that is how the story is actually told. There are simply little loose ends that make one doubt, and those tiny "ideas" are what causes the audience's inception. I've seen it quite a few times (but the copy I have is missing the first 10 minutes. ) and I think that the movie explains - pretty straight forward - that he is in reality when he comes home. I could be wrong, of course, but that's just how I see it.

And if the top really does fall after the credits, then that pretty much closes all argument.

Originally Posted by Oneironaut

I don't think that it was ever implied (in the movie) that the totem is useless if the dream is his own. The only thing that is said is that the totem lets you know if you are dreaming or not.

(Note: while writing this post which was originally going to be just about totems, I spent more time than I probably should have thinking harder than was probably necessary, and I ended up with what I think are a pretty compelling set of arguments for the case that Cobb is in fact truly awake. )

I don't know... granted, I haven't had a chance to see the movie since the opening day, and you mentioned that you have a copy, so maybe I'm remembering it wrong, but I really seem to remember that the explicit purpose of the totem was to assure the user simply that they were not in somebody else's dream. The reason this is useful is because it assures them that nobody is performing an extraction/inception on them. And if you think about the way totems are supposed to function, that's all that they could be used for. If someone is intimately familiar with the peculiar physics of their own totem, as every totem user is supposed to be, then what would it mean for the totem to behave incorrectly?

Take Arthur's loaded die for instance. Arthur never reveals which side the die is biased toward, but let's say for illustration's sake that it's 6. So when Arthur is awake and he rolls the die, it will either always land on 6 or land on 6 much more often than it should. If Arthur is in somebody else's dream and he rolls the die, it will only be biased toward 6 if the dreamer knows that the die is supposed to be biased toward 6. Since Arthur keeps the die's bias a secret, rolling his die and observing something other than a 6-bias will alert him that he's probably in someone else's dream (i.e., someone who doesn't know the die's true bias). Now if Arthur is in a dream of his own making and he rolls the die, what happens? Well, Arthur knows that the die is supposed to be biased toward 6, so the expectations of his dreaming mind will cause the die to behave normally (i.e., to show a bias toward 6; unless he consciously wills it to behave otherwise, although to do this he would have to be aware that he was in his own dream in the first place).

So there are two conclusions Arthur (and by extension any totem user) can draw depending on whether the totem displays what I will refer to as its signal. Either (a) it behaves incorrectly--that is, it fails to show a bias toward 6, which is his totem's signal--in which case he is most likely in somebody else's dream, or (b) it behaves correctly--that is, it shows a bias toward 6, so the totem's signal is absent--in which case he is either awake OR in a dream of his own making.

However, things get tricky when we try to apply the standard totem logic to Cobb's totem, because his is unlike anyone else's totem. Arthur's totem worked because his die had a bias that only he knew, and Ariadne's totem worked, if I remember correctly, because her chess piece's center of gravity was biased such that the piece would typically fall on one particular side that only she knew about. In other words, their totems' signals occur when they are in someone else's dream, and their signals are absent when they are awake or in their own dream. Totem users are supposed to keep their signals a secret in order for the totem to be effective. Deceptively replicating someone else's signal will lead them to believe that they are either awake or in their own dream (which is useful because they will then not suspect that anyone is tampering with their secrets).

But Cobb's signal is different. His totem's signal (i.e., the totem behaving differently than it does when he is awake) is that it spins continuously and never falls. So let's think about what happens when he is in somebody else's dream. Since his totem's signal is presumably a secret (although this is actually not totally clear, since he revealed it to Ariadne and could have to others as well), the dreaming architect will be unaware of it and therefore unable to replicate it, meaning that his top will eventually fall as normal tops do (i.e., the signal is absent). But this is exactly what it does when he is awake! So the set of conclusions Cobb can draw from his totem is different from the other characters. Whereas for other characters, it was either (a) signal present --> in somebody else's dream, or (b) signal absent --> either awake OR in one's own dream; for Cobb it is actually the following: (a) signal present --> in one's own dream, (b) signal absent --> awake OR in somebody else's dream.

Let's assume for a moment that Cobb's top eventually falls at the end (which I think is true). In other words, the signal was absent. This means that he is either awake OR in somebody else's dream--he is NOT in a dream of his own making. But if he is in somebody else's dream, whose dream is it? The most obvious candidate would be Mal, but that seems very unlikely. Although she is constantly trying to persuade Cobb that he is dreaming and that he ought to kill himself to "truly" wake up, her overall behavior is much more consistent with the idea that she is one of Cobb's dream characters. For instance, she viciously attacks Ariadne along with all his other DCs when Ariadne changes too much in his dream (which would actually be his dream inside her dream), she is always present and waiting for Cobb on the bottom floor of his dream elevator, and she repeatedly interferes with Cobb's professional missions. None of these behaviors would make sense if it were she that was lucid and Cobb that was in her dream. And if Cobb is not in Mal's dream, whose dream is it? He almost certainly isn't in any of the other characters' dreams. So while the evidence for Cobb being in Mal's dream (or anyone else's), on the one hand, is pretty weak, on the other hand this thread is replete with evidence that he is actually awake. As one example, his children have aged when he sees them at the end.
So it seems most likely to me, by a wide margin, that Cobb is awake.

Maybe I missed something, but here's a question that leads me to believe whats his face was still dreaming: How did he know the van was about to hit water?

hey all, i haven't been on in a while (like a year haha). anyway, nice to see everyone again. i had to post to this, after seeing the movie it made me miss this site *violin plays*

at any rate, here are my views:

firstly, those guys are Japanese not Chinese, i had to get that off my chest being part asian myself, and yes there is a huge difference, note the paper walls and the actor himself who has played japanese roles before (Batman) not to mention the very japanese accent. secondly, the reason Cobb isn't recognized by the guy he incepted is because it was a dream, so you can see he vaguely recalls Cobb's face but can't place it. lastly, the reason why the beginning is the way it is, is to give you a big hint when the scene merges into the one where he is with the "younger" japanese man, and the ending is a twist to show you it was him all along and how he grew old in limbo. it does not mean the whole thing is a dream, rather a clue and really just something the director did to tie it all together sort of speak. so in conclusion, there are too many obvious signs that he is indeed awake, if you think otherwise then wake up

At the end of the credits you hear his totem fall over.

/thread

I will rent it when it comes out on dvd so i can watch it again. At the end of the movie he isnt in limbo because he saw the faces of his kids. For some reason he couldn't see them throughout the movie.

The ending isn't this complicated. The totem at the end was a complete red herring because it's only useful in someone else's dream. If Cobb was in Limbo, we saw it fail stay up with Saito, so the ending, where it was clearly not staying perfectly upright, means Cobb is out of limbo and either in his own dream or in real-life. The point of the ending was Cobb didn't care. He was able to accept whatever reality he was in, whether his own dream or real-life. Cobb came to the conclusion that chasing perfection had ended where he was.

I think the wife was never actually a person, but a figment of his imagination. The reason the children remained the same is because that was the only way he could conceptualize any thoughts of ever having children. Did we ever know what company he worked for with the Grandfather (Michael Caine)? Was it his father or hers? Also, how did this whole concept of inception transform into a productive career? I believe the man in the Asian home was himself, and he was grown so accustomed to the normal existence of living in the dream state or limbo without his wife that he knew it to be an only reality for him. Another thought that occurred to me was about the wife. If they were in the suite of the hotel for an anniversary celebration, why would he be in a room composed of a struggle and mess when his wife was DIRECTLY ACROSS the ledge from his? Shouldn't she be on the ledge from their room? Is she completely unattainable?