spoilers but by this point in the thread you should know that. :-)
The big ‘question’ or ‘hook’ of the movie is how he learned how to implant an idea. But after I asked that question, I let it go to a degree. Now how he learned to do inception and what it cost to learn is the entire point of the scenes with his wife and her constant appearance. I connected those two together shortly before the big reveal but I was disappointed that ‘there is a connection and you’re missing it’ didn’t pester me more.
Nolan gave you everything you needed to make that connection or hit that inspiration before the reveal in the film similar to “The Prestige” where I was very aware I was not connecting up the dots. I was aware that the answer was right in front of me and I wasn’t seeing it while in “Inception” I wasn’t as much. spoiler for The Prestige When we see all the hats I started getting a little voice saying “Do you see it now?” And that voice kept crowing at me till we learn of the trap door in the big trick where I finally connected the dots.
“Inception” somehow missed in creating that which is likely more about my own thought processes and decisions of participation in the movie than any failure of the film. I think that the whole action part of the story with the mogul they were trying to get to break up his father’s companies was MacGuffin and the real story was about what it cost to learn inception. I think the action parts distracted me too much from trying to connect the dots between the guilt over DiCaprio’s wife and learning how to do inception. They hid it a little too much that the story is a quest for redemption.
This kind of nitpicking is typically a sign of a movie I really enjoyed.