Okay, so when the van is tumbling down the hill, its effects are felt in dream #2: gravity going nuts. Why didn't the gravity going nuts in dream #2 kick everyone out of dream #3?.. You saw how Arthur was thrown around all over that hallway. Now in the hotel room where the rest of the team is just lying there.. think about what's happening to them (getting thrown from floor to wall to ceiling... like a laundry machine in there) yet they aren't woken up?

First, know this: this is Nolan's dream world, and so they go by his rules and imagination. Nothing is a plot hole unless there is a rule specifically stated that cannot ever be broken, no exceptions. And this has been answered several times already in these forums, but I'll offer my own opinion.

Second: the KICK isn't JUST the sensation of falling. Like in a dream, the kick is usually when you're ABOUT to hit the ground when falling, hence the kick is RIGHT as they hit the water. That's how my dreams work, and I believe that's what Nolan is using as a "rule." I'm sure Cobb and his team got into many fights or brawls over the years as dream-sharers, which probably entailed getting thrown, jumping off high places, etc - many rapidly changing gravitational pulls. The kick is more than just the sensation of falling, it's a more complicated effect than that, one that Nolan did his best to explain with the comical Eams vs. Arthur scene.

Now if you're asking why the sensation of falling in level 1 didn't affect level 3, let me look into that...

Okay, I'm not a physics guy, but this makes sense to me. Do you know calculus? Like when you take the first derivative of something, it's the slope, if you take the 2nd derivative of something, it's the rate of change. Each function, graphically, looks increasingly different than the other. Okay, that probably only confused you more, but keep that in mind.

"Reality:" flying in airplane | 1st level (Van): sensation of falling | 2nd level (hotel): feeling weightless | 3rd level (snow): normal gravity again

Only the level immediately above can effect the gravity/conditions of a level. Nolan is assuming here, that if you are feeling weightless, this does not carry over any significant gravitational changes into the dream level immediately above (assuming you are going deeper/lower, not higher) you. I don't know if this obeys the laws of physics, but then again, these are Nolan's rules and laws, and you are really underestimating Chris Nolan if you think this is a "glaring plot hole," because trust me, he's been thinking of this story since he was a teenager, so he thought of this a lot more than we have. If you really want to get technical - the people on the plane are flying around 500mph - should this impact the sensation/gravity/conditions of the 1st level of dream world? This is Nolan's world - and it's his rules and laws. Ask him the technicalities, but I assure you, it isn't a "glaring plot hole."

It's one of the rules of the movie, that a kick from level 1, no matter how violent, cannot wake someone from level 3. The kick must come from level 2. That's why they need the simultaneous kicks from multiple levels.

steveportee wrote:It's one of the rules of the movie, that a kick from level 1, no matter how violent, cannot wake someone from level 3. The kick must come from level 2. That's why they need the simultaneous kicks from multiple levels.

isn't the tumbling in level#2 enough to cause a kick though.. I know the tumbling originates from level 1 originally, but it's being transferred to level #2 with significant consequences (as seen in the hallway fight)... I thought that would be enough to kick them out of the snowy mountain dream.. after all the original kick idea was taking out the floor by C4 explosives and have them fall down one floor.

JonnyT23 wrote: isn't the tumbling in level#2 enough to cause a kick though.. I know the tumbling originates from level 1 originally, but it's being transferred to level #2 with significant consequences (as seen in the hallway fight)... I thought that would be enough to kick them out of the snowy mountain dream.. after all the original kick idea was taking out the floor by C4 explosives and have them fall down one floor.

It's Nolan's world, and he says, No, that isn't enough to cause a kick. Again, it's not just the sensation of falling. It's much more than that.

I'm not sure about the tumbling, because we never see how to tumbling effects level 3. I wonder if that's just an oversight or something got edited out.

And yes, it would makes sense that a level 1 kick could have an impact strong enough to kick someone out of level 3, but the rules of the movie seem to imply that it just doesn't work that way.

A point that seems to be disregarded here is also the way time is experienced between the different levels of dream.

The further level of sleep you're in, the slower the ratio to real time gets. If this is the case, then the force of gravity would barely be noticable at the depth they were in.

So in a way, it's almost as though the mind is actually acting faster in real time, though at a subconscious level it is able to perceive and digest as if it was real time. If an asteroid slowly hurtled towards the Sun, it'd have more of a chance of getting pulled in by the gravity of the star. If it's velocity was increased, it'd stand a better chance at experiencing less of a pull, as the force of it's velocity would be (hopefully) greater than the force of the Suns gravity.

Tying that up, as the mind is working faster, the less likely they are to notice the effects of tumbling around inside a van two levels of dream states up. That's how I saw it, based on what was said about the properties of time being perceived very differently in dream states.

Just a theory.