Inception explained in one infographic | Hacker News Reader

Inception explained in one infographic

fastcodesign.com

109 pointsjedschmidt29 comments

People seem to make this movie out to be far more confusing than it actually was. I found it pretty straightforward, so although there is a lot to keep track of, it's not really difficult to follow.

Now something like Primer, on the other hand...

I've seen several, and this one does an alright job, although with too much text:

http://i.imgur.com/HXLOw.jpg

If you like this genre make sure to catch TimeCrimes, quality spanish movie in the same veign :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480669/

I don't see a title on that graphic. Is that for Primer? Which I haven't seen yet? Should you include a spoiler warning?

I completely agree. I watched the movie thinking to myself every now and again "OK when's the full on mind fuck coming?" but it never really came, not for me anyway. Afterwards when I heard or read people talking about how confusing or hard to follow the movie was, I began to wonder if perhaps there was some huge extra layer of complexity to Inception that just went totally over my head. A bit more time has passed now and I don't think there was.

I still very much liked the movie though.

The only confusing bit is whether he was actually ever in the real world at all, or it was all a dream. This is almost the main concept of the film, and not answered when we see the spinning top still spinning at the end.

Great film, glad to see a great sci-fi film doing well at the box office as well. Moon was a great story last year, that did not do so well. Worth checking out.

I saw Moon and thought it was good too. I liked how it seemed to intentionally and quite successfully avoid every cliched direction the story could have taken.

Yeah, though I didn't really see this as confusing, simply an unknown left open to interpretation.

I was half waiting for some kind of twist like say, it turns out that Cobb was dreaming the whole time and is in reality the heir to the company and is the target of the Incpetion... or something. I didn't really think that one through too deeply though and I'm not sure that a twist like this would have made the movie better in any case. I guess it just comes back again to that expectation that was built up in me of it being a full on "mind fuck" movie. In some ways I was kind of happy walking out of the cinema that my mind had not been fucked, just well entertained.

The ending isn't confusing, just ambiguous.

Exactly, for some reason the people i've talked to try to find even more hidden things that they actually are. Which just says how much they loved it. Awesome movie.

Boo. Full size version isn't full size. The two crops are obviously from a higher resolution (readable) graphic that is not the full size one linked.

Hey there--I'm the editor of the site and I've put the real, original version online. Thanks for reading!

Here is a summary of Inception that I read somewhere, but can't recall where right now.

"If you run a VM inside a VM inside a VM inside a VM, things get really slow."

That's wrong, the inner VMs run faster.

The clock may go faster, but things take longer (like Disk I/O...)

Here are my two cents on the subject. I think the entire movie was Cobb stuck in a dream. Its not just the top at the end, its the ability to fly all over the country, getting chased by nondescript g-men etc. The big things for me though were how did Cobb and Mal get stuck in limbo after only 1 dream. It only ever shows them 1 level deep. I think Mal was right and they needed to go one more level. Another point was he ends up in France(we never know how gets places) and talks to his father in law, a key line was "Come back to reality".

Sure all those could be interpreted a certain way but I like mine the best.

I agree, but "stuck in a dream" doesn't explain the events of the movie.

My theory is that Moll knows (from the level where she jumps) that Cobb knows hows to do inception. She gets back to reality and tell people. The film portrays this knowledge being "extracted" from him -- perhaps, in part, to get him to finally jump.

I really liked Inception but wanted Mal to be right too. There is a similar film called Avalon which isn't half as entertaining:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0267287/

However, the ending in Avalon is mind blowing and makes the film worth seeing.

My problem with this theory is that if Mol did wake up after jumping off the building, why didn't she kick Cobb back to the real world?

Maybe I'm misinterpreting the movie, but I don't think this is correct at all. If you cut out the first and last 10 minutes of the movie, then maybe you could get the impression that it flows somewhat like this.

I think it's a fairly good representation. It's faithful to the chronology; the first 10 minutes of the movie and the last 10 minutes are the same.

One thing that strikes me as off, however, is Cobb's length of time spent in Limbo. It's only slightly shorter than Saito's yet as far as the audience sees, Cobb only spends a brief amount of time there to find Saito, as evidenced by his relative lack of aging.

Re: Cobb only spends a brief amount of time there to find Saito, as evidenced by his relative lack of aging.

one explanation i've found online is that since Cobb's mind is more aware of limbo, it's better able to handle the time he spends there, so he doesn't age nearly as much as Saito

Other option is Saito aged that much between the time he died and Cobb went to look for him.

I was under the impression that limbo was a separate level entered into when you "die" in a dream but your body is not ready to receive you back. Saito goes there when he dies in Level 3, and Cobb when he drowns in Level 2 because he's trapped "below". Level 4 was simply a deeper level filled by Cobb's dream world that he had created with his wife.

I might have misunderstood though.

They mentioned (very briefly) that those who have been to limbo bring their artifacts (from being in limbo) with them when they return. That's why Limbo was built around Cobb's subconscious/memories/creations.

Another version:

http://dehahs.deviantart.com/art/Inception-Infographic-17242...

This one contains more info, and as a bonus has the Escher stairs effect as featured in the movie. However, it's harder to understand.

Cool, but inaccurate. This is completely missing the 4th level dream that Cobb, Ariadne, and Fischer go into in the bunker.

Reality?

There might need to be some variations on these infographics to fit the multiple theories out there.

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