My friend brought this up to me and it has really, really bothered me know watching Inception. I'm hoping someone can help me reconcile.
In the dream with Saito, the first level where Cobb gets the bathtub kick, he is given the kick within the same dream he comes back to. In other words, the kick is administered in the bathtub level and he wakes up in the bathtub level.
Later on, when they are in the hotel elevator for example, they are given the kick on the hotel level and this wakes them up on the next level instead of the same level the were given the kick on.
As much as I tried I couldn't come up with anything to say to her to defend it. Can someone please tell me if there is something I'm missing?
The hotel level kick wakes them up from the snow fortress into the hotel, and the van hitting the water brings them up to the next level. At least that's the most logical interpretation i could come up with.
The kicks don't make perfect sense. One of my biggest annoyances with the film. But whatever.
steveportee wrote:The hotel level kick wakes them up from the snow fortress into the hotel, and the van hitting the water brings them up to the next level. At least that's the most logical interpretation i could come up with.
The kicks don't make perfect sense. One of my biggest annoyances with the film. But whatever.
Keep in mind I read the last part of your post...
It still doesn't make sense to me. In one instance it brings him up to the current level, in another instance it brings him up to the level above that.
Nolanoscopy wrote:My friend brought this up to me and it has really, really bothered me know watching Inception. I'm hoping someone can help me reconcile.
In the dream with Saito, the first level where Cobb gets the bathtub kick, he is given the kick within the same dream he comes back to. In other words, the kick is administered in the bathtub level and he wakes up in the bathtub level.
Later on, when they are in the hotel elevator for example, they are given the kick on the hotel level and this wakes them up on the next level instead of the same level the were given the kick on.
As much as I tried I couldn't come up with anything to say to her to defend it. Can someone please tell me if there is something I'm missing?
In the first dream-within-a-dream it's a simple kick. The dream within the dream being kicked back to the dream.
The big final set of kicks is one big synchronized kick. The same thing is happening, essentially, but all in quick succession.
Nelson wrote:In the first dream-within-a-dream it's a simple kick. The dream within the dream being kicked back to the dream.
Yeah, this is kinda my thinking. Cobb doesn't wake up by falling into the bathtub; instead, he wakes up by drowning in the dream within the dream (even though it's merely implied).
My problem is on the bathtub kick he is given the kick on the level he wakes up on. With other kicks they are given on the level lower than where they wake up.
NO, it is correct that you wake up on the level of the kick, like in the bathtub scene. Just like when they were testing Yusuf's serum on Arthur in the warehouse, they gave him the kick outside of the dream he was in, therefore waking up. As Nelson already mentioned, the kicks and waking up during the inception job, just happened in quick succession or rather simultaneously from Ariadne and Fischer throwing themselves off the building in limbo all the way down to level 1 aka Yusuf's dream where the team is in the van falling off the bridge, where they planned to wake up.
Don't forget that killing yourself in a dream acts like a 'self-kick'; waking yourself up,
because it is debatable that Ariadne and Fischer killed themselves in Limbo and then died again in demolished snow fortress hospital along with Eames. but it all happened very closely along with the kicks happening in the levels below.
I was talking about this the other day in the Arthur in the van forum. I think its the falling to your death that wakes them up in the dream. For example, if you're asleep and you fall out of the chair you wake up, but you also wake up if you dream that you fall off a cliff. Because Cobb is in a dream in the beginning of the film, the bathtub is necessary to give the possibility of death (drowning). While they are attempting inception, they jump of a building in limbo, the hospital building collapses, the elevator is crashing, and the van is falling into a river; all have the possibility of death which causes them to wake up from their dream. That's the best explanation I can come up with. I don't think it necessarily the death that wakes them up though. Yusef's sedative is so strong that killing yourself in a dream doesn't wake you up, hence Saito's predicament. I really think its just the sense of falling with the expectation of death that wakes them up in the dream.
