Inception plot details

With all things Inception being kept tightly under-wraps, today the folks over at InContention got their hands on the film’s plot details form a script reading.

Major spoilers ahead, so if be cautious if you keep reading below:

Per InContention:  “Inception” takes place in a world where we have developed a means by which we can enter people’s dreams.  Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Cobb has been described as a “CEO type,” but he is also something of a criminal.  He dives into people’s dreams to extract information.

Ellen Page will play Ariadne, a young college student studying in Paris who is a part of Cobb’s team (along with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Arthur and Tom Hardy’s Eames).  Cobb’s team actually “creates” the dreams and Ariadne is an “architect” of the them.  She engineers them.

When Cobb’s team enters the dreams, it is not via a machine such as The Matrix or The Cell, I’m told.  It is via injection, and the technology can easily be transported in a suitcase.  In one scene (featured briefly in the trailer, I believe), the team actually enters a person’s dream while on an airplane.

Cillian Murphy stars as Fischer, a business-type who is soon to become the head of a company.  Cobb’s team is attempting to insert an idea into Fischer’s mind to compel him to separate the company into two smaller companies.  The reasoning for this is unclear on my end.

Ken Watanabe plays Saito, a character blackmailing Cobb.  For what reason and to what extreme, I do not know.  Aside from him, there is no classic villain in the story, but Cobb’s wife (Marion Cotillard) causes some trouble.

The two of them at some point find themselves stuck in many levels of a dream and Cobb’s wife tries to convince him to stay in that world, that it is much better than real life.  However, Cobb wants to return to his children and the real world.

This plot point is a bit unclear (and is a massive SPOILER), but I’m told that the wife commits suicide in the dream in order to return to the real world.  When Cobb himself returns, he is charged with his wife’s murder and has to flee with his children.

The film will not be typical sci-fi fare at all.  It is set in the real world, present day.  And virtually all of the “action” scenes take place in the dream environment.  This should go a long way toward explaining the “your mind is the scene of the crime” tag line that accompanied the trailer.  Ultimately, it seems like a grounded, more tangible blend of Minority Report and The Matrix.

Source: InContention