The Ending
There are a ton of theories being tossed around the Internet about the ending of Inception, the two biggest debates being whether Cobb was still in a dream or did he in fact return to his children in the “real world.”
The ending of Inception is meant to leave you thinking and questioning the nature of reality. The important question is not “Is Cobb still dreaming?” – What is important is the fact that the character of Cobb goes from being a guy who is obsessed with “knowing what’s real” to ultimately being a person who stops questioning and accepts what makes him truly happy as what’s real.
But people want more concrete answers than that, so here you go:
After two viewings I can tell you that from the moment that Cobb and Saito (seem to) wake up from limbo, Nolan very purposefully shifts the film into an ambiguous state that leaves it somewhat open to the viewer’s perception and interpretation of that perception – two big themes of the movie, coincidentally enough.
From the moment Cobb and Saito wake, there is no more dialogue between the characters and few shots or images that would concretely explain or prove one interpretation. Is Cobb still dreaming and his team and family (and maybe Saito) are all projections? Or is it the job completed, everyone is back in reality and everything is happily ever after? There are a few pieces of “evidence” that we can certainly address:
- Was Saito truly powerful enough to make one phone call and end Cobb’s problems or was that just Cobb in limbo projecting his subconscious wish to go home? You can argue logistics all you want, but if it’s said that Saito is a powerful and wealthy man (he bought a whole airline on a whim), then there’s reason enough to infer that he could bend the legal system for Cobb. Rich powerful people bend laws all the time.
- Is there something up with that immigration agent or is he just an immigration agent? After two viewings, the conclusion should be that the immigration guy is just a guy. If he’s staring at Cobb, it’s because his job is to look people over and scrutinize them. Would you want immigration letting people through without face-to-face scrutiny?
- Did Cobb’s father (Michael Caine) arrange to meet him at the airport or is he there because he’s Cobb’s projection? At this point we’re reading way too much into things. There is a phone on the plane, so Cobb could’ve easily arranged for pickup. This was also an intricate plan they were hatching, so arranging for airport pickup would probably be on the to-do list.
- In early dream scenes Cobb is wearing a wedding band that doesn’t appear in the “real world” scenes or the end scenes in the airport – does that mean the ending is “reality?” Details like that are certainly strong evidence that there is a real world and that Cobb does live in it at times – such as when he isn’t wearing a wedding band.
- Does the fact that Cobb uses Mal’s totem mean it doesn’t work as a totem and therefore he never knows if he’s in reality or not? Again, we’re reading a little too deep into things. The only people who know the weight and feel of that totem are Mal and Cobb, and since Mal is dead, Cobb is the only one left who knows the totem’s tactile details. So yes, he could certainly use it as a measure of reality, the totem was not “ruined” by him using it.
- At the end, Cobb’s kids seem to be the same age and are seemingly wearing the same clothes as they were in his memory of them – is it “proof” he’s still dreaming? As carefully documented by our own Vic Holtreman, at the end of the film Cobb’s kids are wearing similar outfits to the ones he remembers, but their shoes are different. As for their ages: if you check IMDB, there are actually two set of actors credited with playing Cobb’s kids. The daughter, Phillipa, is credited as being both 3 and 5 years old, while the son, James, is credited as being both 20 months and 3 years old. This suggests that while it might be subtle, there is a difference between the kids in Cobb’s memories and the kids Cobb comes home to. That would suggest the homecoming is in fact “reality.” But feel free to debate that.
- Will the spinning top keep spinning or was it about to fall over just before Nolan cut to black? Sorry, we will never know for sure, although it does start to wobble and it is never shown doing that in the dream world. Each of us will take away a guess – kind of the point of that final shot.
At the beginning of the film, after the first job Cobb’s team tries to pull on Saito, we see Cobb sitting in his hotel room alone, spinning the top and watching it intently, gun in hand. This is a guy who is ready to blow his brains out if the top keeps spinning, in order to “wake himself up.” That’s how obsessed and paranoid he’s become.
Throughout the film, Cobb continues to obsess about spinning the top and verifying reality – however, at the end of movie, he spins the top and walks away from it before he can verify if it stops spinning or not. His kids come running in and Cobb could care less about about the top or “true reality” or extraction/inception anymore. He just wants to be with his children, in whatever place he can be with them. That emotional connection and desire is “reality” enough for him.
In the end, Cobb walking away from the top is a statement in itself that also completes the arc of his character. In a way, the movie is its own maze designed to plant a simple little idea in the viewer’s mind: “reality” is a relative concept.
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Bravo, Mr. Nolan. You’ve gotten us thinking and talking. I leave things there – hope you enjoyed our explanation and look forward to hearing all the wonderful discussion continue.
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THis….all this..the comments, the theories.The endless discussion…All this is Nolan’s reward…He made a PERFECT movie…He exprerimented with his first two ‘mind-messng’ movies (memento, prestige) until Inception..I really fear the next movie of this type he ll make…
Its up to you to decide. Nolan left it ambiguous and left clues throughout the film that you could use to argue that Cobb is either dreaming or awake. And judging by the comments on here it worked. Remember he is a filmmaker (a clever one) and the reason for the ambiguity is to get you thinking and talking. You could argue to the end of time about the ending (thats the point) and you would never be right. So I ignore people who say he is awake beacause…. or people who say he is dreaming because….. you are both wrong/right. Take from it what you will and leave people to take from it what they will.
There is another option of course… Why didn’t Cobb have a totem of his own? Arthur had a loaded die, Ariadne made a chess bishop… We only briefly and within a dream saw him steal Mal’s totem from a safe. And how come Mal comes and goes in his dreams as she wishes beyond his control? Maybe it is all Mal’s dream, even the ending…
Cobb’s totem was Mal’s totem. It was explained that Mal is in Cobb’s subconcious. She’s his guilt. Since he put the idea in her head (inception) that dying was the only way to go back to reality, she came back to reality and still believed dying was the only way back to reality. So she commited suicide and he was indirectly responsible for killing his wife. That’s a lot of guilt. Remember the train when they first went into Fischer’s subconscious? It’s the train that woke him and his wife (Cobb and Mal) up from limbo. He’s always feeling guilt for “killing” her throughout the entire movie.
Mal is dead so it can’t possibly be her dream.
Yes it shows that Mal is dead but what we dont know is if she was right or not. Maybe when she jumped off the building, she popped into another level in the dream. Which meant she still would have been alive and it would still be possible she is the one controlling his dream. All in all, it was a beyond amazing movie.
I LOVED this movie! I love that it made us talk about it and think about it and this detailed explanation and interpretation is PERFECT!!!
“In the end, Cobb walking away from the top is a statement in itself that also completes the arc of his character. In a way, the movie is its own maze designed to plant a simple little idea in the viewer’s mind: “reality” is a relative concept.”
WELL SAID!!!!
Good job guys and definitely BRAVO Mr.Nolan!! What a genius!
Cobb *is* the mark. He is suspected of murdering his wife and all the other characters are agents trying to discover the details of his guilt. As he wakes on the plane he doesn’t actually talk to anyone else until he meets his father. He shows no real signs of knowing Arthur et al, but they know who he is because they have stung him. He and Fischer exchange glances that we take as being Fischer recollecting his dream, but this is Fischer the agent thinking his mark has just recognised him and attempting to act nonchalant. Therefore the first moment we enter the movie is the beginning of Cobb’s manipulated dream state and everything else is his consciousness being taken through different levels so as to access information he himself doesn’t want to reveal in his reality, such as how Mal really died – something we eventually learn because he is forced to confront truths he himself will not, or cannot, confront consciously. That, or Cobb is Santa.
Well we learn that Mal is dead within a dream. Is this real? We know that she is in Cobb’s subconcious within a dream. But even so, how did she get there? Arthur at some point talks about the limbo state to Ariadne and he implies that Cobb is there. Towards the end of the movie Mal ask’s Cobb to look at their childrens’ faces. The children turn but Cobb doesn’t look. Why? Do they even have children? When Ariadne gets down to the basement, in the “hotel room” where Mal has broken everything, Mal says I am tired of being a mistress (or was it a lover?) What is the meaning of this? And then there is the mega hint… From the first dream in some latin state where Cobb and co are extracting Saito, the song that is heard (and from then on throughout all dreams in the movie) is an Edith Piaf’s old song. I think this is a masterpiece touch by Nolan since marion Cotillard had previously played Edith Piaf.
And to Theoiswrong: After all you ve said the question remains. How come Cobb an experienced extractor does not have a totem of his own? Why did he take Mal’s and what happened to his? What did he use before Marion die and why did he give up such a personal infallible and valuable tool for something that belonged to someone else?
The problem, folks, is that the only way back is a kick from the previous dream world. Everyone is sedated. If you die in a dream world, you go to limbo.
OK, so in the fortress, Adriana and Cobb enter Cobb’s dream to rescue Fischer. This is a dream of the world shared by Mal and Cobb. I am not going to go into Adriana, Fischer, and Salto. I believe that Adriana gets out, but Fischer, Cobb, and Salto do not. I don’t want to argue all that, because the argument is tedious. But one thing we know, none of the heroes can wake up by being shot, because they are sedated. As evidence of this, Salto is in limbo.
Now Cobb finds what I think is a projection of Salto in his dream. Salto shoots Cobb. Now Cobb is kicked out of his dream into limbo — ie the jet liner followed and the final scene of Cobb reunited with his children.
What do you want to bet we get a sequel.
That may just be the best theory yet Joe. I have to agree that what you have said is perfectly possible and I would just like to say that if Cobb doesn’t care if he’s in a dream state or not, neither should we.
That’s not the problem. A bullet to the head in a dream will wake you up, but not when you’re that heavily sedated. Time fluctuates throughout the deeper levels of the ‘dreams’, making a 10 hour plane ride into a lifetime. So the problem is, their sedated so they won’t be able to wake back up without a ‘kick’ because in the movie, he altered the sedative to not mess with your hearing, so you could still hear the music, which’ll mean you can get ready for the kick, which means anything else that would’ve normally woken them up just hurts you in the long run.
Fischer ‘woke up’ from the kicks, (because Adriana threw him off the porch,) and then the defibrilator, and finally in the elevator. What no one seems to talk about is how they’re all still in the first level of Fischer’s dream when they climb out of the completely-submerged van only to find themselves stuck there. It’s 20x the speed of a first level dream to reality, so the ’10 hour plane ride’ would’ve been 200 hours, a little over 8 days. They took a day to do everything explaioned in the move, so they would’ve had to wait, fending off Fischer’s subconcious for nearly a week non-stop before they could wake up. The time it takes for a week to pass by in level one would be many times longer than that of level three, so Cobb and Saito had possibly decades in that level of dreams, when only 10 hours passed by on a plane, so Cobb would’ve had plenty time to think of something he could do, and a week of nothing for everyone else, they could have thought of something as well, so Cobb waking up is not out of the question.
A sequal is out of the question IMO. If they do have a sequal, they’d have to continue off of Inception because of all the confusion, and if they do explain what happened, then Inception’s magic is lost. The main reason people love this movie so much is because it got them to THINK. If Nolan makes a sequal, then people wouldn’t have to THINK about what happenned in Inception, thus Inception losing its magic, and a legendary film.
this movie teaches people not to dream in dreams. now i am scared to sleep.
It seemed clear to me that what was perceived as reality was Cobb’s dream, and due to one simple fact. When he arrives at the airport in the end, everyone is looking at him. Recall the second time he brought the architect into the dream world to see what she could do with 5 minutes, and she questioned all the people (projections of Cobb’s mind)in the world looking at her.
As far as the top wobbling at the end: the totems cannot prove reality since they were created in a false reality.
I don’t think it makes sense to believe it was Cobb’s dream, at least not from the fact that people were staring at him. The Dreamer’s projections would stare at other people changing the dream, but not at the Dreamer him/herself, as proven in the scene Cobb takes Ariadne into his dream and she starts bending and changing it until killed by Mal.
Plus, his friends, and specially Ariadne, were looking at him rather fondly, so I don’t suppose he was changing someone else’s dream either.
In the movie Robert Fisher is the mark of the inception. This name is obviously linked to the real “Bobby” Fisher, famous chess master, who became world champion and then drifted into madness and paranoia. His american passport was cancelled on 13 july 2004 after controversial declarations about 9/11. He was born in 1943, and his father left him, his mother and sister when he was two… just like in the movie…
The best evidence for this interpretation is Ariane’s totem. Her totem is a chess piece: a white bishop… Bobby Fisher favourite strategy was a gambit aiming to keep his pair of Bishops.
In this perspective it’s possible to think that all characters in the inceptions are Cobb’s projections. Ariane is the white (positive) Bishop who leads him out of madness. The name Ariane hints to Ariane in the Greek mythology who leads Theseus out of the minotaur’s maze. Mal is the Black (negative) Bishop who drags him into madness (In french “Mal” means “evil”).
So what I think is that all the movie is just a projection of Dom Cobb guilt, trying to heal from something he did. In the light of Bobby Fisher biography, I assume that Dom Cobb ran away from his wife and children when they were two, just as Bobby Fisher’s father.
This movie is also a beautiful metaphore of cinéma: you assume what you see is real but you can never tell how you get there… Just like Memento, excellent movie of Christopher Nolan….
I still can’t figure out what the numbers are for (528 941) someone an idea??
Let me add this. At the end of the movie when all the players are escaping the van in Level 2…how come Eames (the Forger) is sitting next to Fischer on the shore as the ‘Lawyer’ one sec and then in the next he is Eames himself?? Wouldn’t that give it away to Fischer that Fischer in fact was not in a dream. Because see…the whole time the ‘Crew’ leads Fischer to believe that Fischer began dreaming on Level 2 (meaning Fischer was in his 1st dream on Level 3.)
Wow…sorry guys. More to think about. That’s why Fischer gives Cobb a weird look at the airport. Fischer knows something isn’t right.
I personally believe that the end itself is a dream state.. Actually i think that in the all movie the true inception is done to Cobb. I trully think that at one point Cobb got lost in his limbo with his wife and that she is actually alive in the “real World”. Some people look at Michael Caine character as a friendly cast by nolan but i think is much more than that. Cobb been lost in a limbo state is a plausible idea. The fact that his own father (a masterpiece architect) could construct a world for his son to believe he is doing something to come to reality and see his kids again. I think this way mostly because of the airport agente scene. I don’t think he stops and look at him just to see if he is up to something like if he was a terrorist. I actually believe that Cob is in a dream, architected by is father or somebody else, a dream and a world were he can enter America and see his children. But… Cobb has doubts that is gonna pass the checking gatte and at that time that Checking man (that character created by an architect) see’s him as an intruder trying to change that dream. (just like the Paris scene with Ariane changing the dream). But then Cobbs has a leap of faith and believes he is gonna pass trow the gate and the dream continues so he can go and live with his children, even if in a dream created for him.
As I read before and agree, it is all Cobb’s dream from minute 1. Either a) someone is searching for his past and when they find out they let him in his Limbo or b) the sequel will give us more facts on what is actually happening. What is more interesting is how to judge the characters since from level a to b to c and deeper into dream levels, people who might be your enemies become friends and other projectiles appear that you on your own use through your subconscious. And this makes it hard since no one in the dream is very certain of reality. I personally think that there will be a sequel and Nolan (or the next director) will unfold a “different” perception of reality and dreaming, coming back to the point that a few hours of dreaming with the use of 6-7 people and more, can get you to so many multiple dream levels that one could live his life over and over again. And this is what I think has happened to Cobb, he has been living his life in a dream after the death of his wife.
@debaser
I’m not even going to try and explain why I firmly believe the movie is NOT all one, big dream; I’ve done so multiple times already on this thread and no longer see the point.
HOWEVER, I WILL say that I would be absolutely incredulous if Nolan allowed a sequel since the film does not lend itself to a continuation of the plot. Also, NO ONE ELSE will direct any sequel that would (for some hellishly stupid reason) be made for one very specific, very good reason: “Inception” was Nolan’s idea…he created it and put it together. He directed it because, quite simply, NO ONE ELSE COULD HAVE. He will not willingly give up that world to some other interpretation.
and when he questions the spinning artifact he decides not to wait to see the outcome, will it keep spinning or not? Maybe because the spinning artifact is controlled by Cobb’s desires, maybe that is why his wife had put it away because she could control it? Remember it was stopped in the vault before Cobb started spinning it to show her it was a dream. Anyway it would also be nice to see Marion Cotillard naked in the next inception, she is way way hot.
Think of it this way. It’s been years, (possibly longer do to the time fluctuations,) since he’s seen his kids, and if they come through the door, you’re not going to wait and see if the top is still spinning or not.
Another thing, the top is not magical. It’s not an artifact. It has no ‘powers’, it’s just a top used by Cobb since his wife is dead and he feels responsible, (because it is his fault and all,) so he uses that one because it was her’s, and because it made the movie that much better.
I’m trying not to be pissed off at how stupid you are, because you are very dumb, for-lack-of-a-better-word. It’s as if you didn’t even watch the movie.
The whole thing with the totems (the top) is that it’s their tie to reality, it’s reassurance. If that top doesn’t stop spinning, or the loaded dice (always a 3 perhaps) lands on a 4, you know you’re dreaming. As long as they have their totem, they can find whether or not they’re in a dream or not.
Plus, if their is a sequal coming, it would never live up to Inception, plus, it would ruin a legendary film, PLUS, it’s not even in post-preduction yet so if it was coming, it’s a loonnnggg way away.
I wasn’t trying to be mean when I said you were dumb, it’s just you seemed like a friend of mine who doesn’t seem to be able to follow storylines at all, and doesn’t seem to have the slightest idea what he’s talking about when he talks about movies. (And besides, if I was trying to be mean, I would’ve came up with something much more ‘mean’ then calling you dumb.)
The part where he walked off to see his kids, forgetting about the top was just that. He loves his kids so much, that he will (and did) do anything to see them again. It’s not like he said ‘F**k you, top’ and walked away, he just saw his kids and just picked them up.
Don’t think too deep into the top into the vault thing.
That top is a symbol of the connection between her and reality. When she put it in the vault, it was like she was giving up reality for her new life, her new ‘reality’.
A film-maker’s goal is to make an amazing movie that people will want to see, and this movie is a perfect example. That ending, where the top wobbles before it fades-to-black, is just that. Nolan won’t be able to tell you whether he was in ‘reality’ or still in the dream because there is no right answer.
What makes this movie so great is that ending. Nolan knows that, and it’s because of that ending that you are all here. If it was obvious he was still in a dream/reality, it wouldn’t have gotten you thinking about it, and if you weren’t thinking about ‘Inception’, it wouldn’t be so populaur.
Think of the ending as Schrodinger’s Cat. A paradox. A theme repeated throughout the movie, (remember the stairs?), and the explanation to the ending.
Schrodinger’s Cat is a thought experiment, in which there is a cat in a container. Inside the container, along with the cat, is a device. The cat cannot interact with the device in any way at all, and the container is shut. The device has a 50% chance of killing the cat, and a 50% chance of not killing it. Without opening the container after some time, we will never know whether the cat is dead or alive, so the cat is both dead and alive, both right answers and both wrong answers. Until we open the box, (have Nolan tell us whether he was in a dream or reality), we will never know whether he’s dreaming or not.
No one* will be able to tell you whether he was in ‘reality’ or still in the dream because there is no right answer.*
(Correction)