Ariadne Cobb! Wake me up! Wake me up!!
Played by Elliot Page 
Inception (2010) · 81 quotes
Inception (2010) · 81 quotes
Tied for 3rd most-quoted character in Inception (2010): in 22 of its 81 quotes
Most scenes with: Cobb (16), Arthur (8), Eames (5)
Mind telling your subconscious to take it easy?
More lines from Ariadne
2 quotes Ariadne Ariadne Wait, whose subconscious are we going into, exactly?
Scenes with Ariadne
19 scenes
Ariadne Pleased to meet you.
If you have a few moments, Mr. Cobb has a job offer he'd like to discuss with you.
Ariadne A work placement?
Not exactly.
I have a test for you.
Ariadne You're not gonna tell me anything about this first?
Before I describe the job, I have to know you can do it
Ariadne Why?
It's not, strictly speaking, legal...You have two minutes to design a maze that it takes one minute to solve.
[Ariadne draws a new maze]
Stop...[Cobb solves puzzle again].....You're gonna have to do better than that
[Ariadne flips over notepad and draws a difficult maze] [Cobb is confused on where to start]
That's more like it.
They say we only use a fraction of our brain's true potential. Now that's when we're awake. When we're asleep, our mind can do almost anything.
Ariadne Such as?
Well, imagine you're designing a building. You consciously create each aspect. But sometimes it feels like it's almost "creating itself", if you know what I mean.
Ariadne Yeah, like I'm discovering it.
Genuine inspiration, right? Now, in a dream, our mind continuously does this. We create and perceive our world simultaneously, and our mind does this so well that we don't even know it's happening. That allows us to get right in the middle of that process.
Ariadne How?
By taking over the creating part. Now this is where I need you. You create the world of the dream. We bring the subject into that dream, and they fill it with their subconscious.
Ariadne How could I ever acquire enough detail to make them think it's reality?
Well, dreams, they feel real while we're in them, right? It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange...Let me ask you a question. You never really remember the beginning of a dream, do you? You always wind up right in the middle of what's going on.
Ariadne I guess, yeah.
So how did we end up here?
Ariadne Well, we just came from the... [she trails off, looking confused]
Think about it, Ariadne, how did you get here? Where are you right now?
Ariadne [realises]
We're dreaming?
You're actually in the middle of the workshop right now, sleeping. This is your first lesson in shared dreaming. Stay calm.
Ariadne [As Ariadne's perception fails, the Paris street begins to explode and collapse] [Cobb tries to dodge some of the debris]
If it's just a dream then why are you--?
[Debris falls on Ariadne waking her up] [Now both awake]
Because it's never just a dream is it? And a face full of glass hurts like hell. When you're in it, it feels real
That's why the military developed dream sharing. It was a training program for soldiers to shoot and stab and strangle each other..and then wake up.
Ariadne How did architects become involved?
Well, someone had to design the dreams, right?[to Arthur] Why don't you give us another five minutes.
Ariadne Wha, Five minutes? We were talking for at least an hour!
In a dream, your mind functions more quickly. Therefore, time seems to feel slower.
Five minutes in the real world gives you an hour in the dream.
Why don't you see what you can get up to in five minutes?
You've got the basic layout. Bookstore, cafe. Almost everything else is here too.
Ariadne Who are the people?
Projections of my subconscious
Ariadne Yours?
Yes. Remember, you are the dreamer. You build this world. I am the subject. My mind populates it. You can literally talk to my subconscious. That's one of the ways we extract information from the subject.
Ariadne How else do you do it?
By creating something secure, like a bank vault or a jail. The mind automatically fills it with information it's trying to protect. You understand?
Ariadne Then you break in and steal it?
Well....
Ariadne I guess I thought that the dream space would be all about the visual, but it's more about the feel of it. My question is what happens when you start messing with the physics of it all?
Ariadne [Ariadne folds the city in on itself]
It's something isn't it
Yes, it is
Ariadne [Projections start to stare at Ariadne as they walk by]
Why are they all looking at me?
Cause my subconscious feels that someone else is creating this world. The more you change things, the quicker the projections start to converge on you.
Ariadne Converge?
They sense the foreign nature of the dreamer. They attack, like white blood cells fighting an infection.
Ariadne What, they're gonna attack us?
No, no....Just you.
[Ariadne creates a bridge]
This is great, but I'm telling you, if you keep changing things like this...
Ariadne [One of Cobb's projections bumps into Ariadne]
Jeez, mind telling your subconscious to take it easy?
It's my subconscious. Remember? I can't control it.
[Ariadne comes to a stop, Pulls two mirrors together and creates a pathway]
Very impressive. [Cobb starts to realize the location]. I know this bridge. This place is real, isn't it?
Ariadne Yeah, I cross it every day to get to the college.
Never re-create places from your memory. Always imagine new places.
Ariadne You gotta draw from stuff you know, right?
[Cobb starts to become nervous]
Only use details. A streetlamp or a phone booth, Never entire areas.
Ariadne Why not?
Building a dream from your memory is the easiest way to lose your grasp on what's real and what is a dream.
Ariadne Is that what happened to you?
Listen to me. [Cobb grabs Ariadne, All projections stop and stare] This has nothing to do with me, understand?
Ariadne Is that why you need me to build your dreams?
[Projections start to converge on Ariadne, Cobb tries to fight them off]
Hey, get off her. Back up. Back up
Ariadne [Projections separate Ariadne from Cobb]
Hey. [Ariadne begins to yell for cobb] COBB! COBB!
GET OFF OF HER!
Ariadne LET ME GO! LET ME GO!
MAL! MAL!
Ariadne COBB! WAKE ME UP!
[Cobb's projection of his wife, walks up and stabs Ariadne, waking her up]
[After Ariadne is stabbed by Mal in a dream, she wakes up gasping for air]
Hey, hey, hey. Look at me. You're okay. You're okay. Hey
Ariadne Why wouldn't I wake up?
Cause there was still some time on the clock. You can't wake up from within the dream unless you die.
[Cobb wakes up and immediately heads to the bathroom to check his reality]
She'll need a totem.
Ariadne What?
A totem. It's a small personal...
Ariadne That's some subconscious you've got on you, Cobb! She's a real charmer.
Ah, I see you've met Mrs. Cobb.
Ariadne She's his wife?
Yeah. So a totem. You need a small object, potentially heavy. Something you can have on you all the time that no one else knows.
Ariadne Like a coin?
No, it needs to be more unique than that. [shows her a small red die] This is a loaded die. [Ariadne reaches for it, he pulls his hand away] No, I can't let you touch it, that would defeat the purpose. See, only I know the balance and weight of this particular loaded die. That way, when you look at your totem, you know beyond a doubt that you're not in someone else's dream.
Ariadne I don't know if you can't see what's going on, or if you just don't want to, but Cobb has some serious problems that he's tried to bury down there. And I'm not about to just open my mind to someone like that.
[Ariadne leaves as Cobb comes out of the bathroom]
She'll be back. I've never seen anyone pick it up that quickly before. Reality's not gonna be enough for her now, and when she comes back....when she comes back, you're gonna have her building mazes.
Where are you gonna be?
I gotta go visit Eames.
Eames?...No, He's in Mombasa. It's Cobol's backyard.
It's a necessary risk.
There's plenty of good thieves.
We don't just need a thief. We need a forger.
Ariadne I tried not to come, but.....
But there's nothing quite like it
Ariadne It's just...pure creation.
Shall we take a look at some paradoxical architecture?
[Arthur and Ariadne are walking up a wooden staircase in the dream]
You're going to have to master a few tricks if you're going to build three complete dream levels. [Projection drops papers in front of Arthur]..Excuse me.
Ariadne What kind of tricks?
In a dream you can cheat architecture into impossible shapes. That lets you create closed loops. Like the Penrose Steps. An infinite staircase. [The camera reveals they are walking on an impossible, looping staircase] See?...Paradox.
So a closed loop like that will help you disguise the boundaries of the dream you create
Ariadne But how big do these levels have to be?
It could be anything from the floor of a building to an entire city. But they have to be complicated enough that we can hide from the projections.
Ariadne A Maze?
Right, a maze. And the better the maze...
Ariadne Then the longer we have before the projections catch us?
Exactly.
Ariadne My subconscious seems polite enough.
[Arthur laughs]
Ha,ha. You wait, they'll turn ugly. No one else like to feel someone else messing around in their mind.
Ariadne Cobb can't build anymore, can he?
Well I don't know if he can't, but he won't. He thinks it's safer if he doesn't know the layouts.
Ariadne Why?
He won't tell me. But I think it's Mal.
Ariadne His ex-wife?
No, Not his Ex.
Ariadne They're still together?
No. It's....no she's dead...What you see in there is just his projection of her.
Ariadne What was she like in real life?
She was lovely.
Ariadne [Ariadne approaches Cobb in the workshop]
Were you going under on your own?
No, no, I was just, uh, running some experiments. I didn't realize anyone was here, so...
Ariadne Yeah, I was-- I was working on my totem, actually.
Here. Let me take a look [he offers his hand to take the chess piece, but Ariadne withdraws it] So you're learning, huh?
Ariadne An elegant solution for keeping track of reality. Was it your idea?
No, it was uh... was Mal's, actually. [showing his top] This, This one was hers. She would spin it in the dream and it would never topple. Just spin and spin.
Ariadne Arthur told me she passed away.
How are the mazes coming along?
Ariadne [explaining the "mazes" of Fischer's subconscious]
Each level relates to the part of the subject's subconscious that we are trying to access. So, I'm making the bottom level a hospital so Fischer will bring his father. You know, I--Actually, I have a question about this layout –
No, no, no. Don't show me specifics. Only the dreamer should know the layout.
Ariade
Why is that so important?
In case one of us brings in our projections. We don't want them knowing the details of the maze.
Ariadne You mean in case you bring Mal in. You can't keep her out, can you?
Right.
Ariadne You can't build because if you know the maze, then she knows it. Well, She'd sabotage the whole operation. Cobb, do the others know?
No. They don't.
Ariadne You've got to warn them if this is getting worse.
No one said it's getting worse. I need to get home. That's all I care about right now.
Ariadne Why can't you go home?
Because they think I killed her. [stands to walk away] Thank you.
Ariadne For what?
For not asking rather I did.
The compound we'll be using to share the dream creates a very clear connection between dreamers whilst actually accelerating brain function.
In other words, it gives us more time on each level.
Brain function in the dream will be about 20 times normal. When you enter a dream within that dream, the effect is compounded. It's three dreams, that's 10 hours times 20--
It's a week the first level down, Six months the second level down, The third level--
Ariadne That's 10 years. Who'd would want to be stuck in a dream for ten years?
Depends on the dream.
So, once we've made the plant, how do we get out? I'm hoping you have something more elegant in mind than shooting me in the head?
A kick.
Ariadne What's a kick?
This, Ariadne, would be a kick. [kicks Arthur's chair; Arthur flails but manages to right himself]
It's that feeling of falling you get that jolts you awake. It snaps you out of the dream.
Are we going to feel a kick with this kind of sedation?
Ahh, that's the clever part. I customize the sedative to leave inner ear function unimpaired. That way, however deep the sleep, the sleeper still feels falling, or tipping.
The trick is to synchronize a kick that can penetrate all three levels.
We could use the musical countdown to synchronize the different kicks.
[Ariadne has entered one of Cobb's hidden memories] [turning towards Ariadne]
What are you doing here?
Ariadne [frightened]
My name is –
I know who you are. What are you doing here?
Ariadne I'm just trying to... understand.
How could you understand? Do you know what it is to be a lover? To be half of a whole?
Ariadne No.
I'll tell you a riddle: you're waiting for a train, a train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you don't know for sure. But it doesn't matter. How can it not matter to you where the train will take you? [she picks up a jagged wine glass]
Ariadne What is this place?
This is the hotel suite where we used to spend our anniversary.
Ariadne What happened here?
[Mal suddenly dashes towards them, as Cobb and Ariadne throw themselves in the elevator]
You promised! You promised!
Please! I need you to stay in here! Just for now!
You said we'd be together! You said we'd grow old together!
Ariadne [After they awake in the real world]
Did you think that you could build a prison of memories to lock her in? Did you think you could contain her?
[After Saito has been shot in the first dream layer]
Get Fischer in the backroom now. [Opens car door] Get him in the backroom. Move. What the hell happened?..Has he been shot? Is he dying?
I don't know.
Jesus Christ.
Where were you what happened to you?
We were blocked by a freight train.
Ariadne I didn't!
Then where'd it come from?
Let me ask you a question: why the hell were we ambushed? Those were not normal projections, they've been trained, for God's sake!
Ariadne How could he be trained?
Fischer has had an extractor teach his subconscious to defend itself. His subconscious has militarized. It should have shown in the research. I'm sorry.
When why the hell didn't it?!
Calm down.
Don't tell me to calm down! This was your job, God damn it! This was your responsibility! You were meant to check Fischer's background thoroughly! We are not prepared to deal with this type of security!
We have dealt with some security before! We'll be a little more careful, and we'll be fine!
This was not a part of the plan! [on Saito] He's dying, for God's sake!
Don't do that! [shoves him back] Don't do that.
No. It won't wake him up.
What do you mean, "it won't wake him up"? If we die in a dream, we wake up.
Not from this. [everyone looks at him] We're too heavily sedated to wake up that way.
So, what happens when we die?
We drop into Limbo.
Ariadne Limbo?
Unconstructed dream space.
Ariadne Well, what the hell is down there?
Just raw, infinite subconscious. Nothing is down there. Except for whatever that might have been left behind by whoever's sharing the dream who was trapped down there before. Which in our case, is just you.
Ariadne But how long could we be stuck there?
Not even think about waking up until –
How long?!
Decades! It could be infinite! I don't know! [motioning to Cobb] Ask him, he's the one who's been there!
[Saito is moved upstairs]
Great. [to Cobb, sarcastic] Thank you. So, now we're in Fischer's mind battling his own private army. And, if we get killed, we'll all be lost in Limbo until our brains turn to scrambled egg. Hm?
[Cobb says nothing and walks away]
Ariadne [to Cobb]
When were you in Limbo?...You might have the rest of the team convinced to carry on with this job, but they don't know the truth.
Truth? What truth?
Ariandne
The truth that, at any minute, you might bring a freight train through the wall. The truth that Mal is bursting through your subconscious, The truth that as we go deeper into Fischer, we're also going deeper into you. And, I'm not sure we're gonna like what we find.
We were working together. We were exploring the concept of a dream within a dream. I kept pushing things. I wanted to go deeper and deeper. I wanted to go further. I just didn't understand the concept that hours could turn into years down there...that we could get trapped so deep that when we...when we would up on the shore of our own subconscious, we lost sight of what was real. We created. We built the world for ourselves. We did that for years. We built our own world.
Ariadne How long were you stuck there?
...Something like 50 years.
Ariadne Jesus. How could you stand it?
It wasn't so bad at first, feeling like gods.The problem was knowing that none of it was real. Eventually, it just became impossible for me to live like that.
Ariadne And what about for her?
She had locked something away, something deep inside her. A truth that she had once known, but chose to forget. Limbo became her reality.
Ariadne What happened when you woke up?
Well, to wake up from that after years, after decades. To become old souls thrown back into youth like that? I knew something was wrong with her. She just wouldn't admit it. Eventually, she told me the truth. She was possessed by an idea. This one very simple idea that changed everything. That our world wasn't real. That she needed to wake up to come back to reality...that in order to get back home...we had to kill ourselves.
Ariadne What about your children?
She thought they were projections. That our real children were waiting for us up there somewhere.
[Mal yelling to try and convince Cobb they are still dreaming as Cobb carries the children into the next room. "Mal": I'm their mother!. "Cobb": Calm down . "Mal" Don't you think I can tell the difference. "Cobb": If this is my dream, why can't I control this? "Mal": BECAUSE YOU DON'T KNOW YOUR DREAMING.]
She was certain there was nothing I could do no matter how much I begged, no matter how much I pleaded. She wanted to do it, but she could not do it alone. She loved me too much, so she came up with a plan on our anniversary.
We need to shift his animosity from his father to his godfather.
Ariadne We're going to destroy his one positive relationship?
No, we repair his relationship with his father whilst exposing his godfather's true nature. We should charge Fischer a lot more than Saito for this job.
Ariadne Who or what is "Mr. Charles"?
It's a gambit designed to turn Fischer against his own subconscious.
Ariadne And why don't you approve?
Because it involves telling the mark that he's dreaming. Which involves attracting a lot of attention to us.
Ariadne Didn't Cobb say never to do that?
So now you've noticed how much time Cobb spends doing things he says never to do.
Ariadne What's happening?
Cobb's drawing Fischer's attention to the strangeness of the dream. Which is making his subconscious look for the dreamer. For me. [the projections begin staring at them] Quick, give me a kiss. [Arthur and Ariadne kiss]
Ariadne [confused]
They're still looking at us.
Yeah, it was worth a shot. We should probably get out of here.
Ariadne [The team is entering Fischer's subconscious]
Wait, whose subconscious are we going into, exactly?
We're going into Fischer's. But I told him it was Browning so he can be a part of our team.
That's right.
Security is going to run you down hard.
And I will lead them on a merry chase.
Make sure to be here in time for the kick –
Go to sleep, Mr. Eames.
Ariadne [Cobb watches through a window with a sniper rifle as Mal sneaks up on an unaware Fischer]
Cobb. No! She is not real!
Ariadne She is just a projection. Fischer is real!
What happened?
Ariadne Mal killed Fischer.
So that it, then? We failed?
We're done. I'm sorry.
Well, it's not me that doesn't get back to my family, is it? It's a shame, I really wanted to know what was going to happen in there. I swear we had this one.
Let's set the charges.
Ariadne Wait, there's still another way! We just have to follow Fischer down there.
Not enough time.
Ariadne No, but there will be enough time down there, and we will find him! As soon as Arthur's music kicks in, use the defibrillator to revive him. We can give him his own kick down below. You get him in there (the vault). You blow the building, and we all ride the kick back up the layers.
