Poking Around in Dreams

As I recently mentioned, I love Inception.

That's not to say that I think there are about a zillion plot holes in it.

1) Robert Fischer never once recognizes his last remaining competitor. Not in his dreams, not in reality.

Yeah, his father just died and maybe he's all upset about it, but still.

2) So you can get close enough to Fischer to slip something in his drink. Huh, maybe you should just poison him.

But then we wouldn't have our movie.

3) So you can't go to the USA or any country that has an extradition treaty. Here's a thought: move your kids to France.

...yeah, there's just no defense for this one.

4) Dom goes into Limbo to rescue Fischer. That's pretty much stated. He and Ariadne wash up on the beach, go looking for Fischer, find Mal, find Fischer, shoot Mal, etc. Then Dom says he's going to stay and look for Saito. Next time we see him, he's on the beach again. What?

I've actually got an explanation for this one: Dom drowned in level 1 after the van hit the water. He wasn't conscious of it when it happened, because he was on level 4/Limbo, but it happened. No matter where you are when you die on an earlier level, you always go back to the start of Limbo. Even if you're already in Limbo.

5) The kicks. How? What?

It's pretty clear both in the first dream sequence and when Yusuf is explaining about inner-ear function that you'll snap out of the dream in level n+1 if your body in level n is dropped. So why, in order to get from level 3 to level 2, does Eames set up charges to blow up Piz Gloria and drop himself and the others? Isn't it Arthur's job to bring Eames and the others from level 3 to level 2? And on that note, once the van is in freefall, Arthur's body in level 1 is in freefall... so why doesn't that take him from level 2 to level 1?

Possible explanation: there's some mumbo-jumbo about a synchronized kick. Maybe, due to the nature of Yusuf's particular chemical, the kicks all need to come at once or they won't have any effect. Still doesn't explain why Eames needs to place any charges, but it covers Arthur's weightless improvisations.

6) If level 2 is weightless, why isn't level 3?

Because. Yusuf's magical chemical.

7) Okay, smartass, they say Yusuf's magical chemical will give them a week on level 1, six months on level 2, and 10 years on level 3. Hang on a second.

7a) They work all this out from a starting point of ten hours in the real world, before they know they're going to do the job on a ten-hour flight. Where did that ten-hour figure come from in the first place? That's just a continuity error. We now return you to the logical flaw...

7 continued) Instead of a week on level 1, six months on level 2, and 10 years on level 3, we get about an hour on each level. Maybe 2 on level 3 if we accept that it really did take Fischer and Saito an hour just to reach Piz Gloria. Explain!

Explanation one: Fischer's projections being militarized caused problems in one way or another.

Explanation 1.1: Fischer's mental training somehow decreased the time dilation. I have no way to back this up.

Explanation 1.2: Fischer's militarized projections sabotaged the plan on level 1, speeding up the timetable. They say pretty much that, but that doesn't mean the problem goes away. Either Yusuf was driving around for a week (unlikely), or he reached the bridge a lot faster than he was supposed to. So far, so good. Except that the team - or at least Dom and Saito - are under for the full 10 hours. The mission starts as soon as the seatbelt sign goes off, and Dom only wakes up 20 minutes before the plane lands.

Explanation 2: see Explanation 1.2, assume that most of the operation took an hour in real time, tops, and that Dom spent the rest of the time prowling Limbo looking for Saito.

Not buying it. Dom doesn't look nearly old enough.

Explanation 2.1: But elsewhere in the film (right before it, in fact), we see that Nolan doesn't always put old-makeup on the actors.

Still not buying it. Saito's "I'm an old man now" line implies that Dom is not.

Explanation 3: Yusuf lied.

Yeah, either he panicked and got to the bridge way too fast, or he was simply wrong about the time dilation. No matter how you spin it, it's his fault. No wonder Dileep Rao's name isn't on the DVD case.

8) Killing yourself under the effects of Yusuf's magic chemical sends you to Limbo... unless you're already in Limbo, in which case it sends you back up one level, as opposed to all the way out, which happened when Mal and Dom waited for a train?

...mmmmmm yes. Or possibly all the way. Ariadne killing herself only sends her up one level, but Saito (apparently) kills himself and Dom at the end, causing them both to instantly wake up. Of course, by that point all the other dreamers and architects were out, so it's possible that the intermediate levels didn't exist anymore. In the first dream, the castle (Arthur's dream) collapses when Arthur wakes up. Presumably something similar happened to levels 1, 2 and 3 here.

9) So basically all these logical flaws together mean that the top never falls over at the end?

Pretty much, yeah.