Why Are People Surprised At Miles' Appearance in America?

This 2010 contemporary sci-fi actioner follows a subconscious security team around the globe and into the intimate and infinite world of dreams.
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i had this issue was .... y should he call his Miles in advance to tell him hes at the airport , coz he was not sure whether the inception would be a success. Coz if it was not to be a success then saito's agreement will be called off and he would be arrested on arrival and i guess his Miles will wait there for days unknowingly. (or that he wouldnt want Miles seeing him getting arrested.)

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Se7en wrote:i had this issue was .... y should he call his Miles in advance to tell him hes at the airport , coz he was not sure whether the inception would be a success. Coz if it was not to be a success then saito's agreement will be called off and he would be arrested on arrival and i guess his Miles will wait there for days unknowingly. (or that he wouldnt want Miles seeing him getting arrested.)
People seem to have a problem with this, and although it's not addressed in the movie one way or another, I don't think Cobb would have had doubts about the Inception being a success. Cobb had a lot of motivation to succeed: 1)He gets to see his kids again, and 2)He doesn't want to be arrested when they land. I'm pretty sure that failure was not an option for Cobb.

None of this prevents Cobb from calling Miles from the airplane or while waiting in line at immigration (anyone who has EVER flown international through LAX knows that immigration takes for-freakin-ever).

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allmond guy wrote:Yeah, I never really bought that, either.

Citizen Kane is one of the greatest movies so far, but that doesn't change the fact that the whole movie rides on something that didn't happen. There was no one in the room to hear him say "Rosebud"! A flaw is a flaw.
You know, movies have been doing this for like ... decades. The viewer is meant to fill in the minor parts that are not shown. Either that or it's all up to suspension of disbelief, like how Leonard in Memento actually remembers the fact that he has anterograde amnesia, how does he do that? Get over it.
Also, Cobb wouldn't know until he got to the airport whether or not he'd be arrested. I doubt he would arrange to have his father-in-law pick him up under those circumstances.
Are you serious? Obviously he was so sure that the plan would go off without a hitch that he made sure Miles was at the airport.

You must be a troll.
If she plays cranium she gives good brainium.

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Apart from the fantastic theory that we may have been witness to the team incepting Cobb's mind at the very end - I like this idea but its a stretch to believe it. Miles would for sure be at the airport because when Cobb goes to see him in Paris, he tells him that this is his last job which will free him to go to America - so naturally Miles is in the US waiting for him to return...I don't see how this is weird in any way and its not really an anomaly. IF we were in Cobb's dream then it would still be highly probable that he would expect to see Miles waiting at the airport to take him to the kids.

:geek:

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Cilogy wrote:
allmond guy wrote:You know, movies have been doing this for like ... decades. The viewer is meant to fill in the minor parts that are not shown. Either that or it's all up to suspension of disbelief, like how Leonard in Memento actually remembers the fact that he has anterograde amnesia, how does he do that? Get over it.


But Memento is airtight. He can make new memories. He's even got a tattoo that says "Learn through repetition."

I understand suspension of disbelief, but it also means that a story can't violate its own created world. For instance, maybe we can buy time travel in Harry Potter, and a character insisting that it's very dangerous and must be used carefully. Then we find one character has been using it every single day as routine -- that violates the suspension of disbelief.

Folks, just because there are legitimate criticisms of a work doesn't mean anyone's trying to tear everything down. There's no reason to be unreasoning apologists when there are legitimate points to be made.

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Cilogy wrote: You know, movies have been doing this for like ... decades. The viewer is meant to fill in the minor parts that are not shown. Either that or it's all up to suspension of disbelief, like how Leonard in Memento actually remembers the fact that he has anterograde amnesia, how does he do that? Get over it.
Don't mean to side track the thread but wasn't that the whole point of the "Remember Sammy Jankis" tattoo on his left hand? And the reason why he was telling everyone he met the Sammy Jankis story?

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This is the third thread today in which I'm posting this, but, again, it bears repeating:

Leonard remembering his condition is not a plot hole.

SPOILERS, OBVIOUSLY



Okay: The "I can't make new memories" thing is misdirection. He can make new memories, which is why he lies to himself -- doctoring his files, setting up Teddy, etc. He has a tattoo that says "Learn through repetition" but another part of the movie's misdirection is using the (false) case of Sammy Jenkis to suggest that someone with this condition cannot make new memories.

Let's look at just some of the new memories he has created:

That he has the retrograde amnesia condition
That his wife was murdered
That you have to burn Polaroids to destroy them
That, with this condition, you get by by faking recognition of others
That "you have to have a system"


Now, he can falsify "history" by repeatedly lying to himself, thus creating false new memories. One is that his wife was raped and murdered; he's removed any eveidence that he gave her the actual overdose (and thus landed in the mental institution.) One is that Sammy Jenkis, who was an unmarried con man he met in his insurance gig, was married and developed retrograde amnesia and subsequently gave his wife the overdose and landed in the hospital. We don't even know what Sammy's con was, exactly; he could be someone Leonard latched onto teh same way he latches on to Teddy at the end of the movie. Teddy is walking evidence; Leonard removes any evidence which distubs him so that he can go on living.

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allmond guy wrote:Okay: The "I can't make new memories" thing is misdirection. He can make new memories, which is why he lies to himself -- doctoring his files, setting up Teddy, etc...

(excised for length)
Wow this is just as bad as some of the Inception analysis I've seen. You're putting words into a movie that weren't in the movie.

I agree with your premise, that Leonard can make new memories, but its much more simple than you're making it out to be. Leonard is not a liar, I believe that everything that happened to him in the past actually happened to him and that Sammy Jankis was a real person.

The truth is, anterograde amnesia prevents the portion of your brain from converting short-term memory to long-term memory, so his experiences vanish and he's unable to remember what he was doing fifteen minutes ago. The way he makes new memories, as you say, is through repetition. That activates a different portion of the brain. I'm pretty sure even the movie explains this, but its the science behind it as well. He says Sammy refused to do this, so he never learned. Leonard has more patience.

The scenes where we see Leonard questioning his reality are just that; they're not flashes of his real life, they're not memories. They're Leonard questioning what he believes to be true.

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