The "Inception" Thread

[mousepod]

Originally Posted by Alex

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).

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

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).

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.