I love the way Arthur and Eames are shown here and we can immediately see what's going on in just in one shot. They're equal and opposite visually and thematically on a purely film school nerd analysis level, regardless of fandom goggles.
Honestly, seeing this interaction giffed on Tumblr and the way it established the characters and their relationship to each other in one second without sound was what made me jump into the whole fandom and Dream Husbands ship in the first place, because it shows just how much they belong together.
Their postures - Arthur still and formal, Eames slouching and constantly fidgeting. Their outfits - Arthur's coordinated gray suit and tie all done up nicely and Eames with his jacket hanging off the chair, obnoxious watch, and weird mustard colored short sleeved shirt. Arthur diligently taking notes while Eames distractedly plays with his totem, his notes sitting unopened on his knee. The way Eames spins his whole body to talk to harass Arthur while Arthur just turns his head maybe 45 degrees. Plus the actors themselves physically with coloring and build, and different accents. They're situated symmetrically on the screen (same distance from the edge of the screen), same height, same distance from the camera.
Their characters are there to be left brain (logic and order, "lacks imagination") and right brain (emotion and imagination, "not like you") for Cobb.[1][2] Their totems both being so similar (red cheating gambling tokens - but their methods controlling different aspects of the game) are a sign of their connection. In the first third of the film they're in conflict, but in order for Inception to succeed, left and right brain have to come together and work in sync. And so there's a whole-ass montage of them in the final third simultaneously laying explosives to get the kick going on level 2 and level 3, blindly trusting the other to do his job, so they can complete the heist successfully.
The fandom goggles do come in when they're both played by extremely attractive actors who interpreted the tension between the characters LIKE THAT, but I mean, come on. Darling. They're two characters who are each others' equals, opposites and rivals in every way; who have tension but begrudging respect and ultimately trust, work brilliantly alongside each other, and have some kind of unspecified history together. They're two halves of a whole as dictated by the narrative.
How are we not supposed to ship this?
I suppose you could make an argument for Id/Ego/Superego or Ethos/Pathos/Logos, the whole Kirk/Spock/McCoy dynamic. But the movie is about neurological pseudoscience so left/right brain works better imo. Esp given that they actually mention the imagination thing.
I saw a menswear blog post that pointed out that whatever Cobb's wearing always lies between what Arthur is wearing (dressed up) and Eames is wearing (dressed down). Except for the scene where he and Arthur are kidnappers.
No one knows for sure! Nolan gives us juuuust information for me to come to my own conclusions but not enough to answer some pretty basic questions that might give us a definitive number.
But I have an answer for you!
Get ready for spreadsheets, time conversion charts, infograms, and so, so much conjecture.
(caution: contains overthinking)
By watching the scenes, making a note of what happens, and guesstimating loosely how many in-person minutes it would have taken, I have added up how much time the team spends in level 3 once they reach the fortress. There's a chart at the bottom that shows this in picture-form, but to be exact:
Eames rushes to resuscitate Robert, Cobb and Ariadne arrive, they talk about the plan, Cobb and Ariadne go under {3 minutes}
Eames gives Saito the gun, goes and sets charges, Saito holds off security, Saito dies {6.5 minutes}
Eames arrives in antechamber, Arthur starts the music, Eames starts reviving Robert (first attempt) {30 seconds}
Eames keeps trying to revive Robert {10 seconds}
Robert is revived and talks with Maurice, Eames watches Inception, Eames blows the charges {1 minute}
Ariadne arrives from limbo, wakes in level 3, the floor drops {1 second}
Ariadne wakes in level 2, the elevator stops {1 second}
The van sinks in the river, a sleeping Cobb is left behind and drowns {2 minutes}
Cobb washes up in limbo from having died [*], gets found by Saito's security, gets taken to Saito's palace, convinces him to wake up {30 minutes}
Obviously I had to assume a few things to make any of this work:
[*] I assume that Cobb drowning -- and actually dying instead of just sleeping -- is how he manages to wash up on the shores of limbo despite already being in limbo. If you want to quibble with me on this, PLEASE DO. I would love to talk about how this plot point was supposed to work
All these times are made up based on how many times it flashed between the scenes, how much progress Eames had made around the fortress and how badly it looked like he was getting his ass handed to him by Robert's security XD
The time for a kick from one level to the next (to wake up, essentially) is 1 second
Saito dies the instant before Eames appears in the antechamber
It takes Eames a few tries to get Robert back with the AED
You might notice that I've converted the times listed above (highlighted blue in the chart) into time spent in limbo. As Yusuf so kindly explains to us, there is a twenty-fold acceleration between levels. In table form, that looks like this:
There's not really a need to have a separate minutes and hours table--the numbers are the same, obviously, but it makes it easier to see our magic number highlighted in yellow, the numbers that Yusuf confirms for us: 10 hours in real time is 8.3 days in level 1, 5.5 months in level 2, 9.1 years in level 3, and a whopping 182 years in limbo (ouch).
Yes, you can access this spreadsheet here: [x].
So we have a rough timeline and a conversion chart. From there, it's just a very fun exercise in converting time and adding minutes.
So, as you can see, here's what we end up with:
Robert was in limbo for 203 minutes and 20 seconds, which equates to 3 hours, 23 minutes and 20 seconds.
Saito was in limbo for 320 070 minutes and 20 seconds, which equates to 7 months, 12 days, 6 hours, 30 minutes, and 20 seconds.
Wait, only 7 months? But Saito ends up, like, ancient, right? For sure! So for Nolan-verse to make sense, one of my assumptions has to be wrong. The one really easy way to rack up the years in limbo is to spend even a few more minutes in level 1. If Cobb takes 15 minutes (according to how time passes in level 1) to find Saito, that converts to 4.6 years in limbo.
So how long in level-1-time would Cobb have to faff about to pass 50 years in limbo? Thanks to the spreadsheet, we can find out it's 60 hours!
Other theories I've seen discuss how your appearance in limbo has a lot more to do with how old you feel than how old your "body" is. I like this idea!
Anyway, everyone else survives the van, swims to shore, and hangs around for 8.3 days.
Wait, 8.3 days? Don't they wake up?
This is where I get really confused because I think Nolan changes how kicks work.
There's a lot of pressure to sync up the kicks but we never find out why. Will they be left behind? Yanked out before the job is done? Left feeling totally discombobulated because part of their consciousness is on another dream level? I need specifics, Nolan! But as for the actual kick mechanic, honestly, I had a pretty good grasp on it until Ariadne said "we ride the kicks all the way up" and I could feel my tenuous understanding disintegrate like a marshmallow in a blast furnace.
Earlier in the movie, we see Arthur asleep, immune to Yusuf slapping his face. He only wakes when Yusuf tips him over. He needed a kick from the level above (reality) to wake up from his dream (level 1). We see the same thing when Cobb gets dumped in water at the start of the movie: a kick in reality to get him out of the dream.
If Arthur's elevator trick is all it takes to wake them up from the fortress (the kick from the level above), why have they got explosives in level 3 in the first place?
Because suddenly, the logic changes: when we see the kicks start to collapse, we watch Ariadne fall off a skyscraper in limbo (the lowest level) to get back up to level 3. This is the reverse of what we understand. The fortress explodes, the floor drops, the kick that happens in level 3 takes her to level 2. The elevator stops in level 2 and that kick takes her to level 1. Suddenly it's the kick from below that seems to do the trick.
And yet everything we see before then seems to go against then. IF YOU UNDERSTAND THIS BETTER THAN I DO, PLEASE DM ME. I'm too invested in this.
Anyway.
They're sitting at the rocky riverbank and shivering. They're too heavily sedated to wake up from death or fear. They need a kick. There's probably nothing stopping them from falling from a great height in level 1 to try and wake up, but again, what understanding of "kick" are we using? Could you do it in either reality or in the dream? Barring repeated jumping on a trampoline in level 1, they would need heavy turbulence on the plane (or the landing on the tarmac) in reality to disrupt their inner ear. If that's all it takes--yeah, they can wake up as soon as the job is done.
But for fic purposes (and yes I've got one in progress), I think it's way funnier if they just have to sit around for 8 days until the sedation wears off.
What about Mal? How long was she in limbo with Robert before Cobb showed up?
Hah, yeah, okay. So. Hear me out. She's Cobb's projection. Her death in level 3 should not have done anything. She's not wired to the PASIV, she's not a sedated human partaking in the dream-sharing. There is no separate, distinct human mind to fall into unconstructed dream space. Robert should, technically, be chilling in limbo alone.
Of course, once Cobb goes down there he inevitably takes her with him, the same way he does in every level he goes to. And her death in limbo, of course, is meaningful, certainly for Cobb.
I disagree with you on so many fronts.
DM me or find me on the Discord. I have so much time on my hands right now (clearly) and love dragging people into rabbit holes with me. I already am hemming and hawing about some of the lengths of time I chose for the events in level 3.
And if I have made an egregious math or plot error, I look forward to hearing about it for the rest of my life as the edited post tries to catch up with the original 😂
Something that just occurred to me is that while both Arthur and Eames' totems are related to gambling, neither one actually involves much chance and they way they get rid of that chance ties in nicely with their characters.
Arthur's die is weighted- he knows going in that the odds are in his favour because he's actively changed things to make it so. In any situation where a die like that would be used, chance is minimized. This makes sense for someone as organized and detail-oriented as Arthur. He's the pointman- his job is to make sure that there are as few unknowns in the situation as possible when they enter a dream. Extraction is inherently risky by nature and Arthur, just like his totem, takes concrete steps to decrease that risk as much as possible and make the odds in his (and the team's) favour before anything even happens in the first place.
Eames' poker chip may not have any special abilities (besides maybe replicating when in a dream? I don't know if that's canon or fanon) but the use of a poker chip in the first place is very in line with Eames' character and way of addressing risk. If played poorly or by a novice, poker very much is a game of chance. To an expert though, someone who knows what they're doing, it's a game of strategy. There's still luck and chance involved of course, but if you understand the rules and how to properly observe your opponents that chance can be minimized. Just like forging, being good at poker requires an ability to read others and adapt to a changing situation without ever giving away what's in your hand. A level of risk stays- it's what makes the game fun, especially as the stakes are raised- but it's minimized through flexibility, adaptability, and a very keen eye. Just like a poker player, Eames mitigates the risk of extraction by observing and reading the mark and those closest to them, working and adapting to influence/distract/trick the mark within the dream all while hiding his "cards", so to speak. You could even say forging is the ultimate poker face
Both Arthur and Eames mitigate risk in different ways, and this is reflected in their totems. Arthur's way, like a loaded die, is effective and reliable but also rigid and harder to adapt to unforseen circumstances. Eames' way, like a master poker player, is flexible and adapts to the situation but the flexibility ultimately leaves more up to chance. I just think it's a fun little detail that really adds to both their characters
Fanon Eames is closer to Canon Arthur and Vice Versa
Hear me out, here me out
I’ve been thinking about this since forever, and I only recently started talking to people about it and I am?? So shocked but happy about the amount of people who agree with me. You lot are amazing :’)
I shall try to make my thoughts coherent, stay with me.
Before I do, I just want to say your opinions are valid, always, even if I may be going at this hard right now.
[lots below the line]
This isn’t to say that our fanon perceptions are terrible, that I don’t love them. I do! They’re lovely, heck, go through my feed, there’s a lot that’s gripping fanon.
And our writers are so wonderful. Honestly if one of you wrote a fic describing contents in your trash cans I’d probably read that too.
Oh and!! What I continue saying may actually be your fanon perception, if so, awesome, ty pfft.
But here’s the thing.
Arthur isn’t prissy? He’s not really an uptight stick-up-his-yeehaw person. In canon he’s actually quite warm.
I say this from a v neutral POV, no ships or anything.
He’s very understanding and warm to Dom right from the start, when he notices Mal’s shadow. He’s so soft and caring about it and it is 😭💞
Everyone knows about this one but The way he says “she was lovely” about Mal to Ari :((
The way he treats Ariadne the entire time.
I know Christopher Nolan tried to make their ship happen, but the thing is, that’s still him? As much as a lot of us cringe at the kiss, it’s canon. It happened. And it definitely adds to how little we know about Arthur.
See thing is, you can tell a lot about a person by the way that they treat someone new. It’s very ... well, it sort of defines a person in a way. (By that I don’t just mean first impressions— I mean after the first one, well.)
He’s very nice to her at the start when she’s learning everything and etc, he’s super warm (and oh my God that little smug smile he had the first time? Come on.) and encouraging. We love him.
And he flirts. This trope is usually given away to Eames, if so, but truth is; he flirted with Ari when he said give me a kiss. You smooth little point man you 😫❤️
I’ll keep saying that he’s super warm because he is, okay >:(❤️
If I watched the movie again right now while talking about this, I assure you I could go on and make this post longer than my own fics. But I’ll spare you guys from that this time around.
Ahhh gosh, there’s one thing that I see around that Arthur’s not very ... smiley?
I’m gonna have to. Disagree there. He actually does smile a lot.
I feel like I should point out that a lot of the scenes we see are when he’s working, when he’s on a job. He’s a point man, yaknow, it’s kind of a built in this to be determined and keep your head in the game.
At the start when he’s frowning and all, it’s because the job might get botched, because Saito’s in the helicopter, etc.
But then there’s the scenes in between mainly when he’s teaching Ari, and if you can’t see how soft he is there, I really do urge you to give it a rewatch.
He smiles!! He’s adorable.
And what’s the first thing we see of his when we’re at the end of the movie, back in the plane? Him smiling again.
But before that, they were trying to do a job when projections start shooting them up, Saito’s bleeding, Dom Cobb’s yelling. It’s just. Hell.
And it’s super justified for him to be so tense. He’s the point man, he was supposed to know all the little bits around their job but now a man’s bleeding while someone yells at him saying it’s his fault, of course he’s going to take that blame to himself.
He actually handles Cobb very calmly (if I were there —as I mentioned before—, I would shoot Cobb, no questions asked.), he’s very patient about it. But after Cobb stops hovering over his head, he’s had time to process how this might truly be his fault (I’m sorry bby you did your best :(().
Another thing is—, Arthur’s a very expressive person. A lot of that goes to Joe, ofc, but my man cannot keep a stony face, his expressions are always saying something. A lot of fics say that his face is unreadable but really, it’s just that he has a lot of layers on sometimes <3
(ALSO WAIT I HAVE TO MENTION—HE WHISPERS “PARADOX” INTO THE PROJECTIONS EAR BEFORE PUSHING HIM OFF THE STAIR AHSHJSHDHD THAT WAS SO ADORABLE PFFT)
What I’m really trying to get at here is that Arthur!! Is actually
A very warm. Kind. Lovely. A bit flirty. A lot supportive. Very smart (everyone gets this one right always ofc) person.
Honestly, bless the creators who’ve already written my babe like this, but I just really really needed to get it out there.
It isn’t to say your fic is of less value. Tbh my favourite fics, Arthur’s a bit of the cold prissy person, but I’m just trying to distinguish here, yaknow?
Okay I was adding the pictures and I remembered wanted to say that the way Arthur carries himself is actually quite carefree!! Just how he handles himself in general, he moves with ease, but ngl an example is the chair leaning thing. Hes so ,,, not rigid guys :((
I also made one tailored towards Eames!! Didn't want completely flood this and make it a long one. Check that out too, if you'd like, thanks!
Edit: I can’t believe I tried so hard not to make this ship-like I completely forgot to add Eames skhjdfhf
In Tom’s own words. There’s no denying that Eames is intentional - he’s brilliant and dangerous and very nuanced. I could talk about Eames being a wickedly smart, well educated artist with a gambling problem all day. I could talk about him being an ex military, slightly angsty chameleon all day. Eames made Inception happen. Eames figured out what would make Inception work.
So much focus is placed on him misspelling things, “Eames is dumb ha ha” — maybe he is dyslexic. Dyslexia and intelligence are unrelated - one can be smart and dyslexic.
Look at this man and tell me he doesn’t pick up on everything. Tell me he isn’t dressed in a way that absolutely makes him seem harmless and quirky, in a way that makes sure that he controls how people see him, the narrative they come up with. He wants you to underestimate him. This is no accident.
Hi! I was recently scrolling through the arthur x eames tag and I saw your meta post, and it really got me thinking about the little details that could alude more to arthur and eames' relationship. I then realised this very important piece of information. When we are first introduced to eames, he is playing poker. because of the way he rubs his fingers and the audience"s idea of his character, it is likely that he is cheating at the game. Now, consider this: Arthur's totem is a loaded die.
oh, yeah! imo this was definitely deliberate. arthur and eames have matching totems, and both of these totems suggest slightly unscrupulous activities.
(there are plenty of fics that talk about this and i love them all, but i can’t think of any off the top of my head rn whoops)
when you look at cobb’s totem, which was once mal’s, it’s about the permanence of what you can build for yourself (the top never topples in a dream) vs. the uncertainty and unpredictability of reality (at the end, the top starts to tip but we never actually get to see it fall). it’s very symbolic, academic stuff.
so is ariadne’s– a chess piece. chess is a highly structured game with set rules and boundaries. structure, like architecture. her totem isn’t a “cheating” totem; its “tell” is just its tipping point.
back to arthur and eames. (everything here is my personal interpretation; feel free to take it or leave it.)
eames is definitely a more seedier character than most of the other characters in the film (he’s literally called a thief and a forger). he’s obvious about his deviancy. the only time we see him looking serious and professional is when he poses as a legal representative for fischer-morrow in order to get close to peter browning. and that’s a con. most of the time, we see him not-conning.
arthur, on the other hand, has this rigidity and put-togetherness that seems curated. like he wants to present a facade. kind of like a con man. (kind of like eames). hence you get the sense that there’s a lot more to arthur than meets the eye– hence the loaded die.
arthur more or less is always conning to some extent. i’m sure cobb and eames, who both know him pretty well, can see past it, but to someone like ariadne, his fabricated credibility probably seems pretty believable. now, i’m not saying that he’s not professional or competent because that man thrives on both of those things. but look– he’s an ex-military dream criminal. if he wanted stability and put-togetherness, he’d be an accountant.
anyway, really what i could have said instead of ALL OF THE ABOVE is: arthur and eames– both seedy af, but different brands of seedy. their matching totems are objects that represent this.
I have this theory that in Inception, Eames is very nearly on his way to being addicted to dreaming.
When we first see him in Mombasa, he's quite literally a loser - the first thing we see him doing is losing a dice roll. He's gambling in illegal gambling dens, using his forgery skills on petty crime (that stack of 100 Kenyan shilling tokens is maybe USD$30) and generally kind of a sleazy guy.
We see him in Yusuf's dream den, we're specifically shown Eames’ reaction. He's disgusted and I think scared too.
When we see him in Paris planning the dream heist, he's aloof, talking clinically about how to get the job done, and fidgety. The only signs of personality are when he's needling Arthur (because Arthur just brings that out in him), and some of it is entirely uncalled for (Arthur was genuinely impressed!).
When he's one level under, he's teasing Yusuf, downright flirting with Arthur, and talks Cobb down. When he's two levels under, he's seducing Robert, teasing Saito and having a great time. Three levels and he's basically James Bond, saving the day.
I wonder how much of his topside snippiness comes from withdrawal and wanting to get back into dreaming?
Since he's a supporting character, this arc is unfinished. In the Eames' own words:
Shame. I wanted to know what was gonna happen in there. I swear we had this.
Unfortunately I don't have anywhere near the life experience or knowledge to be able to be able to fully depict it with the sensitivity it deserves, so I'm just putting this idea out into the world to make it everyone else's problem.
So... something I just noticed about the way Arthur and Eames interact in the movie.
When they're in the real world, Arthur and Eames are presented side by side when they're interacting, having to turn and face the other (except for the whole "Eames, I am impressed" scene, where they're halfway across the room from each other but still snarking).
Then when we go into the first dream level and they're no longer side by side. They're either talking diagonally to each other (most notably, in the front and back seats of cars three different times) or moving (in the "darling" scene, Eames comes up behind Arthur then leaves, for example). They're never quite completely aligned. They still have to turn to talk to each other.
Then FINALLY in level 2, in their final conversation, they're sitting still and talking directly face to face. And touching, can't forget that.
They really do come together over the course of the movie ❤️
