Saito aged because of the time multiple applied to each layer, limbo was shared but the deconstruction of the rules provides various interpretation...

good!!!!

Just wanted to thank you guys at /Film for featuring this and the Pulp Fiction infographic.

And thanks for the feedback everyone.

Seriously. This chart makes perfect sense. In regard to the kicks. As i understand you seem to need two kicks. One in the dream your in and one in the dream above.

So the falling, combined with the defribilator, wakes them up out of cobbs dream.

The explosions at the hospital combined with the eleveator explosion gets them out of snow storm dream and into the elevator.

Then that same elevator kick, combined with the falling van in the level above, carried them out into yusefs dream. And from then on I guess you wait for the watcher on the plane to wake you up once the sedative wears off or whatever?

Only thing this timeline supposes which is interesting though is this. According to this timeline. Saito and Cobb never left limbo.

Logically it makes sense.

Saw it yesterday and I was a little dissapointed. On the technical side it was a perfect ten. But storywise I didn´t shine. I like the premise but not what Nolan did with it. The fact that there was really nothing to loose for the characters just made it emotionally flat. Ok I do remember that they actually could "die" if killed in a drugenhanced dream. And Cobb wanted to spend real time with his kid, so there was some kind of win or lose situation. But you have to be a imbecil of a crimescene investigator not to see that Mal jumped from the building across...
So the reason for Cobb not being able to return to his kids was in my opinion nonexistence.
I saw nothing that needs any kind of theorising. It was no real mystery going on, just people going into dreams, then dreams in dreams. But no mystery.
In my eyes it was just a multilayerd cake with different colored whipcream for each layer, it all tasted the same, got me full quite quick and just looked different.

Ok this is what I thought the movie would be about:
Cobb finds a piece of a "puzzle" in a dream that his clients wants him dead for and he had to run, using his team to gain more pieces to that puzzle to solve it.
More like a Bourne kind of movie with Matrix flavours.

Now it was really about nothing, just quasiphilosophy for the insecure intellectuals to theorise about.
But there is nothing to theorise about, and I dont think Nolan intended there to be any. He just used the premise and ran with it, in the wrong direction.

/Cobb (as in webcobb? and Mal as in bad?)

This reads like it was written by Armond White's less intelligent brother, Carl White. People who want to criticize others for theorizing about the movie are the ones who are insecure.

I’m not sure this does make it any clearer. Don’t get me wrong it looks cool! But if you follow the film just as it plays out and don’t concern your self with all the theories, like the whole thing is an inception on Cobb etc, then Cobb’s level of creation is Limbo. He’s the only one in the shared subconscious to have bee there, so the reminisce they experience (huge city) is his. So effectively, this timeline shows a drop from Limbo (Cobb’s dream on the timeline) in to a level below Limbo! The Eames level is the last actual dream in the film. This actually raises more questions. Quite the opposite of clearly explaining the timeline of the film…

My only confusion with Inception is how and when kicks work exactly - I assumed that a kick on a higher level pulled you out of a lower dream, but then realized later that some of their actions might contradict this.

Do kicks take you out of a lower dream or not? Based on the early scene of Leo being taken out of the Saito mission by being dunked in the bathtub, I assumed that the van falling and then hitting the water were both kicks meant to wake people from the hotel level (thus why people are wondering why Arthur didn't wake up to the van level once it first went over the bridge, since he was awake on the hotel level). The falling elevators, and the impact they'd make once they crashed, would take people out of the snow level. Why they blew up the snow level's fortress, I wasn't sure, but working from the infographic's theory that it was Cobb's dream and not limbo we were being shown, I guess the floor collapsing beneath them would take them out of Cobb's dream.

The alternate understanding I have is that, at least under Yussef's sedatives, you need to synchronize being killed in a dream with a higher kick - if you just die in the dream without a higher kick, you go into limbo. So Ariadne and Fischer's death by falling from the building was timed with the floor collapsing in the snow level (actually, in Fischer's case, being revived, but whatever). When they, I assume, were killed from the fortress collapsing on them, it was timed with the falling elevator, so they woke up in the hotel. When the elevator crashed, it was timed with the impact of the van hitting the water, so they woke up in Yussef's dream.

Okay. Okay. I get it. When Mal Shoot Fischer, he doesn't die. She kidnaps him and escapes with him to Cobb's dream, level 1. Cobb and Ariadne go under and enter Cobb's dream level 1 to go after her. Jumping off the building returns Ariadne and Fischer to Fischer's dream, level 3 and they're able to be there for their kick. By choosing not to jump, Cobb misses his kick and drowns in the van on level 1, sending him to limbo.

That or the Fischer in Cobb's dream is just a projection and the whole "rescuing" scenario is just part of Cobb's dream, but isn't actually necessary, because Fischer is brought back by Eames defibrillating him. Therefore Ariadne would be basically receiving an inception from Cobb, by way of him convincing her that his dream is Limbo.

INCEPTION is deceptively simple. It's part of its brilliance- to create something that feels so complex but presented in a completely accessible way. It's as though movie nerds have been starved all summer for something even remotely intellectual that they're putting more into this movie than is really there. Like Devin's dream as film thing- there are absolutely no cues existing in the movie for that sort of analysis, but it doesn't stop film geeks from going apenuts over the idea.

Intellectuality without emotionality is nothing more than masturbatory.

That is what Inception is. A great session in front of a playboy. Not brilliant. Not complex. Nothing to look into.

So you're saying a great session in front of playboy is an intellectual experience. Okaaay.

Yes, masturbation lives only in the mind.

You have to be a sociopath to get emotional when masturbating. Maybe just very weird, but still.

Yeah. Get used to me being right.

Well, you could be a sociopath, I dunno. But I found a lot of emotion in the movie, and that is despite Nolan's tendency to approach his movies with a sort of engineer's mindset. It's a different sort of art than someone like Gilliam or Snyder might throw into a movie. But his style reminds me a bit of Aranofsky's PI- there is beauty in the mathematics. But still- to imply that INCEPTION lacks emotion... I have no idea what you're talking about. Beyond just Cobb's character arc, I see a lot of love in that movie.

Come on. Cobb's arc was silly and confusing and I got nothing out of it. I don't even remember what it was.

Maybe I am a sociopath, but I felt like I was agreeing with you on most of the points you were trying to make.

So...does this make it a good movie?

paradox

Because Cobb's dream is a misnomer. It's actually limbo. "Saito's dream" and "Cobb's dream" were just different aspects of a shared limbo.

There's a simple explanation why Saito was aged and Cobb did not: Saito believed that he was in the real world and his "body" aged to maintain this belief. Cobb knew he was in limbo and his mind had no need to maintain the illusion of passing time.

"Cobbs dream" was limbo, otherwise when Fischer died, Mal wouldn't have been able to have access to Fischer. "Saito's dream" and "Cobb's dream" were just different aspects of the same limbo that they were sharing. Cobb wouldn't have had to die again (as some have stated above) to rescue Saito. When Cobb finally resolved his feelings of guilt, he was able to "escape" Mal's construct and was free to enter other areas of limbo.


I've only seen this movie once and may be misremembering things, but when Ariadne and Fischer jump off the building, how is it that they're kicked back to the 3rd level? When you die in limbo, aren't you ejected from the dream entirely? (As Cobb and Mel were and as Cobb and Saito were.)

Maybe, but your first paragraph feels like a bit of a stretch to me (and did Fisher die? There's seems to be some disagreement on this. If he died why is he still injured in "limbo"?).

And I would say that this:

"Ariadne and Fischer jump off the building, how is it that they're kicked back to the 3rd level?"

is another argument in support of it being Cobb's dream rather than limbo, since as you say, when you wake up from limbo, we presume, you don't have to ride the kicks up but are ejected entirely.

Okay. Okay. I get it. When Mal Shoot Fischer, he doesn't die. She kidnaps him and escapes with him to Cobb's dream, level 1. Cobb and Ariadne go under and enter Cobb's dream level 1 to go after her. Jumping off the building returns Ariadne and Fischer to Fischer's dream, level 3 and they're able to be there for their kick. By choosing not to jump, Cobb misses his kick and drowns in the van on level 1, sending him to limbo.

Either theory you subscribe to doesn't explain how Ariadne and Fischer ended back in level 3. If they were in Cobb's dream, they should have been sent to limbo, or, if they were already in limbo, they should have been ejected from the dream entirely.

Not if the transition was caused by the sensation of falling rather than dying. I seem to remember a shot of Ariadne in free fall closing her eyes before waking up at the snow base.

Just a crazy theory here:

I dont think Cobb realised he was in Limbo either when he was in the presence of Old Saito. My theory is when Mal stabbed Cobb and died in Limbo he went futher down into (?) Unconsciousness? / Death? -dictionary definition of "Limbo" is the in between place of Life (dreams + reality) and death (which has no sense of time just black) ==> (evidence by the dark background when the projection of Mal was dying) Cobb came out of this lower level and appeared on the beach 50years later in Limbo

Inception is really easy to understand, and is really well explained, if you're willing to believe that the level after Eames' dream was actually Limbo.

Once you take a closer look, and consider certain things (like the fact that Cobb arrives on a second shore and is taken before Saito, who is aged, despite Cobb remaining young) then you have to consider that level actually being Cobb's dream (as this infograph shows). Then from there you can either accept that it was Cobb's dream, or start to look back at other details to support or disprove this theory. It's as complicated as you want it to be.

The only issue is that some people are posing much more complex and ridiculous theories.

How did Fischer end up in Cobb's dream when he died?

How do we know that Fischer is dead? It's possible that Fischer was just close to death/in a comatose state. And even if he was really dead, if the Limbo level is actually Cobb's dream, then Fischer there would be a projection from Cobb's subconscious, and Eames defibrillating Fischer brought him back to life/consciousness, and he was never in the level with Cobb.

The only thing that really makes me believe the Cobb dream scenario is Cobb appearing on the shore and being dragged to Saito's Limbo-mansion , as if he died and went into Limbo finally.

One thing I don't get.

At the beginning Arthur wakes up Cobb from Lvl 2 --> Lvl 1 by pushing him into the bathtub. Ie. Arthur gives Cobb the kick in Mombasa, wakes him up INTO Mombasa from the mansion. MANSION->MOMBASA

Following that logic:

Van hitting the water wakes them up from the HOTEL->VAN
Elevator falling wakes them up from SNOW->HOTEL
Base exploding/Defibrillator wakes Fisher and Ariadne up from the CITY->SNOW, while Cobb kills himself and ends up in Limbo to save Saito.

So. Why does Ariadne jump off the building? Isn't her kick from the level above?

Another thing: since we don't see how they got from the VAN->REALITY (assuming it is for the sake of argument), are we supposed to assume they just wait till the timer runs out? Which is permitted because Fisher's subconsious is no longer trying to attack them?

I think it's because Ariadne believed that they were in Limbo, not Cobb's dream, and so she believed she had to kill herself/Fisher for them to get back to the Snow/Eames level. She would have experienced the kick from Eames regardless, but she didn't realize that she wasn't actually in Limbo.

Yeah, I think in order to get out of limbo, you have to kill yourself. This precedent is set by Cobb and Mal killing themselves with the train to get out of their limbo. And this adheres to the theory that Ariadne was in limbo as opposed to a 4th tier of dream.

The 4th level of dream theory aka Cobb's dream (as opposed to the theory that anything deeper beyond Eames's dream is limbo) doesn't make sense because why would Fischer go into Cobb's dream if he died? He should go into limbo, which he does. So if you die or if you go under the machine in the 3rd tier of dream (Eames's), you go into limbo.

Unless the Fisher in Cobb's dream is just a projection.

Inception really brings out the condescending-worst in people.

This is lame, I was expecting to see some math formulas or lines connecting one side to the other.

Most unclear graphic ever.

Excuse me while my head explodes.

people are freaking over people being confused by the movie, when most of the people commenting to those respects are actually talking about the above infographic, which seriously is not helpful

I too understood Inception, but still have trouble with the limbo idea. So, why was Saito old but Cobb wasn't?

And I'm well aware of the time extension for each subsequent dream level...

because Cobb knows its a dream and Saito believed it was reality (until he spun Cobbs totem....

I dont think Cobb realised he was in Limbo either when he was in the presence of Old Saito. My theory is when Mal stabbed Cobb and died in Limbo he went futher down into (?) Unconsciousness? / Death? (which has no sense of time just black) ==> (evidence by the dark background when the projection of Mal was dying) Cobb came out of this lower level and appeared on the beach 50years later in Limbo

But I think most people believe that the Limbo level was actually Cobb's dream (including this infograph) and that once he died there he went to the actual Limbo, where Saito had already been since he had died, and had thus aged significantly in the process.

I think it's because Saito was actually in Limbo but that what was "supposed" to be Limbo initially was actually Cobb's dream. Therefore, he had to kill himself (this was never shown) to get into the actual Limbo, where Saito was, and where he was already an old man whereas Cobb had just arrived at his current age.

I perfectly understood Inception until I saw this. WTF??

All parting guests of Inception will enjoy a complimentary home game.

Wow, this info graphic is horrible. According to this, every character went into the deepest dream level...

Also, it wasn't Eames dream they went into. IT WAS FISCHER'S! This guy really DIDN'T understand the film.

It was Eames's dream. Otherwise, how did Eames "create the 'shortcut'" Cobb and Ariadne were talking about when they were running out of time after the first kick (after the van breaks through the railing in Yusef's dream)?

It was only Eames dream in the sense that he came up with the plan for it (with Ariadne as the architect presumably). The dream was taking place in Fischer's head. They tricked him into thinking he was in someone else's mind when he was actually in his own.

The way I understood it, it was Eames' dream, because it was his head that Arthur put the headphones on to activate the kick in the elevator. Yes, Eames was just the construct for all of Fisher's projections, but it was the same thing as Arthurs and Yusef's. Fisher believed they were going into Browning's dream, so the group's worry was that Fisher would be creating projections that he believed were action Browning's projections.

Why does it have to be in Fischer's head as opposed to the same ol' filling the world (Eames's dream) with his subconscious (the contents in the locked room).