Inception

This is a compilation of the flaws/inconsistencies I found in Inception. Also included are some apparent inconsistencies and my explanations resolving them. They are listed randomly, and are titled with geeky names inspired by the names of the episodes of The Big Bang Theory.

For those who haven't yet seen what is arguably one of the best movies ever made (#3 on IMDb at the time of writing this post, #2 after TDK on my list of Nolan movies), this would be the place to stop reading.

The suicide anachronism Cobb and Mal, after having spent 50 years in limbo, kill themselves by sleeping on a railway track. If indeed they had been there for 50 years (and as portrayed in one of the closing scenes), they must have been old when they died. The scene however shows them still being young.

The imbalanced parentheses Mismatch of the order of dreams. I would think that the order in which the dream layers are shown must be a LIFO stack, i.e. when person B is dreaming a dream inside person A's dream, B would have to wake up from the inner dream before A wakes up from the outer one. This is not the case, at least (not necessarily the only case), for Ariadne dreaming within Eames's dream. One possible explanation is that all people wake up at the same time, but each is shown sequentially in the film. Another is that when the person dreaming the outer dream wakes up, those within the inner dream are trapped in limbo, and since they do eventually die there, they wake up from the outer dream also. But the question remains that if they are indeed waking up from limbo, they should get back to reality and not still be in any other dream level. But, this is not the case and hence the inconsistency.

The dreamer ambiguity The dreamer of the third level dream---the one where they are in the snow capped mountains---is not clear. I believe there are two dialogue sequences where it is claimed that the dreamers are different. When Ariadne asks "Whose dream are we getting into?", Cobb replies saying it is Fischer's dream, and Arthur adds that he will be helping them break into his own dream. This is just before they enter the third level dream. However, in the third level dream, Cobb says "Eames, this is your dream..."

The weightlessness paradox The premise is that if the dreamer is experiencing a state of weightlessness, so does everyone in his dream. This is true because when Arthur is dreaming the second level dream sitting in the freely falling van in the first level dream of Yusuf, everyone in Arthur's dream in the hotel is weightless. If that is the concept, then everyone involved in the third level dream, including Eames and Fischer who are the two possible dreamers, are experiencing weightlessness. Why does this not carry forward to the dream in the snow capped mountains?

The Browning disappearance In the second level dream, when Cobb, Arthur and Ariadne are with Fischer in the room, Fischer's projection of Browning (It is surely Fischer's projection because Eames is shown entering the room later) is shown to be entering the room and being caught by the team, showing him to be the one conducting the kidnap in dream level one to annul the will that would dissolve the Fischer-Marrow empire. Then, both Browning and Fischer will be plugged to the dream sharing machine along with the others, but somehow everyone except Browning appear in the third dream level, i.e. Browning is conspicuously missing.

The Cobb deficiency Another concept is that of the architect. There are dialogues which hint that the architect is someone who builds the worlds in the dreams at different levels and "explains" them to the people who will be sharing that dream. There is another dialogue where Cobb tells Ariadne, who is the architect, not to explain him the specifics of the plan for the world in the dreams. I found these to be contradictory. But this might be explained as Cobb not wanting to know the specifics himself because of his condition. He would still want others to know the plans well. This is justified by a scene where Yusuf is shown working with Ariadne on the plans, and another where Eames is said to have added a "shortcut" through a maze in the dream level three. Also, Cobb constantly asking Ariadne to explain things to Saito and Fischer also corroborates this explanation.

The Saito time-dilation The fact that only Saito was old in the dream when Cobb came to convince him to kill himself to honour the agreement between them can be explained. Conceptually, the age of a person in a certain dream level depends on the time spent in that dream by that person. When Saito dies, he goes into some unknown, but deep, dream level. Now when Cobb is searching all the dream levels to get to Saito, it can be said that he spends not too much time in each level. So, in the first scene of the film, Cobb can be assumed to have just arrived into Saito's dream whereas Saito himself has been there for decades. But there is a dialogue where Cobb, while asking Ariadne to kill herself and get back and explaining why he will stay back, says "Saito must be here somewhere." If that dialogue is taken literally to conclude that Saito was trapped in the same level dream, the age difference is difficult to explain. By "somewhere here", I think Cobb meant "in some dream deeper than here."

The limbo explanation Cobb also gets stuck in limbo because he does die in a dream---not in level three, but in level two, when everyone comes out of the van--- Cobb stays behind, drowns and dies.

The bullet repulsion What is perhaps the most unrealistic part of the film is the fact that the entire team suffers only one bullet shot after being barraged by bullets almost everywhere---in reality, with a lot of bullets that seem to be dodging Cobb in Mombasa; dream level one, with infinite bullets shot at the van; two, with bullets shot at Arthur; three, with the bullets from a whole army of militants not finding their targets. But I am willing to consider this Nolan's V-effect and disregard it.

Kudos to Gandhe for coming close to the main concept of the film!

Swayam-na-vadhu

I have always hated and vehemently opposed "reality shows". Come on! The name is itself an oxymoron - "reality" is something that doesn't happen in a "show". But, somehow these shows manage to garner a lot of public attention. Whether it is for ruining kids' lives by subjecting them to unwarranted, extremely critical, rebuttals of performances aimed at increasing ratings; or trained judges opposing each other just for the heck of opposing, bringing their idiosyncrasies and idiotic theories to the fore, to give the audience a laugh, again at the expense of the contestant. Or the controversy arousing game show where no one knows whether there is a lie detector or the lie detector is nothing but a sensation maximising device, which makes me wonder how a sane person would choose to contest - to be ridiculed on the one hand, or humiliated on the other -- really, it is a lose-lose situation for the celebrity contestant, amply exemplified by Vinod Kambli.

To top them all is the Indian Britney - Rakhee Sawant! Here's a girl who is willing to do anything, "any" thing, to be in the spotlight. No one had thus far slapped her boyfriend when he came to her home with a bouquet of flowers apologizing for some crap -- perfect recipe for brouhaha, live on TV! And in no one's case was the whole episode "filmized" with background scores suiting the mood of the scene. No woman had been so outspoken about her personal life - everyone needs some personal space. But not Rakhee (or Salman, for everyone knows everything about him) ! I am so fed up with all the news about reality shows and Rakhee Sawant, that the sadist in me has awoken, and I conjured up the perfect end to her televised swayamwar -- the selected groom rejecting her, live on TV! (evil grin)

Manic Media

While everyone is out appreciating the role of media in the recent "Cash for votes" scandal and the ISI findings, I think the media is also responsible for some damaging measures.

There is no dispute that decorum is the last thing seen in the Parliament today. In times like this, it is up to the media to highlight the sporadic gentlemanly gestures of the Parliamentarians and uphold them as the right way to proceed. Unfortunately, the media, at least in my opinion, is not only doing nothing like this, but also doing the opposite. For instance, when Rahul Gandhi spoke after the Nuclear deal votes, he complimented ex-prime minister Vajpayee's vision and execution of the Nuclear tests. He continued to suggest that prime minister Manmohan Singh also shared this vision and lauded his efforts to get the Nuclear deal through, which, in his opinion, would go a long way in alleviating the power shortage prevalent throughout India. This, for anyone, would be a nice gesture - a person from the ruling party praising another from the opposition, acknowledging his colleague's work. Without getting into the way the politicians should conduct themselves, I will move on to why the media was irresponsible. The news article about this was titled "Rahul 'charms' everyone after votes". What is the point of such a title? What is the point of such an article? Do they want to sarcastically remark that Rahul Gandhi was being sycophantic? This is an instance where I thought the media was cynical and went astray, shunning its responsibility. The reason why media has to police itself is that Indian politics is in a very bad shape, and everyone knows that. It is also known that media is one of the most effective ways to influence a lot of people. Given these, the media should applaud Rahul's nicety, irrespective of what his intentions were, and hold such instances as worth emulating by politicians to be, if not for the present politicians. Being cynical helps no one. And for the media, being cynical is a cardinal sin! And for the record, I am not a supporter of Rahul Gandhi.

Another article was titled - "Inflation hits 12%, but Indians OK with Income tax". I was stunned to see this as a headline. What would anyone think after seeing this headline? Are they suggesting that inflation hitting 12% is a pretext on which Indians can try to evade taxes? Outraged, I went on to read the article to see that they were actually talking about this years earnings for the government through income tax, and comparing it to the previous years, discussing the reason for the difference, the steps the government should be taking to catch people who evade income tax and reduce the tax on the middle class etc. The article as such was a good one. But the headline nevertheless was outrageous. And the headline is like the first impression. And sadly, "Don't judge a book by it's cover" is hardly followed in today's world. So, the headline really matters, and this one in particular, was a fairly irresponsible one.

Next comes Page 3. I think it is the shallowest, the most materialistic, the least ethical section, for it brings the party-sleep-shop-eat-party lifestyle of morally handicapped, rich and famous people to your home and thereby encourages you to have a similar lifestyle. Having said that, it is necessary to balance the more serious things making news. I understand. But what I don't understand is why what Darsheel Safary thinks about "girls, Kareena and six-pack abs" would be interesting to people! He might be a bunny toothed sympathy evoking kid, and he might have acted pretty well in his debut movie, but what can people get out of this?

And then there are glaring mistakes like wrong dates, like this one from a channel that won the best news channel award (In fact, this was aired on August 21st, 2008)! But this, I guess, is not as bad as the others I have highlighted.

Though the media has made it's mark with it's sting operations, citizen journalists sections, environment watch catalogues, it has to still be careful not to be carried away and publish articles or air reports with any sign of cynicism, with misguiding headlines.

Births and lives...

I was kind of outraged when I saw this news article on IBNLive। There is no doubt that this kid has had a birth not usual among her classmates. There is also no doubt that whatever compensation her parents were supposed to get (which I guess is for trying out something that wouldn't be tried normally especially in the superstitious days of the 80's) they should. I sympathize her for whatever promise has not been kept. But, does that mean this girl can proclaim herself to be "सब्से अलग"? I mean, it was courageous on part of her parents. But, how can she say since she was the first Indian test-tube baby, she expects a life out of the ordinary? I think there are a lot of people in a similar situation. It is right on part of the media to highlight this issue as an example of the government's negligence but totally unacceptable as an example of a 'special' life going awry, which seems to be the motive behind the article.