If you're going no spoiler, I'm moving the discussion to a new thread.

Thanks, Greg. Great idea!



Yay! Inception Free Reign!!!

Why not?

If the whole thing is a dream then all the stuff about totems is bull**** that must have been foisted off on Cobb somehow, even though he's an expert in this stuff. Presumably it is a tool to strengthen Cobb's belief that the first dream level is the real world. Or we have to assume that Cobb's totem was compromised off screen since it is shown working (that is, falling).

Secondly, all the stuff about Limbo is bull**** because that level is then simply another constructed level used to reach Cobb's final catharsis.

Are there really different layers of dreaming or is it all just actually single layer with them moving from one part of the maze to another? Is there really any time dilation in dreams, there's no longer any objective reason to believe so since we have no knowledge of how fast time is passing in reality. Is the stuff about sedatives all just made up to strengthen the reality of the fake? The explanation of aggressive projections must be a lie (but they're a bit of a plot hole anyway) story since presumably Fischer is a co-conspirator and perfectly aware he's dreaming.

All that's left is "you can share dreams and in doing so impact their reality." Everything else in the movie can be accepted or dismissed at will without impacting the credibility of that conclusion. But even that isn't entirely there, why can't it be that the whole movie is the natural dream of a damaged psyche working through guilt over his wife (that is, maybe the whole movie is the dream of DiCaprio's character from Shutter Island).

So, having determined that two or more of the core rules of this presented world are lies, what else is a lie and how do you decide?

That's my view of the "it's all a dream" theory anyway.

Thanks, GD.

In Inception-related news, Tom Hardy, who plays Eames, says of course he's had sex with men, and discusses his fluid sexuality and femininity/masculinity flow. :D

Alex,

I don't think you need to throw out any of the core rules and still have the movie take place inside a dream state.

If we assume the dreamer has to be present (which there's no reason to actually assume, Arthur is presented as the dreamer of the Hotel Level and so it is the scenes with Cobb and other people where Arthur isn't presented that have to be explained within the presented framework of the movie).

You just have to have a frequent transfer of who the controlling dreamer is.

There are scenes without Cobb (add to the list the first scene of Fischer and his dad on his deathbed; the other only crew member present for that is Eames).
There are scenes where Cobb is alone (of the top of my head) with Ariadne (late night bull session), his father (when he goes to get a new architect), Eames (the bar where we first meet him), and Arthur (the hotel room in Kyoto).

There is nobody who is present for every scene of the "reality" level.

Alex, the most successful elements of dreaming presented by the film are those that resonate with our actual experience of dreaming. Thus, time dilation is brilliant. Most of us experience that in dreams, so it was a fun element to have it quantified and further expounded such that the dilation became greater the deeper the levels you experience.

On that note, another resonant concept - in fact, the underpinning of the entire move - is that there are dreams within dreams. I daresay most of us have experienced that. I know I have.

The audience doesn't need to be convinced of these concepts. They have experienced them. But, yeah, totems are bullsh!t. :)

True, it isn't necessary for it to still be a dream state. But I don't see how the presentation of totems and limbo is consistent with your theory of what the purpose of the dream state is. At least not without assuming facts not in evidence within the movie.

But I'd love to be shown what I'm missing.

Good point. I completely forgot about that. So the absence of Cobb from any scene isn't a plot hole at all. Nice.

I'm fairly certain that they present Miles as Mal's father, not Cobb's. Perhaps he's the one who is trying to get Cobb to admit that he performed inception on his daughter.

What if Mal isn't dead, but in some kind of permanent dream state? If she was the dreamer, that might explain why Cobb uses her totem - and why her "secret" was the totem itself.