I finally got to watch Inception this weekend, and it was as epic as I hoped. Loved it loved it. Will totally buy it once it's out.

While I was watching it, I was glad that they didn't bother to sit the audience down and talk us through every aspect of the dream business (how it works, how long it's been around, how many people can do it). It was fun that they just went with it as if it were normal, and let us fill in the holes (like the dreaming populating the dreamscape!? lol THE MOVIE ITSELF IS A DREAM!!!). But the one thing I wish they would have explained a little better is the totems.

Arthur explained to Ariadne that the feel of your totem would tip you off to the fact that you were in someone else's dream because no one can recreate your totem perfectly. That would imply that it's the dreamer that recreates everyone's totems during the dream. But does that mean the totem is ineffective if you're in your own dream? If it's your dream, you created the totem, therefore you ought to know its feeling.

Plus Cobb's totem (the only one that's ever used) doesn't work by feel, it works by the visual/physical spin aspect, which would be very easy for a dreamer to recreate (assuming they knew it was his totem and that the spin was the key).

Or is it that each person recreates their own totem automatically when they enter a dream, and whether or not the totem functions depends on their subconscious knowledge of the fact that they're in a dream? In which case, Cobb's subconscious is so effed up anyway, wouldn't it effect the totem towards whatever outcome he wanted from it?

I wish we could have seen the other totems in action as a basis for comparison.

Thank you Croik, for sharing my slight disconcern for the lack of totem use. Arthur shows his totem...never uses it. Ariadne makes a totem in front of everyone, and never uses it. And as for the rest, do they even bother having totems?

On second viewing, I noticed that Cobb said the totems were Mal's idea. It could be that other dream-invaders (or whatever you wanna call them) aren't familiar with the practice, which might mean Yusef didn't have one.