Inception (2010) - 19 questions

Question: During the snow scene, someone says, "Have we missed the kick?" (I can't remember who said it) What are they talking about?

Answer: "The kick" is what wakes them up from the current dream; they are wondering if it failed to wake them up.

Question: Why does Fischer Jr. start to cry when he sees a pinwheel in his father's safe?

Answer: It represents a fond memory from his childhood and he is overcome with happiness to see his that father cherished it as well.

Question: In the beginning of the movie, we see Cobb and Eames get mad at their first architect for not knowing about the wool rug in Saito's "love nest". But further on when Ariadne joins up and they are hiding from the commandos from Fischer's subconscious, no one blames her for not knowing about them beforehand. Since the architect is supposed to know everything about the level she/he built, so why do they blame Eames? (at least I think it was him.).

Answer: The architect builds the levels, they don't populate them. Nash screwed up in a physical detail of the dream, the composition of the rug, which is the role of the architect, so he gets into trouble. Ariadne only designed the dream's architecture, the inhabitants of that dream are all formed from Fischer's subconscious and thus are not something she has any control over. Eames was the one who was detailed to research Fischer's background, and thus should have picked up that he had been trained in the anti-intrusion tactics that manifest as the armed security force. He somehow missed it, so they get annoyed at him for putting them all in danger.

Question: Cobb starts to say to Ariadne, "There's something you should know about me." But he never finishes. What does he want to say?

Answer: He was going to tell her about Mal.

Question: Cobb tells Ariadne that his wife buried something deep inside her and never let it out. What was he referring to?

Answer: She buried the truth that she was living in a dream. She'd chosen to make the dream life her real life.

Question: Near the end of the movie, when Cobb is home, he gives his totem a spin and it shortly starts to decay in its spin. Then as the movie ends it pans to his totem still spinning smoothly but then it starts to wobble again. So, what are we suppose to conclude? Is it left intentionally ambiguous?

Answer: Yes, it's an ambiguous ending, so we can conclude whatever we want, based on our reading of the film. There are plenty of theories around the internet, so feel free to have a read and decide which one works best for you.

Question: How do the people in the film share a dream? I understand that the briefcase contains sedatives to put everyone to sleep, but how do they get inside a certain individuals dream? How do they end up being in the same dream together?

Answer: The details are never explained in the depth, but all the dreamers are connected via the briefcase, so it seems likely that the briefcase acts in some way as a networking hub for them to share the dreamspace.

Question: Towards the end of the movie my husband thinks he saw braces or at least a retainer wire on the girl who plays the architect. Has this been seen by anyone?

Answer: No. She has no retainer or braces throughout the movie.

Question: Can someone please explain how each and every totem works? We understand that Cobb's will not stop spinning if it is a dream, but how does Arthur's and Ariadne's work?

Answer: No details are given within the film. However, Arthur's totem is a loaded dice, so it seems logical to assume that it will always come down on a specific side, one that only he knows. As for Ariadne's chess-piece, we only see her working on it, never using it. Probably it has some specific and unusual weighting built into it, allowing her to determine, in some unspecified manner, maybe by tipping it to a certain angle, or simply by feel, that it's the genuine article.

Question: Can anyone clarify the limbo in the film please? At the almost fifth level of dream, the dreamers of limbo - Cobb and Saito, 1. Who has given a kick for them to come to reality as everyone has left the dreams long back? 2. All through the Movie, they used a link to enter other's dream, but what happened to that link when they went to Limbo, can they intersect each other without any link through their dreams?

Answer: Limbo appears to function somewhat differently from the upper dream levels. In the upper levels, the dreams are specifically constructed, the team uses a link system to tie themselves together in the dream and so forth. Limbo, the deepest level, doesn't appear to require this - it's simply a raw dreamstate automatically shared by those who venture into it. Cobb, Saito, Ariadne and Fischer are linked on all the prior dream levels, so they already exist in a shared dream state, thus they all cohabit the limbo level that lies beneath the constructed ones. As for Cobb and Saito, they provide the "kick" themselves, likely by using Cobb's pistol to commit suicide. As time travels so fast in the limbo state, almost no time has passed on the higher levels, despite the pair experiencing years in limbo. As such, they're able to ride the tail-end of the kicks used to extract the others, and eventually wake effectively simultaneously with the rest of the team in the plane.

Question: In one of the first dreams (Think it were the "test" dreams of Cobb and Ariadne) where we're supposed to see some french/Paris-inspired location , from bird's eye view, there can be seen a Mercedes car parking on the left with a German plate (M-IK nnnn, which is most probably assigned to "Sixt" car rental). Where were these scenes filmed? Should car plates be readable?

Answer: IMDB mentions that the filming location is Paris. Streets, monuments are identifiable (you can see the Sacre Coeur, the Eiffel Tower and the Seine) and the French cars all have plates ending with 75 (indicating central Paris). The M on the German car indicates that it is registered in Munich. (Yes, German rental cars are registred in Munich).

Question: I remember Cobb saying that he spent time in Limbo for about fifty years. Was he referring to the time that he spent with Mal, or something else that we weren't shown?

Answer: He's referring to the time spent there with Mal - remember that we see, towards the end of the film, a scene with the pair of them in their Limbo-built cityscape, both of them old-aged.

Question: How come Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) didn't recognize Saito (Ken Watanabe) on the plane, especially if the two are supposed to be bitter business rivals?

Answer: Saito's rivalry is with Fischer's father, not with Fischer himself. With Fischer and his father not being on particularly good terms, it's hardly unreasonable that Fischer might be unfamiliar with his father's competitors. Equally, it's not particularly clear that Saito and Fischer Snr are necessarily bitter rivals - the whole reason for the inception is that Fischer's company is so much more powerful that Saito's that Saito needs Fischer to break up his father's corporate empire so that he isn't pushed out of the market. Saito may have a bee in his bonnet about Fischer Snr, as you'd expect from a smaller competitor looking at a more powerful opponent, but it's quite likely that Fischer Snr gave little thought to Saito, dismissing him as being little threat to his empire. In which case, there'd be even less reason for Fischer to recognise him on the plane.

Question: If they are in a dream and they can imagine and create things (like, for example weapons, or modify the environment) why can't they imagine to create a bunker where the subconscious guys can't shot at them? Or, some kind of any other protection? Or mega-destructive weapons so they don't need to drive and escape all the time in the first layer?

Answer: Aside from the obvious "the movie would boring if that were so," if they change too much in the dream, it would collapse. They only have one chance of making it work, so they can't afford to change anything drastic that might be noticed.

Question: In the first class section of the plane, after everyone has woken up from the dream and the mission is accomplished, shouldn't Robert Fischer be suspicious as to why he dreamed of everyone of his cabin mates?

Answer: (1) Most people forget most if not all of their dreams shortly after waking, so he probably wouldn't even remember they were there (the only thing he had to remember was the idea of breaking up the company, which the team planted very deeply); and (2) a common theory of dreaming is that it's simply your brain "reorganizing" itself, so it's not unusual to have recent people, places or events incorporated into your dreams (like the people surrounding him).

Question: How many children does Cobb have? This is because when Cobb was talking to his children on the phone, there were three voices.

Answer: He talks to his two children plus their grandmother.

Question: In the vault scene, isn't forger Eames impersonating the Elder Fischer on his deathbed in the vault? If so, then how can he also be across the room at the door?

Answer: No, he isn't. Everything in that room is out of Fischer's subconscious - as the film explains, the team design the dreams to include a secure area, a vault, safe, whatever, which the target will then fill. In the higher levels of the dream, the team have been surreptitiously guiding Fischer towards the idea of splitting the company up; this is the level where it pays off, where Fischer's own subconscious fills the vault with the things he needs to see or hear to make the idea real, to complete the inception.

Question: When Cobb finally gets home to see his children at the end why don't they look any different from his memories? The story implies that he's been gone for a long time yet they don't appear to have aged.

Answer: The story really doesn't imply too heavily exactly how long Cobb has been on the run. Very few clues are given, so it could quite plausibly be less than a year since his wife's death, in which case their children would not have aged dramatically. Their voices on the phone seem compatible with children of the ages shown at the end of the film and Cobb shows no concern when reunited with them that they should be older than they are. Two sets of children are listed in the credits, of different ages.

Question: I'm not sure if it was just one song or not, but what was the song played that cued the "kick"?

Answer: Édith Piaf's "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien".