At the end of the movie Inception, has Cobb returned to reality or is he still trapped in his dream?

The movie “Inception” was released in 2010 and tells the story of Cobb, the main character, as he moves between dreams and reality. Due to the open interpretation of the ending, audiences have various interpretations and debates about whether Cobb has returned to reality or is still trapped in the dream.

 

The movie “Inception” was released in July 2010 and was very popular and successful. One of the most unusual things about this movie is that it has an open ending. This open ending left many viewers curious about the ending, and many viewers felt frustrated by this open ending. For this reason, I will analyze the ending of the movie and whether or not the Cove has returned to reality.
First, let me introduce the movie’s brief plot. The main characters, Cobb, Saito, Arthur, Ariadne, and Eames, use drugs and sedatives to enter Robert Fisher’s dreams and plant the idea in his mind to “take over his father’s company and ruin it.” Robert Fisher’s father is the chairman of a world-shaping company, and Saito is the chairman of the company’s competitor, and he asks Cobb to do this because he wants Fisher’s company to fail. Robert Fisher’s father dies, and his son, Robert Fisher, is set to inherit the company, but before he does, he plans to destroy it by entering his dreams and planting thoughts. The specific plan was to enter the dream in three stages, plant thoughts, and use a “kick” to exit the dream. There are three ways to come out of a dream. There are three ways to come out of a dream: die, the drug wears off, or use the kick. If you die in the dream, you can come back to reality, so you kill yourself to come back from the dream to reality. And if you don’t die, you’ll naturally return to reality when the drugs wear off. In addition to these two methods, the “kick” method involves a waking person knocking the dreamer out of a chair, putting them in a car, dropping them from a height, or otherwise altering the relative gravity. The dreamers would then wake up. Cobb’s plan involves three stages of dreaming, so he uses sedatives as well as drugs. If you die in the dream, you won’t be able to return to reality, and you’ll be in limbo. Although limbo is a dream, the person in limbo is unaware that they are in a dream and mistakes it for reality, and they live in it until they die. So you can’t use death to get out of the dream. And the method of waiting for the drug to wear off involves entering a total of three stages of dreaming, so in order to wait for the drug to wear off in the third stage of dreaming, you need to live in the dream for about 50 years (in this movie, time is many times longer in dreams than in reality). This leads to the final method, which is to use a “kick” to come out of the dream in stages.

 

 

Cobb, Saito, and the rest of the team enter the first stage of Robert Fisher’s dream, where Saito is shot and injured. This increases the risk of Saito falling into limbo, but Cobb and the team continue with their plan anyway. In the third phase, Cobb and his teammates succeed in their plan, but Saito dies and falls into limbo. In order to save Saito from Limbo, Cobb enters one more level of the dream, Saito’s Limbo, while the rest of the team uses Kick to get out of the dream. Kob enters Saito’s limbo and meets Saito, who tells him that this is a dream and not reality, and Kob exits the dream and returns to reality. To confirm his return to reality, Kob spins his “totem,” a spinning top. A ‘totem’ is an object that confirms whether you are in reality or a dream, and in the case of the spinning top, if the spinning top stops, you are in reality, and if it continues to spin, you are in a dream. In the end, the movie ends without showing whether the spinning top stops or not.

 

 

The ending of the movie is somewhat ambiguous. The first is that Cobb enters Saito’s dream while he’s in limbo, informs him that this is a dream and not reality, and grabs a gun. Obviously, death by gunshot is not an option because of the sedation. However, since Saito did not enter the limbo state by being drugged and sedated, but by dying in his dream, it is possible to exit the limbo by dying. However, Cobb was drugged into limbo. In Kob’s case, it is possible for him to enter Saito’s limbo and exit limbo by dying, as long as he was drugged when he entered limbo, excluding sedation. As evidence of this, Ariadne, who entered Limbo with Cobb, exited Limbo through death. This suggests that Cobb was drugged when he entered Limbo, minus the sedative.
Second, the ending does not show Cobb and Saito exiting the dream in three stages (minus limbo). So how did they escape? Except for “limbo,” they can’t die. This would put them back into limbo. Then there are only two options: use a ‘kick’ or wait for the drug to wear off.
Did Cobb and Saito use the kick to come back to reality from their dreams? I don’t think so, because in order to use the kick, someone in the real world has to give it to you. For this reason, when Kob and his teammates entered the three stages of the dream, they left one teammate behind for each stage of the dream. Therefore, Kob and Saito had no teammates to give them a kick after the other teammates had already used the kick to exit the dream.
However, there is a slight possibility that Kob and Saito could have used the Kick to get out of the dream. This is because they were able to get out of limbo very quickly, and used the same kick to get out of the dream as the rest of the team. This is slightly possible, since time is longer when you enter a dream. However, I don’t think this is likely, because when Kob and Saito returned to reality, the other team members were already awake and waiting for Kob and Saito to return to reality, so they didn’t come out of the dream with the same “kick” as their teammates, so they wouldn’t have gotten out of the dream with a “kick” after all.
In the end, their only option is to stay in the third stage of the dream, waiting for the drugs to wear off, and live for 50 years or so before returning to reality. It’s a very simple, but reliable method. However, during this process, they could die and be trapped in limbo for 50 years. This is the reason for the movie’s open ending. Did Cobb spend 50 years in the dream and return to reality, or did he die in some way during that time and fall into limbo and think the dream was real? My theory is that he did return to reality. The reason for this can be found in the situation when Cobb and Saito return to reality. Before they entered the dream, Cobb and his teammates were on an airplane, and they had timed the drug to wear off before the plane arrived. When Cobb and Saito wake up, a flight attendant approaches them and hands them an immigration form. This means that they wake up near the end of the flight, which means that the drug has worn off and they have returned to reality.

 

 

Another reason is the idea of ‘limbo’. People in limbo live in a state where they mistake dreams for reality. So, if Cobb was in limbo, would he spin his totem, the spinning top? A totem is a tool that tells you whether you’re dreaming or in reality, and if you were in limbo, you wouldn’t even think about spinning the top. Therefore, the very act of Cobb spinning the spinning top shows that it is not a dream but reality.
The open-ended ending of Inception leaves the viewer with a lot to think about, and each interpretation can be different. Theories and interpretations surrounding the movie’s ending are still being debated, which is part of what makes it so fascinating. Inception is a movie that touches on dreams, reality, and the passage of time, and has left a lasting impression on audiences.