The most confusing sci-fi movies explained

Christopher Nolan’s dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream thriller can be a bit of a nightmare to follow. So it’s just as well the internet has collectively dreamt up a shedload of stylish infographics to unpick the nested plotlines.

Why not start with a guided tour though inception-explained.com?

Or perhaps this diagram clarifies things?

View in full at adammartinvisuals.com.

Or this poster?

View in full at Shahed Syed's deviantart.

Or this poster?

View in full at Neil Laws on behance.net.

This image lays out how the dream timelines correspond to one another...

From Luis Buenaventura's Flickr.

And as for the question: at the end, is Cobb dreaming or awake?

The top wobbles. And that's all we have to say about that. But to get more confusing... we're going to need to go back in time.

Doc: You’re just not thinking fourth dimensionally!

Marty McFly: Right, right. I have a real problem with that.

Have a problem with that no longer with these terrific diagrams.

This timeline diagram lays it all out:

View in full on Mushir Hoda's deviantart.

As does this one:

View in full here, created by Sean Mort.

And this one:

View in full on mysticalpha's deviantart. 

'I don’t wanna talk about time travel shit', says Bruce Willis as Old Joe in 2002 time-travel noir 'Looper'. 'Cause if we start talking about it, then we’re gonna be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws.'

Oooh, did somebody say DIAGRAMS WITH STRAWS?

Straws!

View in full here. Image created by Michael Talley.

More straws!

View the full straw-enhanced explanation at flicks.co.nz.

Str... oh.

Still cool though. By Noah Illinsky for Wired.

I think I recognise this one from a recent meeting.

View in full here. Image created by AceFox.

This is it. The mother of all mindbenders. A film that, by virtue of its meagre $7,000 budget, elliptical time-travelling plot and remorseless economy of exposition has perhaps generated more discussion per dollar than any other sci-fi film out there. These timeline diagrams only begin to explain why...

You can only time-travel backwards to the point you turn the time-travel machine on.

Diagram via Wikipedia.

Unless you take a time-travel machine back in time with you using the time-travel machine... Then it gets more complicated.

View in full here. By Tyler Skrabek.

Quite a bit more complicated.

View in full size here. Created by Laura Ells.

No, more complicated than that.

View in full size here. Created by Keith Pearson.

The more you think about it...

View it full size here.

...the worse it gets.

View in full size here.

This one's just a hot mess.

View it in full size here.

Is this one right?

See in full here.

Or is it this one?

See the enormous original here.

Actually, it might just be this one.

via XKCD.

Still haven't got it? Perhaps this 15-minute explainer video will make things clear:

Or if you'd rather read a detailed explanation...

This handy article provides an incisive explanation of the film's events, but let's face it, you've read this far, you owe it to yourself to go deep. So turn to The Primer Universe for 27,000 words of painstaking analysis.

Just watch the whole thing again with this fan-made audio commentary!