Movie – Inception
Overview:
The movie I chose to look at is called Inception. It is a movie that involves a
futuristic world in which the technology exists to allow people to enter the subconscious
thoughts of other people through their dreams. The main character, Cobb, is an expert in
this new industry and specializes in stealing information from others in their dreams,
which is considered extraction. The movie, however, dives into a new idea that no one
has ever been able to accomplish, inception. This concept of inception involves going
very deep into someone’s dreams and planting an idea that will change the way they
think about something, which in turn could shape their actions when they are awake.
Cobb is approached early in the movie by a man named Saito who would like him to
plant an idea in his largest business competitor’s son, Robert, that would cause him to
break up his father’s business when his father passes it on to him. Cobb accepts this ‘job’
and heads out to become the first person to successfully complete a subconscious
inception of an idea in someone.
Portrayal of the Business World:
The business world is portrayed in a very deceitful and aggressive way. The
reason Saito wants Cobb to complete the inception job is to stop a giant energy
conglomerate from continuing its spread and control over the energy industry. In a
positive light, stopping this conglomerate and getting it to break up would be better for a
great number people around the world. Saito describes the company by saying, “Soon it
will control the energy supply of over half the world, and thus will become a new world
power.” So basically what Cobb and his team are trying to accomplish in their inception
is a good idea that will help a lot of people, but it is not legal. This type of action would
be justified in people that have a Stage 5 view of the world. They are not following the
law like a Stage 4 person would do, but rather acting in a way that would benefit the
greatest number of people.
Ethical Dilemmas:
#1 - The first ethical dilemma we come across in this movie is when Cobb sets out to
find an architect for his ‘job’ to build the dream worlds he will be using. To do this he
seeks out his father, who is a professor at a college, and he introduces Cobb to one of his
brightest students, Ariadne. Cobb approaches her and gives her a small test to design a
maze in 2 minutes that takes at least 1 minute to solve. When she questions why he will
not explain the job to her, he tells her that it “isn’t strictly legal.” This draws a red flag
for her, and you can see that she kind of stops and ponders what he has said, but she does
not pursue the issue any further. The issue was portrayed in a mysterious way that made
it very appealing for Ariadne and caused her to continue with the test in order to learn
about the job.
The issue was not really resolved in that she did not question Cobb any more
about the legality of the job or anything she was doing. Cobb was very subtly persuasive
and lured her in deeper and deeper by showing her how much control she had and all of
the things she could change in the world around her in the dream. By the time she
accepted the concept of designing the world inside of a dream and all of the things she
could change by just thinking it, she became more and more interested and intrigued.
She completely overlooked the fact that the job she would be helping was not legal and
began to have fun with what she was doing.
This issue should have been resolved immediately when Cobb informed her that
the job she was going to be helping with was illegal. She gave in to her curiosity,
however, and decided to proceed with helping Cobb. I feel if I were faced with this
dilemma, I would be very cautious about what was going on with this strange man that I
had just met who was offering me an illegal job. I do think I would have been very
intrigued though and pursued the issue a little bit. I would like to believe I would not
have gone through with helping Cobb in his mission to complete the inception, but the
idea is so interesting that I cannot say for sure, and I may have found myself heading
down the same path Ariande took.
#2 - The next ethical dilemma presented in the movie occurs when Cobb and his team,
which consists of five others, actually enter the dream world in which they will be
completing the inception. When they enter into Robert’s subconscious, they are attacked
by the “projections” or people in his subconscious. One of Cobb’s crew is shot and is
dying, so the rest of the crew plan to kill him, which would normally just cause him to
wake up and leave the dream world. Cobb stops them and informs them that because of
the sedation they are using, they will not wake up if they die, but rather go into a state of
limbo where they will spend decades in and may never wake up from.
At this point, there is no way to resolve the issue because they are all already in
the dream world and cannot wake up until the timer they have set wakes them up. As
imagined, everyone involved in the job is extremely upset with Cobb and the fact that he
left this major detail out of the agreement they all entered in to. If any of them dies in the
dream world, they may never wake up.
This dilemma never should have happened in the first place. Cobb deceived
everyone involved by not explaining to them the full danger they were facing in
completing this inception job. If I were faced with this issue, I would be very upset with
Cobb, but there would be nothing that I could do at this point. Instead, I would have tried
to prevent the problem by gaining more information before I committed to the job with
Cobb and tried to understand every possible risk.
#3 - The third ethical dilemma that is very evident in this movie is the way in which
Cobb and his crew perform the inception on Robert. In order to persuade Robert to break
up his father’s conglomerate when it is passed on to him, Cobb attacks Robert’s
relationship with his father. While in Robert’s subconscious, Cobb makes him believe
that his father felt that Robert was a disappointment and wanted him to create his own
corporation rather than use his father’s that he had built up. Robert begins to question
whether his father ever had any faith as him as his son and if he could ever build a
company as good as his father did.
This issue is never resolved, and Cobb and his crew all seem pretty proud of the
sneaky approach they have thought up in order to get Robert to break up his father’s
company. None of the members of the team ever question whether what they are doing is
ethical, but rather only focus on what they are trying to accomplish. It also seemed like
they did not try and think of any other ways to go about getting Robert to change his
mind about what to do with the company after his father’s death.
A better way to handle this situation would have been to think of a different
approach to the inception that would not have involved making Robert believe his father
viewed him as a failure. If I were in this situation, I would have been very opposed to
Cobb’s method of getting Robert to change his mind. I would have tried to find a way to
convince Robert to change his mind without breaking down the relationship between him
and his father.
Other Ethical Issues portrayed:
One underlying ethical dilemma that goes on throughout the movie is why Cobb
is doing this job for Saito. Cobb is doing the job for Saito so he can come back to the
United States in order to be reunited with his two children. He was forced to flee the
United States because he was suspected of killing his wife, but Saito has the influence to
“make one phone call” and completely erase Cobb’s past in the United States. Even
though the job Cobb is doing is illegal, I feel if I were in his position, I would do the
same in order to be reunited with my children.
Another underlying issue is that Cobb’s deceased wife keeps showing up in all of
the different dream worlds, trying to sabotage their mission and kill the members of
Cobb’s crew. Cobb did not explain that this would happen to his crew, especially
Ariande, who has no background on Cobb. He should have been much more open with
the people he was working with in order to gain their trust and protect them.
What I learned:
I have seen Inception several times and it is one of my favorite movies, but I have
never really looked at it from a business ethics perspective until this assignment. This is
an action movie that is very complex and hard to explain, but when I looked at the
fundamental underlying reason for the job they are completing, it was easy to see some
ethical business dilemmas arise. The main question that I keep asking myself in
watching and thinking about this movie is does the end justify the means? What Saito
was actually asking of Cobb, and what the crew was doing was going to help a lot of
people and stop a giant conglomerate from taking control of over half the world’s supply
of energy. They may have done some unethical things along the way, like going into
someone’s subconscious and changing their beliefs, but in the end, a great number of
people were benefitted in doing so. Because the end result of breaking up the
conglomerate was such a good thing, I do believe they made the right decision to go
forward with the inception by whatever means necessary. In real world business,
conglomerates and giant corporations that have too much control spring up much more
often than I would like to see. Although it is the goal of a company to gain market share
and grow and expand, I believe for the overall good of people, it is not good. I feel if a
company becomes too large and has too much power, it is just setting them up to take
advantage of that power in a negative way that could hurt a lot of people. If, for example,
Robert had not decided to break up his father’s conglomerate in the end, they would have
controlled a vast amount of the world energy industry, which could have allowed them to
increase their prices to a point where a lot of people would have gone without energy.