spoilers etc.
Also, you can be in limbo for years and years, subjective limbo time, but in reality only moments have passed.
Yes, a lifetime can go by, because each layer is ten times dilated by going into a dream within a dream within a dream. Um, within a dream.
So if a character descends into a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream (and SPOILERS they do) a person’s brain can magically work at 100000% normal capacity while still maintaining a presence in all the other dream layers? Fuck you.
Correct, that is physically impossible. Neither is anything seen in the movie for that matter (the brain cannot make that accurate of a simulation). This is a rather odd place to stop suspending your disbelief.
But first, as the chemist who invented the sedative, why is it important to synchronize the kicks, the triggers to wake you up?
Well here’s the key: You want to wake all the way up, because if you don’t, you can’t go back up to rekick and wake yourself up. The sedative leaves inner-ear function unimpaired, so you have to feel a jolt in the level you’re asleep in to wake from the level below.
DREAM AVATARS DONT HAVE INNER EARS LET ALONE INNER-EAR FUNCTIONS. And it doesn’t make any sense to me how the brain of the dreamers is supposed to differentiate between real world stimuli and what they’re experiencing in each dream level. Beyond that, there was no explanation for why a person in a second-level dream would not feel what his real body is feeling if he can feel it on the first level.
You can't wake up from a dream level if you're still asleep in that level? That's what I'm getting out of that statement. It makes some sense given how absurdly detailed the dreams are.
Also unexplained is how the characters can keep descending in the dream state, since the chemist character formulated the sedative to allow for only 3 dream levels. Even more confusing is why if the architect character can change the dream world in fundamental ways, why doesn’t he just surround the other characters with impenetrable barriers before venturing into deeper dream levels? The writers went to great lengths to show that too many changes in the dream world cause the “projections” to attack, but in each level they were already being attacked as soon as they entered! IT JUST DOESNT MAKE SENSE.
1. The chemist was hypothesizing and it had not been empirically tested. And limbo technically isn't another level. That point wasn't very clear in the movie.
2. The dream illusion needs to be as realistic as possible or the person will just wake themselves up. In the first heist, Saito does this (twice).
3. The projections are also another reason, actually. During that one training sequence
Juno Ariadne changes it too much and gets surrounded by a mob and stabbed. Since Fischer's projections were already trained, such changes would have made it worse somehow. Hence all the paranoia about it.
And then the whole idea of “totems” is bullshit too! The top that spins and spins and spins in a dream… why? If the dream architect is expected to make changes as subtle as the fabric of Saito’s carpet, why would he overlook making a toy work according to known physics? The rest of the dream artifacts work just like their real-world counterparts (quick examples: the dream machine, the guns, the cars, the elevators, the safes, the keypads) but for some reason a simple top baffles the “most skilled extractor of dreams”. Even stupider is the ending: Leo leaves the magic top spinning, and the film cuts to black before it stops, leaving the audience to wonder if it was all a dream.
The entire point of the totem is that
you are the only one who knows how it works. They're for defensive purposes. An architect trying to trick you would not know the exact weight distribution of the top or a die (as you note later).
The top works because if you were
in a dream you could will it to spin forever. That's physically impossible, so there's a test for you.
Earlier in the movie though, Leo himself explains that an extractor alone knows the weight and feel of his totem, so if Leo were in a dream he would have known it the whole time even without spinning the thing. It might have been an interesting development if Leo had known he was in a dream all along and still went through with the heist (and resulting dead wife shenanigans), but the movie's just not structured that way.
That's not quite right; it might have been difficult to determine just by having it in your hand.
Anyway the top is more for the audience than Cobb's character. I doubt totems work very well if you don't want them to.
I HATE INCEPTION
These are pretty dumb reasons in all honestly. The first part of the movie is full of infodump and throwing more exposition everywhere would just drag it down more.
