He isn't dreaming. But the thing is incredible. It cuts out before you find out because it doesn't matter. He has finally stopped caring about whether he is dreaming and he walks off and leaves the top behind to see his kids. The whole movie, he tries so hard to distinguish between reality and the dream. So hard that they become inseparable. He always says never to create a dream from a memory because that is how you lose track of reality. But what does he do? He creates a prison of memories of his wife, Mal, to keep her alive. The top be spins represents reality. That's why Mal locks it in a safe in limbo when she goes crazy. She has given up her reality. Constantly through the movie, characters are telling him that he needs to wake up. When he is visiting the chemist who makes the drug that puts them under, an old man tells him something like, "who are you to say that this is not real. They dream to wake up." That is exactly what Leonardo's character is like. Later Mal, his wife, tells him at the very end that he spends his life running from corporations and governments trying to hunt him, just like how a dreamer's subconscious attacks it. His realities are crossed. In the end, he faces Mal in limbo and tells her he needs to wake up. He Leaves her behind. Finally, he has let her go. He has stopped dreaming. He wakes up and is allowed home. That's when he spins he top but leaves it because his kids walk in the room. He finally sees their faces and he leaves the top behind because it doesn't matter. (It is also significant that the top used to be Mal's talisman to keep track of reality that he now uses.) As if that wasn't enough evidence for him being awake, I caught a detail that just proves that Christopher Nolan is just pure brilliance incarnate. The girl that DeCaprio hires as a dream architect is named Ariadne. In Greek mythology, in the myth of Theseus, Theseus gets trapped in a labyrinth having to face a minotaur at the very center. The only way out was to face it at the center and then find one's way out. Theseus survived because King Minos (the king who owned the labyrinth) has a daughter who fell in love with Theseus and gave him a golden spool of thread that he could trace his trail with so that he could find his way back out. Her name? Ariadne. In the movie the whole time, that girl is trying to bring DeCaprio back to reality. To pull him out of his labyrinth. But before he can escape, he has to travel to the center (limbo) and face his Minotaur (Mal). Then, he follows the thread Ariadne (the maze maker) created for him to get out, and he escapes back to reality. Absolutely brilliant.

We know that Mal filed a letter with their attorney explaining how she was fearful for her life and that Cobb threatened to kill her, to persuade Cobb to also kill himself. We can assume Mal’s intentions from this letter came to fruition as Cobb is not able to go back to the US without being arrested.

Would Miles (Mal’s father) think the letter is true, that Cobb really did kill Mal? We can assume not since I’m sure he wouldn’t talk to Cobb at all, let alone help him, if he thought he had killed his daughter.

As an aside, why doesn’t he feel any animosity toward Cobb seeing as it was his inception of her which led to her death?

It's just so accurate. If I have to pee or fell asleep thirsty, it seeps into your brain. I've had waves like what happened in the Japanese Palace beginning scene coming to my dreams because of the aforementioned situations.

I rewatched the movie and it seems as if Cobb's kids didn't age much between his memories and his return to their house. Is there any good estimate of how long Dom spent in hiding and running away from the government?

I need to know. Did Cobb’s totem fall over in the end when he met his kids or is he stuck in the dream??

Hello.

Saito will actually have the largest company in the industry. And with this it will generate a Monopoly. It just eliminated the competition. Nothing heroic about what he caused.

Cobb's team is essentially helping to create another Monopoly (Saito), which will grow over time.

when cobb first meets yusuf and tries the heavy sedative he wakes up frantic and rushes to the bathroom, as he's about to spin his totem he gets interrupted by saito and doesn't end up spinning it at all afterward. dont really have a theory but i didnt see any posts that noticed that.

time stamp is at 44 minutes

Suppose I have a totem (either the ones from the movie or some other one), if I fall asleep and have a lucid dream in which I try to wake up, and I have a false awakening in that case: could the totem I have be use within my own dream to know that it is the real world, and not another false awakening?

Hello, dear members. I'm new to this community, wanted to share a link to my post dedicated to the film, maybe u will find it interesting.

https://aibaranov.github.io/inception/

Dumb question.

I just rewatched inception for first time since it came out. While it’s not perfect, in a lot of ways it is. The way Nolan deals with the mind and dreaming is so fascinating.

For some reason I figured Mal was his totem. If Mal or his children showed up then he knew he was dreaming.

I haven’t made up my mind if the whole thing took place in cobbs dream but the presence of Mal and his children was such an interesting theme. I love how there was almost jumpscare levels of dread when she would show up.

And I guess that’s partly why he might still be in a dream in the end.

Mal makes a really good point with secret agencies chasing him and how his motivations don’t really sound that believable.

ABSOLUTE 10/10 MOVIE WITHOUT QUESTION, EVERYTHING ABOUT IT IS PERFECTION EXCEPT FOR THE LAST 10 SECOND HOW TF CAN YOU END A MASTERPIECE LIKE THAT??

https://preview.redd.it/e4pu736pziwd1.png?width=794&format=png&auto=webp&s=70c0bf02fbf52ce6d049997b7ffc2058f4ef84cb

Sorry if this question has been posted before, but I searched it on Reddit and I got nothing. People have asked this question online before (eg on Quora) but the answers aren't really clear imo.

A totem's mechanism is something that should be kept a secret because if someone else knows about it, they can use it to make you believe that you're in real life. Both Cobb and Arthur drill the importance of secrecy into Ariadne. However, pretty early on into the movie, Cobb reveals the mechanism of the spinning top to Ariadne, telling her that the top would keep spinning if he was in a dream. Does this not explicitly go against everything that he'd told her earlier on?

There are some theories I've seen about this which is that:

1. Cobb's real totem is his wedding ring, which appears on his hand in a dream but not in reality, so explaning the spinning top mechanism would come at no cost to him. This is another debate in itself so for the sake of the question I'm going to assume that the top is his true totem.

2. Cobb didn't fully explain the mechanism to Ariadne, only telling her that the top will continue to spin indefinitely in a dream. In a dream, the dreamer can bend reality as they see fit. What Cobbs doesn't tell Ariadne is that whether the top spins indefinitely or not, is dependent on his own reality-bending when he is in a dream. Thus, it doesn't matter whether Ariadne knows that it will keep spinning or not, since it is ultimately Cobb who decides how long the top spins. Even if she, as the Architect, constructs a world where the top falls over, Cobb would easily be able to will it back to spin forever. However, if this is true, why wouldn't everyone be able to use minor reality-bending as their totem? (I say minor, since otherwise the subject's subconscious would attack them)

3. Cobb kind of just messed up and had a moment of vulnerability with Ariadne. I guess this could be true since Ariadne already knows so many of Cobbs's secrets, so he might not think that another one would even matter anymore.

Have watched it recently again at Cinemas on IMAX, watched it at my sister's place, recently got a home theatre and have been watching it almost everyday trying to analyse, looking for things I missed and feeling calm with the amazing Hans Zimmers score. My comfort movie!!!! what's wrong with me. i am an Inception addict. 😭

I want to know the rules of tottem, like can a cup of a coffee be a tottem?

I have to write an essay for psychology on why Cobb was dreaming at the end of the movie, a lot of evidence I found seems to have been proven false (ex: the kids looking the same). Can someone please provide good evidence?

Please give an actual answer and not just “he wasn’t dreaming”.

Step 1: Comment any 5 numbers from 1 to 141 Step 2: A dialogue or quote from movie

Will make a 15 seconds video from “the comment with most upvotes in 24 hrs” and post it here!

Explanation: Movie length is 141 minutes before it shows the endcard Inception. Whatever number you will choose, I will take a couple of seconds from each minute and make a video with quote you mentioned.

Okay, so... I just watched the movie for the first time in my life (yeah, yeah, blabla, very late, bla ^^). I don't really wanna talk about anything in the story, but there one thing...

In the airport scene at the end, when Cobb is heading towards the exit, he passes some people. One of those is the guy with the "Fischer"-sign... although: That's not a guy, that's a cardboard cutout!!

Or am I going insane?

Ive rewatched this movie countless of times and each time I stay entertained from the fact that this technology could or could not be possible. We’re already aware of CIA doing studies of the effects of LSD and countless psychological torture experiments, although inception may or may not be torture is there any possibility that the CIA could of done dream studies of tapping into someones subconscious and altering their ideas?

I've just finished watching Inception for the first time and WOW this movie is mind-bogglingly good - some of the best vfx in the last 15 years (and they still hold up) - a great story (even if I have literally no idea what's going on most of the time) and is genuienly just an incredible movie

He was a professor in paris and seemingly didnt know about the job outside of the brief meeting they both had..

Do any of you guys lucid dream and build ur dream worlds and spend time in different layers like inception is clearly real from my experiences. Just when I tell people they look at me like I'm insane. Just looking to see if anyone else has some fun in their sleep. Ig it also brings up the question if we are currently in limbo. Life is so funny sometimes.

What kind of inception would he have implanted then?

A question that haunts me ever since I first watched this movie 10 years ago was the following. Cobb and Mal were in the Limbo for years. When they decided to return, they just killed themselves and woke up. Why didn't Saito do the same when he entered the Limbo?