I'd like to take a poll if I may...

Nolan said he made a purposefully ambiguous movie. What do you feel are the morals of Inception? For instance, would one be that if we really could have dream sharing technology, it may not be a "good" thing because of what happened to Mal and Cobb? And how does everyone feel about the morality of what Saito forces Cobb to do in order to get back to his children - is influencing a billionaire to break up his father's company a "bad" thing? In fact is the movie enforcing bad morals? Or, is it okay because these dream thieves are gentlemen thieves? A scene with morality is when Michael Caine says, "you're here to corrupt one of my best and brightest" and he says, "I never taught you to be a thief". Arthur says at one point that dream sharing technology was first developed for the military to shoot and stab each other and wake up - are we to make anything of that? Is another moral of the movie that Cobb doesn't look at the spinning totem at the end of the movie, because all that mattered was that he got back to his kids, and to him it didn't matter if it was reality or dream? Symbolizing that if we have similar totems of our own, we should strive to overcome them? Is another moral that Fischer has a positive catharsis with his Dad and that it's "good" to be your own man? Lastly, on the theme of overcoming regret - Cobb's regret of being the cause for his wife's suicide, is this a "good" moral - the theme for overcoming regret? Of overcoming demons and continuing onward.

Please let me know if you agree with any of my list of "morals" from Inception, or if you disagree, or if you have any of your own that you took away from the movie. I talk so much about the film technically, but from a story and morals standpoint, what are your thoughts!

A lot to tackle there. I'll address a couple things: the morality of "fooling" Fischer into breaking up the empire. I look at that as an ends justify the means thing, because while the methods are questionable, the goal is admirable (preventing the formation of a monopoly).

I think that's why Saito could promise that Cobb's charges would be dropped, because there were probably people high up in the government with a vested interest in preventing Fischer's company from becoming a monopoly.

And as for dream sharing itself, I don't think it's either good or bad inherently. It's all based on how it's used. Using it to steal information would be a negative use. Using it for other things, such as psychological analysis for example, would be good uses. What Cobb and Mal did wasn't a "bad thing," they just weren't prepared for what they got themselves into.

steveportee wrote:A lot to tackle there. I'll address a couple things: the morality of "fooling" Fischer into breaking up the empire. I look at that as an ends justify the means thing, because while the methods are questionable, the goal is admirable (preventing the formation of a monopoly).

Yeah, but that's essentially taking Saito at face value. Remember, the first job was to deliver Saito's expansion plans to Cobol Engineering, and since they could not get access to all of the plans, its quite possible that the censored part of the expansion plans involved having inception performed on Fisher Jnr so the company is broken up, thus allowing Saito's company to expand.

I doubt that Saito was as noble as he tried to portray himself.

Every aspect is grey, as it should be.

Fischer's monopoly-as the other man stated, it is pretty much okay because they were preventing a monopoly.

As for the question of technology, as with any other technology, it depends more on who is using it.

There's no poll.

It's definitely questionable, but in the end Fischer "reconciled" with his father. All of Nolan's films end in an intentionally ambiguous way, which is what I love. Kind of like the end of The Dark Knight. Yeah, they straight-face lied about Dent's true fate, but it was to bring hope to the city. Really messy questions. Nolan's a terrific entertainer. Kubrick with car chases.