finally had a chance to watch it last night, and loved it. Such an awesome movie, I want to see it again.
Great movie. I could get into all of those arguments over the final scene, but I’m just going to stay the hell out.
Wow, amazing fucking movie! The concept is so brilliant!!! It’s so intense!!!
Blu-Ray = Insta-buy
Its all it has to be said.
man some of my friends are saying it was boring as hell…to them i say open your minds. its weird to have people say this is boring, since i was on the edge of my seat.
What did you guys think of the performances in the movie?
Leo was good but not as good as in other movies
I was disappointed in Levitt because hes been getting alot of hype for his acting lately and lacked any charisma in this role
Ellen Paige was good, she left her Janine Garofalo Jr. act at the door and played the role straight up. I also noticed how pretty she is in this film.
Tom Hardy stole the movie for me, he was great.
The japanese guy who was Saito was stereotypical but good enough.
and Cilian Murphy and Michael Caine fit their roles but didnt really have much of a part in things.
[details=Spoiler] The movie ran long but I would still have liked to see the actual RESULT of the inception where Cilian’s character decides to split up the company and appears to have a change of heart. They should have spent a LITTLE time with the cilian murphy character. But then again it was a 2 and a half hour movie so i can see why they cut it.
Also, he couldnt see his kids face if it was a dream so I’m going to say not a dream. [/details]
Movie was def gdlk.
My opinion
Spoiler
Team “Not A Dream”
i dont think levit was dissapointing…i think the character was written didnt play to levitts strengths. he plays better more odd ball/neurotic characters.
saito wasnt stereotypical at all imo. fuck…he was a damn co-star and not playing a foo. he was a pivotal part of the plot…def not stereotypical.
with the exception of Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy and to some extent Watanabe, the supporting cast really did nothing more than perform perfectly adequate versions of the characters they were supposed to portray. This doesn’t bother me, however, because the movie details Cobb’s emotional retribution and conquering of his heavy burden of guilt, and to draw attention away from this would be doing the story a disservice.I loved Leo in this role, he did absolutely great, one of my favorite performances of his.
I thought it was a bad ass movie. Great special effects, Ellen Paige, explosions, guns & using your brain to try to figure it out, XD.
Question about Totems:
You can look, feel, and even grasp totems as long as you don’t understand its tendency, right?
saw it last weekend. it was great. may see it again
I didn’t think Ellen Paige was great or bad. She was kinda there too me. nothing special.
[quote=“SnakeAes, post:238, topic:105057”]
PLOT SPOILER WARNING.
Ending
[details=Spoiler]The way I see it is, Cobb is clearly not in limbo because there’s a definite time when he wakes up on the plane. He wakes up to see everyone else, content to have completed their mission - with the exception of Saito, who looks like he just woke up from a very long dream lol.
:>Editor’s Notes: The illusion of waking up is not at all enough to substantiate reality…they woke up from saito’s 2nd level into the first and we had to be shown that it was a dream. Else we would have accepted it as reality also. I’ve woken up from a dream only to discover later that I was still dreaming before.
Also, if we consider that Cobb is on the same “dream” level (reality) when he sees his Totem fall as he is when he sees his kids, it doesn’t make sense to believe that previously the Totem fell and now that he has seen his kids, it won’t fall. Again, that assumes Cobb never enters a dream state between waking up on the plane and seeing his kids.
Editor’s Notes :> Of course he didn’t he had just slept for several hours on a very long plane flight. Add to that, that he had already stated that he no longer dreams.
Something else I noticed is that you never see the kids’ faces all throughout the movie until the last scene. Any other time, their faces are hidden or obscured - my interpretation of that is that it’s either because he’s dreaming and they’re not real, or Cobb’s subconscious guilt at not being able to see his kids again makes him literally unable to see his kids (i.e. see their faces) in his dreams. Yet, at the end of the movie he is able to see them, plus we the viewers, are finally able to see them. So that’s another reason I think the ending is real.
Editor’s Note: It would make perfect sense for him to have a mental block that inhibited him from seeing the face of his children. He didn’t see their faces in limbo either. Once he had gotten over his guilt and moved on, these inhibitions were gone. Hence he could see his children faces.[sarcasm] I find it very plausible that his children didn’t age a day, wore the exact outfit he last saw them in and remained in the exact same house despite their mother dying, their father going on the run and guardinship being transferred to their grandmother who allows them to speak to the man that allegedly killed her daughter.[/sarcasm]
My feeling is, Cobb couldn’t possibly be in Limbo when he sees his kids - if he were, we would expect one of two scenarios: One, he is in Limbo and is back in the same Limbo he was in with Mal (and later showed to Ariadne). We’ve seen that Limbo dream and know what it looks like, plus, isn’t it crumbling and in disrepair? I don’t fully recall on that part, so someone correct me if I’m wrong. Anyway, the other scenario would be that he’s in an entirely new Limbo state, which would start him with a clean slate, which would have required him to recreate all of the environment, which he didn’t do (or at least, we didn’t see him do it).
*Editor’s Note: They woke up in limbo with a shoreline and a beach. I don’t think the entire environment had or typically has to be recreated. *
Lastly, if we are to believe that they were never in “reality” to begin with, that would mean that Cobb is dreaming on his own, which would mean that every member of his team is a projection. That seems pretty implausible given their unique insights and talents, many of which Cobb does not share (especially Eames, the impersonator, and Yusuf, the chemist).
*Sharing talents/insights has nothing to do with a projection. In a dream I might interact with a wizard…just because I am not a wizard doesn’t mean I can’t imagine one. Projections are made up from imagination. Hence, some are not based on reality. *
[quote]
[/details]
yea my rebuttals are in the quote
I’m going to repost this because I don’t think the arguments were ever rebutted.
I think that’s what makes this movie so great. Both sides of the argument can be correct with the evidence given.
^ the totem is not meant to ‘show’ her really anything, it’s supposed to be symbolic. Earlier in the movie he mentions how people often automatically create a safe-like area to store their most private and important thoughts, and by cobb spinning the top in this place, he’s really planting the idea in her mind that their world was not real. I do not believe it was intended for her to just open the safe one day and see it, thinking ‘ahh shit’. This is how cobb got mal to trust him, not the scene at the train, that was just to calm her as a train approached their heads.
Also, regarding limbo, it is not simply another level of dream like you’re treating it. Limbo is empty dreamspace, and if you die in limbo under normal conditions, you will wake up. This is suggested (but obviously not confirmed due to the ambiguous ending) when cobb and mal wake up in ‘reality’ after getting hit by the train , or cobb ‘waking up’ on the plane after completing his mission. In the fischer mission, however, they could not simply terminate out of the dream by killing themselves in limbo due to the potent nature of the sedative, meaning they wouldn’t wake up. It was therefore necessary for them to synchronize a kick in limbo and in the third level for those in limbo to move ‘up a level’ (not really up a level, limbo is just a deep area of dreamspace) so that they wouldn’t become lost in it. When cobb found saito, however, the effect of the sedative had worn off, and if they remembered themselves at that point, which they did, they could have (and allegedly did) terminated out of limbo by killing themselves.
It’s not that cobb can’t architect , it’s that he won’t, because if he builds the dream level, his subconcious (mal included) will know the exact layout, and she has become very dangerous at this point due to cobbs incredible sense of guilt.
When he ignores when someone asks if she is dead, i believe that is ambiguous. If it were reality, cobb could simply be consumed by the guilt of her death, but the fact that he has her very thoughts, emotions, and actions within his head signifies that she is not really dead to him. if it were a dream however, it wouldn’t really make sense, because if cobb knew at any point he was dreaming, or even suspected it, he could alter his own dream world. The possibility still exists, however, that cobb is within someone elses dream, and he is the subject, in which he could never really prove that mal is dead.
I do not believe it could be true that the entire course of the movie could be cobb still within limbo , or a dreamstate, for the sole purpose of the top itself. Had cobb been in dream, every time he spun the top, it would merely act as he had convinced himself it would (i.e if he thought he was in reality, the top would topple over , as cobb would be the dreamer and in control of this, subconciously). This would render the entire ending sequence useless, as it would not matter in the slightest whether or not the top fell over or didn’t, because it was up to cobb’s will. This is why I think the possibilities exist as such:
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cobb is in reality when he believes it to be so, and is within dream when he believes it to be so (the movie is completely honest with us). the top should fall over in this case
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cobb never came out of limbo after entering the second time, meaning the waking up on the plane sequence as well as subsequently going to his house and seeing his children. the top would continue spinning.
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after cobb and ariadne enter his own personal dream, cobb never truly wakes up, and the entire progression of the film thereafter is dreamstate. Evidence to support this woud be that after cobb ‘wakes up’, he proceeds to the bathroom to spin his top, but it gets cut short by another character interrupting him. cobb never spins the totem again until the end of the movie. in this situation, the top would continue to spin.
Last thing i’m gonna talk about is when you discuss the ‘who are you to say otherwise’ line by the old man. That’s just him speaking to the dreaming peoples’ choice to live out their dreams like they are reality and accept their alleged reality as dream. This is simply their moral choice, as it is cobb’s moral choice at the end of the film to accept the reality he was in to be real, nomatter whether it was or not.
To be honest with you, I’m not sure whether or not I understood what your original theory was in the first place. If it was that ‘cobb is still in a dream at the end’, of course I can’t dispute that. The audience is not meant to believe one way or another at the end imo. They are supposed to consider the possibility that both possibilities could be true, with evidence to support each claim, and it is really impossible to know which is correct. Like I said earlier, the course of events in the film as well as the slowing motion of the top at the end suggest that the film occured in reality, but Nolan plants the idea in our heads at the end that it is possible that certain elements we believed to be reality were in fact, not. This idea is indisputable, as the possibility cannot be disproved.
dear god, I should have just said this^. so much easier to write
Inception: The Infographic [PIC]
Another chart for the Dream Timeline
[spoiler=]As great as it is, i’m finding some problems with the layer after the snow fortress being referred to as Cobb’s Dream. I’m pretty sure they say they went into limbo. However, it would make more sense if it WAS Cobb’s dream.[/spoiler]
I think Ellen Page’s level of refinement in this movie was absolutely spectacular. Let me explain:
Any crappy actor can portray basic emotions like anger or happiness, but it’s the actor’s ability to portray subtle emotions that really makes them stand out, at least in my mind.
There are two instances I can think of, off the top of my head, where I clearly saw this from Ellen Page during Inception.
I guess I should use spoiler tags.
Ellen Page is awesome
[details=Spoiler]The first occasion I noticed Ellen Page’s acting was when Cobb puts Ariadne to the test, giving her two minutes to create a maze that takes one minute to solve. After she fails the first time, you see the mild frustration and determination when she tries again. Then when she fails, she pauses, thinks, and turns the notepad over, drawing on the side without the graph lines. When Cobb takes longer to solve this one, even before he has said that she passed, Ariadne has this confidently smug look on her face - but not conceited or cocky.
I thought her ability to nail an emotion and detail out a thought process with that kind of clarity really showed her talents as an actress right there. That was a moment in the movie where I logically and emotionally followed her train of thought because of her acting.
The other instance is when they’re in the Hotel Level of the dream and she is sitting with Arthur. The projections begin to stare at them and Arthur tries to draw attention away from them by stealing a kiss from Ariadne. When she observes that the projections are still staring, Arthur shrugs it off and says something to the effect of “it was worth a shot,” implying that he had a feeling all along that it wouldn’t work and just wanted to kiss her.
Ariadne reacts with disbelief, but you can tell that she’s mildly amused. I thought she nailed that one too.[/details]
It’s those little details that made me really appreciate Ellen Page’s performance.