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Inception

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Blue Kitty:
Holy fucking shit, that was amazing.  I can't describe how awesome that movie was, and how much my head hurts thinking through all the things.

knives:
Scarred, that's actually pretty close to my theory. The whole film is just the dream of some guy. The symbolism, rules, and other not reality qualities matter to him, but from our view it's just abstract. That makes the movie to a degree very reflexive and needs that final shot. The events are false to the characters as it is to us as an audience. It's almost like asking why should we care about a fiction. DiCaprio's answer by turning away from the totem suggests to just live with it as it will leave him happy and without regret and obsession. For us obviously those aspects don't go into play and that's just another level to the film, but still has some significance to what I'm talking about.

jimbunny:
Nothing precludes Joseph Gordon Levitt's character from being a robot, either, but that doesn't mean there aren't subtle hints to that effect.

And I noticed the kids as well, but my objection isn't just to the spinning top, it's to the suggestion that everything might actually be a lie. And that, by the way, is how the rest of the movie frames it - as a distinction between truth and lies; the force of the movie is behind the idea of truth - reality, consequences - as the thing that must be returned to, no matter how enticing the lie. The movie's sudden "eh, maybe not" moment undercuts all that with an idea (reality is an illusion, it's all in your head, etc.) which is, pragmatically speaking, useless. If I can compare this movie to The Matrix, they're thematically very similar. It's just that the latter films (even after two disastrous sequels) still held on to the "real world" as its core value component. I feel like Inception sacrificed (or at least toyed with sacrificing) its quest for "what is important" for the sake of that gasp from the audience. That's why I thought it was cheap; it makes the rest of a good movie cheaper.

RallyMonkey:
I saw it again last night.

As to the kids, they are definitely older. As they're played by different actors, which is backed up by the credits. With:

Phillipa (3 years)
James (20 months)

Phillipa (5 years)
James (3 years)

And I still think it's important to sit back and realize what the totems are meant for, as far as I understand it. They're purely to know that you're not in someone else's dream. It has nothing to do with the spinning of the top, but just if it feels right to Cobb. If he was in someone else's dream, which he would be if he never got out of the Inception, he would not be comfortable with the idol.

So this leaves three options:

He's not dreaming.
He's in his own dream.
He's in Mal's dream.

Even if the top does stop spinning, it doesn't preclude any of these possibilities, as there's nothing saying that the top has to keep spinning if it's a dream, Mal just had it do so when she was dreaming.

Though, another possibility is that limbo doesn't really work under the limits set by the movie. They kept mentioning that Cobb had been to limbo before, but they had never actually shown that in the film as far as I could see. The world Cobb and Mal created was just in a nested dream. So, if he did go to limbo, it would be when they killed themselves by train. In which case, I would say our best option is that the entire movie takes place in that limbo, since he doesn't ever mention actually going.

I am putting way too much thought into this.

jimbunny:
Sorry, RM, didn't see your post.

If he's still in a dream, though, Cobb should still be in Limbo (we assume that Cobb and Saito shoot themselves in order to wake up, just as Cobb and Mal killed themselves on the tracks to wake up the first time). Cobb washes up onto the beach even though he was already in Limbo (after talking to/being knifed by Mal for the last time), which implies that you just keep going back each time you die, unless something happens to allow you to wake up. Therefore, showing up on the plane would be absolutely unlike previous experience. To me, if the movie is held to be consistent, this suggests that either: a) Cobb and Saito succeed at waking up (possibly as a result of the 10-hour dream ending), or b) dreaming operates differently than how we've been told, and the whole movie has taken place in someone's (probably Cobb's) subconscious where there are actually no rules as such. I won't lie: I think, at least for how this film was made, Movie A is great and Movie B sucks.

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