
Forgotten Supernova by Tathya S is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at forgottensupernova.tumblr.com.
Super, directed by James Gunn (Slither, Dawn of The Dead, Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed), is a dark comedy and superhero satire. Is that a warning? Well, if you watch Super because it has Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page in it and you automatically assume it’s a comedy, then boy you’re barking on the wrong tree. Some scenes can be violent, they make you question the point of this movie: is it to entertain or to disturb you? Perhaps it’s a cross breed, sort of, between Watchmen and Kickass. It has the satirical feeling that Kickass represents, the superhero cliche, that any of us can be a superhero, defender of living crooks. It also gives you that dark ambiance Watchmen has. Combined the two and voila: you got Super.

NOTE: THIS ARTICLE BELONGS TO PETER HALL FROM CINEMATICAL, NOT ME.

Interpretation 1: All of Inception is a dream.
(Peter Hall’s note: This is the Inception theory to which I subscribe.)
We are never once shown reality. Every frame of Inception is a dream. Whose dream? My money is on Cobb, though it is conceivable that Cobb is simply the subject and that he is in someone else’s dream (see Interpretation 3 and 4 below).
There are a number of key elements throughout the film - lines of dialog shared amongst the characters (Mal and Saito both tell Cobb to take a “leap of faith”, Cobb predicts what Saito will say in limbo), acceptance of improbable events during segments of “reality” (Saito saving Cobb in Mombasa) - that support the notion that everything is a dream, but for me it all comes down to a simple question: What is our totem? We learn very early on that the one unimpeachable way to know whether or not you’re in a dream world or the real world is to test your totem; an item whose behavior only a single individual can identify and predict. In the case of Cobb, it’s his wife’s spinning top. Arthur’s is a single loaded dice. Ariadne’s is a precisely weighted chess piece. But what is the audience’s totem?
What event in Inception is the audience aware of that no one else can know? There isn’t one. There’s no point in which reality is clearly and unimpeachably established. The film opens in a dream sequence (Saito’s limbo) before transitioning to another dream sequence (Saito’s dinner party), which then slides into another dream (Saito’s secret apartment). The characters supposedly