
Inception Explained: a really cool scrolling animation of the plot - picklepete
http://www.inception-explained.com
======
Pewpewarrows
This was really well done. I'd just like to point out a few things, as someone
who's watched Inception way too many times:

1) It is never said that 3 levels is the maximum depth of a dream until Limbo
occurs. My interpretation has always been that Cobb and Ariadne hooked up a
shared-dream machine to Fisher's dead body, which brought them into Limbo.

2) Why are there 2 Limbos? There's the one Cobb and Ariadne follow Fisher and
Mal into (which has the architecture of the Limbo that Cobb and Mal shared all
those years ago). There's then the Limbo that Cobb and Saito share, where it
looks like Saito architected the environment (Asian influences). And if they
were the same Limbo, why was Cobb washed up on a shore with no memory of how
he got there in Saito's Limbo?

3) In the Limbo that Cobb and Mal shared, all they needed to do was kill
themselves to wake up. Why then was the defibrillator needed to wake Fisher up
from death in Limbo to Dream 3?

~~~
trevelyan
The reason there are two passages through what seem to be limbo is that
Inception is Christian allegory. If you look at the structure of the film you
can see Nolan using the opening and closing heist sequences as allegorical
bookends to demonstrate Cobb's character development. In the first Cobb is a
faithless and money-oriented thief who embraces violence and selfishly
abandons his team when this fails ("every man for himself"). At the end Cobb
takes a "leap of faith" when he rejects Mal, whose seduction of him is framed
as a temptation of faith ("you don't believe in one reality anymore.... so
choose to be here"). Cobb reaffirms his faith in his children "up there",
rejects violence even when he is attacked and then sacrifices his own life to
save Saito.

So you're not supposed to worry too much about the logic of the dream levels,
since all dreams are basically metaphors for life: mazes where people "get
lost" and from which they need to "die to wake up". The only thing that makes
limbo _special_ is that it is particularly symbolic. Nolan is presenting a
metaphor of life itself as a Penrose staircase, and portraying faith as the
way out. When Ariadne shatters the mirrors that trap Cobb in a recursive
chain, the image is symbolic: she is a gift from Cobb's father ("ask and ye
shall receive") and her role in the film is to guide him out of the maze that
is the mortal world. This is presumably why she is the character who
accompanies him to immigration.

For more evidence that this is intentional, look at the overwhelming creation
imagery and the narrative emphasis on father-son alienation and reconciliation
(with Fischer as with Cobb). Look at the curious way Michael Caine seems to be
playing God when he shows up in Paris. And then look closely at the ending,
which shows us neither a dream nor reality. What Nolan presents is symbolic:
we see Cobb's judgment and forgiveness of sins at immigration, and then his
reunion with his family in the heavenly garden. The film closes with Cobb
ignoring his totem (as a crutch of faithlessness it is no longer needed) and
then his son James (who represents faith and like his sister shares an
apostolic name) telling him that they are building a castle on a cliff.

A what? That last bit circles back to the opening shot of the children on the
beach. It is a bookend reference to Matthew 7.24 and the parable of the wise
and foolish builders. The contrast (beach -> cliff) reinforces Cobb's
character journey while telling us that the ending is NOT a dream (something
reinforced by the lack of the water imagery associated with the other dream
levels). It also reinforces the parallels Inception creates between the
buildings of limbo and the sandcastles on the beach, and explains why all are
ultimately washed away by water just as death washes away life in the
Christian parable.

Brilliant movie.

~~~
instakill
This is post-rationalization if I've ever seen it.

~~~
trevelyan
Any act of film/literary analysis obviously requires thinking about something
after you've seen/read it. The harder you think the better, and what you need
to look for when evaluating arguments are evidence of internal consistency,
plausibility and authorial design.

So where is the problem? Nolan himself has said in media interviews that the
significance of the top is that Cobb walks away. He's also remarked on the
centrality of creation imagery in the film and explicitly stated that "there's
a relationship between the sand castle the kids are building on the beach in
the beginning of the film and the buildings literally being eaten away by the
subconscious and falling into the sea." Funny how he even specified the
_beginning of the film_ in that quote. No-one is post-rationalizing those
words into his mouth.

Frankly, there's tremendous power to any interpretation that leads one
independently to the same conclusions the director later makes, all the while
explaining away what are inconsistencies under other readings (why Mal is bad,
why the continual biblical references, why there is so much damn water in the
dreams, etc. etc. etc.). The fact that Nolan is using fairly conventional
symbolism (water = death/subconscious) is just icing on the cake.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
So the importance of the top at the end - one of the most debated points -
isn't whether it falls or not, but the fact that Cobb having spun it doesn't
bother to check?

~~~
trevelyan
Exactly. The totem is "an elegant solution for keeping track of reality." And
reality is the garden on the cliff, something emphasized not only by the
comparison of life to a dream and dreamers to "figments" and "shades", but
much more directly in such lines as Cobb's father urging his son to "come back
to reality" when none of the characters are even dreaming.

We know Cobb doesn't need his totem by the end, because his rejection of Mal
at the climax is an expression of faith. To understand the implicit
alternative, look to the parallel heist sequence which opens the film. There
we had a very different Cobb place his faith in the "reality" of Mal when he
lowered himself out the window above a fatal fall. Nolan emphasizes that this
is the wrong decision by showing us Cobb's immediate (biblical) fall,
blasphemy and then betrayal and loss. Death destroys the world by water as
foreshadowed in the parable that opens the film.

At the end of the film the logic of this sequence reverses. Cobb resists Mal's
temptation to stay with her in limbo. He rejects her for the first time ever,
telling Mal she is not "real" where even moments before he was expressing
lingering doubts to Ariadne ("how can you know"). And whereas his lack of
faith had previously led to his defeat, here his expression of it leads
directly to Fischer's symbolic reconciliation with his father. And while the
film presents another death sequence as required by Matthew 7.24, this is but
prelude to a heaven sequence that breaks the endlessly circular logic of the
dream world / penrose staircase. The rules are violated because they no longer
apply: Cobb is free of the maze.

~~~
AndreiVajnaII
Your explanation has just made the movie more interesting to me. Until now I
thought it was quite idiotic, but your revelations do make sense.

Though I still think that the ending scene is badly handled. If the point is
that Cobb doesn't care any more about the outcome of the spinning top, then
Nolan should have just slided from the image of the top to Cobb and his
children.

By zooming in on the top and cutting the shot right before it should falls, it
just adds this unneeded baggage of questioning whether all that happened is
real or not. Like some sort of magic trick. "Do you doubt what you've just
seen?" And I just didn't find that that was the point of the movie.

~~~
trevelyan
I think that's a really good comparison, because it really is a magic trick,
isn't it? I think most good heist films are in the sense that the pleasure is
in the misdirection: what makes them satisfying to watch is being "in on the
game" -- seeing all of the clues arranged in plain sight and watching how the
director pulls it off.

So Inception might not be for everyone since it's heavy on narrative and light
on character development (we don't see _why_ Cobb changes, he just does), but
there's all of this wonderfully meta sleight-of-hand just below the surface as
Nolan tells us how he is making the film. Even beyond the symbolism, the very
rules he outlines for how to create dreams apply equally well to the film
itself (make the plot a paradoxical maze, get the audience lost in it while
you plant ideas in their heads, and make the message stick by forming it
around a core message of positive emotional catharsis). And yet we are still
surprised, or I was at least!

Anyway, hopefully if you see it again you'll like it better next time. I
personally think it's hands-down one of the best films in the last decade, and
it's a real pity it got shunted off at the Oscars when it should have swept
the field.

------
irishcoffee
Am I the only one who gets annoyed when people think inception was some
stupid-deep, hard-to-understand movie?

It was (I thought) very straight-forward. The bigger problems with the movie
come from the plot holes pointed out by Pewpewarrows. Do those holes perhaps
contribute to the confusion?

~~~
evincarofautumn
You’re not alone.

If you want a movie with _actual_ complexity, watch Primer. Oh, you’ll
probably think you get it the first time through, because the writing is
great. Then you’ll rewatch it a couple times and see just how much you missed,
because the writing is _brilliant_.

~~~
pi3832
They're not up to Primer's level of complexity, but for bending your brain a
little, try:

eXistenZ (<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120907/>)

Naked Lunch (<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102511/>)

(And other David Cronenberg movies. While I'm at it, although it's completely
linear, I'm going to plug: "Crash" (<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115964/>).)

Jacob's Ladder (<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099871/>) is almost a great
brain-bending movie, but for some damn reason at the very end there's a,
"Let's explain what _really_ happened!" scene. F'idiots. (I recommend stopping
the movie when you get to the scene where the Jacob and his son (played by
Macaulay Culkin) dreamily walk up a back-lit stairway together. Let the movie
percolate in your brain for a while. Then, start the movie up again and see
how they ruined it.)

~~~
kstenerud
All great movies. Some others (with varying degrees of sophistication):

The 13th Floor (<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809/>)

A Scanner Darkly (<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405296/>)

Brazil (<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/>)

Time Bandits (<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081633/>)

Dark City (<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118929/>) - A little disappointing at
the end though =/

~~~
evincarofautumn
I really enjoyed Dark City. The directors cut is best, though, because it
doesn’t give away the twist at the beginning like the theatrical cut did.

------
swang
While these scroll sites are pretty cool... I don't know if its the javascript
library or maybe that is the affect the site's creator wanted but it doesn't
feel smooth.

Maybe because of the scroll speed the animations have fewer frames to animate
which makes it look choppy? I'm not sure.

~~~
jfarmer
I found if you use the mouse scrollwheel rather than the keyboard it was much
smoother.

~~~
swang
I was using my mouse scrollwheel though... :(

------
Jabbles
Perhaps someone here can explain something that has annoyed me since I saw
Inception. Falling (accelerating under gravity) is meant to "wake you up".
Whilst falling you feel weightless - almost by definition (if you and the
weighing machine are accelerating in sync, you apply no pressure to it). For
some reason falling causes the loss of gravity in the dream world, and there's
that whole scene about "recreating gravity". But since falling is
indistinguishable from being weightless, what is stopping the dreamers from
waking up? And why does weightlessness only go one level down?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weightlessness>

~~~
natep
Because it's not the falling, it's the jolt of landing. When in free fall, you
are not actually accelerating. In terms of landing, though, it doesn't matter
if you hit the ground or if, say, the bottom of an elevator hits you.

~~~
Jabbles
I haven't seen the film since it came out, so I may be mistaken. Didn't Cobb
demonstrate to Ariadne that you wake up when you sense yourself falling? By
tipping Arthur's chair over as he was dreaming? Arthur (if it was that
character) didn't fall on the floor, there was no jolt. Also, doesn't the van
land in the water, and no one wakes up?

~~~
natep
According to the Inception Wiki, we're both right.

> One method used to awaken from a dream within a dream is called a "kick",
> which is the sensation of falling, hitting water, or a sharp jolt that can
> startle the sleeper awake.

Although I still think it's terribly inconsistent, if the details matter.
There's too many different kicks with too many subtle differences and
similarity for me to go into in a reasonable-length post.

------
jacquesm
Check out #5 for another illustrated version of the plot, and one that
predates the movie:

[http://www.cracked.com/article_19021_5-amazing-things-
invent...](http://www.cracked.com/article_19021_5-amazing-things-invented-by-
donald-duck-seriously.html)

------
jsnell
I don't understand how this is a "cool animation". In both Chrome and Firefox
it does nothing by default. Pressing up or down moves the page by a single
(useless) frame. Pressing page up or page down moves it by some random number
of frames. Again totally useless, since it often ends up in a middle of some
fade-in or fade-out. The scroll wheel is no better. Nor the scroll bar. What
am I missing?

The content might be interesting, but it's impossible to tell since this might
be the worst way of presenting data I've seen this year. Which is quite an
achievement, congratulations :-)

~~~
icebraining
"Space" mostly works here, although the frames don't come off well aligned.

------
jeffthebear
If you want to go deeper: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ginQNMiRu2w>

------
kyasui
This froze my entire computer (newish macbook pro) and and I had to restart.
Also didnt have that much stuff open, anyone else?

~~~
corford
No problems here but I'm on a beefy machine: FF11, 64 bit Win7, quad core i5,
8GB ram, SSD drive - frankly I'd cry if a website was able to slow/crash that.

~~~
onemoreact
I use chrome on an 64 bit Win7, i7 2600K with 16GB ram and a 35/35 FIOS
connection and plenty of flash sites slow things down to a crawl. Honestly, I
cant help but wonder what exactly some developers expect people to use.

~~~
corford
I don't think it's a question of what they expect. More like they have no idea
how to program and Flash has let them get away with it. Seriously, there is no
other sane reason why you should experience slow downs on a machine with that
spec (assuming Flash can even harness most of that power).

------
irrationalfab
Out of curiosity, does anybody have an estimation about how much money the
link (which I assume to be affiliated) may generate?

~~~
jordan0day
The "Buy the DVD on Amazon" link?

My guess would be: not much.

------
jkrsna
Can someone explain how its done?

~~~
picklepete
It's powered by John Polacek's Scrollorama
(<http://johnpolacek.github.com/scrollorama>) jQuery plugin.

------
kreek
The first illustrated version of Inception is here
[http://disneycomics.free.fr/Ducks/Rosa/show.php?num=1&lo...](http://disneycomics.free.fr/Ducks/Rosa/show.php?num=1&loc=D2002-033&s=date)

------
huhtenberg
This is even more confusing than the film :)

------
franze
i get a spammy access-restriction warning (see screenshot:
[https://img.skitch.com/20120321-86btw83e3gcnea6x4prr8wcj75.p...](https://img.skitch.com/20120321-86btw83e3gcnea6x4prr8wcj75.png)
)

------
lurchpop
that's probably really cool on a fast computer.

------
callmeed
So does the top stop spinning or not!?

~~~
parfe
Mal either died or kicked up a level. She used the top as a totem, not Cobb,
and multiple people knew the properties of it. The top could not measure dream
or reality while in Cobb's possession. His own dreams would render that totem
useless.

------
sukuriant
The webpage is very garbled in IE9

------
caycep
So how does this work in VMWare? :P

------
marknutter
Great way to make some quick cash via the affiliate link.

~~~
user24
You've been downvoted, but personally I feel that this is why this site is
interesting.

I do disagree that was a 'quick' way to make cash however.

But the idea of producing an 'explained' website with a very nice and subtle
affiliate link is excellently executed. I'd have thought the HN crowd would
appreciate that.

