inception 30 day challenge / day 6
favourite headcanon of the team:
THIS IS SO HARD! there are THOUSANDS of incredible ones crafted carefully over the last decade! ahhh
i must admit i am so heavily influenced by the masterpiece that is presque vu (everyone go read this inception prequel right NOW because if it was submitted to nolan he’d turn it into a screenplay - i have no doubt in my mind) that i’m not sure if my headcanons are my own or not?!
ok. i have to pick a fav at random because i have way too many feelings flying about the place.
that mal was the one who introduced her bff arthur to eames. and that she was thrilled they were happy together. and that a large part of why arthur and eames broke up (pre-canon events) is because of the inability to process their feelings after mal died.
i think this gives the entire film even more depth than the four layers of the fischer job. the heart of the film is not cobb - it’s mal. she binds them all together. and yet we almost never get to see the real mallorie cobb, except through arthur’s eyes. literally his sad eyes when he says, “she was lovely.”
eames fucks off to mombasa, as far away as possible from cobb after mal dies. he can’t handle him. he can’t handle arthur. he can barely handle his own feelings. it’s all too much. mal was the only one that ever gave him cause to be happy, and it all fell apart. none of these men knew how to grieve, and it drove them apart.
arthur stuck with cobb out of loyalty to mal. he’s angry, he’s resentful, he wants out because he hasn’t even been able to mourn his lost relationship with eames. but he figures the one thing he must do is help cobb get back to his children - mal’s children - because she would want that too. for them.
ultimately i think cobb is a better person for having experienced mal, both in reality and in dreams, in all her “versions.” he needed that to grow.
mal changed cobb like she changed arthur and eames. and in coming together for the fischer job, they did precisely what the ambitious mal always wanted them all to do: