Spoiler Alert!!! Don't Read This If You Haven't Seen Inception Yet!

Okay. Now I'm going to talk about Inception and I didn't want to spoil the awesome movie for anyone. Seriously, if you haven't seen it and want to, please don't read this post. SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Okay, hopefully if you're still reading, you have already seen it (or don't plan on seeing it). As you know, the movie has an open ending. Dom spins the little metal top and just as it seems like it might waiver and fall, the credits roll. So is he still in a dream or not? Of course there is no way to tell for sure. The movie ends before anyone knows. But here are some clues that I've gathered after my second viewing of the great movie.

-Since we don't know how much time has past between the last time Dom saw his kids and the present time, we have no way of knowing how much the children have aged. Maybe only a few months. Maybe a few years. About 30 minutes into the film, Dom talks to his children over the phone. His son sounds like a little kid (muppet-ish voice, asking kid-like questions). But his daughter sounds like she is 10 or 12. In Dom's memory, the children look like they are between 4 and 8 years old. They also seemed close in age. So the daughter couldn't be 10 or 12 and the son still a muppet sounding toddler. But at the end of the movie, Dom sees his kids again and they look exactly like they did in his memory. It makes it seem like a dream and since we can't see what happens to the spinning top (it only topples in reality), I guess that's the point. POINT: Not sure.

-Michael Caine plays Dom's father. At one point Dom has presents for his children and asks Michael Caine to send it to them. Caine says something about how stuffed animals aren't going to make Dom's children forget that they don't have a father. If Dom's children were a lot older, stuffed animals wouldn't be an appropriate gift. So the fact that his gift was stuffed animals makes it seem like they are still little. POINT: Ending was reality.

-At the end of the movie, Michael Caine is waiting at the LA airport for Dom, seemingly out of the blue. The Michael Caine parts in the movie go like this: Dom goes to Paris to see Caine, dropping off gifts for his stateside children and seeking new talent for this one last job. Caine recommends Ellen Page's character. 2 hours of movie go by and then at the end, Caine is there to pick up Dom at the airport. Granted, Dom could have called his dad and said, "Hey pops, I'm coming back to the states. I might be going straight to jail or I might be scott free. Either way, can you pick my ass up?" I mean, they don't usually show characters going to the bathroom or eating breakfast. It could have happened. And I know Christopher Nolan didn't include such a scene because it would have ruined the open ending. But I don't think it's likely that Caine's character was there at the LA airport. When we last saw Caine, he was in Paris. Dom flew into LA on a 10 hour flight from Australia. Is that enough time? And why didn't Dom's mother (or whoever is watching over his kids) pick him up instead? POINT: Ending was a dream.

-The little metal top is a talisman that Dom uses to verify that he is back in the real world and not still dreaming. When Dom spins it in the real world, it spins for a while, waivers, then falls down. While in a dream, the top spins endlessly. At the end of the movie, Dom spins the top, then sees his children and runs out to them. The top continues to spin while Dom is hugging his children in the background. Then the top starts to waiver and BOOM, the credits roll. From what we saw in the movie, the top wouldn't have waivered at all in a dream. The fact that it does start to waiver is a clue that gravity is in effect and that Dom is in the real world. POINT: Ending was reality.

After all that, I'm still not sure what it is. If it is a dream or reality. But Inception is a kickass movie. That much I know.