SPOILERS!!! Discussion of Inception

POSTED BY: jewelstaitefan
UPDATED: Thursday, April 16, 2015 05:07
VIEWED: 15884
PAGE 6 of 8

Quote:

---

Originally posted by lwaves:
That Hawthorne guy obviously didn't get the movie or the reason for the architecture styles in the dream levels.
It's purpose was that they didn't want Fischer to know he was dreaming until they told him. This means that each level had to look realistic to Fischers POV. If Ariadne had put the Eiffel Tower or the some other famous building in the LA chase scene Fischer would know it wasn't real. Same thing if they'd used fantastical architecture or physics (like the city folding over) that too would have told him something was wrong and the plan would have failed.

As for cliches then every single movie and TV show out there uses cliches, including Serenity. You can't escape it. The guy needs to loosen up a lot or stop watching movies.

---

You are exactly right! I copied over some comments that make your point (and more) from http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/08/cliche-and-pastiche-in-incep
tion/

water balloon says: I don’t understand the criticism. She built a world for a specific purpose, to trick someone into believing he wasn’t dreaming. Why would she waste time making the architecture original?

Matt B says: It seems to me that a movie with so much metaphysical stuff going on needs to have a substantial number of familiar beats & reference points so the audience can pay attention to the unique stuff without getting lost in the weeds.

James Gary says: “Inception” is a factory-standard heist film with two tons of of pretentious gobbledegook strapped to the roof using bungee cords.

bdbd says: All the stuff James Gary describes as strapped on was part of the fun. My 15 yr old son thought it was cool, which is as it should be. If overly thought out architectural details, innovations and whatnot were added, the whole thing would have been very twee, although more satisfying perhaps for architecture critics.

LaFollette Progressive says: I thought the act of inception itself was executed very well and held the story together as something a bit more than just a dumb heist flick. But it also works pretty well as a dumb heist flick.

lfv says: A huge amount of the criticism seems to be centered around how disappointed people are that the dreams aren’t completely crazy and weird… um, my dreams are weird, I guess, but in subtle ways. In general, they are pretty much like real life. I’m not flying around in some psychedelic universe populated by Martians.

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity", where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

JSF - yes, that's what I understood from when Cobb found Mal's totem in the doll house. Here's someone else saying it for me: "Now, did Cobb really kill Mal? Yes, but accidentally. In the past,when Cobb and Mal were experimenting with the dreams they went so deep that they got lost in their dreams. Mal was convinced that their dreams were reality and thus locked her totem (the top) in her safe. The safes signify a person's sub-conscious. We see Mal's safe and we also see Fischer's safe where he hears his father's dying request. Back to Cobb and Mal. Since Cobb started the top spinning in the safe, an idea was planted in Mal's subconscious that her reality was a dream. This allowed Cobb to convince her that the dream state they were in wasn't reality and further convinced her to let the train run over them and bring them back to reality. However, since he planted the idea in her subconscious she forever thought that reality was a dream to the point of killing herself. This is how Cobb found out about Inception. Thus, Cobb essentially killed Mal by planting an idea in her subconscience that her reality was a dream.

In the end, he had to let her go, forgive himself, and stop Mal from guilting him by killing her in Limbo."

http://www.bomann.org/

The scene where Mal jumps is Reality but she thinks it's a dream... another one of Cobb's broken rules.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Quote:

---

Originally posted by pizmobeach:
Now, did Cobb really kill Mal? Yes, but accidentally.

The scene where Mal jumps is Reality but she thinks it's a dream... another one of Cobb's broken rules.

---

I agree with the other points about how Cobb discovered Inception, how it was effectively his fault that Mal 'killed herself'.
But I still question that what we see is reality. It's part of the reason I think the movie has done so well and why this thread is still going. That these various possibilities exist. So I'll submit some more thoughts, evidence and theories on why it's a dream.

I give you someone who hasn't been mentioned much - Miles.

If Cobb's kids live in LA with their grandparents (Miles and I assume Miles's wife) why does Miles work in Paris? He's at a college (maybe a professor) so he has to be there at least several days of the week. Isn't it a bit much to go back and forth each week. Not impossible I grant you and he's probably not the only person, but why not work in LA or live in Paris.

If Mal really is dead and it is reality then as far as the real world is concerned Cobb killed her. He is a wanted man. The letters from the psychiatrists and Cobb's inability to enter the US enforce this point. So as Mal's father the only evidence Miles has against Cobb being a killer would be Cobb's word. I just can't believe that he'd take his word over all the other evidence and his own feelings towards his daughter. And yet we see Miles help him to perform another inception (the very thing that effectively killed Mal) and he greets him warmly at the end and takes him home to the kids. These don't seem like the actions someone would take towards Cobb, even if you believed in some way that he was telling the truth. I got the idea that Mal's inception was supposed to be the first ever, so if Cobb told him this and explained it would he really believe it was an accident, and then forgive him for it?

So I still side on the theory that it's all a dream, every bit of film, with the intent of getting Cobb out of dreams and back to the real reality where Mal is alive. Everything we see still happens, it's not one of those 'it's a dream so nothing really happened' shots that longer running TV shows like to use. Everything still happened just one level deeper than what the film shows.



"The greatest invention ever is not the wheel. It's the second wheel." - Rich Hall

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Quote:

---

Originally posted by lwaves:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
The constructs as autonomous? No. Mal wreaks havoc everywhere, conspiring with Saito in the audition piece, shooting Fischer. If she is a construct of Cobb's, as Cobb thinks.

---

Mal is a memory, or at least a construct from memory, not just something thats been made up. Cobb tells Ariadne that you don't use memories or real locations even though he has broken these rules himself. I took it that because she was a memory it made her stronger (dangerous?) and she could break through into the dreams featuring Cobb by using his guilt. Or something along those lines.

---

Fischer used his memory to construct Brownlee (with the impersonator's help) and used his memory of him plus his dispostion towards him.
Mal is downright treasonous, colluding with the enemy (exposing the safe scam to Saito in the interview) and shooting his partner as well. If she is Cobb's construct, he must really hate her, which was not really the impression given in the rest of the film (albeit shown from Cobb's POV). I'm not yet buying that he would construct her so antagonisticly.

A separate point, if she is Cobb's construct, then he himself wants to go to limboland, causing her to kill Fischer so he'll go and force Cobb to follow? Are you saying Cobb does this via Mal because he realizes he must go to limbo to find Saito before he returns to his "reality" in the plane, but he cannot convince himself or the others to do so without Mal intervening and shooting Fischer?

Quote:

---

Quote:

---

After watching a second time, I wondered if Murphy and Caine are the only carryovers Nolan brought from Batman. Anybody know?

---

I know and I'm not telling.
Actually there is another. Murphy and Caine both appeared in both Batman movies and Ken Watanabe also played the 'fake' Ra's Al Ghul in Batman Begins.

---

Ah, yes. Thanks.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Quote:

---

Originally posted by pizmobeach:
JSF - yes, that's what I understood from when Cobb found Mal's totem in the doll house. Here's someone else saying it for me: "Now, did Cobb really kill Mal? Yes, but accidentally. In the past,when Cobb and Mal were experimenting with the dreams they went so deep that they got lost in their dreams. Mal was convinced that their dreams were reality and thus locked her totem (the top) in her safe. The safes signify a person's sub-conscious. We see Mal's safe and we also see Fischer's safe where he hears his father's dying request. Back to Cobb and Mal. Since Cobb started the top spinning in the safe, an idea was planted in Mal's subconscious that her reality was a dream. This allowed Cobb to convince her that the dream state they were in wasn't reality and further convinced her to let the train run over them and bring them back to reality.

---

But he was very clear that the reason she should trust him was because it doesn't matter where they are going as long as they are going together. He wasn't going with her on the jump, so she should have trusted him that they were not in a dream (as far as Cobb was concerned). I do not see this as the fault of Cobb, or his causing this.
Also, some viewers seem to suggest that the totem in the safe was in reality, but it was in the dream, where he was right to do it, and she should have checked her totem - or the top - to verify that it was not spinning, and therefore reality. This has nothing to do with Cobb doing anything in reality to cause Mal to become delusioned.

Quote:

---

However, since he planted the idea in her subconscious she forever thought that reality was a dream to the point of killing herself. This is how Cobb found out about Inception. Thus, Cobb essentially killed Mal by planting an idea in her subconscience that her reality was a dream.

In the end, he had to let her go, forgive himself, and stop Mal from guilting him by killing her in Limbo."

http://www.bomann.org/

The scene where Mal jumps is Reality but she thinks it's a dream... another one of Cobb's broken rules.

---

You might want to claim that the inception can override, overrule, and dominate logical thought so much that Cobb's explaining to Mal that they are in reality and the dream they were in was just a dream, but everybody else apparently was not susceptible. Do you think if Fischer was told it was all just a dream he wouldn't follow through with the breakup? When Saito came out of the audition dream, he was able to comprehend that he'd been in 2 levels of dream. Everbody else was able to go down many levels of dream and come back out and understand not only in advance what they would do at each level, but also keep track of which level they were at, and which level they had returned to.
If Mal's comprehension was so faulty that she could not do what almost anybody else coud do, how is her defect Cobb's fault? Guilt is one thing, and he may feel it, but no sane person could blame him for her lack of sense.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Quote:

---

Originally posted by lwaves:

I give you someone who hasn't been mentioned much - Miles.


If Mal really is dead and it is reality then as far as the real world is concerned Cobb killed her. He is a wanted man. The letters from the psychiatrists and Cobb's inability to enter the US enforce this point. So as Mal's father the only evidence Miles has against Cobb being a killer would be Cobb's word. I just can't believe that he'd take his word over all the other evidence and his own feelings towards his daughter. And yet we see Miles help him to perform another inception (the very thing that effectively killed Mal)....
I got the idea that Mal's inception was supposed to be the first ever, so if Cobb told him this and explained it would he really believe it was an accident, and then forgive him for it?

---

Mal's inception was an accidental one. Miles most likely understood this. If the film is in reality then Miles mentions to Cobb that Cobb wants to borrow "another one of his students" for more of the dreamwork that Miles understands. Thus Miles has a vastly better understanding of the dreamwork that Mal and Cobb were doing, and perhaps talked more with Mal about it, before her death - compared to the authorities who don't understand any of it. Miles does not have only Cobb's word after the fact, Miles was apparently fully aware of their dreamwork before her death, so he would be able to know the story was not made up by Cobb of whole cloth. An accident it might be, but not a complete fabrication created only after Mal's death.
Cobb also has worked to include better "safeguards" in the process, trying to help everybody from getting lost or confused. And Miles would understand the improvements in the practice.

Som time has now passed since recent posts, so I'll add another wrinkle.
Cobb seems to break most of the rules he tells others. He explains things one way, but that's not always how things actually are.

The film, or Cobb's explanation, seems to indicate the dream levels are directly up and down, even though many people are sharing the dream. Apparently all the players must also be present in the upper level dream in order to participate in the next lower level dream, except for limboland where anybody can drop to from any other level.
What if this is not really so? what if a lateral move can be made, to jump from one dream to another dream - either one also a level lower than the parent dream (a sibling dream) or even one not dreamt by other players of the current or higher levels of your dream?
If Cobb's "reality" is not really so, then by Mal not appearing anymore in his "reality" level of dream proves that Mal, working in the actual reality above to bring Cobb out of the dream they once shared, can insert herself in his dreams below the level Cobb thinks is reality, effectively skipping a level herself (at this point you can start to speculate which of the Mals were constructs of Cobb's - if any - and which were Mal herself, or a construct of one of the people trying to help Mal bring Cobb back).
So what if Mal and friends are trying to dream and perhaps use several levels - there likely would be a need for similar level compatibility or else the chronopacing would be off - one player's minute would be 20 minutes in the other player's dream. Maybe they are trying to create a dream level that Cobb will drop into, not knowing it was already created before the players in his dream also dropped into it.
So how can two sets of players, in separate dreams, get into each others dream worlds? Up in reality, Mal and friends must hope that Cobb keeps thinking about the wife he lost (in the dream they once shared but he is now alone in) and when he is thinking about her, or he constructs her in his dream and that provides a link for her and her dream and her friends and helpers to "connect" the 2 dreams - sort of like 2 stargates linked by a wormhole, but for dreams.
Maybe Cobb and Mal had not explored this possibility, but after Mal returned to reality she did discover th

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

After digesting my above post, you might notice that the end of the film was a critical juncture.
Cobb was going to kill his Mal in limboland (or some say that anyhow). If he does, then Mal and friends will lose their "in" or their link to access his dream (reality) or his levels of dream below that. So they would need to make their move before he kills her, or make themselves a new link they could use. If they are successful and get him into a parallel dream (another "branch" of the "dream tree" like siblings in a family tree), then the sequel could find them getting Cobb to come up from the "new" dream and back to reality (with Mal).
If they are not successful, they will need to find another way to link their dreams, or insert into Cobb's dream. Then we might not see Mal in the sequel or the third installment, but Mal and her team might finally find a different way to link and appear in the 4th or later installment of this saga.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Quote:

---

Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
Mal's inception was an accidental one. Miles most likely understood this. If the film is in reality then Miles mentions to Cobb that Cobb wants to borrow "another one of his students" for more of the dreamwork that Miles understands.

---

Yes it was an accident and I can agree that Miles probably knows as well. But if Miles is in true reality and Mal really is dead then look at it this way.
If you helped someone get a gun (say for hunting or whatever) and then they accidently shot someone you love very much, you may understand that it was an accident, you may even be forgiving but would you help them to get another gun? It may just be my way but I certainly wouldn't help them to get one in the same way that I can't see Miles helping Cobb in the way he did. Even though I agree that Miles would understand dreams far better than Cobb, he did teach them so there may be some guilt on Miles's part for that. I just can't see Miles putting the life of an innocent (Ariadne) into that potential danger knowing what happened to his daughter.
This is more of what leads me to think it's all a dream. Ariadne picks things up quicker than anyone before (Cobb remarks to that) and she almost forces Cobb to face his past by going into his memory/dreams and asking questions etc. I definitely think she was a plant, maybe had some training (from Miles?) beforehand or at least knew what to expect. I mean, she's a student and she didn't even question the fact that this job 'wasn't exactly legal', she just appeared to accept it.

Quote:

---

Cobb seems to break most of the rules he tells others. He explains things one way, but that's not always how things actually are.

---

This is one point that leads me again to think that it's all a dream. He says one thing but does or has done another thing. The rules appear to be of his making for the most part, maybe because of what happened to Mal. If we take that idea further to say that all (or most) of the important points about Cobb aren't necessarily true then it backs up some of my ideas. I'm not saying that they're outright lies, just not correct as we see them. We know he breaks his own rules so that's covered. If he thinks he's in reality then he isn't. He thinks Mal is dead but she isn't. His/Mal's totem isn't telling him the truth, a point I made awhile ago about his totem not being right I just hadn't had the thoughts to piece it all together.

On another note regarding the meaning of names people have connected the name Cobb to Cobol, the company that is after him. Maybe but I have another one that I will state now that I am not serious about, I just want to play around a little bit.
Over here in England we have a word called cobblers that means lies. Nolan is English so he he would know the word. Connection?

Quote:

---

The film, or Cobb's explanation, seems to indicate the dream levels are directly up and down, even though many people are sharing the dream. Apparently all the players must also be present in the upper level dream in order to participate in the next lower level dream, except for limboland where anybody can drop to from any other level.
What if this is not really so? what if a lateral move can be made, to jump from one dream to another dream - either one also a level lower than the parent dream (a sibling dream) or even one not dreamt by other players of the current or higher levels of your dream?
If Cobb's "reality" is not really so, then by Mal not appearing anymore in his "reality" level of dream proves that Mal, working in the actual reality above to bring Cobb out of the dream they once shared, can insert herself in his dreams below the level Cobb thinks is reality, effectively skipping a level herself (at this point you can start to speculate which of the Mals were constructs of Cobb's - if any - and which were Mal herself, or a construct of one of the people trying to help Mal bring Cobb back).
So what if Mal and friends are trying to dream and perhaps use several levels

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME