It was a final shot that mesmerized a generation of moviegoers. The Inception ending, which featured Cobb’s spinning totem maybe (or maybe not) coming to a stop, ignited years of debate on social media – and it’s a conversation that continues to this day.
Much of Inception dealt with Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his crack team of thieves trying to enter a person’s subconscious to steal valuable information. It's unclear by the end, however, whether Cobb himself is in a subconscious dream or back in reality on American soil to see his children.
While director Christopher Nolan has addressed the question of whether Cobb is in the real world or dream world before, he’s now had what feels like the final say on the matter during press rounds for Oppenheimer.
- On its 10th anniversary, Christopher Nolan reflects on Interstellar's continued popularity after watching it for the first time in a decade: "It was a very special thing to see"
- No one knows for sure if Final Reckoning is Tom Cruise's last ever Mission: Impossible movie, but the director teases the title is "appropriate"
"I went through a phase where the film came out, where I was asked that a lot," Nolan told the Happy Sad Confused podcast. "I think it was [Inception producer] Emma [Thomas] who pointed out the correct answer... the point of the shot is the character doesn’t care at that point.” He added, "It’s not a question I comfortably answer."
Michael Caine, who starred in Inception as Cobb’s father, previously muddied the waters by telling Esquire that his brief appearance in the final scene of the film actually meant that the sequence was ‘real’ and not a dream.
“When I got the script of Inception, I was a bit puzzled by it, and I said to him, ‘I don’t understand where the dream is,'” Caine said in 2018.
“I said, ‘When is it the dream and when is it reality?’ He said, ‘Well, when you’re in the scene it’s reality.’ So, get that – if I’m in it, it’s reality. If I’m not in it, it’s a dream.”
So, two conflicting accounts. The answer, then, isn’t the point. It’s how we – and Cobb – feel at that moment that’s the most important thing. And, yes, we fully expect to be talking about the ending for another decade. It just keeps on spinning.
For more on Oppenheimer, check out our own interview with Christopher Nolan, then see where it lands in our ranking of the best Nolan movies.
