Inception is a 2010 American science fiction-action film written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Marion Cotillard, and Cillian Murphy. The film is inspired by the experience of lucid dreaming.[5] The film, a variant on the heist genre, centers on Dom Cobb, an "extractor", who enters the dreams of others to obtain information that is otherwise inaccessible.[6] His abilities and questions about the death of his wife have cost him his family and his nationality, but he is promised a chance to regain his old life in exchange for planting an idea in a corporate target's mind.[7] This process of planting an idea, known as "inception", is less familiar and far more difficult than Cobb's usual job of "extraction".[7]
Development of Inception began roughly ten years before the film's actual release when Nolan wrote an 80-page treatment about dream-stealers.[8] After presenting the idea to Warner Bros. in 2001, he felt that he needed to have more experience with large scale films.[9] Therefore, Nolan opted to work on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. He spent six months polishing up the film's script before Warner Bros. purchased it in February 2009.[9][10] Filming began in Tokyo on June 19, 2009 and finished in Canada in late November of the same year.[11][12]
Inception was officially budgeted at $160 million, a cost which was split between Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures.[3] Nolan's reputation and success with The Dark Knight helped secure the film $100 million in advertising expenditure.[3] Inception premiered in London on July 13, 2010 and was released in both conventional and IMAX theatres on July 16, 2010.[13][14] The film grossed over $21 million on its opening day, with an opening weekend gross of $62.7 million.[4] The film received mostly positive reviews.[15]

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Plot

Dominic "Dom" Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) washes up on a beach and is brought by armed guards into the chamber of an elderly man. The scene then cuts to a dream in the mind of Saito (Ken Watanabe) where Cobb, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and dream world architect Nash (Lukas Haas) are on an "extraction" mission, in which an individual's mind is infiltrated through dreams and information is stolen. Extractors and their victims sleep in close proximity to one another, connected by a device that administers a sedative and share a dream world built on their mental projections. In the dreamworld, pain is psychologically experienced as real but death results in awakening. Cobb carries a spinning top to use as a "totem", a unique object which either spins unceasingly or topples, allowing him to always determine whether he is dreaming or awake, respectively. Unbeknown to Cobb or Arthur, Saito is in fact auditioning the team to work for him.
Saito asks Cobb to perform the act of "inception"; using dreams to secretly implant an idea. The target is Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), son of Saito's terminally ill corporate rival Maurice Fischer (Pete Postlethwaite). The objective is to convince Fischer to break up his father's company, preventing it from becoming a monopoly, forcing Saito out of business. Cobb recruits Eames (Tom Hardy), a forger who shifts identities inside dreams, Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a chemist who develops sedatives and dream architect Ariadne (Ellen Page). In Cobb's mind, Ariadne discovers that a vision of his deceased wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) continually haunts him, constantly sabotaging his missions. Cobb reveals to Ariadne that he and Mal spent many years in a limbo dream world forging their lives. After waking, Mal remained convinced that she was still in a dream and committed suicide, attempting to force Cobb to join her by incriminating him in her death. Cobb refused, forced to flee the U.S. and his children to avoid murder charges. In return for the mission, Saito promises to clear the charges and reunite Cobb with his children. The plan involves creating three dream layersâ