Inception ending EXPLAINED: Was it reality or NOT? Michael Caine reveals the big secret

It has baffled and beguiled audiences fro almost 20 years.

Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending thriller cuts just as teh spinning top appears to wobble. Or does it?

The key to understanding what was reality and what was not is usually believed to be dependant on whether it wobbles (reality) or stays completely upright (illusion).

In a brand new interview Sir Micahel Caine just cut through all of that and revealed Nolan told him there is only one thing you need to look for.

The film ends with DiCaprio’s Dom Cobb shown being reunited with his children. If this is reality then it is a truly happy ending after all.

Speaking at Film 4’s Summer Screen, Caine confessed his own confusion prompted him to ask his director what was going on.

He said: “When I got the script of Inception, I was a bit puzzled by it and I said to [Nolan], ‘I don’t understand where the dream is.’ I said, ‘When is it the dream and when is it reality?’”

Shockingly, Nolan’s explanation is so much more simple than anyone could have guessed. 

Caine told the audience: “He said, ‘Well, when you’re in the scene it’s reality.’

“So get that — if I’m in it, it’s reality. If I’m not in it, it’s a dream.”

It really is as simple as all that.

Caine’s Professor Stephen Miles is, indeed, in that final scene, which means Cobb really did get his happy ending after all, whether or not the spinning top fell.

In the past Nolan had teased: “The point is, objectively, it matters to the audience in absolute terms: even though when I’m watching, it’s fiction, a sort of virtual reality. But the question of whether that’s a dream or whether it’s real is the question I’ve been asked most about any of the films I’ve made. It matters to people because that’s the point about reality. Reality matters.”

“The way the end of that film worked, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Cobb — he was off with his kids, he was in his own subjective reality. He didn’t really care any more, and that makes a statement: perhaps all levels of reality are valid.”

Could someone explain Interstellar next, please…