Interstellar - Christopher Nolan

I've talked to a couple of friends about Interstellar this week and even with the silly plot contrivances I think the film could have been improved had about a third of the dialogue been dropped. The script spends far too much time explaining everything breathlessly, especially that bit in the black hole. One reason people are still talking about 2001 all this time later is that Kubrick didn't explain anything and left it open for the viewer to interpret. As much as Nolan is attempting original ideas, he is still very much making Hollywood films, with the same beats, the same act structure, the same melodramatic performances, the same lack of subtlety.

The part with the daughter at the end is also handled poorly. I maintain that this is 3/4 of a very good movie, but I encourage everyone to see it on the big screen for the things it does well (and there are a lot of them).

 

Why couldn't the humans from the future just come back and fix the problems the earth was having?

 

It's explained in the movie (but I can't remember exactly at the moment--it has something to do with the fact that they've evolved and interact differently with time).

John K.

 

Then the movie would be five minutes long instead of 165 minutes long.

 

Only relatively...

 

Good one Vidiot...

 

Eh, it's kinda like The Wizard of Oz: why didn't the Good Witch just tell Dorothy to click her heels together three times and go back to Kansas? Because then it'd be a 20 minute movie instead of a 2-hour movie. These time-travel/fantasy/metaphysical things can get very messy when it comes to story logic.

 

This is my point about Matthew McSplain-ahey's dialogue. If they'd left the black hole an unexplained phenomenon, everything would be a lot more mysterious. And there's really no way for him to know definitively that future humans did any of this, so it's just a lot of mumbo jumbo anyway to keep people from walking out of the theatre saying, "Why didn't he tell me what everything means?" It's an explanation, but not a very good one.

 

SPOILERS!

I saw it again yesterday. Wanted to catch it before it left the big screen forever. I stand by my judgement it's a great sci-fi flick. I'll admit the first third is a bit slow. But the last third is killer.

Anyway, this was sort of the point of the movie if you listen carefully (or see it three times). There was so much said. They tried to use real science, I guess, which says you CANNOT travel backwards in time according to relatively (according to the film, and I think Hawkins). The only thing capable of doing that is gravity (according to the film). That was what the whole thing about the dust and watch hand and all that was about. That was their only tool; the only thing they could manipulate in the past. It's pretty complicated. Also, the whole "force of love" element fits in with how only the father could find the right moment in time in the teseract they constructed because people in the future couldn't completely control things. That's why they created those millions of snapshots of the daughter's room (that scene's imagery is just brilliant. Talk about "show me something I haven't seen before. I loved it) and only McConenghey could find the right moment because he could "sense" his daughter's presence.

And certainly will admit he was supposed to be one smart mother@%#^. He kept coming up with solutions. running rings around "the best of humanity."

 

It does indeed. As luck would have it I was home in CT visiting family this weekend and found out the film is showing right now (and for another week) at the Maritime Center in Norwalk, CT. True IMAX. Very comfortable, never crowded -- no better place to see a movie. This film looked fantastic. And IMO it's overall quite a good SF film, serious and emotionally compelling through and through. A lot of the science struck me as superficial (the references to evolutionary biology and psychology) or cracked (the physics of the event horizon of the black hole and what's inside). But apparently there is a book on the physics from Prof. Kip Thorne of CalTech (who not only contributed to the story but did extensive calculations to back it up, where he could). So I'm going to check that out. Anyway, definitely worth seeing, if you are an SF fan, and especially if you do still have a chance somewhere to see it in IMAX.

Now for the real question:

Spoiler: re the ending

When Cooper splits the space station to go find Dr. Brand, he's taking a big risk, isn't he? I mean, he doesn't know Edmunds is dead, right? So how does he know Dr. Brand hasn't landed on her planet and been happily reunited with her true love and begun executing Plan B?

 

Did anyone get out to see the extra 12 minutes of footage at select AMC_ IMAX showings today February 21.

http://m.ign.com/articles/2015/02/2...terstellar-coming-to-an-imax-theater-near-you

Most showings started at 3pm and unfortunately only today.

 

Looks like it won 1 Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

 

I have felt since I saw it that when he says (something like) "we did this" that he wasn't saying that "we" was the royal we, as in humanity in the future created that tesseract space for him to communicate, but that "we" as in he and the robot created that space inside the black hole, because it was possible and it was how time was handled within it. It was his timeline that it was interacting with, which is why he was able to communicate with his daughter. He was the "fifth-dimensional being" because of the black hole and tesseract within it. Otherwise, it would have just been all of time before him and he'd have had to find the point when changing the path of humanity so that the dust and educational stupidity didn't happen. All this is what is actually in the movie, and other suggestions are extrapolating beyond that. I stick with what I actually saw/heard.

 

I would have gone again if they had CUT an hour.

 

Either interpretation of that element seems fair to me. Once he's inside the black hole, all scientific bets are off, so to speak; what follows is fantasy. Maybe Cooper is right about how he got there, and maybe he isn't. Perhaps he was put in the right place. Perhaps I'm just thankful that the inside of Gargantua looked nothing like "Event Horizon."

On a related subject, check out the Wikipedia article for tesseract -- it's one of the most baffling things I've ever seen on Wikipedia.

 

And Nolan isn't one to explain. So your interpretation is as good as anyone else's. He's left the end of Inception up to the viewer, too, and I appreciate that. I don't need concrete, pat endings. Leave it open and let me ponder.

Yes, the whole idea of a tesseract is mind-bending. The animation I saw of it makes a little more sense, but it's still pretty out there.

An intriguing thing presented in the movie is how we have as much grasp of what a fifth-dimension experience would be as a two-dimensional being would of the three-dimensional space we live in. That is to say, we can hardly comprehend that it can exist.

 

Finally got to see this yesterday. I irritated my wife greatly by whinging at the free-form physics going on all the time, but some minor 'why's':

Early on when they were docking the rocket with Endurance, instead of docking manually with the pilot Matthew McC behaving like a space cowboy meets racing driver, why didn't they just get TARS to do it? TARS has probably played Elite a million times and could do that with his eyes closed.

Where did they get the fuel from to fuel their old gas-guzzling vehicles? There was no military so presumably a complete breakdown of food and energy security. Did they still have a currency system? Who was producing and distributing the gas for vehicles?

 

Watched this for the fourth time yesterday - I like it more and more each time I view it. When I first saw it, I thought it was okay but disappointing. I only saw it again because I like the real IMAX presentation so much - and I'm glad I did, as it worked better for me that second time.

Took it in a third IMAX screening and now a fourth on Blu-ray. Awesome movie that (obviously) holds up really well to repeat viewings. I think it's a shame it got so little Oscar attention - it's an epic in the best sense of the word and a film I think will become viewed as a classic down the road - it's the best film of 2014, IMO.

My Blu-ray review, if anyone's interested:

http://www.dvdmg.com/interstellar.shtml

 

I've finally seen it and I haven't read any of the comments yet. My assessment is as follows.

It was a bit of a self referential snooze fest. I enjoyed the bits which dealt with the scientific method and the acknowledgment of relativistic effects, which are mostly ignored in scifi. Some nice visuals too.

But, really, what is the story about? I don't know - mainly forced sentimentalism and some crap about 'love' transcending time and space or something. We learn nothing of the wormhole givers and their motivations, which is what piqued my interest early on.

The running time was way too long given the content. They could have easily cut all of the Mat Damon scenes, which seemed like unnecessary filler. The movie seemed to want to be a latter day 2001, but no cigar. Also, the robot design seemed a bit ludicrous. I'd give it a 6.5/10.

 

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I'd read that docking is a manual-only thing. Maybe Soyuz can dock automatically but I'm pretty sure if it's a US ship, they are docked by the commander. I'm not sure, but this may be a holdover from the early Mercury days when NASA just wanted to toss the astronauts up in the capsule and bring them back, all under automated controls, and the astronauts understandably balked ("Spam in a can!")

Were they definitely running on gas? I really can't recall if we heard traditional engine noises. Didn't Coop capture the drone at the beginning for its batteries and solar panels to use on his farm equipment?

I still love the movie and am looking forward to revisiting it on Bluray in a couple weeks.

 

Wouldn't Amelia Brand be like 30 years older at the end of the film?

 

No. For one, I don't think we know specifically how time on Edmonds' planet moves - it could be like Miller's planet, where every hour there is years on Earth.

Also, in Cooper's experience, everything that occurs after he separates from Brand takes a short period of time. Brand's under the same time frame, I think, for most of that, so she shouldn't age any differently.

Also, I don't think the shot of Brand at the end necessarily takes place at the same time Cooper leaves the space station. It's semi-implied that she's going into hibernation, so in the "current time frame" where Coop leaves the space station, she may already be asleep.

Any potential nitpicking about Brand's age aside, I think it's a beautiful ending. One could argue it's "sequel-bait", but I don't think Nolan meant it that way, just as I don't believe he intended the ending of "Dark Knight Rises" to automatically lead toward another movie.

Nolan may end movies better than anyone in the business - at least his last four have all finished with stunning endings. (It's been too long since I saw "The Prestige" to remember exactly how it ended.)

 

I watched it a second time. I still don't think it's a snooze fest (but I tend to like long, slow-burn films anyway). However, the speech about love that Hathaway gives made me gag a second time and I also agree with Deesky's opinion that the Matt Damon scenes don't really add anything to the overall story.

It's a valiant effort and a nice change of pace from the usual whiz-bang-pow sci-fi that is the norm from the major studios. However, I think Nolan was going for a true epic of 2001 proportions and in my opinion he didn't get close to that.

 

Snooze fest might have been a little harsh because I wasn't bored while watching it. Only in retrospect did I think so given the filler material and a story of little substance. BTW, I too love 'slow burn' stories, but they have to ultimately go somewhere interesting. Exhibit A: The Man From Earth, a small-scale, slow burn film I absolutely loved.

Same here. I was yelling WTF??

I totally agree about it being a nice change in direction from the usual Hollywood fare, but I just wish it was a better film.