Inception, Finally

[sub_divided]

I know it's redundant to endorse the movie at this point, but: it's much better than you'd guess from the trailer or (non-spoiler) synopsis. Those make Inception look like a heist flick that takes place in the subconscious - which it still is, kind of - in a way that seems like a huge waste: enter a world of constructed reality, where normal rules don't apply, just to conduct very boring corporate espionage?

But it turns out the the heist plot is just the excuse - though it has a very moving resolution, I cried - and the real story is about Cobb, the main character's, issues stemming from previous work as a dream-extractor. And this story (Cobb's) fully realizes the wonderful/awful potential of being able to spend an infinite amount of time in a private shared world.

In other words - and without going into details - Nolan is playing with very powerful forces here; and as always, his execution is good enough that you can focus on the ideas without being tripped up by how they are presented.


Thoughts
Firstly, this movie contains a lot of exposition. Nolan is lucky that he can hire actors like Ellen and Leonardo, who look sympathetic, engaged, and totally serious while they are explaining that in order to wake up from heavy sedative, you need to be simultaneously jolted in the Real World *and* on all levels of the Dream.

People who were like "this movie didn't make sense until the last two minutes" were probably objecting to how weird this rule is - or maybe to the fact that it's a bit ridiculous for a movie that takes place in a lawless place (dreams) to have so many rules in the first place. XD On the whole, the movie does a good job of explaining what's happening on screen while it is happening.

I'd like to believe that Cobb goes back to reality at the end of the movie, though I know it's not likely, with his kids looking exactly the same as they did years ago. But as Kara said, whether it was reality or a dream doesn't matter: the important think is that Cobb didn't wait to see whether the top would fall, he didn't care.

Following from that, the reason he didn't stay with his wife wasn't that he prized "reality" over the dream-world, but that the version of his wife in the dream-world was a diminished version of the real person he'd known - that she wasn't good enough.

But if his children were dreams, they were good enough??? What happens when they grow up and he can't imagine them grown up? That's why I prefer the ending to be reality and dislike Chris Nolan's deliberate attempts to be ambiguous here. Because we all know, right, that ambiguity is just a way to keep the people who prefer to see an optimistic ending happy while secretly not believing yourself that the optimistic ending would really happen.

Anyway at least Sato came back to reality in order to fulfill his promise to Cobb and be young again, and Fisher came back to reality in order finally live outside his father's shadow - triumphantly. I was impressed by how natural this idea - which sounded quite ludicrous when they were hashing it out beforehand - really seemed when implemented by Fisher himself.

Following on that theme, I can see how the dream world would come to be more compelling than reality. It's not like dreams are easier, or safer, or even more exciting than reality, but that you don't have to see through all of the details for the dream to work out as planned - if you're good, your subconscious and the target's subconscious will help you by changing reality so that your half-baked, improvised ideas actually work as planned. So it's a world where - once you've learned the tricks of lucid dreaming, and if your subconscious doesn't hate you - you can get what you want, always.

Again, can I just emphasize that this totally contrived plot - Fisher doesn't once mess with the script the dream-extractors have laid out for him, except for his mental security, which doesn't count, as it is reflexive - is still remarkably emotionally moving. XD; By the end, I was really glad that Cobb had insisted they plant a positive idea in his subconscious, and not a negative one. Because Cobb would know, wouldn't he...

I feel like there should be a warning on this movie for suicidal people. WARNING: Movie contains themes of reality being a dream you need to kill yourself to wake up from.

In conclusion, I think I would have liked any movie that presented such a complicated and "logical" metaphor for: codependence, shared worlds, murder-suicide pacts, and shared/drugged dreaming.


Plot holes
There's no way Arthur could have gotten them all out of the room, in free fall,and to the elevator to plant the bomb, while also grappling in mid-air with security forces, in three minutes.

Why does the kick have to be simultaneous? Why can't you wake up on a deeper level, then on the next level, then on the next level, in sequence?

Why bring the chemist? Unless because he asked to come - and having the extra hands along did turn out to be a boon, except for Sato who was a liability - the "no room for tourists" lampshades this line so you don't mind so much.

Even everything being so orderly is explained by the fact that it is a consciously constructed world, to which the subconscious of the target is brought. But Kara was like, still, if that was me I would have filled up the orderly world with much weirder shit.

I'm with Sabina in not really getting the urge to write slash for this movie, though... for one thing, Arthur and Eames have sort of blurred together in my mind, and I can't remember which one was responsible for what or what they looked like or what their personalities were supposed to be or anything like that. XD; Maybe if they'd been played by more famous actors.

Comments

just fyi

[ex_ayalesca554]

On IMDB, Cobb's kids in the last scene are played by different actors than the children in his previous dreamscapes/scenes.

Claire Geare ... Phillipa (3 years)
Magnus Nolan ... James (20 months)

Taylor Geare ... Phillipa (5 years)
Johnathan Geare ... James (3 years)

I also read someone mentioning that they're wearing a different pair of shoes (black instead of white, or the other way around).

Whether or not this MEANS anything ... :P

[tsubame]

See, I don't think the kick was entirely simultaneous, was it? Since technically none of them woke up "all the way" with the shared dream, they only woke up to the level of the Rainy LA dream when the kick happened. Though perhaps that was just because they were all still sedated IRL?

As for bringing the chemist, it seems to me that they had all the different levels planned out beforehand. So he was an integral part of the plan.

Regarding the weirdness, well, yeah, weirder would have been a lot more fun. Though during the actual inception part of the dream, the weirdness probably wouldn't have served to fool Fischer.

See, I came out of the movie thinking, "so, who are the slashers gonna pick? If I were going to slash two people, who would I slash?" And naturally my choice was totally not the one that the fandom went for. Why does it always happen that way?

It seems I underestimated just how much everyone loved Arthur. And I forgot that slashers don't care if there are somewhat canon couples in place.

::coughs:: I would have picked Cobb and Saito for being slashable. "Let's be young men together again" I mean come on. How is that not slashable? And yet.

::more coughing:: Completely unsolicited comment, sorry . . .

Re: just fyi

[tsubame]

Yeah, I read that they were wearing different clothing, too. But I think that all the confusion is understandable, since we never really see the faces of the kids when they're young. And people don't tend to remember clothing unless it's particularly striking or they're particularly attuned to it . . .

[yifu]

Why does the kick have to be simultaneous? Why can't you wake up on a deeper level, then on the next level, then on the next level, in sequence?

Simultaneous would be more exciting? Which it does, IMO.

I can't imagine pairing any of the characters in the movie, except for Dom/Mal, so my OTP is Arthur/his wardrobe.

Off on a tangent: I can usually tell whether or not I'll like a movie after watching the trailer, but last summer two trailers proved me that won't always be the case. The first is Inception - the trailers gave me the impression that the movie would be something like a jumble of dream scenes and I wouldn't enjoy it. That shows how little I know. The second is of course Failbender. The trailer does look somewhat promising - the actual movie, however...as if the pain of whitewashing isn't enough.

[lacewood]

I actually think Nolan's attempt at making the ending ~ambiguous~ was MORE predictable than if he'd played a happy ending straight, because you KNOW that Nolan won't play a happy ending straight. So you can kind of guess how it was going to end by the time he explained Maud's death, and it seemed kind of cheap. XD

And I'm with you on how the idea they were planning to plant in Fischer sounded kind of dumb in theory but was actually surprisingly moving in execution.

I assumed the point of the dream world being so orderly is that the subject has to believe that it's actually AWAKE - but your subconscious can make you believe some ridiculous shit when it's dreaming, so... I guess the key is the subconscious differentiates between the whacked out reality it creates, vs the whacked out reality someone else creates for you? But-- Oh geeze, self, why are you overthinking this anyway. XD

(What I wanted to know was why Ariadne had to demand that she be let in on the job and the team was apparently going to go in WITHOUT her originally. She's the architect, shouldn't she have to be there by default? >_> Also, Nolan, what... do you have against married women? Because 3 movies in, it's starting to look like you might want to see a therapist about this. XD)

Re: just fyi

[sub_divided]

So what you're telling me is that this was an elaborate troll on Nolan/the grandfather's part, to pose the kids the exact same way and put them in the exact same clothes (except shoes!) when Cobb got to meet them again. Great...

(Or maybe his imagination aged them up lol.)

Re: just fyi

[sub_divided]

Whoops, I just read the comment above about the clothes being different too. Still, Nolan was totally psyching us out with that staging.

[sub_divided]

But they made elaborate preparations for it to be simultaneous! With music, and everything! I mean yeah there was a split second before the truck hit the water, but the whole thing was rigged like a row of dominos. And I don't see why you'd need that to be true, unless you could only manage one "rude disruptive shock" at each level and needed it for both entry and exit.

Yeah, it wouldn't have fooled him, I guess. Or, it would have fooled him while he was dreaming (we accept all kinds of things while we';re dreaming), but not after he woke up.

Hahaha, I would totally support Cobb/Sato. It feels like the fandom as a whole just collectively decided it was bored with Cobb, and his dead-wife angst -- which granted, is a cliche, but can we get an acknowledgment of the enormous scope of the trauma??? There is a difference between "wallowing in your grief" and "being haunted/sabotaged by your own subconscious".

If they're just tired of the Straight White Male Lead, they should leave Arthur and Eames out, too!

Sato and Cobb are the only people who understand what it's like to live down there, they could bond epically.

[ex_ayalesca554]

Sato and Cobb are the only people who understand what it's like to live down there, they could bond epically.

shit this is actually the kind of fic I could want to write! stuck together in a shared VR for ever and --

-- OH WAIT I ALREADY DID. though that might not stop me!

[sub_divided]

I was wishing too hard for a happy ending to do much predicting, XD. But I know which one I'd rather have - the one that fits the Heist movie framework (team pulls it off and retires... until the next "last" job), not the one that fits the horror movie framework (am I dreaming? am I awake? oh, I'm awake now... OR AM I).

Huh. Yeah, you could have a point there - dream-extractor teams can study the subject's objective reality, and recreate that fairly convincingly in a dream, but they have no idea what's in the subject's subconscious mind. The mind would probably immediately attack a foreign weirdness.

On the other hand, that only explains why the dream landscapes are orderly - it doesn't explain why the subject always seams to populate them with ordinary things. I mean, if someone made a nice New York for me to dream in, who's to say I wouldn't fill it with Godzilla?

Yeah really, how are they going to go in without the person who knows how the mazes work! Is it because she's a GIRL???

You might... be on to something with the dead wife thing. :p

[sub_divided]

This only just occurred to you? XD

[ex_ayalesca554]

which "this"?????? the fic idea, or the shippy idea? (I do ship them now.)

[paradoxical]

Part of simultaneous kick would be, I presume, because they did not want Fischer to know that he's in a dream that they're orchestrating, and if they did it one level at a time, he'd wake up gasping and knowing that someone was in his head while he's asleep. This way, he isn't aware of it at all when he wakes up. At least this is my guess.

repost

[sub_divided]

See comment above for the only logical reason I could think of for *needing* a simultaneous kick. It does make the movie more exciting, I agree.

That is totally what I saw in the trailer. A jumble of dream scenes, strung together into a heist plot, with all of the most interesting ones coming from a videogame-like "tutorial stage" at the beginning of the movie, to show off special effects.

The Avatar trailer, on the other hand, wasn't bad! Unlike the trailer for Shyamalan's trapped-in-an-elevator movie, which was awful. (But at least the movie's budget is probably small.)

[sub_divided]

Huh. That actually makes sense. Or at least, he'd return to his senses feeling bruised, as if he'd been rudely awakened four or five times.

[sub_divided]

The shared-dreams = shared-(virtual)reality idea.

[ex_ayalesca554]

ah, well, it's not entirely the same -- I like VR more, less room for authorial BS and handwaving, but hey dreams work too. XDDDDD

[lacewood]

I would've definitely preferred the movie to end in reality - unless they make a sequel where MAL has to extract DOM from this dream, but what are the odds of that? XD

I suppose they might have wanted to keep her out of it because she's still a college student and not yet up to gunning for a career in crime or something, but HOW were they going to enter HER dreamworld without her? Guys, what the hell.

Seriously, at first I was just like, maybe for your next movie you could try a plot that doesn't revolve around dead ladies, Nolan? And then I thought about it some more and realised, dead married (or going to be married) ladies and it started to feel a little more specific and disturbing. XD

[paradoxical]

Yup. They didn't want him to be suspicious at all, because then he'd know that the idea he had when he woke up might have been planted or something. I'm pretty much sticking to this as the theory as to why they needed a simultaneous kick. XD

[sub_divided]

It's a good theory!

[tsubame]

Re: Ariadne . . . actually she wasn't supposed to be part of the team, since the Architect isn't actually needed for them to enter the dream. All she had to do is design the levels and then teach them to the dreamers-- that was stated in the beginning. The reason she came was because she convinced Cobb to bring her ("either you bring me or you tell one of them about your messed up brain" was the gist of it, I believe).

[tsubame]

Yeah, the fandom has jumped the Cobb boat over collective Arthur-squee. I mean, Arthur was awesome-- possibly my favorite character (though I like Saito a great deal), and that was one heck of a nice waistcoat he was kicking ass in-- but I do think that Arthur and Ariadne make a cute pairing, and Cobb certainly had his cool moments there.

I think that people don't really look past Cobb's dead-wife angst, since it's so essential to the plot of the movie, to pairing him up with anyone. Plus he's obsessive over his kids, and fandom seems to prefer their slashables kiddie-free. But single dads need love too! And you're right that both he and Saito are the only ones who have survived being trapped in limbo-- so they've both experienced what it is to live to old age, only to be abruptly rewound to do it again. They're both truly "old souls" by the end of the movie, living a second human lifetime.

Plus a huge part of the movie was Cobb working through his dead-wife-angst. Presumably he's also worked his way through his lived-a-human-lifetime-already angst, too, years past. And now Saito has to work through that . . . so I feel like there's lots of material there.

[lacewood]

But this is kind of strange, because how does the dream world, designed and built by the architect, exist if the architect's own mind isn't present in the shared dreaming then? Does it exist in the minds of the other team members instead? What if different team members remember different details differently, whose would take precedence? Or does a specific team member then have to remember and take on the architect's world?

(Come to think, the team is shown meeting in the dream world prior to the mission, presumably to familiarise themselves with it. But if Cobb is so afraid of knowing the layout, shouldn't he have avoided exactly this?)

Probably I'm just overthinking this, that's the problem with the movie trying to set down specific "rules" but not explaining the full structure (if it exists). XD;

[tsubame]

I don't remember everything from the movie explanations anymore, since it's been a while since I saw it. But it seems that there's only one dreamer, and the other people are just wandering around in that person's dream. So the architect teaches the world to the dreamer. Presumably they're all trained and have experience in holding dreams together and not forgetting the important parts. Those who are wandering around in the dream can also add to it-- the guns, Cobb's freight train and Mal, et cetera. That was my understanding, at least . . .

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, that's what I got out of it too. Ariadne designed the layouts; in the month leading up to the heist she taught them to the chemist (city level), Arthur (hotel level) and Eames (snow level). Everyone's subconscious is linked together, so they are all populating the dream (though ideally not with anything weird that will tip off the target), but only person is actually responsible for the physical layout.

[sub_divided]

I was just talking to a friend about this, and we decided that it might also have been related to the difficulty of arranging more than one kick in a level... because you'd need two, right? One to bring everyone back to the level below (that was timed with the level below), and then one to get out and go to the level above (that was timed with the level above). Considering that these kicks also need to get everyone out at the same time, they tended to be something extreme, like blowing up the snow base, or (originally) blowing out the floor of the hotel room or driving a truck off a bridge. So it'd be hard to do them twice, even if you didn't have subconscious security to worry about and could take your time.