The end of Inception

For whatever reason, we haven't posted a review of Inception. I know we talked about it on the first podcast of season 2. Now that everyone's seen Inception I figure, I can talk about the ending (or I'm bored at work.) I was stumblingupon on stumbleupon and read someone's opinion on the ending and thought "You're wrong!" There are two camps when it comes to the debate, either, Cobb made it back to reality and all is well, or he was still stuck in limbo. What about a third option that's probably right? As you know, Cobb's totem was the top. If it would be spinning and never fall, it was a dream. If the top was to fall, Cobb would know he was in reality. The final shot is the top spinning and wobbling slightly. But, Christopher Nolan totally Soprano'd the ending, so we'll never know if the top fell or not and the debate will never be settled. My initial thought was, the top fell. It must have, right? Then I read some other opinions on the ending that mentioned the fact that his kids hadn't aged from when we first saw them, to the end of the movie. Good point. A child that young would look drastically different after a year (which is about how long I assume he'd been gone, it was never blatantly mentioned, at least that I can remember.) Then I realized, it doesn't matter to Cobb. Throughout the entire movie he tried his hardest to avoid seeing his kids' faces in his dreams because he would become too attached to the dream children and would never want to go back to reality. But, his reality was nothing to be envied. He had lost his wife. He was running from the law and he hadn't seen his kids in a very long time, but he thought reality kept him sane (or something). In the final scene you hear Cobb's kids yell to him and he is obviously happy to see them because he stops staring at the top, which has yet to cease spinning, to go see them. He obviously didn't care whether or not he was in reality. He finally decided that seeing his kids in any context would be better than never being able to see them in either.