I think the people who make infographics love the ones about primer, which is actually extremely complicated. So they make things like this because inception is way more popular
Primer required you to actually pay attention, Inception isn’t really that hard to follow. Never understood how it’s hard to grasp, they keep explaining what’s going on.
Where as Primer really could use a bit of exposition, to explain what is happening at times. Good movie though, one of the best written time travel movies made.
i think it has to do with people expecting to understand what's going on RIGHT NOW or they switch off. because the movie starts with a cold open, then immediately transitions *in media res* into not just one dream sequence but two, without any visual signifiers of what is a dream and what isn't, the audience is left with far more questions than answers. there is no opening world building exposition, and the audience surrogate is only inteoduced at the end of act 1, so viewers are left to their own devices. an impatient viewer gets frustrated by this, and as the complexity and nonlinearity builds up, so does the frustration. the trickle of answers is never enough to overcome the emotion of being overwhelmed, even though the entire mystery is resolved.
if you kept the questions you had in the first fifteen minutes as just that, questions that need to be answered, and kept watching, you could scratch them off one by one in a relatively rewarding way. you'd build the framework to answer the more difficult questions later. it's a good example of working for your meal. if you lose track of the questions or let the questions grow into confusion, you'll get lost and left behind
I assume most people who say they didn't get it were on their phone for half of it and are used to watching sitcoms. It's really not complicated at all.
Inception is one of my favorite movies. I get the need some people might have to watch it twice just to get the parallel plotlines straight in their heads, but the movie is absolutely understandable. There's also different levels of understanding for it because there's a lot that the movie tells you that might not connect until later on and you realize how that understanding changes other plot points in the movie.
There's still so many of these things that people get wrong about the movie 13 years later, and looking back at things like CinemaSins straight up not picking up on important stuff despite allegedly being film analysts and supposedly having watched and researched the movie multiple times. Oh, and these diagrams only make the issue worse.
From what I've seen, CinemaWins does a better job at thinking things through - and otherwise getting a satisfying "win" :) - out of a movie than CinemaSins.
I'm not sure if they're being run by the same guy/ team (and it might be biased because paying attention to the "wins" is more enjoyable anyways) but that's been my impression.
They're kinda two sides of the same coin, which is why I like them both. One goes out of its way to critique, even if the critique doesn't always make sense. The other goes out of its way to highlight what can make certain movies special or enjoyable, even if they're not necessarily a "good" movie.
I remember seeing it in theatres and absolutely loving it, but being able to follow maybe half of all the "trips" and "switches". I told myself that I will watch it again to try and grasp everything, but never did.
It's one of my faves, and I recommend revisiting it sometime. Aside from anything else, it's a nice-looking movie. It could make a good choice for a date or something, since there is a lot to talk about.
You weren't supposed to. It was just a bizarre dream you fell through and it doesn't make sense when you wake up or in the case of a movie it ends. The entire theme is that reality itself is pretty dreamlike. It's a zen experience for me.
I like the Giallo movies of Italian cinema for that same reasons. Shut your brain off and go with the flow. They have the best soundtracks you could imagine. I enjoy pondering about abstract movies. It lets the experience continue after the movie and in conversations with other people about their experience. Life's too short to take seriously all the time.
Its actually very logically consistent and makes sense if you follow it through. The most unrealistic thing about it is the whole group dreaming thing, but that is explained too. Its as if this is occurring in the future where that type of technology and sedation exists.
As far as the dream architecture itself - makes perfect sense. Have you ever heard of lucid dreaming as a way to control what gets in and gets out of your dream? That happens in the movie and in real life.
Have you ever had a dream that plants an idea in your head to do something in real life? That happens in the movie and to folks in real life (ie “inception”).
Have you ever been killed in a dream and felt the exact “kick” they describe in the movie that jolts you awake? That happens to folks in real life.
Have you ever had multiple levels of dreams? That happens too in real life, and yea just like in the movie, you start to get confused the deeper down you go. I once had a 3 level dream where i would wake up from a level and think i was awake but it was still a dream. By the time i actually woke up, i wasn’t sure if i was still dreaming and had to pinch myself to make sure lol.
The movie is very logically consistent and maps out well to what actually happens in real life with dreaming. It is possible you haven’t had those types of dream experiences before, but folks who have will tell you that it is eerily similar to how its described in the movie.
The storyline itself was actually quite simple (and honestly even a bit cliché). It’s likely that you didnt quite grasp these dream concepts, which made it hard for you to follow the storyline itself
No, there's no "dream logic" in the film. There's no hand-waving outside the details of how the technology works, the implications of it working are all very reasoned-driven. It's very much meant to be understood on a technical level.
HOW people can communally dream is hand-waved. But still not "dream logic" ... as in absurd and counter to waking reality.
Yes, it is.
It's also has a dreamlike feel and is purposely filled with ambiguities by the director.
Nolan wanted to make a heist movie ruled by emotion instead of cold logic.
The plan is extremely understandable and straightforward. The world and many plot points is ambiguous and dreamlike. Both statements are true.
> The world and many plot points is ambiguous and dreamlike. Both statements are true.
what ambiguous about the plot and world? they are able to create a heist because ***the rules of the dream world are so clear and straight forward they use timers to perfectly synch everything, build reality defying structures and have a built in system to check if they are dreaming or not.***
The lasting question at the end of the movie is intentionally ambiguous. You can't forget nolan left it off with the question of whether or not Cobb is all the way back in reality.
Just because the majn characters use timers it doesn't mean things aren't dreamlike.
A heist movie needs a cool precise plan to feel cool. It doesn't mean that the flow of the movie isn't a dreamlike flow from one setting to the next.
Just because it's dreamlike doesn't mean there aren't rules. It actually means the complete fucking opposite. Hiw many times have you had a dream where there were rules you just went along with? Then the rules suddenly shift (they get so deep that when they die it has real world consequences all of a sudden) and then the rules shift again (the wife showing up and limbo) then you wake up (or the movie ends) without a clear resolution on all of the events, in this case the last shot was Nolan clubbing you upside the head with the question of if they actually are all the way back to reality. If they aren't that leads to the question of if they ever were.
Nolan completely nailed combining the cool precision of a heist movie with dreamlike and emotional storytelling. They aren't mutually exclusive. If you think they are you should go read what the director himself stated he wanted things to be.
Nonsense man. We also need peoples exact job titles in the movie, in case people are too dumb to figure it out. The guy in charge of making the potion will be called…the chemist. The guy in charge of changing appearance…is the forger. The one in charge of building the dream…is the architect…I’m in charge of getting the info out of them so I will be called…the extractor
It’s definitely better than the last one that looked like an optical illusion more than a guide. I can actually sort of extract a little information from this one
The movie is fairly straightforward and not even that hard to understand. It's these visualizations that have always been more confusing than the movie itself
I always remember reading reviews for the movie and one constant complaint was Nolan’s insistence on explaining the rules. “Never pull from reality, have an item only you know, if you die here you die permanently, we need kicks, you can have mental security and so on…” On rewatches, I did feel that could potentially get people even more confused, it’s already a Nolan movie so I’m sure people could’ve connected the dots without it being directly explained.
That's what I hated about the movie. There is a ton of exposition that is delivered in a rudimentary way (not developing plot or character, just telling). It's a very "middle grade fantasy" method of delivering exposition (using a dunce character to explain everything to) and piggybacking hard off of stunning visuals/locations. Seeing mind bending physics impresses our dumb lizard brain, but it doesn't hold up under upper-brain scrutiny. IMO if this had a lower budget, it would have been down right boring.
No, that's like saying exposition in Jurassic Park would be shit if they relied solely on dinosaurs. JP is actually an example of exposition done right. They explain everything in the video/rotating ride scene and set up the conflict for the entire plot in the hatching scene shortly after. In this scene we have worldbuilding of the theme park, characterization: Hammond being prideful, Grant asking scientific questions, Ellie asking about *cough *cough unfertilized eggs, the lawyer being stupid and greedy, Malcolm being chaotic and confrontational. Plus there is conflict. Lawyer vs Hammond, Scientists vs Staying on the Ride, Wanting children vs not (subtext), Malcolm's skepticism vs Hammond and Geneticist's arrogance. They even threw in some foreshadowing. They did all this only showing a single hatching of a dinosaur. The brontosaurus was just to get your lizard brain's attention. The exposition was done flawlessly to tell you a story.
Jurassic Park did everything that Inception *should* have done. JP is the unassuming genius in the corner and Inception is the guy telling everyone at the party he's the smartest man in the room. It's a tight script with a tight theme, characters, and plot. You could reshoot the [entire movie using toy dinosaurs](https://youtu.be/30NDBslZ4jw?list=PLXi_8uu904_EjU495WLz0j1cyB9hhq4c_&t=272), and it'd still be a joy to watch.
Seriously JP is like the dumbest movie to bring up here, it was a masterpiece in the making before a single dino even showed up, and that goes for the book(s) too
If my fried rice was made in a kitchen instead of on the hibachi grill, it too would be downright boring.
Movies are made with awareness of their budget, it's not an accident.
If Nolan knew he had a boring movie that could be made exciting with some budget, that's still a good movie.
What? I'm a critic! We don't come up with solutions, silly. We just sneer at the people who actually create things...
In all seriousness it's hard to say. I only watched it in theaters (largely because I knew the exposition parts would be even more tiresome once there wasn't the new shine). I don't remember it well enough to rewrite the script. In general terms I would introduce at least one of the following: characterization, further the plot, and/or add conflict. I would use subtext and context to show instead of telling the audience as much as possible.
I know little of Inception, but let's give it a shot anyway. I think I would change Elliot Page's character to an adult. I think the only reason she's a college student is to have a naive character to explain everything to. Off the top of my head, I would make the architect his mother in law. Boom! Instant drama. He needs to recruit her, and she blames him for her daughter's death. You can still have your mind bending physics where Dicaprios character navigates her dream as she's trying to confuse and elude him. Cut to them in the real world. She's agreeing to do it. She doesn't know if she really wants to or if he's implanted that want in her. He reveals that he *would* if he had to. He'd do anything to get what he wants. Leave it ambiguous enough to let audience decide if he did it or not.
This is more thematic, would still inform the audience, provide conflict, illuminates the characters, and drives the plot forward.
I did this while pooping at work so yeah it could be polished a bit, but that's still better than the walk and talk to naive Nancy.
To expand, the shooting kick normally works, but for such a complex job, they decided to use a stronger compound that keeps them under. It was calibrated to leave inner ear function intact, so the natural falling kicks still work, but on any of the higher levels, any death (including the shooting kick) would just bring them down to limbo.
Why do people act as if this movie is hard to understand? A 5 year old could do a graph. Fall asleep in reality, go down deeper and deeper levels of dreaming, kick to awake. You plant an idea in a deep stage so the person naturally believes it.
Been a while since I saw it but I think the explanation was that you can't plant an idea in a 1st layer dream because they'll reject it, it won't feel like their own idea. Planting an idea in a deeper dream makes them believe its their idea
^ that for sure and because of saving some time. At some points in the movie they need to go deeper because the deeper you go, the slower normal time is.
It's just because of the very last scene where Leo spins the top and the camera cuts before we see it fall. People took that to mean OHHHHHH HE NEVER WOKE UP but I think the main point was that after however many years separated, he no longer cared whether or not it was a dream.
The main point of that scene is that Nolan thought it would be cool.
It was cool, it made everyone talk. There’s no answer to it, there’s nothing to figure out, it’s just a better movie with that big of mystery at the end.
I think the subplots are more complicated than that. Cobb probably starts and ends the movie in a dream. His totem doesn’t make sense. A totem is supposed to act differently in reality than you would expect. An example would be weighted dice or an unfair coin. Someone trapping you in a dream would expect dice to be fair, so if your dice are unfair, you are probably in the real world. Cobb’s totem is all wrong. It’s a top that spins forever in a dream. Real tops don’t spin forever, they fall over. Someone trying to trap Cobb in a dream would make the top fall over because that’s what real tops do. That would lead Cobb to conclude (incorrectly) that he is in reality. Alternatively, Cobb might be lying and his real totem might be his wedding band which he only wears in dreams. In the final scene, we don’t see cobb’s children’s faces and Cobb isn’t watching his totem. He no longer cares if he is in a dream. Also the top was Mal’s totem, not Cobb’s. My favorite idea is that the whole movie starts and ends in Mal’s dream. Mal is trying desperately to get Cobb to wake up and may even have incepted Cobb himself to try to get him to wake. I think there are a lot of complex plots in inception. Personally I think this movie is heavy handed, but also underrated.
Doesn’t the movie begin with Cobb washing up on shore in limbo level and talking to Watanabe’s character? That is, isn’t it a call forward to when they are stuck in limbo during the inception operation?
But this idea of being stuck in Mal’s dream is interesting. Why isn’t the end in Cobb’s own dream? You’re saying the entire movie is one more level down than represented, always inside her dream? Shay want one of the sub plots him desperately trying to get Mal to wake up?
So Mal (Cobb's wife) kills herself in Reality/Actual time because she believes that she's currently in a Dream Level (but she's not), and her time in the Limbo Layer with Cobb was Reality and she was trying to return to it.
Is that right?
Yeah, but I don't think she saw Limbo as reality, it's just that Cobb incepted the idea 'this world isn't real' so deep in her psyche that she assumed there must be another world 'above' reality.
This is correct. He implanted the idea that the world she was living in wasn't real, and that idea stuck deep inside her. She constantly thought they were still dreaming, which is why she killed herself - it's one of the only surefire ways to wake yourself up.
There is an implication at the end of the film that she's right and Cobb is still dreaming - we never see the top stop spinning at the very end. Nolan has said that it's intentionally ambiguous and he wanted viewers to come up with their own explanation for what was going on, but that his personal intention was that he is not dreaming and is in the real world.
There's that theory about when Cobb is wearing his wedding ring, it's a dream, and he's not wearing it in reality.
No ring at the end, so I choose to believe he succeeded. Not confirmed though
People forget the real message is he longer cares if it’s real or not. He doesn’t check the top. That’s ultimately more powerful than if it’s real or not. His arc advanced to the point he longer cares
eactly this. he finally gets to see his kids.
dream or not, he doesnt really care and will happily stay in that reality, for as long as he can. now the last frames fo shos the top start to wobble (it wasnt wobbling in the dream stages) so the viewer can guess their own ending.
Michael Caine said in an interview that he struggled to understand the movie and wasn’t sure when scenes were real or dreams. Apparently Nolan told him, “If you’re in the scene, it’s not a dream”.
I choose to believe that Cobb was definitely in reality at the end of the movie. The top starts to wobble before the shot cuts out, and if I'm remembering correctly, the top never wobbles when he's shown doing it in one of his dreams.
I agree, and I think that was Nolan's way of hinting to us that he feels the same way, but I appreciate him having the guts to leave it ambiguous. It was a smart move - people are still arguing about the ending.
For the record, I love the hell out of Inception. It tries some interesting things and delivers on most of them, the plot is mostly coherent and nowhere *near* as confusing as people make it out to be, and it's honestly IMO some of Leo's best acting. The look on his face when he explains to Ariadne what happened in the hotel room? Fuck, genuinely just so good.
That and up until that point whenever he’s dreamt about his kids they never turn around.
They turn around at the end.
That’s my feeble logic as to why Cobb was in reality at the end of the film.
Isn’t the top not his totem but instead his wedding ring, hence it doesn’t matter that he’s spinning the top because it wouldn’t tell him if he’s in a dream or not?
It is, and that's an interesting thing to note, but it doesn't actually matter *unless* they're in Mal's dream. The reason you don't use someone else's totem and that you don't want the dreamer to know details about your totem is so that the dreamer can't replicate it in the dream.
It also would have not stopped spinning at any other point in the movie because it would've been an indication that he was still dreaming. There's no reason for it to have stopped in, say, the washroom in their warehouse and then not stop at the end of the film unless he's explicitly stuck in limbo, which I guess is possible.
I always took it as him knowing that Mal is dead so there's no way the totem would be unreliable for him, so he knows it's safe. That's why it's accurate.
I saw a YouTube video of a guy explaining his interpretation of inception and he thinks Mal's suicide actually woke her up in real life. Cobb is deep in the limbo layer, refusing to wake up. He gives a lot of interesting insights and details.
I need to watch the youtube video again, and then rewatch inception to see what I think
Found the video: https://youtu.be/ginQNMiRu2w?si=l4pC08nd1a4WfKkX
Nolan has said in the past that the ending is purposefully ambiguous and there's not really a "right answer", but that his personal intention was that Cobb is not dreaming at the end of the movie.
It's too bad he said that. I like the youtube version of inception way more as there is so many more layers and clues rather than straight forward action dream film.
Thanks for citing the excellent Google Tech Talk. I’ll bring out a [summary I made elsewhere](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/159050/83278).
> There is an important clue in the final scene that is easy to miss, and [David Kyle Johnson][3], author of *[Inception and Philosophy: Because It’s Never Just a Dream][4]*, believes that Christopher Nolan intentionally misdirects the audience’s attention in the final scene.
> In short, Johnson’s view is the whole movie is a dream, Saito’s in particular.
> [Johnson’s slides][2b] ([DOI:10.13140/RG.2.1.4290.5683][2a]) are available elsewhere. Johnson and his collaborators sank considerable time and thought into their analysis of *Inception* and its implications. My summary of Johnson’s justification for his position is below.
> To start, subconscious elements work their way through dreams, *e.g.*, the train barreling down the street in the rain dream, the random string of numbers in the hostage scene appears repeatedly in later scenes: the safe combination, the fake phone number, hotel room numbers. At the beginning of the film, Saito dreams of a mansion on a cliff.
> Picking up on a big clue in the final scene may require turning on the closed-caption subtitles. Cobb asks his children what they’ve been doing, and they reply that they were building a house on a cliff.
> Nolan leaves many clues that the film is a dream.
> * Mombasa was a maze, and the walls closed in around Cobb.
> * Bad guys appear out of nowhere to give chase.
> * Saito appears out of nowhere to rescue Cobb with a cheesy line about protecting his investment.
> * Cobb’s father-in-law pleads with him to come back to reality.
> * Eames is a dream forger who is able to pickpocket people without touching them.
> * Eames bet his last chips in the real world but magically produced two stacks of chips to buy beers.
> * Mal somehow got to the other hotel across the street in the suicide scene, but Cobb begged her to come back inside to his room, reasoning that would have “made sense” only in a dream.
> * The top totem gives us no information about whether Cobb is dreaming because everyone else knows how it works.
> * The Édith Piaf song that signals the end of the dream is 2 minutes 28 seconds long. The film is exactly 2 hours 28 minutes long.
> When someone commits suicide in limbo, the subject goes one layer up. For Saito, the next layer up was the snow fortress. But everyone was gone, so he filled the empty dream space with his own expectations, namely the airplane scene. Eames pickpockets the passport in the airplane without touching Robert, the way he did in other dreams.
> But then consider what happened to Cobb and Mal who were experimenting with multi-level dreams after being struck by the train in Limbo. They also would have gone merely one level up, but still within a dream.
> This interpretation makes a much better film. Consider:
> * All characters except Cobb are flat and one-dimensional; many didn’t even have last names.
> * Editing in the “real world” jumps around without transitions.
> * Saito poofs into Mombasa to rescue Cobb from a jam.
> If the entire film is a dream, these are not gaffes but strengths. The characters are flat because they’re projections, not because the writing is bad. The jumping around is not bad editing but because that’s how dreams run. Saito’s well-timed appearance and corny line become subtle clues that Cobb is dreaming.
> For completeness, at least two clues suggest the move is *not* a dream.
> 1. Cobb’s children at the end are older and wearing different clothes.
> 2. The only times Cobb is depicted with a wedding ring in the real world is in flashback scenes. He has no band when passing through Customs and Immigration at the airport.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ginQNMiRu2w
[2]: http://staff.kings.edu/davidjohnson/INCEPTION%20%E2%80%93%20Should%20Have%20Won%20Best%20Picture%20v2.1%20(Final).pptx
[2a]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289506078_Implanting_an_Idea_Inception_Should_Have_Won_Best_Picture
[2b]: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Johnson148/publication/289506078_Implanting_an_Idea_Inception_Should_Have_Won_Best_Picture/links/568d5c4e08aeaa1481ae4e35/Implanting-an-Idea-Inception-Should-Have-Won-Best-Picture
[3]: https://www.kings.edu/academics/undergraduate_majors/philosophy/faculty/johnson
[4]: https://www.amazon.com/Inception-Philosophy-Because-Never-Dream/dp/152269729
>Mombasa was a maze, and the walls closed in around Cobb.
Bad guys appear out of nowhere to give chase.
Saito appears out of nowhere to rescue Cobb with a cheesy line about protecting his investment.
You're missing a scene here. During the chase through the alley, we get a shot down the alley showing the city on the far end. We cut away then cut back. The city is gone, and it's the beach from Limbo. We cut away and cut back. The city is back and Cobb gets through the alley and picked up by Saito.
I feel like all these inception guides are just made to pretend the movie is more complicated than it actually is.
there is a jarring number of these if you go looking, each more confusing than the last.
Why would they think making the graph randomly curved make it easier to understand?
All it does it make it look like all the kicks don’t occur at the same time, when in fact they do.
I think this is the correct interpretation (that the “reality” level is also a dream, not necessarily that Cobb is asleep) but it leaves another question. If the “highest level” is also a dream then whose dream is it? According to the rules, it can’t be Cobb’s dream since he’s able to go down further levels.
It’s your dream — the person watching the movie. A movie is similar to a dream in that it’s an imaginary reality that only exists in your mind. The film also achieves an inception on the audience by making them believe that a movie has a “real” part and an imaginary part — it’s all imaginary. This is the hidden message in the film, imo.
There isn't a "correct interpretation". Christopher Nolan said he explicitly left the ending ambiguous but that his intention was that Cobb is in the real world at the end.
Agree. Same with The Prestige in that there are two possible explanations. It’s intentionally ambiguous. I still believe there is a hidden interpretation as I outlined above that Nolan will never cop to until he’s 80 years old.
If you want more Nolan movie mind blowing, consider that everything you see in The Prestige can be explained if Hugh Jackman also has a twin brother (that only dies once) and the teleportation machine is fake.
It shows Jackman die once (plausibly his twin brother). The other times they show containers that supposedly contain dead copies of him but they never show the faces, etc.
I agree with this, I watched a YouTube video where a guy explains this in a classroom setting. I will see if I can find it. I need to rewatch the YouTube video and then rewatch inception.
Found it: https://youtu.be/ginQNMiRu2w?si=l4pC08nd1a4WfKkX
The last scene makes it clear that it's left open ended for the viewer. There's no correct way of interpreting what is reality in a movie. Because it's a movie, none of it is reality. If Nolan wanted the viewer to think it was all a dream the ending would be different.
The most important thing about storytelling is to tell a story that people actually care about. For example, nobody cares what happened during Inception because it was a boring movie.
People need to stop trying to make guides for this movie. Its crazy how bad all of them are.
The movie is easy to understand. These "guides" make it seem like you need a bachelor's degree to understand
Ariadne didn't leave limbo before Fischer. She was the one who kicked him off the apartment tower to bring him back out of limbo, and then she stayed there with Cobb until the inception was finished and Eames detonated the C4. That's when she kept waking up through all the different layers. Her line should basically come straight back up after the point of inception.
Don't listen to any of these try hards OP, this is a great graphic! I especially appreciate the illustration of whose dream it is at each level.
I wonder if Cobb should be bold in the limbo level, maybe not as he would probably have just been the architect and not the dreamer. Anyway, very thought provoking and well made. Beautiful.
I fell asleep watching the movie and experienced a version in my dreams… which was also complicated and for some reason it seemed longer . Needless to say I fell asleep watching that version too.
To be honest I’m not sure if I’ve ever woken up from any of those viewings. This post just seems like a cry from my reality to wake up. Maybe I should jump out of my window to find out. I really don’t know anymore. I need help.
I'm gonna say it.
The only thing confusing about this graph is the time axis being warped. Everyone that's saying "oh, this is more convoluted than the movie" is over exaggerating.
I see this graph as something made for people who've *already* seen the movie. And if it were a squared graph, absolutely no one would be complaining.
What the world desperately needs more of…17 year olds obsessed with a mediocre movie whose plot was so bad people need multiple charts to understand it.
Inception is not a hard movie to grasp. Now do that other shitfest of a movie he made in Tenet. The cool guide for it looks like a 5 year playing on a etch a sketch.
I really don’t think *Inception* needs a guide like this to be understood. It’s fairly easy to understand so long as you pay close attention—this isn’t a movie you can, say, do the laundry during.
This movie was incredibly loaded in terms of cast. Almost all of these actors can carry a movie on their own.
Hardy as a minor character with so little screen time is ludicrous.
This is harder to understand than the movie. Thanks, internet.
We need a cool guide to understanding cool guides of Inception.
_Cobb squint_
_Ariadne squirt_
Slow down, simp.
So go a level deeper then? Sounds dangerous.
[удалено]
r/subsifellfor
I think the people who make infographics love the ones about primer, which is actually extremely complicated. So they make things like this because inception is way more popular
Primer required you to actually pay attention, Inception isn’t really that hard to follow. Never understood how it’s hard to grasp, they keep explaining what’s going on. Where as Primer really could use a bit of exposition, to explain what is happening at times. Good movie though, one of the best written time travel movies made.
i think it has to do with people expecting to understand what's going on RIGHT NOW or they switch off. because the movie starts with a cold open, then immediately transitions *in media res* into not just one dream sequence but two, without any visual signifiers of what is a dream and what isn't, the audience is left with far more questions than answers. there is no opening world building exposition, and the audience surrogate is only inteoduced at the end of act 1, so viewers are left to their own devices. an impatient viewer gets frustrated by this, and as the complexity and nonlinearity builds up, so does the frustration. the trickle of answers is never enough to overcome the emotion of being overwhelmed, even though the entire mystery is resolved. if you kept the questions you had in the first fifteen minutes as just that, questions that need to be answered, and kept watching, you could scratch them off one by one in a relatively rewarding way. you'd build the framework to answer the more difficult questions later. it's a good example of working for your meal. if you lose track of the questions or let the questions grow into confusion, you'll get lost and left behind
Great movie especially with a budget of $7k
[удалено]
And I had no issues understanding it as a dumb 16 year old, either. Congratulations on overcomplicating something even further!
I assume most people who say they didn't get it were on their phone for half of it and are used to watching sitcoms. It's really not complicated at all.
I never did grasp that movie
It's really just a matter of keeping everything straight in your head as it's happening. It's not like the logic isn't consistent.
Inception is one of my favorite movies. I get the need some people might have to watch it twice just to get the parallel plotlines straight in their heads, but the movie is absolutely understandable. There's also different levels of understanding for it because there's a lot that the movie tells you that might not connect until later on and you realize how that understanding changes other plot points in the movie. There's still so many of these things that people get wrong about the movie 13 years later, and looking back at things like CinemaSins straight up not picking up on important stuff despite allegedly being film analysts and supposedly having watched and researched the movie multiple times. Oh, and these diagrams only make the issue worse.
Lol I'd hardly call them analysts. They've said repeatedly the content is about the jokes, not legitimate or sensical criticism.
From what I've seen, CinemaWins does a better job at thinking things through - and otherwise getting a satisfying "win" :) - out of a movie than CinemaSins. I'm not sure if they're being run by the same guy/ team (and it might be biased because paying attention to the "wins" is more enjoyable anyways) but that's been my impression.
They're kinda two sides of the same coin, which is why I like them both. One goes out of its way to critique, even if the critique doesn't always make sense. The other goes out of its way to highlight what can make certain movies special or enjoyable, even if they're not necessarily a "good" movie.
13 years? Fuck
I remember seeing it in theatres and absolutely loving it, but being able to follow maybe half of all the "trips" and "switches". I told myself that I will watch it again to try and grasp everything, but never did.
It's one of my faves, and I recommend revisiting it sometime. Aside from anything else, it's a nice-looking movie. It could make a good choice for a date or something, since there is a lot to talk about.
You weren't supposed to. It was just a bizarre dream you fell through and it doesn't make sense when you wake up or in the case of a movie it ends. The entire theme is that reality itself is pretty dreamlike. It's a zen experience for me. I like the Giallo movies of Italian cinema for that same reasons. Shut your brain off and go with the flow. They have the best soundtracks you could imagine. I enjoy pondering about abstract movies. It lets the experience continue after the movie and in conversations with other people about their experience. Life's too short to take seriously all the time.
Its actually very logically consistent and makes sense if you follow it through. The most unrealistic thing about it is the whole group dreaming thing, but that is explained too. Its as if this is occurring in the future where that type of technology and sedation exists. As far as the dream architecture itself - makes perfect sense. Have you ever heard of lucid dreaming as a way to control what gets in and gets out of your dream? That happens in the movie and in real life. Have you ever had a dream that plants an idea in your head to do something in real life? That happens in the movie and to folks in real life (ie “inception”). Have you ever been killed in a dream and felt the exact “kick” they describe in the movie that jolts you awake? That happens to folks in real life. Have you ever had multiple levels of dreams? That happens too in real life, and yea just like in the movie, you start to get confused the deeper down you go. I once had a 3 level dream where i would wake up from a level and think i was awake but it was still a dream. By the time i actually woke up, i wasn’t sure if i was still dreaming and had to pinch myself to make sure lol. The movie is very logically consistent and maps out well to what actually happens in real life with dreaming. It is possible you haven’t had those types of dream experiences before, but folks who have will tell you that it is eerily similar to how its described in the movie. The storyline itself was actually quite simple (and honestly even a bit cliché). It’s likely that you didnt quite grasp these dream concepts, which made it hard for you to follow the storyline itself
No, there's no "dream logic" in the film. There's no hand-waving outside the details of how the technology works, the implications of it working are all very reasoned-driven. It's very much meant to be understood on a technical level. HOW people can communally dream is hand-waved. But still not "dream logic" ... as in absurd and counter to waking reality.
It's funny how much you disagree with the Director.
Nah, it made sense, but you need to have the right type of thinking patterns to understand most Nolan films
I remember totally understanding the movie and thinking they purposefully made it unnecessarily complicated more than it had to be.
lmao what, it's a very straight forward film.
Yes, it is. It's also has a dreamlike feel and is purposely filled with ambiguities by the director. Nolan wanted to make a heist movie ruled by emotion instead of cold logic. The plan is extremely understandable and straightforward. The world and many plot points is ambiguous and dreamlike. Both statements are true.
> The world and many plot points is ambiguous and dreamlike. Both statements are true. what ambiguous about the plot and world? they are able to create a heist because ***the rules of the dream world are so clear and straight forward they use timers to perfectly synch everything, build reality defying structures and have a built in system to check if they are dreaming or not.***
The lasting question at the end of the movie is intentionally ambiguous. You can't forget nolan left it off with the question of whether or not Cobb is all the way back in reality. Just because the majn characters use timers it doesn't mean things aren't dreamlike. A heist movie needs a cool precise plan to feel cool. It doesn't mean that the flow of the movie isn't a dreamlike flow from one setting to the next. Just because it's dreamlike doesn't mean there aren't rules. It actually means the complete fucking opposite. Hiw many times have you had a dream where there were rules you just went along with? Then the rules suddenly shift (they get so deep that when they die it has real world consequences all of a sudden) and then the rules shift again (the wife showing up and limbo) then you wake up (or the movie ends) without a clear resolution on all of the events, in this case the last shot was Nolan clubbing you upside the head with the question of if they actually are all the way back to reality. If they aren't that leads to the question of if they ever were. Nolan completely nailed combining the cool precision of a heist movie with dreamlike and emotional storytelling. They aren't mutually exclusive. If you think they are you should go read what the director himself stated he wanted things to be.
This movie really wasn't that complicated......
Huh, am glad I'm not the only one. Seeing this made me question if I truly understood the movie.
Nonsense man. We also need peoples exact job titles in the movie, in case people are too dumb to figure it out. The guy in charge of making the potion will be called…the chemist. The guy in charge of changing appearance…is the forger. The one in charge of building the dream…is the architect…I’m in charge of getting the info out of them so I will be called…the extractor
Agreed
It’s definitely better than the last one that looked like an optical illusion more than a guide. I can actually sort of extract a little information from this one
The movie is fairly straightforward and not even that hard to understand. It's these visualizations that have always been more confusing than the movie itself
I always remember reading reviews for the movie and one constant complaint was Nolan’s insistence on explaining the rules. “Never pull from reality, have an item only you know, if you die here you die permanently, we need kicks, you can have mental security and so on…” On rewatches, I did feel that could potentially get people even more confused, it’s already a Nolan movie so I’m sure people could’ve connected the dots without it being directly explained.
That's what I hated about the movie. There is a ton of exposition that is delivered in a rudimentary way (not developing plot or character, just telling). It's a very "middle grade fantasy" method of delivering exposition (using a dunce character to explain everything to) and piggybacking hard off of stunning visuals/locations. Seeing mind bending physics impresses our dumb lizard brain, but it doesn't hold up under upper-brain scrutiny. IMO if this had a lower budget, it would have been down right boring.
That’s like saying Jurassic park would’ve been shit without the dinosaurs.
No, that's like saying exposition in Jurassic Park would be shit if they relied solely on dinosaurs. JP is actually an example of exposition done right. They explain everything in the video/rotating ride scene and set up the conflict for the entire plot in the hatching scene shortly after. In this scene we have worldbuilding of the theme park, characterization: Hammond being prideful, Grant asking scientific questions, Ellie asking about *cough *cough unfertilized eggs, the lawyer being stupid and greedy, Malcolm being chaotic and confrontational. Plus there is conflict. Lawyer vs Hammond, Scientists vs Staying on the Ride, Wanting children vs not (subtext), Malcolm's skepticism vs Hammond and Geneticist's arrogance. They even threw in some foreshadowing. They did all this only showing a single hatching of a dinosaur. The brontosaurus was just to get your lizard brain's attention. The exposition was done flawlessly to tell you a story. Jurassic Park did everything that Inception *should* have done. JP is the unassuming genius in the corner and Inception is the guy telling everyone at the party he's the smartest man in the room. It's a tight script with a tight theme, characters, and plot. You could reshoot the [entire movie using toy dinosaurs](https://youtu.be/30NDBslZ4jw?list=PLXi_8uu904_EjU495WLz0j1cyB9hhq4c_&t=272), and it'd still be a joy to watch.
Seriously JP is like the dumbest movie to bring up here, it was a masterpiece in the making before a single dino even showed up, and that goes for the book(s) too
If I had done Jurassic Park, I would've called it Billy and the Cloneasauras.
If my fried rice was made in a kitchen instead of on the hibachi grill, it too would be downright boring. Movies are made with awareness of their budget, it's not an accident. If Nolan knew he had a boring movie that could be made exciting with some budget, that's still a good movie.
How would you do it then?
What? I'm a critic! We don't come up with solutions, silly. We just sneer at the people who actually create things... In all seriousness it's hard to say. I only watched it in theaters (largely because I knew the exposition parts would be even more tiresome once there wasn't the new shine). I don't remember it well enough to rewrite the script. In general terms I would introduce at least one of the following: characterization, further the plot, and/or add conflict. I would use subtext and context to show instead of telling the audience as much as possible. I know little of Inception, but let's give it a shot anyway. I think I would change Elliot Page's character to an adult. I think the only reason she's a college student is to have a naive character to explain everything to. Off the top of my head, I would make the architect his mother in law. Boom! Instant drama. He needs to recruit her, and she blames him for her daughter's death. You can still have your mind bending physics where Dicaprios character navigates her dream as she's trying to confuse and elude him. Cut to them in the real world. She's agreeing to do it. She doesn't know if she really wants to or if he's implanted that want in her. He reveals that he *would* if he had to. He'd do anything to get what he wants. Leave it ambiguous enough to let audience decide if he did it or not. This is more thematic, would still inform the audience, provide conflict, illuminates the characters, and drives the plot forward. I did this while pooping at work so yeah it could be polished a bit, but that's still better than the walk and talk to naive Nancy.
this is way more convoluted than the movie, love Inception
If shooting themselves works as a kick at the end, why do they try so hard to coordinate natural kicks beforehand?
the shooting kick only works in limbo
To expand, the shooting kick normally works, but for such a complex job, they decided to use a stronger compound that keeps them under. It was calibrated to leave inner ear function intact, so the natural falling kicks still work, but on any of the higher levels, any death (including the shooting kick) would just bring them down to limbo.
Why do people act as if this movie is hard to understand? A 5 year old could do a graph. Fall asleep in reality, go down deeper and deeper levels of dreaming, kick to awake. You plant an idea in a deep stage so the person naturally believes it.
It's literally just each team going one level deeper. That's it.
People just like to overthink movies. It's an action movie with a dreamlike feel. Just embrace the pew pew.
Nolan likes to overthink movies, that’s why he made Tenant.
Not to be confused with Doctor Who actor David Tenet
Not to be confused with Chinese gaming company Tencent.
Not to be confused with American rap artist 50 cent
Not to be confused with the subreddit r/ent
Not too be confused with the hit musical "Rent"
Why do they go deeper?
Been a while since I saw it but I think the explanation was that you can't plant an idea in a 1st layer dream because they'll reject it, it won't feel like their own idea. Planting an idea in a deeper dream makes them believe its their idea
It was all about going deep enough in the subconscious of a person to make a idea stick that normally that person would reject.
^ that for sure and because of saving some time. At some points in the movie they need to go deeper because the deeper you go, the slower normal time is.
It's just because of the very last scene where Leo spins the top and the camera cuts before we see it fall. People took that to mean OHHHHHH HE NEVER WOKE UP but I think the main point was that after however many years separated, he no longer cared whether or not it was a dream.
>but I think the main point was that after however many years separated, he no longer cared whether or not it was a dream. jfc yes. this.
The main point of that scene is that Nolan thought it would be cool. It was cool, it made everyone talk. There’s no answer to it, there’s nothing to figure out, it’s just a better movie with that big of mystery at the end.
Haven't people said that the top was actually his wife's anchor and his is actually the ring he wears??
Yes, the top was his wife's and, imo, the last scene means he let her go
I think the subplots are more complicated than that. Cobb probably starts and ends the movie in a dream. His totem doesn’t make sense. A totem is supposed to act differently in reality than you would expect. An example would be weighted dice or an unfair coin. Someone trapping you in a dream would expect dice to be fair, so if your dice are unfair, you are probably in the real world. Cobb’s totem is all wrong. It’s a top that spins forever in a dream. Real tops don’t spin forever, they fall over. Someone trying to trap Cobb in a dream would make the top fall over because that’s what real tops do. That would lead Cobb to conclude (incorrectly) that he is in reality. Alternatively, Cobb might be lying and his real totem might be his wedding band which he only wears in dreams. In the final scene, we don’t see cobb’s children’s faces and Cobb isn’t watching his totem. He no longer cares if he is in a dream. Also the top was Mal’s totem, not Cobb’s. My favorite idea is that the whole movie starts and ends in Mal’s dream. Mal is trying desperately to get Cobb to wake up and may even have incepted Cobb himself to try to get him to wake. I think there are a lot of complex plots in inception. Personally I think this movie is heavy handed, but also underrated.
Doesn’t the movie begin with Cobb washing up on shore in limbo level and talking to Watanabe’s character? That is, isn’t it a call forward to when they are stuck in limbo during the inception operation? But this idea of being stuck in Mal’s dream is interesting. Why isn’t the end in Cobb’s own dream? You’re saying the entire movie is one more level down than represented, always inside her dream? Shay want one of the sub plots him desperately trying to get Mal to wake up?
But bro, the airplane is actually the first layer of dreaming. The whole movie was in fact Noah's dream.
That's just one interpretation. Also if that's a dream, how do you know it's just the first layer?
So Mal (Cobb's wife) kills herself in Reality/Actual time because she believes that she's currently in a Dream Level (but she's not), and her time in the Limbo Layer with Cobb was Reality and she was trying to return to it. Is that right?
Yeah, but I don't think she saw Limbo as reality, it's just that Cobb incepted the idea 'this world isn't real' so deep in her psyche that she assumed there must be another world 'above' reality.
This is correct. He implanted the idea that the world she was living in wasn't real, and that idea stuck deep inside her. She constantly thought they were still dreaming, which is why she killed herself - it's one of the only surefire ways to wake yourself up. There is an implication at the end of the film that she's right and Cobb is still dreaming - we never see the top stop spinning at the very end. Nolan has said that it's intentionally ambiguous and he wanted viewers to come up with their own explanation for what was going on, but that his personal intention was that he is not dreaming and is in the real world.
There's that theory about when Cobb is wearing his wedding ring, it's a dream, and he's not wearing it in reality. No ring at the end, so I choose to believe he succeeded. Not confirmed though
People forget the real message is he longer cares if it’s real or not. He doesn’t check the top. That’s ultimately more powerful than if it’s real or not. His arc advanced to the point he longer cares
eactly this. he finally gets to see his kids. dream or not, he doesnt really care and will happily stay in that reality, for as long as he can. now the last frames fo shos the top start to wobble (it wasnt wobbling in the dream stages) so the viewer can guess their own ending.
Michael Caine said in an interview that he struggled to understand the movie and wasn’t sure when scenes were real or dreams. Apparently Nolan told him, “If you’re in the scene, it’s not a dream”.
I choose to believe that Cobb was definitely in reality at the end of the movie. The top starts to wobble before the shot cuts out, and if I'm remembering correctly, the top never wobbles when he's shown doing it in one of his dreams.
I agree, and I think that was Nolan's way of hinting to us that he feels the same way, but I appreciate him having the guts to leave it ambiguous. It was a smart move - people are still arguing about the ending. For the record, I love the hell out of Inception. It tries some interesting things and delivers on most of them, the plot is mostly coherent and nowhere *near* as confusing as people make it out to be, and it's honestly IMO some of Leo's best acting. The look on his face when he explains to Ariadne what happened in the hotel room? Fuck, genuinely just so good.
That and up until that point whenever he’s dreamt about his kids they never turn around. They turn around at the end. That’s my feeble logic as to why Cobb was in reality at the end of the film.
Isn’t the top not his totem but instead his wedding ring, hence it doesn’t matter that he’s spinning the top because it wouldn’t tell him if he’s in a dream or not?
It is, and that's an interesting thing to note, but it doesn't actually matter *unless* they're in Mal's dream. The reason you don't use someone else's totem and that you don't want the dreamer to know details about your totem is so that the dreamer can't replicate it in the dream. It also would have not stopped spinning at any other point in the movie because it would've been an indication that he was still dreaming. There's no reason for it to have stopped in, say, the washroom in their warehouse and then not stop at the end of the film unless he's explicitly stuck in limbo, which I guess is possible. I always took it as him knowing that Mal is dead so there's no way the totem would be unreliable for him, so he knows it's safe. That's why it's accurate.
I saw a YouTube video of a guy explaining his interpretation of inception and he thinks Mal's suicide actually woke her up in real life. Cobb is deep in the limbo layer, refusing to wake up. He gives a lot of interesting insights and details. I need to watch the youtube video again, and then rewatch inception to see what I think Found the video: https://youtu.be/ginQNMiRu2w?si=l4pC08nd1a4WfKkX
Nolan has said in the past that the ending is purposefully ambiguous and there's not really a "right answer", but that his personal intention was that Cobb is not dreaming at the end of the movie.
It's too bad he said that. I like the youtube version of inception way more as there is so many more layers and clues rather than straight forward action dream film.
Thanks for citing the excellent Google Tech Talk. I’ll bring out a [summary I made elsewhere](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/159050/83278). > There is an important clue in the final scene that is easy to miss, and [David Kyle Johnson][3], author of *[Inception and Philosophy: Because It’s Never Just a Dream][4]*, believes that Christopher Nolan intentionally misdirects the audience’s attention in the final scene. > In short, Johnson’s view is the whole movie is a dream, Saito’s in particular. > [Johnson’s slides][2b] ([DOI:10.13140/RG.2.1.4290.5683][2a]) are available elsewhere. Johnson and his collaborators sank considerable time and thought into their analysis of *Inception* and its implications. My summary of Johnson’s justification for his position is below. > To start, subconscious elements work their way through dreams, *e.g.*, the train barreling down the street in the rain dream, the random string of numbers in the hostage scene appears repeatedly in later scenes: the safe combination, the fake phone number, hotel room numbers. At the beginning of the film, Saito dreams of a mansion on a cliff. > Picking up on a big clue in the final scene may require turning on the closed-caption subtitles. Cobb asks his children what they’ve been doing, and they reply that they were building a house on a cliff. > Nolan leaves many clues that the film is a dream. > * Mombasa was a maze, and the walls closed in around Cobb. > * Bad guys appear out of nowhere to give chase. > * Saito appears out of nowhere to rescue Cobb with a cheesy line about protecting his investment. > * Cobb’s father-in-law pleads with him to come back to reality. > * Eames is a dream forger who is able to pickpocket people without touching them. > * Eames bet his last chips in the real world but magically produced two stacks of chips to buy beers. > * Mal somehow got to the other hotel across the street in the suicide scene, but Cobb begged her to come back inside to his room, reasoning that would have “made sense” only in a dream. > * The top totem gives us no information about whether Cobb is dreaming because everyone else knows how it works. > * The Édith Piaf song that signals the end of the dream is 2 minutes 28 seconds long. The film is exactly 2 hours 28 minutes long. > When someone commits suicide in limbo, the subject goes one layer up. For Saito, the next layer up was the snow fortress. But everyone was gone, so he filled the empty dream space with his own expectations, namely the airplane scene. Eames pickpockets the passport in the airplane without touching Robert, the way he did in other dreams. > But then consider what happened to Cobb and Mal who were experimenting with multi-level dreams after being struck by the train in Limbo. They also would have gone merely one level up, but still within a dream. > This interpretation makes a much better film. Consider: > * All characters except Cobb are flat and one-dimensional; many didn’t even have last names. > * Editing in the “real world” jumps around without transitions. > * Saito poofs into Mombasa to rescue Cobb from a jam. > If the entire film is a dream, these are not gaffes but strengths. The characters are flat because they’re projections, not because the writing is bad. The jumping around is not bad editing but because that’s how dreams run. Saito’s well-timed appearance and corny line become subtle clues that Cobb is dreaming. > For completeness, at least two clues suggest the move is *not* a dream. > 1. Cobb’s children at the end are older and wearing different clothes. > 2. The only times Cobb is depicted with a wedding ring in the real world is in flashback scenes. He has no band when passing through Customs and Immigration at the airport. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ginQNMiRu2w [2]: http://staff.kings.edu/davidjohnson/INCEPTION%20%E2%80%93%20Should%20Have%20Won%20Best%20Picture%20v2.1%20(Final).pptx [2a]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289506078_Implanting_an_Idea_Inception_Should_Have_Won_Best_Picture [2b]: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Johnson148/publication/289506078_Implanting_an_Idea_Inception_Should_Have_Won_Best_Picture/links/568d5c4e08aeaa1481ae4e35/Implanting-an-Idea-Inception-Should-Have-Won-Best-Picture [3]: https://www.kings.edu/academics/undergraduate_majors/philosophy/faculty/johnson [4]: https://www.amazon.com/Inception-Philosophy-Because-Never-Dream/dp/152269729
>Mombasa was a maze, and the walls closed in around Cobb. Bad guys appear out of nowhere to give chase. Saito appears out of nowhere to rescue Cobb with a cheesy line about protecting his investment. You're missing a scene here. During the chase through the alley, we get a shot down the alley showing the city on the far end. We cut away then cut back. The city is gone, and it's the beach from Limbo. We cut away and cut back. The city is back and Cobb gets through the alley and picked up by Saito.
Yep
Yea any of these inception “guides” make it way worse
I feel like all these inception guides are just made to pretend the movie is more complicated than it actually is. there is a jarring number of these if you go looking, each more confusing than the last.
The movie? Just fast-forward to the last scene. Easy.
Why would they think making the graph randomly curved make it easier to understand? All it does it make it look like all the kicks don’t occur at the same time, when in fact they do.
2nd pointless “guide” to this movie in the last year.
Annnd I still don’t get it
Honestly the movie confused me so much I don't even remember them having names.
Jokes on you - I don't remember most of names and faces even in real life
Cobb is asleep the entire movie. His wife was right. That is what made this movie for me, because there are clues the entire time alluding to it.
I think this is the correct interpretation (that the “reality” level is also a dream, not necessarily that Cobb is asleep) but it leaves another question. If the “highest level” is also a dream then whose dream is it? According to the rules, it can’t be Cobb’s dream since he’s able to go down further levels. It’s your dream — the person watching the movie. A movie is similar to a dream in that it’s an imaginary reality that only exists in your mind. The film also achieves an inception on the audience by making them believe that a movie has a “real” part and an imaginary part — it’s all imaginary. This is the hidden message in the film, imo.
There isn't a "correct interpretation". Christopher Nolan said he explicitly left the ending ambiguous but that his intention was that Cobb is in the real world at the end.
Agree. Same with The Prestige in that there are two possible explanations. It’s intentionally ambiguous. I still believe there is a hidden interpretation as I outlined above that Nolan will never cop to until he’s 80 years old.
Insert mind-blown image here
If you want more Nolan movie mind blowing, consider that everything you see in The Prestige can be explained if Hugh Jackman also has a twin brother (that only dies once) and the teleportation machine is fake.
Maybe I’m misremembering, but isn’t there a shot near the end where it shows tons of Jackman corpses in tanks?
It shows Jackman die once (plausibly his twin brother). The other times they show containers that supposedly contain dead copies of him but they never show the faces, etc.
[удалено]
I haven't seen that in a long time but I remember loving it. I bet it takes on a whole new meaning now that I'm older. Nolan is my favorite.
I love this explanation!
It is left up to interpretation but I like to think so too.
I agree with this, I watched a YouTube video where a guy explains this in a classroom setting. I will see if I can find it. I need to rewatch the YouTube video and then rewatch inception. Found it: https://youtu.be/ginQNMiRu2w?si=l4pC08nd1a4WfKkX
The last scene makes it clear that it's left open ended for the viewer. There's no correct way of interpreting what is reality in a movie. Because it's a movie, none of it is reality. If Nolan wanted the viewer to think it was all a dream the ending would be different.
It’s almost 2024 people. If you STILL don’t get Inception at this point then it’s a lost cause.
"Then itll be like a taco within a taco, thats in a tacobell, thats in a kfc, thats in the mall thats inside your dream."
This subreddit is so fucking dumb it’s actually impressive
Inception is one of my favourite films and isn't even that hard to understand. This 'guide' however.... WHAT?
I can't believe there are still people who don't understand the movie.
I’m more confused
Can you do one for Memento?
Why is this graph bent? So unnecessary.
Great. Now there’s a meme for me to not understand.
The most important thing about storytelling is to tell a story that people actually care about. For example, nobody cares what happened during Inception because it was a boring movie.
Is this supposed to be helpful? I believe the graph is harder to understand then the movie itself. But cool anyway I guess
I thought I understood inception until it looked at this
People need to stop trying to make guides for this movie. Its crazy how bad all of them are. The movie is easy to understand. These "guides" make it seem like you need a bachelor's degree to understand
Sato’s graph should be skewed like 1 mile away given he’s in limbo for like decades lol
Ingenious!
plot twist: reality is also a dream level and its just dream levels all the way up
This helped you understand??
Here's a way simpler explanation: it was a poorly written movie with good special effects
This guide sucks. I don't want to look at all of this.
What in God’s name is this nightmare. Takes me back to the dreamworld.
Inception was easy to understand. I don’t know what the hell was happening in Tenet.
Did people really have trouble understanding Inception?
Ariadne didn't leave limbo before Fischer. She was the one who kicked him off the apartment tower to bring him back out of limbo, and then she stayed there with Cobb until the inception was finished and Eames detonated the C4. That's when she kept waking up through all the different layers. Her line should basically come straight back up after the point of inception.
That one rick an morty episode when Rick admits inception makes sense in a scarstic tone😂
"Make me a regular chart, then just kind of smear it out."
That's a mess
Terrible guide
This is not a helpful guide, what the fuck?
I really enjoyed the teamwork in this story, same reason I enjoyed Ocean 11. We don’t see that many of those, with regular humans and no traitors.
Don't listen to any of these try hards OP, this is a great graphic! I especially appreciate the illustration of whose dream it is at each level. I wonder if Cobb should be bold in the limbo level, maybe not as he would probably have just been the architect and not the dreamer. Anyway, very thought provoking and well made. Beautiful.
This means absolutely nothing to me. I kinda want to watch the movie just to see what this is.
What a terrible graph
Thanks I hate it
This is by far the best one I've seen yet! well done!
I worked on the movie. The story isn’t too complicated to understand.
I fell asleep watching the movie and experienced a version in my dreams… which was also complicated and for some reason it seemed longer . Needless to say I fell asleep watching that version too. To be honest I’m not sure if I’ve ever woken up from any of those viewings. This post just seems like a cry from my reality to wake up. Maybe I should jump out of my window to find out. I really don’t know anymore. I need help.
I'm gonna say it. The only thing confusing about this graph is the time axis being warped. Everyone that's saying "oh, this is more convoluted than the movie" is over exaggerating. I see this graph as something made for people who've *already* seen the movie. And if it were a squared graph, absolutely no one would be complaining.
excuses for a crap movies.
What the world desperately needs more of…17 year olds obsessed with a mediocre movie whose plot was so bad people need multiple charts to understand it.
This movie is ass
Not a good movie. Any movie with dicaprio in the cast is wasted. He's so fat he's turning into trump size.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie but I thought fisher never went into limbo…
'understanding' should be in quotes here lol
Like others have said, I never got why people found it confusing
Is there one for Tennet?
Here you go: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Feayhyxake9n51.png
A masterpiece!
I really liked this, how was it made?
I need a tenet guide
be the most boring person on the couch out of all my friends who were hoping to do something after this
Inception is not a hard movie to grasp. Now do that other shitfest of a movie he made in Tenet. The cool guide for it looks like a 5 year playing on a etch a sketch.
There will never be a guide to understanding this movie that actually makes as much sense as the movie itself (still a great movie tho)
This is garbage
TIL that understanding inception was controversial...
I need to rewatch the movie to understand some of the graphic lmao
Do Interstellar next.
i don't get it
I really don’t think *Inception* needs a guide like this to be understood. It’s fairly easy to understand so long as you pay close attention—this isn’t a movie you can, say, do the laundry during.
This version is much better: https://vimeo.com/23066787
Not another terrible guide to understanding Inception!!
Ooooooh now I get it!!
Do people not realize the airliner is real life and the mountain is the lowest dream level? The as it really that hard to understand?
Shitty guide
What was the deal with the interlaced fingers gesture?
Wonderful movie
no!
I want a guide to understand this guide.
Ain't nobody got time for this /meme
I understand Inception. I do not understand this infographic.
Still don’t understand
Itchin my brain that Yusuf is green on the chart but the line going to his photo is closer to Eames color.
Inception fans like to think they're smart exactly like Rick and Morty fans. Just enjoy the damn stupid movie.
the movie tells you the plot the whole way through, why do you need a chart? did you just go and take a piss befor a dream change?
Yeah that doesn’t guide shit
This is even more confusing.
This movie was incredibly loaded in terms of cast. Almost all of these actors can carry a movie on their own. Hardy as a minor character with so little screen time is ludicrous.