a) The movie is as simple as its shown. I mean he is in reality he does Saito’s job and in the end Saito fulfills his promise. Some facts. The scene where we c Cobb entering the hotel room opposite to where Mal jumps, we c the totem lying down. Mal could have checked the totem and it didn’t spin but since she was infected with the idea she abandons her totem and jumps off. We c many times Cobb trying to spin it n it stopping n falling stating tht its all a reality. In the end whn he meets his children do the children wear the same clothes, technically yes but a bit different also they are a bit old. So Cobb does really meet them in reality. U mite say the scenery was the same but tht is coz of his memories wid dem. The way Cobb wakes up in the plane is coz since he was in limbo he thot he ws in a big dream for quite some time and when he wakes up he gives that expression n so does Saito. Then in this case only concern what is the significance of inception. Nolan doesn’t make such insignificant endings. Memento meant Guy Pearce was the memento, here inception has to do something with Cobb’s mind and shud ve some significance.
b) That brings me to the second possibility that the entire movie is a dream and the idea incepted is for Cobb to meet his children and live happily. Precisely the same reason why v don’t c Cobb’s totem, why we have Saito and Mal speaking the same line “take a leap of faith” which should have been just inclusive for Mal Saito has never heard what Mal has said, why Mal though Cobb’s projection says “u r being chased by unknown agents and sorts”, why Fischer doesn’t recognize his last standing competitor Saito (very strange) and why every1 keeps on saying come back to reality. The very reason that even Ariadne (her name is of particular significance some greek mythology relating to labyrinth and that’s the reason she always wears a red even when suited up) is there. Here comes ur theory what if Miles Cobbs dad has significance. Mal has been created as an anti Cobb dream so even if she has come up from reality and is trying to get into his dream to wake him up he doesn’t want her to do so and doesn’t believe her. So Miles has created a dream within dream wherein he has tried to get him reunited with his children and his guilt is far more extensive than Cobb because of the repercussions. (I ve doubts here)
c) The movie is a dream post to the plane scene I don’t ve facts to support it. The best possible fact is the last scene where he finally meets his children, his dad and his children r wearing te same clothes somewhat, which is not perfect.
I m also gonna copy paste basically a 3rd person storyline / theory courtesy imdb discussions, the guys name is DeAd_MiKe_187 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/board/nest/167024711.
i too was left befuddled with plenty of questions ringing my head and during the course of me finding a solution to these i stumbled upon this which is way too good for an explanation so m sharing with all. Let me know what u think.
The idea of 'Inception' is to be a story crafted in the architecture of the mind - Cobb's mind. What people perceive to be real isn't necessarily so, because the mind can make things appear to be as real as ever. An important thing to remember is the start of the film. Dom Cobb wakes up in a place that we later find out to be limbo – more importantly, Saito's limbo.
What happens next is something that is meaningless the first time a viewer watches the film. Saito is seen handling Cobb's totem (which was a top that he took from Mal while in limbo). At first, this is meaningless. Upon a second viewing, the viewer should realize that everything that happens after this scene (the jump cut to Cobb's attempt at extracting information from Saito, and so on) is something much deeper.
Saito promises to give Cobb the one thing that he wants, and that's to find the way back home. How does he convince Cobb to do this? He tells him to "take a leap of faith." This is another line that goes unnoticed at first. On a second viewing, the viewer should remember that line as something that Mal told Cobb when she jumped off of the building. Is the picture becoming clearer yet?
While in Mombasa, Cobb gets chased by anonymous agents (which he perceives to be Cobol agents) through a fantastic action sequence where Cobb escapes the dream-like narrow tunnel and is rescued by none other than Saito. A bit later, Cobb and Saito visit Yusef who brings them into a basement with various figures connected to the dream machine. The idea was for Cobb to experiment with the deep sedative. He does, and when he "wakes up," he tries to use his totem only to be interrupted by Saito. Cobb never does find out if he is in the real world or not. In fact, he hasn’t been yet. He’s been in limbo ever since he got there with Mal. Ever since then, he's been going deeper and deeper to the point where he created Saito as a projection to help him "get back home" - Did you really think Saito can just pick up the phone and make murder charges disappear? No. But, Cobb believes it and thus Saito is used to thrust Cobb further and further into a state of limbo – where at the end of the journey, Cobb truly believes he is with his children after confronting and getting over his projection of Mal.
While in the limbo, Cobb, using Mal's totem, put the idea in her head that she was in the dream world. She was, she just hadn’t realized it yet. What the viewer forgets is that all knowledge of limbo comes from Cobb's character. To think that Cobb is 100% accurate about it is absolutely wrong. He wouldn't know dream from reality – not in the limbo that he describes to people – and definitely not if inception were performed on him to believe that limbo truly was the real world.
Mal and Cobb never really left limbo at least, not that layer of it. When Mal jumped off the building, she gave herself the very same "kick" that Ariadne improvised later on in the movie. Mal was right about still being in the dream world. Cobb was still engulfed in limbo and didn't realize it. When Cobb and Mal had killed themselves with the train, they simply moved one layer deeper just like Saito did when he was killed, Fischer did when he was killed, and so on (this happens again at the end of the film when Saito picks up the gun in front of Cobb).
Cobb, deep in limbo, unknowingly uses the projections of his team to keep going deeper and deeper until the idea of inception is performed on his mind, and he truly believes he was able to find a way back home. Saito's promise to Cobb was kept - in the form of Saito (a projection from Cobb) making sure that Cobb ended up in limbo, so that he could live his "life" with his kids (who are in the same position as they were all throughout the film).
The team were projections in Cobb's mind the entire time. It's how he was able to go to Miles in Paris and find an architect named Ariadne (a name which comes from a Greek mythology story about a labyrinth) who improvised the "kick" at the end of the movie the same way that Cobb had seen (but not accepted as a dream) Mal do previously when she jumped off the building. It's how Eames happened to know of Yusef, and so on and so forth. Everything Cobb needed to make this inception work happened to work out for him. It's even how Cobb's lawyer knew so quickly that Mal had gone to 3 different shrinks to be declared "sane" and how he happened to have a ticket for Cobb to be able to get out of the country before the police would have arrested him.
The movie ends with Cobb appearing from place to place, going from limbo with Saito, to the plane where Saito magically makes one phone call to free Cobb from his problems, to walking through the airport, to meeting Miles who is with Cobb's children. Cobb spins his totem and it spins just like it was a dream. He fixes his eyes on his children and the totem begins to lose speed – this is because inception has worked – Cobb truly believes he is in the real world. His totem will not spin like it did in the dream, not as long as he has his kids. The title of the film is now shown to us, making complete sense because the title was really Cobb's journey through his own mind: INCEPTION
c) The movie is a dream post to the plane scene I don’t ve facts to support it. The best possible fact is the last scene where he finally meets his children, his dad and his children r wearing te same clothes somewhat, which is not perfect.
I m also gonna copy paste basically a 3rd person storyline / theory courtesy imdb discussions, the guys name is DeAd_MiKe_187 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/board/nest/167024711.
i too was left befuddled with plenty of questions ringing my head and during the course of me finding a solution to these i stumbled upon this which is way too good for an explanation so m sharing with all. Let me know what u think.
The idea of 'Inception' is to be a story crafted in the architecture of the mind - Cobb's mind. What people perceive to be real isn't necessarily so, because the mind can make things appear to be as real as ever. An important thing to remember is the start of the film. Dom Cobb wakes up in a place that we later find out to be limbo – more importantly, Saito's limbo.
What happens next is something that is meaningless the first time a viewer watches the film. Saito is seen handling Cobb's totem (which was a top that he took from Mal while in limbo). At first, this is meaningless. Upon a second viewing, the viewer should realize that everything that happens after this scene (the jump cut to Cobb's attempt at extracting information from Saito, and so on) is something much deeper.
Saito promises to give Cobb the one thing that he wants, and that's to find the way back home. How does he convince Cobb to do this? He tells him to "take a leap of faith." This is another line that goes unnoticed at first. On a second viewing, the viewer should remember that line as something that Mal told Cobb when she jumped off of the building. Is the picture becoming clearer yet?
While in Mombasa, Cobb gets chased by anonymous agents (which he perceives to be Cobol agents) through a fantastic action sequence where Cobb escapes the dream-like narrow tunnel and is rescued by none other than Saito. A bit later, Cobb and Saito visit Yusef who brings them into a basement with various figures connected to the dream machine. The idea was for Cobb to experiment with the deep sedative. He does, and when he "wakes up," he tries to use his totem only to be interrupted by Saito. Cobb never does find out if he is in the real world or not. In fact, he hasn’t been yet. He’s been in limbo ever since he got there with Mal. Ever since then, he's been going deeper and deeper to the point where he created Saito as a projection to help him "get back home" - Did you really think Saito can just pick up the phone and make murder charges disappear? No. But, Cobb believes it and thus Saito is used to thrust Cobb further and further into a state of limbo – where at the end of the journey, Cobb truly believes he is with his children after confronting and getting over his projection of Mal.
While in the limbo, Cobb, using Mal's totem, put the idea in her head that she was in the dream world. She was, she just hadn’t realized it yet. What the viewer forgets is that all knowledge of limbo comes from Cobb's character. To think that Cobb is 100% accurate about it is absolutely wrong. He wouldn't know dream from reality – not in the limbo that he describes to people – and definitely not if inception were performed on him to believe that limbo truly was the real world.
Mal and Cobb never really left limbo at least, not that layer of it. When Mal jumped off the building, she gave herself the very same "kick" that Ariadne improvised later on in the movie. Mal was right about still being in the dream world. Cobb was still engulfed in limbo and didn't realize it. When Cobb and Mal had killed themselves with the train, they simply moved one layer deeper just like Saito did when he was killed, Fischer did when he was killed, and so on (this happens again at the end of the film when Saito picks up the gun in front of Cobb).
Cobb, deep in limbo, unknowingly uses the projections of his team to keep going deeper and deeper until the idea of inception is performed on his mind, and he truly believes he was able to find a way back home. Saito's promise to Cobb was kept - in the form of Saito (a projection from Cobb) making sure that Cobb ended up in limbo, so that he could live his "life" with his kids (who are in the same position as they were all throughout the film).
The team were projections in Cobb's mind the entire time. It's how he was able to go to Miles in Paris and find an architect named Ariadne (a name which comes from a Greek mythology story about a labyrinth) who improvised the "kick" at the end of the movie the same way that Cobb had seen (but not accepted as a dream) Mal do previously when she jumped off the building. It's how Eames happened to know of Yusef, and so on and so forth. Everything Cobb needed to make this inception work happened to work out for him. It's even how Cobb's lawyer knew so quickly that Mal had gone to 3 different shrinks to be declared "sane" and how he happened to have a ticket for Cobb to be able to get out of the country before the police would have arrested him.
The movie ends with Cobb appearing from place to place, going from limbo with Saito, to the plane where Saito magically makes one phone call to free Cobb from his problems, to walking through the airport, to meeting Miles who is with Cobb's children. Cobb spins his totem and it spins just like it was a dream. He fixes his eyes on his children and the totem begins to lose speed – this is because inception has worked – Cobb truly believes he is in the real world. His totem will not spin like it did in the dream, not as long as he has his kids. The title of the film is now shown to us, making complete sense because the title was really Cobb's journey through his own mind: INCEPTION
