Pajiba

I just didn’t think it was a movie that left a lot up to interpretation, save for the final five seconds. But maybe I’m the dumb one for not realizing there was lots of secrets.

Dustin, you have no idea how good it is to hear someone else say that, I thought I was the only one who felt that way. I'm not saying I'd kiss you on the lips, I'm just saying you know where to find me.

Read some of the comments on this website and you'll see why (quite rightly) people saw the movie as much more ambiguous.

When i was growing up i use to watch fox kids on weekends. Power rangers was my favorite show. The green ranger was my favorite ranger. I remember I use to go in my big sisters room and lip synch runaround sue. One time in middle school I faked I was real sick because I had to go poop and I didn't want to use the school restrooms.

So I got sent home. I started running home but i couldnt make it. I got bad cramps in the middle of the desert so I just squatted right there and went poop. It stunk so bad but I had to finish. I used my school papers to wipe myself. I got home and thought"oh shiit my name is on those papers!". So the next morning I went early to go see and sure enough my human waste was right there with my Damn homework face up.my name was showing for all to see.

Alot of kids walked by that spot. I hurried and got of bunch of rocks then covered the papers.

It's not that Inception has "unanswered questions." It's that it has gaping plotholes and inconsistencies.

Wait. The ending of Inception was ambiguous? I thought it was quite clear. Actually, outside of the compounding math for the various sleep levels that didn't add up to a consistent formula, I, too, thought it was a pretty straight-forward film. It was certainly denser than what US audiences tend to gravitate towards (meaning: everything wasn't spelled out for the audience, so the audience had to think for once during a blockbuster), but we're not even near District 9 levels of moral or narrative ambiguity. I've had harder times figuring out the fluctuating prices at the snack bar than understanding what was happening in Inception.

That's a lie. Some of the bad continuity in the Page/DiCaprio scenes was confusing, like how Juno's right arm was in a different position every time the camera jumped sides in the cafe scene. I wondered for a long time how a film with so much detail could flub up the most basic continuity issues.

I too found the plot spelled out very, very thoroughly in the film. in fact, when watching it a second time, you can sit back and enjoy the romp, since you already fully understand the mechanics of the dreamstates. However, the final scene is a sole moment of ambiguity, and here is one theory on the solution from a workmate of mine:

INCEPTION SPOILERS AHEAD.
(But c'mon you've all seen it, right?)

My projectionist buddy has seen if three times, and has been paying attention to certain scenes while on shift regularly (we have unlimited access to movies at will). He has noticed that when Cobb is dreaming, at any level, he wears his wedding ring, hence the presence of Mal. When he is awake, he doesn't wear it.
This is shown to the point where some scenes have shots that linger on his hands, or near them. And the repeated Limbo scene with Seito has a gratuitous hand shot in the first showing, and that shot is cut from the repeated showing.

In the final scene, with the wobbly totem, he is not wearing his wedding ring.
Yay happy ending!
Although I haven't confirmed this myself, I will be watching out for it when I see it for a third time this coming week. Anyone else noticed this?

END OF SPOILER ZONE.

"the secret of inception is no secret!" is about "the prestige"(same sentence)

@only new zealander:don't forget Cobb 's totem isn't reliable(it's Mol's totem)and Cobb's job doesn't exist in the real world so....

Robert

It's a fairly open secret that continuity on the level of which you speak is damn near impossible to accomplish. Continuity masters on set mainly focus on the bread stokes, making sure scars are on the same side and folks are wearing the same clothes. But hand placement, things like that.. they leave to the actors to remember.

I feel your pain: missteps like that irk the shit out of me.

I was definitely taken aback when people were trying to tell me about the theories about which they read on the internet because I thought it was what it was. A final scene that was cut off before we got a truly definitive answer.

Saw it again tonight, and I realized that ambiguity was a small, basic idea planted in the audience's mind that grew into this huge THING that may redefine the whole movie. And some other stuff. I think the title of this post is the best thing ever.

What I wish I knew for sure was whether or not Ariadne and Arthur got it on.

To give EW a tiny little leeway, the article was mostly about the secrets of how they pulled off the dream sequences, namely the one where Arthur fights the guy in the hallway.

The Only New Zealander, that's a very interesting tidbit about the wedding ring, I'm gonna have to watch for that next time around. I have to agree with the majority here, I didn't really see any big mystery in the story aside from that final shot.

I just want to say with absolute certainty that the children's clothes were subtly different at the end of the film, since there was an earlier discussion about in the review comments.

Based on some of Nolan and Dicaprio's comments about the film, seeing it for the second time and thinking of it in terms of being a film about filmmaking made for an interesting viewing.

Was I the only one amused by that poop story?

snapnhiss...yeah, you might be the only one. Adventure man tried to be offbeat/quirky/hilarious and failed. I think the comment was just too jarring this Monday morning before my coffee.

What plot holes are you talking about specifically admin? (I'm not asking that argumentatively, I'm just curious as to your interpretation of the film.)

I feel like depending on your position on when the dream begins or ends you would see more or fewer plot holes.

What with the unchanging children and the fact that they don't clearly indicate to us that Leo ever came out of the dream after Yusef's sedative den I feel like you could only interpret the film as, at the very least, ambiguous and it would be hard without repeated viewings to determine what is and isn't a plot hole.

I only saw the movie once though so it's possible that I'm forgetting things and that's why the movie seems very open to interpretation to me.

I refuse to call Salt an original property.

I loved the movie, but on the subject of plot holes, someone on another forum pointed out one I hadn't thought of. According to the "rules" they outlined early on, the architect's mind creates most of the broad physical features of a dreamworld but the subject they're targeting populates it and also determines what secrets are found in safes. So does this mean the team had no actual control over what the son would find when he entered the vault, or what his father would say to him? If so, how could they use the vault to "plant an idea" like the idea that his father would want him to be his own man and give up the company? I guess they were just counting on the fact that the seeds planted at the other levels would cause his subconscious to think up some kind of cathartic discovery along those lines, but it seems like a pretty iffy plan...

I feel the same way about Inception. A second viewing was good for picking up on a few things I missed the first time around. Cobb making a comment in the beginning about how he hates trains. I was a little fuzzy on who exactly was dreaming the second and third levels. Etc. But overall I find this obsession with "answers" to be like the people obsessing over Lost. There doesn't need to be a concrete answer for absolutely everything to be understood and enjoyed. Even though the logistics of the dream levels and the actual role of the Architect are still a little fuzzy to me, it doesn't matter.

And these people who are going "THIS MOVIE SUCKS, I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND IT" were obviously not paying very close attention. There is plenty of exposition every step of the way, there was never a moment where I felt lost.

Maybe the continuity issues were deliberate. After all, they were in a dream where continuity is non-existent or sketchy. In my dreams, scenes, characters, and everything just changes over and over.

You clearly don't understand the fact that Nolan loves secrets and always keeps something under the skin...