Corrected entry: The scene when Arthur and the projection are fighting in the hallway and then in the hotel room is being called "zero gravity", when really, if there was absolutely no gravity, Arthur and the projection would be floating just as Arthur is doing when the van goes off the bridge in the first dream level.
Corrected entry: The totems let you check if you are dreaming and if someone is constructing your dream, like the Fulham, that no one would construct like it really behaves. But how can you use a normal top as a totem then, which every constructor would construct toppling over. In every constructed dream it would topple over, except your own real dreams, which are not dangerous.
Correction: The Fulham, in dreams, never stops spinning. That's an strange behaviour, which proves that you're in a dream. The normal-top totems would act strangely too, not in the same way, but strangely. For example, a dice. If you threw a dice in a dream, it would never stop rolling, or something like that. It doesn't have to be a non-normal top to be a totem, it could be anything. You just have to prove that it doesn't behave normally.
Corrected entry: In the scene within the "dream limbo", Cobb convinces his wife to kill themselves by lying down on the railway track and getting by a train. This would be impossible because they were in limbo, there should have been no one else there to drive the train.
Correction: It's a dream, where they've been creating entire elaborate buildings that simply spring into existence according to their whim. Creating a train that runs on automatic would be a simple task by comparison.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Saito is shot and he is laying on the ground, his shirt is unbuttoned, and you can see the edges of the blood pack that is underneath his shirt.
Corrected entry: The kick of the van going off the bridge should have woken up Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character in the hotel dream level since he was awake in that level and in the level above he was falling.
Correction: It has been explained that there are two ways of waking up from dreams: either by dying in the dream or through a kick on the previous level. You can see that during the first dream experience: Cobb shoots Arthur and he wakes up in the previous level; Cobb himself is pushed into the bathtub in the previous level and he wakes up. As we know, the rules change when you're using the special sedative, as it is much more powerful. We can therefore assume that a kick in the previous level isn't enough, there needs to be a kick in the level you're in as well. Think about it: why does Ariadne throw herself and Fischer off the balcony? If a kick in the previous level was enough, then they would have woken up when Eames used the defibrillator. Also, Eames didn't know that Cobb wouldn't come back, so we can assume that he used the defibrillator on him too, yet Cobb didn't come back because he did not have the kick on the level he was in. So, the fall from the balcony on the level Cobb, Ariadne and Fischer are in combined with the defibrillator on Level 3 [Eames's dream], brings Ariadne and Fischer back to Level 3; the explosion of the snow fortress on Level 3 combined with the elevator fall on Level 2 [Arthur's dream] brings Ariadne, Fischer and Eames back to Level 2; the elevator fall on Level 2 combined with the van hitting the water on Level 1 [Yusuf's dream] brings Ariadne, Fischer, Eames and Arthur back to Level 1. The kick in Level 1 isn't enough for Arthur to come back: he needs the kick on Level 2 as well. That's why he said "It's too soon!, because he didn't have that kick ready yet. It's also why Cobb says "We missed the first kick."
Corrected entry: When first talking about totems, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) shows Ariadne his totem, but won't let her touch it, saying that defeats the purpose of the totem. Later Cobb reveals that his totem used to be Maul's.
Correction: The point is that the owner should be the only one who knows the precise physical characteristics of the totem. As Mal is dead, she's out of the equation, so there's nothing to stop Dom from using it.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Arthur is in the elevator shaft, the wires from the top of the elevator recoil wildly despite there being no gravity, which could not occur unless gravity was present.
Correction: You can see that there is no slack on the cable. Which implies that the elevator maybe moving in the opposite direction (inertia) in zero gravity. Hence, the cables are still experiencing a good degree of tension. If you cut it, then it will definitely recoil wildly.
Corrected entry: In the level one dream when everyone is driving in the city, it is raining during the entire scene. But if you look at the sky during any of these shots, you can see that it is basically cloud-free.
Correction: It's a dream. This may have been entirely deliberate, and if not, is still believable.
Corrected entry: In the first layer of the dream, you have the car flipping repeatedly. In the second layer, the whole world is also spinning. But in the third layer, they are not spinning, even though they would also be spinning in the second layer. To be put briefly, the effects from the first layer carry on to the second layer, but not the third.
Correction: Now explain why that's a mistake. As far as can be told from observing the film, that's simply how things happen, that events occurring in one level can be felt on the level immediately below it, but the effect doesn't continue further down (potentially due to the time distortion, but that's conjecture, and the cause is irrelevant anyway). If you feel that that's incorrect, then I suggest that you resubmit, with evidence taken from the film rather than your own opinion.
Corrected entry: Saito ages but Cobb doesn't. In level 3, Fisher dies before Saito. Cobb gets to level 4 while Fisher is still young, so, Saito must still be young as well. Yet in later scene, Saito is aged, but not Cobb.
Correction: When Cobb goes to Limbo to find Fischer, it can be thought of as level four, as you said. Cobb deliberately entered Limbo, because it is only possible to have three stable levels of dream. He hadn't actually died in any level yet. Time moves 20x faster in dreams, and has a compound effect, so time in Limbo is moving 80x faster then reality when the first level is only moving 20x faster. So Saito has been aging in Limbo for a long time when Cobb drowns in the van and "re-enters" Limbo (wakes up on the beach).
Corrected entry: At the beginning of the movie, we are shown that a person can be woken from a dream by giving them a "kick" OUTSIDE of their dream. This is demonstrated by Cobb being woken up from his Japanese temple dream by being dunked in the bathtub in the South America dream (Japan was dream level 2 and South America was dream level 1). However, the final "riding the kicks" sequence contradicts this by showing everyone getting a kick WITHIN a dream to wake up to the previous dream. Example: When Ariadne was inside Cobb's apartment (dream level 4), she jumped off the building which woke her up to the snow fortress (dream level 3). As she fell through the collapsing floor of the fortress, she woke up in the elevator (dream level 2), and she returned to the van (dream level 1) by falling inside the elevator. If the movie was consistent in its logic, Adriadne and the others should have been woken up from each internal dream by falling in the outer dream. The most likely reason why the writers couldn't keep this logic was because it would have prevented Cobb from staying in Limbo (i.e. the falling snow fortress would have woken him up).
Correction: You've got it backward. Yes, Ariadne woke out of limbo by jumping off the building, but that's because she died within that dream, not because the fall gave her a kick. The elevator crashing woke the team out of the snow fortress, the van crashing woke the team out of the hotel, and the timer on the machine woke them out of the rainy city. Remember how they mentioned that the first attempted kick in the van must have failed (a fact they were aware of because they were still in the hotel) and so they'd have to wait for the van to hit the water to get the next kick?
The sedatives.
Corrected entry: When the helicopter lands on the roof top and Cobb and Arthur leave, the rotors are still heard rotating, yet there is no wind blowing (Cobb's hair, clothes) on the outside of the helicopter.
Correction: When the helicopter's collector lever or "throttle" if you will is put at it's lowest power setting it will not produce any downdraft or "blowing" from the blades. It's not a mistake.
Corrected entry: As the first layer dream was in zero-gravity (i.e: the van falling off the bridge), the second layer was also in zero-gravity (i.e: the hotel room). But the zero-gravity effect did not continue to the third layer dream (i.e: the snowy mountains).
Correction: They were not in zero-g in the first level. They were in normal gravity. That's why the van was falling. It was zero-g in the second level because their bodies felt zero-g as the van was falling. The third level was also not affected because the second level wasn't doing anything to make them feel like they were in zero-g. The van only looked like that because the filming was slowed down to remind people that dream time goes by much slower than real time. Basically, a dream level is only affected by the level directly above it.
Correction: The van wasn't in freefall at that moment. It was rolling sideways down a hill. The image of the dream "rolling" sideways as well is perfectly accurate.
Greenman37