Inception: Why Mal Didn’t Spin The Top (If She Thought She Was Dreaming)

Feb 4, 2025 - 01:00

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Inception: Why Mal Didn’t Spin The Top (If She Thought She Was Dreaming)

Mal struggles to know the difference between dreams and reality in Inception , but it raises the question as to why she didn't simply use her totem to stay grounded. Christopher Nolan has always been an ambitious director who brings wild and wonderful ideas to the big screen. With that, Inception became one of his most mind-bending and imaginative projects, following a group of people who are experienced at inserting themselves inside people's dreams and retrieving sensitive information.

However, when a job calls for an even more nuanced approach, incepting an idea rather than simply retrieving information, it calls on the experience of one Dominick Cobb, a man who has had some experience in this niche. Cobb's extensive work with dream sharing led to him and his late wife, Mal, being trapped in a deep dream state known as Limbo for a long time, until Cobb was able to put a thought into his wife's mind. Unfortunately, his inception worked a little too well.

Mal Was Too Delusional To Even Believe Her Totem After Cobb’s Inception

Mal Struggled To See Reality Through Dreams

After spending a lengthy period in Limbo, Mal became convinced that this dream world, where she and her husband could build and create anything they could imagine, was actually her reality. The pair spent a long time in this state, but Cobb recognized that it was not real, and he wanted himself and his wife to get back to their children. This is why Cobb incepted the idea that Mal's reality was actually a dream, which meant the pair were able to break out of Limbo and return to the real world. However, Mal couldn't shake the idea that, even when she was awake, she was in a dream world.

Custom image of Elliot Page looking up in Inception

Inception's Dream Rules Explained In Full

The worldbuilding in Christopher Nolan's Inception is complex and some of the rules are a little unclear, but others can be firmly established.

Presumably, when it comes to Totem's, Mal's spinning top did not work as intended while in Limbo. Or, with Mal being the one to recognize a need for Totem's in the first place, she could have shared it with her husband, not knowing how important it is to keep a Totem private. Either way, it seemed like Mal was in no condition to believe the Totem would work as intended. And by the film's end, Cobb appears to care little about whether the Totem is working too.

Nothing Would Have Convinced Mal She Wasn’t Dreaming After The Inception

Inception Changed Mal On A Deeper Level

While getting information out of someone's mind, even from the depths of their subconscious, can be a difficult task, it doesn't necessarily change them in any way. After all, information that was there remains intact, it's just been compromised. Inception, on the other hand, seeks to change what a person knows, thinks, or believes at the deepest levels. It requires going down to the depths of their subconscious, underneath numerous layers of a dream, and changing a thought to be something else.

This could mean turning a father's heart towards their child, and stoking embers of love and emotion, or it could mean changing their beliefs about what is real. Cobb wanted to return to the real world, and his real children with his wife. Unable to convince her that Limbo was not the real world, Cobb incepted an idea to cause Mal to believe that things were not what they seemed. And once this change was enacted in her core, it was not something that could simply be switched off. The resulting adventure in Inception is therefore one of the most thought-provoking and tense films by director Christopher Nolan.