Interstellar - Christopher Nolan Directing - Nov 2014

[K]

Not having the

bookcase stuff would instantly improve the film about a hundred times, if you ask me

.

[Harsin]

In the original script he sends a probe back in time with info. Despite that being changed you can still see its remains in that Indian drone scene which now feels like a bit of a non-sequitur.

[Captain Novaforce]

The Blight was flourishing in Earth's atmosphere due to its high *insert whichever gas it was here* content - away from it, the crops most likely can grow again.

If you were trying to achieve atmospheric control I would have assumed a few greenhouses might have been cheaper than loading humanity onto starships but hey ho.

EDIT: probably not a spoiler at all but just to be safe.

[Cheeko]

I loved the world of this film, I'd hate for it to be any shorter.

As for the bookcase stuff, I loved all that too, it's just so crazy and bizarre and its a sci-fi movie so screw it, it worked for me.

I can totally go along with that in the black hole but the pulled apart / drifting bit in Gravity still wrankles me though.

[englishbob]

I loved the world of this film, I'd hate for it to be any shorter.

As for the bookcase stuff, I loved all that too, it's just so crazy and bizarre and its a sci-fi movie so screw it, it worked for me.

I can totally go along with that in the black hole but the pulled apart / drifting bit in Gravity still wrankles me though.

Can you imagine the hate for 2001 if it was released in the internet age. I shudder to think.

[Sabreman]

Good job it got in there before people got too stupid.

[Mr Cochese]

People are terrible at watching films now. It used to about characters and themes and high emotions and surprise reversals - now it's like everyone sits there making a mental list of minor logical inconsistencies to bore their friends with in the lobby. I do this too.

[lolly]

People are terrible at watching films now. It used to about characters and themes and high emotions and surprise reversals - now it's like everyone sits there making a mental list of minor logical inconsistencies to bore their friends with in the lobby. I do this too.

It's called a foyer.

[Mr Cochese]

No mad autistics here.

[Let us measure]

Just got back from seeing this. I didn't connect with the film as much as I thought I would have and came away a bit disappointed. The problem is it sticks so much to the sci-fi epic template set by 2001 that it's constantly daring the audience to draw up comparisons between the two, and Interstellar comes off second-best in nearly every aspect. There are human relationships added to the mix here, but I didn't really end up caring much about Murph or Cooper, let alone the poor neglected son or whiny Hathaway. Space itself in the film also lacked the mystery and threat and unknowingableness that it had in 2001. I found the score really grating too, it was forever building up to a crescendo that never came. And saw the twist coming from miles and miles away. Loved the robots though, a lot more cuddly than HAL.

Couple of questions as I was losing concentration towards the end:

At first I thought it was the robot who blew up the base on Mann's planet. Why and when did Mann set them up the bomb? Did he just want out of there too, luring them in with faked data so he could nick the Endurance and go home? Why then was he constantly going on about completing the mission and saving humanity during the airlock scene?

How did Cooper get out of the singularity? I get that 'they' were him and Tars, and they were in charge of their own little 5-dimensional universe by the end of the film, but how did he get himself out? And why 124 years later?

[Fry Crayola]

Mann just wanted to be rescued. He knew that Earth was fucked, he knew that NASA would only get one real shot at sending out another group, and he knew his planet wasn't suitable. So he falsified the data in order that his planet would be chosen, and booby trapped the computer so the truth couldn't be uncovered.

Going home wasn't an option (Earth being fucked and all), but at least if he's rescued and helps carry out the seed mission, his remaining days aren't spent alone on a toxic world.

As for Cooper and TARS, they went through a wormhole back to Saturn, one that I guess Future People placed there so that Cooper didn't just die after having relayed the information to Murph.

He was about 120-something years old, so the whole trip for him took about 90 years from Earth's perspective. Already in his early thirties at the start of the film, he then spent a few years in transit, 23 years on the ocean planet, and the rest was the result of the time dilation effect from being that close to a black hole. I think the tessaract he was in - their little 5-dimensional universe - wasn't subject to this, but the period of time he spent approaching Gargantua's event horizon sure as hell was.

[Let us measure]

Right cheers for that. I guess I just don't buy the need

for Mann to have been so violent about it. I get it makes a villain for the movie, but surely it would have been just as beneficial to own up to his false data, cooperate and agree to accompany them to the other planet, which is what Hathaway ends up doing anyway. It doesn't really stand to reason that he would turn into a psychopath all of a sudden.

[Nick R]

How did Cooper get out of the singularity? I get that 'they' were him and Tars, and they were in charge of their own little 5-dimensional universe by the end of the film, but how did he get himself out? And why 124 years later?

There's two "theys" in the movie. Cooper is the "they" who was causing the bookcase/wristwatch as he tried to communicate the information back in time.

The other "they" is some super-evolved future human society who created the wormhole and the tesseract in the first place, all in order to get humans off Earth so that we would survive. I assumed that they were also behind Cooper somehow getting out of the black hole after he'd succeeded in his mission to give Murph the data... which was kind of them.

[Nick R]

Right cheers for that. I guess I just don't buy the need

for Mann to have been so violent about it. I get it makes a villain for the movie, but surely it would have been just as beneficial to own up to his false data, cooperate and agree to accompany them to the other planet, which is what Hathaway ends up doing anyway. It doesn't really stand to reason that he would turn into a psychopath all of a sudden.

I meant to link to the Sam Strange Remembers review of this film earlier in the thread, mainly for this bit:

Back on the ship, the crew has to make a choice. They can visit one of two planets - the one containing renowned scientist Dr. Baad Mann, or one containing Sandra Bullock's boyfriend. She obviously wants to see her boyfriend, but the others disagree. She counters that her love for her boyfriend will guide humanity to safety more than cold logic ever could. The rest of the crew puts her on meds when she starts wondering if she can replace the ship's dwindling fuel supply with hope and rainbows.

So they visit the Dr. Baad Mann planet. It turns out that instead of a wonderful home for humanity, it is a frozen wasteland. Mann only gave them the thumbs up because he was lonely. So Cooper kills him. But not before Mann blows up that other guy, whoever he was. All said, Mann may have been bad, but he was the nerdiest, most polite killer you'll ever come across.

And:

When Cooper meets his daughter again, she's old and dying and not really interested in talking to him. He thinks about asking after the other kid but decides he doesn't really give a shit.

[Space Renegade Ulala]

Re. Mann

He's a reflection of David Bowman (jets off into the great unknown, has to disable/lobotmise his AI companion) but because he's an entirely selfish creature devoted to personal survival at all costs, his reasons for leaving are not for the good of humanity and his companion is lobotomised because it is only capable of telling the truth, that this world is an inhospitable shithole and that Mann should stop trying to lure others to it on a false assumption.

The clue is in the name: Man(n) is the true enemy of the piece, Man(n) will doom us all given the chance. Cooper is convinced that it's evolved humans that rescue him and TARS, and give them the chance to save the future but I'm not so certain. It could just as easily be future decendants of TARS as the AIs in this film are consistently shown to be beings who embody humanity's best traits while having almost all its negative ones hard coded out, with one exception - pessimism/negativity. But even then, you can argue TARS' experiences on the mission have shown him that the impossible can be conquered, that a tiny chance is still a chance and that there is more to the universe than pure number-crunching.

In short, TARS owns, robots own.

[Down by Law]

Loved this. No dialog problems at all and what a soundtrack. The runtime flew by.

[Guest]

You make it sound like an efficient gastroenterol virus.

[Down by Law]

They can stick that on the box if they like

[Spoonman]

Loved it, saw it in the IMAX.

Really impressed with the visuals—blatantly obvious that models were used instead of lots of CGI, and as a consequence, the lighting was lovely throughout.

[fragglerock]

I saw it in quite a poky cinema and thought it was dreadful.

There were a lot of 'ideas' like the dust from the car being filmed the same as the Apollo launch... but it did not add anything to the story or seem to have any deeper meaning than it looked good.

Then the film got fucked into further rambling inconsistencies as pointed out above.

Awful.

[JohnC]

Imagine having the cheek to do things which look good in, of all things, a visual medium.

[Scratchy Bollock]

Well, you know, visuals alone are only one, small element of what makes an entertaining film. Lots of films look great but lack a good script, characters etc. I personally found this incredibly derivative, pretty boring, far too reliant on (poor), painfully long dialogue as exposition and I thought the characters were really undeveloped.

There were a couple of breathtaking moments of real spectacle though, and I really liked the score, even though I think the mix was awful and it often felt at odds with the content.

As others have pointed out, there were some really silly moments too that I personally found to be very weak and in some cases unintentionally funny:

Cooper accidentally stumbling upon Nasa, being captured by an army robot and then suddenly told he's the best pilot EVER!!11 and is instantly recruited. Er, right, probably would have been an idea to contact him at some point over the previous nine years then.

'It's been 25 years since I last saw you' - signified by a nice little grey spot in his beard and Michael Caine looking no different, but being stuck in a wheel chair and talking slowly and inaudibly.

'It was you all along Dad!' - nothing at all to really trigger this revelation and to me it felt incredibly contrived.

Cooper luckily being discovered by space rangers.

Lots more, but you get the idea.

I felt it was very bloated and lacked originality. Not impressed with Nolan's last two films to be honest, and I generally love his work.

[JohnC]

I think you may have missed some obvious clues explaining some of that stuff.

[Scratchy Bollock]

Definitely possible and happy to re-watch! Either way, my main gripes still stand though but I can definitely see why others enjoyed it. My group were completely divided with some people sharing my views and others really loving it. I tend to think that's usually a good sign, even if I didn't personally enjoy it.

[Pete]

you're right, those plot holes are silly but they allowed the film to move forward. Nolan does in all his films, normally you're having too much fun to notice.

The only one which irked me was the absurd NASA recruitment strategy, which was so silly it was almost a parody.

Overall I agree with most people here, it looked beautiful but it was a little silly. The references to 2001 were a little heavy handed, and it somehow missed out on the horror and fear of space which is such a major theme in 2001. Characters allude to it but you never feel the terrifying infinity of space like you do in 2001, though it seems like Nolan was trying to do this. Not sure though.

[K]

Characters allude to it but you never feel the terrifying infinity of space like you do in 2001, though it seems like Nolan was trying to do this. Not sure though.

Totally agree with this. I think the problem with the film is that it uses the space setting as the backdrop to the human drama, rather than as an engine for the drama itself. So

the supermassive black hole at the end is used as a mechanism for Cooper to reconcile with his daughter, which diminishes the sheer scale and power.

Similarly, the future humans seem to take the trouble to retrieve Cooper from inside the event horizon of the black hole and transport him across the cosmos to the solar system, for reasons I’m not quite clear on. Getting out of a black hole is traditionally meant to be a bit tricky, which raises the question – if they can do that, then why does the rest of the film take place at all? If they need Cooper inside the black hole to transmit the data back to earth, then why don’t they just get him there the same way they get him back?

The film tells us that going into a black hole lets you hide behind a bookcase and knock books off it in code, and that while physicists may say that information and/or A-list actors leaving the event horizon of a black hole is impossible, nothing is impossible when you need to tell your estranged daughter that you love her. Black holes are a lot of fuss about nothing, really.

[Mr Cochese]

Until someone makes a film adaptation of this song, Interstellar will have to do:

When I was little I was convinced this was about the twin paradox. Only recently did I realise that it actually is, and Brian May is a massive nerd.

[makkuwata]

I ended up seeing this a second time. It's still dumb, but it's still 3 hours that completely disappear without noticing.

[KriessG]

I was looking at my watch before it ended the first time, even in the Waterloo IMAX. I will never bother sitting through it again.

[Cheeko]

Totally agree with this. I think the problem with the film is that it uses the space setting as the backdrop to the human drama, rather than as an engine for the drama itself. So

the supermassive black hole at the end is used as a mechanism for Cooper to reconcile with his daughter, which diminishes the sheer scale and power.

Similarly, the future humans seem to take the trouble to retrieve Cooper from inside the event horizon of the black hole and transport him across the cosmos to the solar system, for reasons Im not quite clear on. Getting out of a black hole is traditionally meant to be a bit tricky, which raises the question if they can do that, then why does the rest of the film take place at all? If they need Cooper inside the black hole to transmit the data back to earth, then why dont they just get him there the same way they get him back?

The film tells us that going into a black hole lets you hide behind a bookcase and knock books off it in code, and that while physicists may say that information and/or A-list actors leaving the event horizon of a black hole is impossible, nothing is impossible when you need to tell your estranged daughter that you love her. Black holes are a lot of fuss about nothing, really.

I really like Space Renegade Ulala's suggestion that perhaps we are too quick to presume it's us, and it's actually the AI robots of the future. Maybe humans have died out and they realise they need us to survive so they work out a way to manipulate the past and Cooper is the only calculated solution, however small the probability. Also that he needed to have gone through that journey and exhausted his options to drive him to need to survive in the tesseract and realise his love for the woman who's name I forget.

It also fits better with the idea that they sent him to NASA and it caught the people off guard. But I agree that was very strangely handled in the movie how that turned around so fast. I feel like this movie was long but some pretty brutal story editing decisions were made to even get it down this far. I'd struggle to reduce any of it though, I loved dusty earth, space, wormhole, planets and gargantuan. Water planet was amazing.