What happened at the end of the movie Inception?

There are 2 possibilities:

a. The whole movie is a dream, or

b. Cobb made it back to reality.

If it's all just a made up story about dreams within a dream, all the details and concepts about the dream rules would mean nothing then.

The clues & details leads to reality at the end. So I go with reality. (^_^)

Clues:

1. At ending, the Top wobbles --> Reality. In dreams Totem spins constantly & smooth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DL8lP2gPog

If we listen carefully after the black out [not after the credits], there's a SOUND of the Totem wobbling n fall.

Dileep Rao [Yusuf] interview: "You know what, I'll just say this: Use your ears not your eyes."

2.Cobb doesn’t wear a wedding ring in reality, he wears it in dreams [in dreams he's still together with Mal]. He doesn't wear a wedding ring at the end.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_buVAhLdEfbg/TQljomldOJI/...

3. The kids are older in the ending, bigger body shape, different hair style, different clothes, short pants, and shoes too.

SHOES: In dreams they're wearing black shoes, at the end Philippa wears pink canvas shoes & James wears white sport shoes.

CLOTHES: In dreams Philippa wears 1 piece of short-sleeves pink dress. Philippa wears a sleeveless pink dress with an inner white shirt at the end.

In dreams James wears redish-color shirt with wider lines. James wears bluish-color shirt with thinner lines at the end.

And there are "painting tools & brushes" on the table at the end.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_buVAhLdEfbg/TQbZANl9I6I/...

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_buVAhLdEfbg/TQbZAkNfRBI/...

4. In Inception, Michael Caine plays as Professor Miles, he’s Cobb and Mal’s lerturer, he’s also the one who started the Dream Project.

Michael Caine has revealed the "true" ending of the film, stating that, "The spinning top drops at the end, that's when I come back on. If I'm there it's real, because I'm never in the dream. I'm the guy who invented the dream."

5. He's not stuck in the world he and Mal built (Limbo). Throughout the movie, there are times when Cobb spins the Top and it stops, means Cobb and Mal made it back to reality and Mal suicide in the real world.

After his mission to get Saito's secret, Cobb sits in hotel room, spinning the Top and watching it intently, gun in hand. He's ready to blow his brains out if the top keeps spinning, in order to “wake himself up”. The Top stops.

Cobb also spins the Top until it stops after waking up from Ariadne's dream (where Mal stabbed Ariadne).

Full clues: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AhFTJ...

Nolan shows us that Cobb was finally back in the real world... the final shot was cut short just as the totem wobbled a bit but before it fell, leaving the audience to consider the possibility that maybe it's just another dream.

I think Nolan left it that way so you can decide the ending, personally i think it was real life, it just happens that the movie ends right before the totem stops spinning

I believe the totem hadn't had enough time to topple over because in the final shot when the camera zooms in the object shakes a bit

The ending showed that he had made his way into a dream world that he accepted as reality because its what made him happy.

It was suppose to leave the audience with a sense of sadness and happiness.

it left us with sadness because the audience knows that what he was living was a lie

and it was happiness because at least this dream world he was living in was making him happy and letting hm be around his kids and thats all he wanted.

EDIT: For everyone that says that the totem falls so hes back in reality i just wanna point something out. If the totem falling over means hes in reality, doesnt that mean that he was in reality the whole time? because the totem would fall over whenever he was outside of the "dreams". If thats the case then the totem falling over doesnt indicate anything now becuase it can fall over in both the dreams and reality.

Credits.

didn't have a clue