No no no... "inception" happens when they plant an idea inside a safe/vault inside someone's dream (inside someone's dream, inside someone's dream), rather than extracting one. Cobb doesn't undergo inception, he just works out his problems as the plot develops with some help from Ariadne. Why? Because it would be a dull and empty plot if all these characters were brought together simply to perform a job. Furthermore the film makes clear that Cobb learns to reject he projection of his wife, so it makes no sense for him to then embrace projected children instead at the end. The children represent reality not just in physicality but in the emotional truth that underscores the film. That's why he spins the top then ignores it soon as his children appear - they're a more certain anchor for reality.
The safe doesn't have any special significance. What is significant is that Cobb takes the totem which is at rest and puts it in motion. Presumably when Mal goes back to retrieve her totem she finds it to be spinning, thus causing her to question which reality is real. She could have stored it in a cardboard box, it would have made little difference.
I believe you are mistaken. The film never shows Mal returning to the safe to find the top (why would she?). The safe is part of her mind which, if you will, contains the IsReality boolean variable. Cobb changes the IsReality variable by finding its location. Then it's possible for him to convince her that they should kill themselves and wake up. But inadvertently he destroyed her mind because subconsciously this switch had been flipped.
Of course the safe had special significance! Safes were of crucial importance throughout the film. (you might ask yourself why it wasn't in just a cardboard box)
Mal had to come back and see the top. Inception is about showing things to people in such a manner that they cannot link it back to you, that they feel it is their own.
Cob claims that you don't affect the mind by murdering projections, so why should you be able to affect the mind by changing the physical projections?
The dreamworld, even limbo, is not the subconscious, its a representation of the subconscious, and a one way camera. If it were not, inception would be much easier. You could just initiate a deep dream and change the environment: there'd be no need for the team to go through the danger of the third level, where two of them died (And didn't expect to be able to resurect)
Ah but when Cobb tampered with the totem they were already very deep into dream state, where a change to the environment could have a profound effect. It's not a oneway camera because the subconscious constantly reacts to things that they do to the environment/projections, no matter what level they're on. Furtheremore Cobb doesn't so much change the environment (which I agree would be too easy, although he had to go to the trouble of finding the safe first), as reactivate something which Mal had chosen to bury and forget. If Mal merely had to look at the spinning top for Inception to work, then he could have just dragged her in there and made here open the safe, and when they woke up she could have seen that the top no longer spun. What he did was change a constant such that she had no idea why she now doubted reality (on every level).
In the other dreams the safes contained pieces of information, but Mal's safe was different as the contents were something with mechanical/programmatic agency, a moving part if you will.
"Because it would be a dull and empty plot if all these characters were brought together simply to perform a job."
What you describe is a very common trope for heist movies, and Inception--despite its depth--satisfies on that level, just as The Matrix satisfies as a sci-fi shoot-em-up despite its depth.
A lot of the best movies satisfy on multiple levels this way.
They never make movies about 'just another job,' which is what this would be if not for Cobb's psychodrama/inner-conflict and Ariadne's attempt to help. Although I suppose the goal of inception would make it unique from the characters' perspective but that's too weak because it means nothing to the audience beforehand.
Except it's not "just another job" at all--it's an impossible job, they have to assemble the best team, they make an elaborate plan that goes all wrong and they have to clean it up--Cobb's personal issues are part of it, and motivate his desperation to take the job, but without that angle you still have the classic heist (or at least caper).
> Except it's not "just another job" at all--it's an impossible job, they have to assemble the best team, they make an elaborate plan that goes all wrong and they have to clean it up
Exepct that's the plot of every single "just another job" movie. But of course inception is a lot more than that.
But c'mon, name a classic heist/caper movie that doesn't up the emotional stakes in some manner not inherent to the job itself (eg. Love interest, betrayal, apocalypse, even just the time honoured 'one last job' etc). I didn't say it would necessarily be dull and empty overall but the plot itself would. There's no way the audience would care enough about the impossibility of the job or the crackness of the team, because it's all just thrust upon them wih no prior context. Now, of courae, it could still be a great film minus the Cobb psychodrama, but there'd be something else there in its place.
Re the rule that inception requires a vault to plant the idea inside - on the one hand, if the whole concept of inception is something dreamed up by Cobb, then that rule can be broken (dreams are rarely consistent). On the other hand, that's why it's so significant that Ariadne's role is the creator of mazes (specifically, mazes which Cobb's conscious mind can't solve): she creates a maze he has to break into in order to confront his issues at the centre. If he did so without first struggling to get there, he wouldn't accept it as his own victory: just like Fischer had to pull off an increasingly elaborate heist in order to believe his own inception.
Re accepting his dream children after rejecting his dream wife: I think the difference is that his real children are still alive and need him. His guilt over Mal's death keeps him distant from them - literally in the film/dream, but maybe metaphorically in reality. Maybe he's been emotionally distant from his kids since her death, and the dream is his mind's attempt to fix things.
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