Interstellar (2014)

[Rick Kitchen]

Interstellar is very, very, long.  It really needed some good editing.  And the music is overpowering and should have been toned down.  The philosophy is pretty much what college freshmen sit around and talk about in their dorm rooms till six o'clock in the morning, and the ending is jumped-to conclusions with no explanation .  So yeah, I didn't particularly care for it.

 

The little girl who played young Murphy was very good, though, though I was a little surprised when I heard she was supposed to be ten.  She looked more like thirteen.

 

[AimingforYoko]

Interstellar is very, very, long.  It really needed some good editing.  And the music is overpowering and should have been toned down.  The philosophy is pretty much what college freshmen sit around and talk about in their dorm rooms till six o'clock in the morning, and the ending is jumped-to conclusions with no explanation .  So yeah, I didn't particularly care for it.

 

The little girl who played young Murphy was very good, though, though I was a little surprised when I heard she was supposed to be ten.  She looked more like thirteen.

Agreed on all points, especially Anne Hathaway's monologue abut love. But it sure was purdy.

I'm sure they cast Jessica Chastain as Murphy and then had the casting director look for a mini-me, but it still was eerie as hell comparing the two.

[VCRTracking]

One of the many tweets about Interstellar that reference Matthew McConaughey's character Wooderson and his famous quote in the movie Dazed and Confused:

 

Cory Schuett ‏@coryschuett 15h15 hours ago

"That's what I love about relativity, man. I stay the same age, & everybody else keeps getting older" - Matthew McConaughey, #Interstellar

 

 

[Rick Kitchen]

He has a last name?

[King of Birds]

Mann beating up Cooper : As this was one of the worst parts of the movie, I almost wish they'd have just mimicked each other instead. All right, all right? Psychopaths ... In... Spaaaaace!  And, thankfully, the only person in TWO galaxies who knew Prof. Brand's "A" theory was bunk was hangin' out on Ice Planet Hoth.

 

Music was dreadfully loud, couldn't hear dialogue that I thought might be important. I guess Hans Zimmer is just more important.

 

Bad coughs / Murph burning the crops / revisiting her old room. Right. Because THAT part of the movie needed dramatic action. "Oh no, in this movie where TIME is so important we need fire of precious crops to add to the Dust Bowl feel, so Topher Grace can be yelling "HIS TRUCK IS COMING!"  I thought for certain the brother was gonna grab the watch and stomp on it.

 

Some cool ideas, some bad plotting.

[JessePinkman]

So Murph was 10 when Cooper left, it's been 23 years. That makes Murph 33. And now Murph and Coop are alledgedly the same age. You expect me to believe that Matthew McConaughey is 33 years old? 

 

Besides that the movie was complete shite. Visually stunning but the plot was boring and meandering, the dialogue beyond cliche and the soundtrack suffocating. It's like someone saw Gravity and said "Let's make that but with more people and time travel!". Or someone read an awful summary of Contact.

[Skyline]

This is Nolan's weakest film IMO. I was bored out of my mind. The revised script still doesn't work.

[rippleintime17]

It took two years to get to the wormhole near Saturn, so 25 years have passed since Cooper left. I think it's believable that the character is 35 (Tom is 15 so he wouldn't be much younger than that). Obviously it's young for Matt but his character was a farmer so it makes sense if he's aged a little more than average given how much time he spends outside/physical his job is. 

[Janet Snakehole]

I liked it....but I liked the stuff on earth more. The first half hour or so before Cooper went into space was interesting to me, like the teachers saying the moon landing never happened, the yankees game, and that there was no military anymore. I would have liked to see more of the blight and how the rest of the world was impacted. But, I like my sci fi more on the dystopia side over space travel, so that might just be me.

What happened to Romilly in the 23 years was pretty sad, poor dude could have been sleeping instead. Matt Damon and the ghost storyline were both pretty obvious twists I thought. But everything in space was absolutely beautiful and this is a movie meant for the big screen.

But yeah, the sound mixing was the worst part. I missed half of what Michael Cain said to Jessica Chastain because of the soundtrack blaring.

Ed to add- I think we were supposed to think Anne Hathaway's whole love being the 5th dimension thing was wrong, since she was just trying to convince them to go the planet where her bf was stranded.

Edited November 10, 2014 by Janet Snakehole

[Skyline]

Did anyone else feel bad for Tom? You know Cooper's other child. He might have forgotten about him but I didn't. Murph was the clear favorite.

[ZoqFotPik]

 

What happened to Romilly in the 23 years was pretty sad, poor dude could have been sleeping instead. Matt Damon and the ghost storyline were both pretty obvious twists I thought.

He did say he went a few stretches, so he wasn't awake the whole time.  Agreed about the twists. As soon as I saw the destroyed robot, I knew MD was lying, and knew right from the beginning who the ghost was. I even felt who made wormhole was somewhat obvious.

Overall, I thought the movie was OK. Too long, too obvious at parts, but very pretty and great cinematography.

One thing that bugged though, there were at least 3 parts of the space ship that could takeoff and land on a planet, they knew the mission to Miller's planet would take a few hours, so why couldn't two people stay on the main ship and go check out one or both of the other planets while other two went for Miller? Was it a fuel issue? It seemed like a massive waste of resources to have the ship just sitting there for 23 years.

[halgia]

One thing that bugged though, there were at least 3 parts of the space ship that could takeoff and land on a planet, they knew the mission to Miller's planet would take a few hours, so why couldn't two people stay on the main ship and go check out one or both of the other planets while other two went for Miller? Was it a fuel issue? It seemed like a massive waste of resources to have the ship just sitting there for 23 years.

Yeah, I think they just had enough fuel to go to each planet once and back with not a ton of extra, not enough for round trips. They also didn't know how long it'd take on the planet, and I think it took at least months for the main ship to get between planets – depending on how it timed out, the people who went down to the water planet might be stuck in orbit for months waiting for the main ship to get back to them, yeah?

 

Another thing that bugged me: why can they send videos and whatever into the wormhole but only get a few bits a year back out? I don't see why that makes sense.

 

And a non-plot thing: at least on the imax version I saw, the aspect ratio kept changing! The on-Earth and some of the spaceship interior shots had a slight letterboxing on the top and bottom, but the exterior more-CGI shots were the full screen. That really bugged me once I noticed it.

 

I liked it overall, but I think I would have liked a version of the movie with more of the beginning stuff and less of the mystical 2001 stuff better.

[AimingforYoko]

Neil deGrasse Tyson gives his thoughts on the science of Interstellar.

Edited November 10, 2014 by AimingforYoko

[hendersonrocks]

I saw this last night in a massive IMAX theater at the zoo and my eyes and ears are still adjusting. It was SO LOUD and SO CLOSE UP that I think I actually missed a lot in the film and/or just couldn't retain it all (I asked my husband over dinner to remind me again when Romilly died, because I had forgotten all about the explosion in the midst of that frenetic 15-20 minutes). My hunch is I'll like it more when I can watch it a second time from my couch.

 

Seeing Ellen Burstyn in the opening frame immediately triggered for me "oh, she is so obviously Murph and I will see her again at the very end." I get why Nolan(s) wanted a known actress for the role, but it also was a dead giveaway that I could have done without.

[backgroundnoise]

I just saw Interstellar and I have no idea what happened to the people on Earth.  I assume Cooper relayed the missing gravity data from the black hole back to Murphy via the watch, but what did she do with it?  Did they complete Plan A?  Where did they go?  I swear I was paying attention but I must have missed something big at the end.  Can anyone help me?

[yourstruly]

I don't know if this necessitates a spoiler since the movie is out, so...

 

 

just saw Interstellar and I have no idea what happened to the people on Earth.  I assume Cooper relayed the missing gravity data from the black hole back to Murphy via the watch, but what did she do with it?  Did they complete Plan A?  Where did they go?  I swear I was paying attention but I must have missed something big at the end.  Can anyone help me?

 

I think you got everything.

Yes, they completed Plan A with the information that Cooper relayed to Murph via the watch. Michael Caine's character couldn't figure out the equation because he needed information from the singularity of a black hole-Cooper provided it, Murph solved the gravity equations-problem solved. Everyone was able to get off of Earth onto various space stations like the one shown at the end.

 

NASA had been working on the stations the whole time-I think that's what was glossed over when they first visit NASA.

 

I really liked the movie, but when Cooper went into the black hole...and survived, I was like "OK, no. I am not an astrophysicist, but I know enough about science to know you could not survive going into a black hole." I just had to go with it.

Edited November 16, 2014 by yourstruly

[backgroundnoise]

Thanks.  Apparently they can grow crops in the space stations. 

 

Why couldn't they just do that and leave the people on Earth?

 

I liked the movie overall, but thought it got too convoluted at the end and relied on pretty huge conclusions being leapt to by Murph.  Did they say whether or not anyone else was going to go to Brand's planet?  Or are Cooper and Brand going to hatch all those eggs and start a colony there?

 

As you can tell, I think the ending was rushed and provided too little explanation.

[jcin617]

I got lost on who exactly made the wormhole.   I get that everything else in the movie (the "alien" in the wormhole, ghost, etc.) was Cooper, but he got all metaphysical when in the black hole and I wasn't sure if he was implying he and TARS created the wormhole, or future humans did (which would be a paradox?) or there was still another force at play.

 

Secondly, I didn't quite get the stellar geography going on.  The wormhole only led to one place, right?  So there were 12 habitable planets all within reach of the wormhole?     I get that 3 were right next to the wormhole (relatively) - I assume part of the same star system.  The other 9 though -- seperate star systems?  

[yourstruly]

 

Did they say whether or not anyone else was going to go to Brand's planet?  Or are Cooper and Brand going to hatch all those eggs and start a colony there?

Brand was hatching the eggs (Plan B) because she didn't know that humanity had survived and that Plan A had succeeded. Cooper left at the end to go get her.

 

 

Secondly, I didn't quite get the stellar geography going on.  The wormhole only led to one place, right?  So there were 12 habitable planets all within reach of the wormhole?     I get that 3 were right next to the wormhole (relatively) - I assume part of the same star system.  The other 9 though -- seperate star systems?

 

I thought it was that 12 or so astronauts went through the wormhole previously and were told to only send back a signal of Thumbs Up (Habitable) or Thumbs Down (not fit for Habitation) when they landed (or as it seemed, crashed) on their designated planet. The three that were visited were the only ones that sent signals back at all, so they were the obvious candidates to check out and maybe pick up the astronaut who sent the signal. It made no sense to me that it seemed like they were deciding on which place to visit once they went through the wormhole-that seems like something you would try to figure out before you even left Earth. 

 

 

I got lost on who exactly made the wormhole.   I get that everything else in the movie (the "alien" in the wormhole, ghost, etc.) was Cooper, but he got all metaphysical when in the black hole and I wasn't sure if he was implying he and TARS created the wormhole, or future humans did (which would be a paradox?) or there was still another force at play.

 

I thought this was confusing too. I think they were implying that it was future humans that had figured out how to transcend/manipulate space and time and live in five dimensions. But I thought the same thing you did-it made it seem like we were fated to survive if they engineered events. How would they even exist if we hadn't survived the crisis on Earth and escaped? And how would we have survived and escaped if not for them? Makes my head hurt.

[jcin617]

Mine too;  if it was all humans, then it's definately a predestination paradox, just like everything with Cooper was.     I mean, if you think about it, whatever is smart or powerful enough to create a wormhole could have just relayed the information Earth needed directly to them, instead of a convoluted "Create a wormhole so that a human and robot can go into a black hole and transmit needed information back through space-time to Earth so they can save themselves."   Or at the least, put the wormhole a little closer.   TARS said something in the black hole about not changing the past (presumably because it would be a paradox itself) so maybe that's the same rules the wormhole folks were playing by -- had to create the wormhole as-is because that's how it happened.  

 

I'm wondering under Plan B how all those eggs were going to be nutured into babies... and more logistically, what the plan was for raising them to adulthood.  I can't imagine it was all at once, but maybe a few at a time, who in turn would each raise a few.   

[NoWillToResist]

I honestly can't decide whether I liked this movie.

 

I loved the visuals of all the space stuff; Saturn, the wormhole, the singularity/blackhole/Gargantua. Gorgeous.

 

Hated the music. Kept overpowering the dialogue which seemed stupid to me.

 

I felt really bad for Cooper's son. Jesus. Could you care less about him, Cooper? And on that note, Murph can just fuck right off. Am I supposed to believe that she honestly thought her dad fucking left her and her brother to die on their planet while he saved himself? Fucking seriously??

 

When they went to Mann's planet and saw that it was this frozen tundra, I was fully expecting them to immediately confront him for lying about the planet's resources in order to get rescued. Imagine my shock when no one questioned him at all. All that was missing was a neon sign over his head flashing HE'S LYING!

 

The first planet with the massive waves was awesome. Surfers everywhere must have wet their pants. I did laugh though because when they first had a look around, I was all "that wall doesn't look like land...looks like water. Heh. Tidal wave!" Imagine my shock when I realized it actually was.

 

I really liked Brand's reaction upon seeing their coworker aged 23 years. I appreciated it when she said intellectually she understood the relativity of time, but witnessing it in action was quite something else.

 

Why exactly did Wes Bentley's character die? He was closer to the shuttle than the robot and Brand. Why, once he realized the robot was going to retrieve her, didn't he get his ass back in the shuttle? What help was he standing there staring? The only good thing about that scene was watching the robot change its structure so that instead of a lumbering thing with two swinging legs, it was this zippy thing with many rotating legs.

 

I thought my eyes were going to roll out of my head when Brand started waxing poetic about how love was maybe sorta kinda science-y important but we just didn't understand it yet. Like, sure lady. Try to make "I wanna try and see if my boyfriend is alive" seem justifiable. Coming right on the heels of her causing Wes's death due to stubborness and bad judgment, I was not amused. The only time I really liked her character was when she sniped to Cooper that, when he had to choose between his kids and the future of the human race, she hoped he would be equally as objective. Heh.

 

I would have liked more info about life on Earth. What was causing these dust storms? Was there some mass famine that wiped out large numbers of humans? Why/how did people deny space travel? I didn't really understand their world.  I could have sworn that Dr Brand said that wheat and other crops already had died out from 'the blight', okra had just snuffed out and that corn would be next. I had the distinct impression that he was meaning imminently...like a year or two, tops. Yet, 23-odd years later, Cooper's son still has corn crops? And speaking of Cooper's son, his first kid died? Was it due to the dust, since his wife and other kid were told that they had to leave immediately for their own health...why was Cooper's son insisting that they stay there?

 

So many questions left, IMO...

[benteen]

I saw the movie today and I enjoyed it.  For a three-hour movie, it didn't drag that much for me.  I'm a sucker for space films that deal with Earth's first voyage into the unknown and I think they did that very well.  It had a great look and terrific acting.

 

Though I admit, half the time I wasn't sure what the hell was going on.  About as much time was spent not being able to hear the dialogue.  The score drowned out some of it but it was just legitimately hard to hear what was being said.  Also featured a lot of hand-wavey when it came to explaining the science behind things.

 

And yeah, Cooper didn't give TWO SHITS about his son, the one kid he had who actually bothered to keep in touch with him.

 

As for Wes Bentley, yeah, he pretty much just stood around waiting to get killed.

Edited December 3, 2014 by benteen

[jcin617]

About as much time was spent not being able to hear the dialogue.  The score drowned out some of it but it was just legitimately hard to hear what was being said. 

 

From everything I've read, any and all issues with the score drowning out the dialogue and so forth were done intentionally.     To what end, I'm not entirely sure.

[benteen]

From everything I've read, any and all issues with the score drowning out the dialogue and so forth were done intentionally.     To what end, I'm not entirely sure.

 

Nolan seems obsessed with that and I don't know why.  It's not good filmmaking. 

[NoWillToResist]

From everything I've read, any and all issues with the score drowning out the dialogue and so forth were done intentionally.     To what end, I'm not entirely sure.

 

Perhaps so that he could intentionally blur out any hope of in-movie answers to the questions he was raising...  ;)

[JBC344]

I think Nolan is just defending his choices and can't just admit that it was maybe a bit much.  I think he made the choice to have the music be a bigger part of the movie than it normally would but I don't think he expected people to have as much of a problem with it and it disrupting dialogue.  I just think he is being stubborn and maybe won't admit that he went a little far and could of scaled back the music a bit and still got his point across.

[arc]

Nolan seems obsessed with that and I don't know why. It's not good filmmaking.

Remember the trailer for Dark Knight 3 (I forget the exact title, but it was the third Nolan Batman movie)? Bane's voice was incredibly distorted. It was outrageous. Then in the final cut, the voice distortion was toned down significantly. My pet theory is that Nolan's hearing is incredibly good and he apparently doesn't take this into account when dealing with the final sound mix.

 

I saw this for the first time tonight, with a friend who watched it for the second time. She said the dialogue was much more audible the first time (in a different theater), and we speculated that either the speakers weren't that good or the graphic equalizer, if movie theaters use such a thing, was off. But reading all these, maybe her experience was the outlier.

 

Anyways, I really liked the movie as I watched it, but then my friend and I discussed a lot of the movie and I liked it less and less. Here's a plot problem that nagged at me even when I was watching it: it was really awesome that Team Cooper took off from Earth with a full-on three-stage rocket. But then the little Ranger 1 craft gets to orbit and above from the two planets (Waterworld and Hoth) without it, so why did they need the booster rockets?

 

The rest of my gripes mostly occurred to me later:

 

1) only tiny amounts of data could be sent back through the wormhole. Bullshit. They could literally see through the wormhole to the distant galaxy, so the wormhole was exchanging vast amounts of information in both directions the whole time. Secondly, even if the wormhole didn't act like that and there was some handwave explanation for the bandwidth limitation, use "sneakernet" (well, "rocketnet"). If they could send ships through at will, and apparently they could, they could have sent tiny drones packed with SD cards from the relay station parked just on the far end of the wormhole[1] to a relay station on this side.

 

[1] this is how they initially determined the state of the three planets as soon as they got to the other side.

 

2) "No parent wants to see their child die". OK, that is a truism for a reason, but when your child has lived to be approx 100, esp because you've time-dilated skipped most of that, I think you'd want to be there for her passing. I actually did miss the passing of my father through bad luck, and I know that's not quite the same thing, but still.

 

3) "Go to Brandt", sez Murph. Wait, you mean you "solved gravity", got a lot of humanity into colony cylinders over the last 80-so years, but you guys never sent through anyone else to catch up with her? Really? That's kind of monstrous. She was gonna have to raise 10 babies all on her own.

 

4) "Murph is too old to be transferring cylinders, but she's [humanity's savior]. She'll be here in two weeks." OK, even granting that she solved gravity, that probably means she's in another colony cylinder in Saturn's orbit. Why did you pack so many colony cylinders around Saturn? There's a lot less sunlight out there. The only reason to abandon Earth was the blight, and the only reason Saturn is interesting (from a survival of the human race standpoint) is that the wormhole is there. That makes it a rest stop, not a final destination.

 

5) But the colonies seem to be where humanity has stopped. Were they waiting for Coop? Because IMO, the savior of humanity does not wait around on a colony cylinder at her advanced age if they haven't found colony-worthy planets. And the savior of humanity's childhood home wouldn't have been brought to a colony cylinder if there was a more viable planet-based colony. AND and and, why the hell is the savior of humanity's childhood home on a different cylinder than the one she lives on? And why bring her to see her dad when she's old and frail and her dad is a fresh time-dilated 37-45???? And did she make all her extended family come to her deathbed on a different cylinder?

 

6) Mann developed his "space madness" (term from The Toast) in two years! It might have been 33 years objective time (10 years plus the time dilation spent on waterworld), but he only had supplies for two years worth of awake time; so therefore the rest of his time was spent in hibernation.

 

7) [this one I didn't think up, I got from an AV Club comment] If Murph "solved gravity", enabling mankind to build those cylinders on the ground and launch them with magic anti-grav instead of regular rockets, then why would they need centrifugal spinning? Just use your artificial gravity!

 

8) [via a diff AV Club comment] Plan B depends on producing enough food for all those babies on the new planet, because they only packed the frozen embryos themselves and not supplies for the babies...

Edited December 7, 2014 by arc

[shrewd.buddha]

Interstellar is very, very, long.  It really needed some good editing.  And the music is overpowering and should have been toned down.  The philosophy is pretty much what college freshmen sit around and talk about in their dorm rooms till six o'clock in the morning, and the ending is jumped-to conclusions with no explanation .  

I actually liked the movie and was glad to have seen in in the theater and not wait until it came out on DVD. But I liked it for the sci-fi  elements and the trippy (tho nonsensical ) logic/time/gravity ideas . 

 

Nolan seems to be making movies a certain way now : he has his standby actors and his big theories that start to unravel if you start to pull at them..

 

Here are my issues with the movie : 

1. How did Matthew McConaughey's character keep his hair and facial hair the same length at all times? (As did everyone else).
2. So, future humans sent the wormhole and saved their past selves from extinction? If that's possible, why not really help them by fixing Earth?
3. Why be so vague about the crisis on Earth? Why didn't people start living underground with air filters? 
4. The sound was really bad -- lots of "what did she/he just say?".
5. McConaughey was kind of mumbly -- enunciate, man!
6. So, did the A plan work, or did the B plan work -- or did both work? We know humans survive.
7. It bugs me when sci-fi movies are obsessed with the survival of the human species... So cats, dogs, insects, etc are not worthy of saving? That's sort of arrogant.
8. Would old Murph send MM's character back to help colonize the new world if Anne Hathaway's character was not Anne Hathaway (you know, female)?

 

I did like the reunion deathbed scene with Murphy and her dad -- it was touching. 

[NoWillToResist]

So, future humans sent the wormhole and saved their past selves from extinction? If that's possible, why not really help them by fixing Earth?

 

I think they tried to address/excuse this by saying something about how their future selves are just so advanced that they can't quite figure out how to communicate with current humanity. I think there was also something about how their aim in placing the wormhole couldn't be very accurate because of the issues involved with translating something from five dimensions to three (or some some sci-fi jibber-jabber).

[arc]

I think there was also something about how their aim in placing the wormhole couldn't be very accurate because of the issues involved with translating something from five dimensions to three (or some some sci-fi jibber-jabber).

Hang on, no that part can't be right, because they also managed to fit the tesseract right into Murph's bedroom, which is a hell of a lot more precise than parking humanity's escape route all the way over by Saturn instead of, say, Earth's Moon.

[NoWillToResist]

Hang on, no that part can't be right, because they also managed to fit the tesseract right into Murph's bedroom, which is a hell of a lot more precise than parking humanity's escape route all the way over by Saturn instead of, say, Earth's Moon.

 

But wasn't Cooper the one giving her the tesseract via the watch (not the five dimensional, more advanced future members of humanity)?

 

Honestly, the science of this utterly eluded me. There was a lot of talking, much of which was covered by music, so I only caught some words/explanations here and there. I got the sense that they did attempt to address this but can't recall the specifics.

 

I'm sure I remember Cooper saying something to the robot who got pulled into the black hole with him about communication issues between three dimensions and five dimensions...

Edited December 12, 2014 by NoWillToResist

[arc]

I think it's some time travel/causality nonsense. Like, the future humans picked Murph for her physics skills, which led to Coop falling into the black hole, which led to them building a time tesseract for him to communicate with Murph.

But it didn't have to be the watch... He also "used gravity" to manipulate the books and the falling sand.

[arc]

Waitaminute.  After 2-ish hours on planet waterworld, leading to Coop missing 23 years back on Earth, he caught up with 23 years' worth of video messages from his family.  Bear in mind that they're still on the far side of the wormhole during all this time.

 

So why in the world could Earth send tons of video through the wormhole but the 12 scientists in the initial exploration wave could only send back tiny amounts of data? The second team, Coop's team, didn't even know Waterworld was closer to Gargantua than they first thought, because none of that information was sent back.  WTF.

[NoWillToResist]

Waitaminute.  After 2-ish hours on planet waterworld, leading to Coop missing 23 years back on Earth, he caught up with 23 years' worth of video messages from his family.  Bear in mind that they're still on the far side of the wormhole during all this time.

 

So why in the world could Earth send tons of video through the wormhole but the 12 scientists in the initial exploration wave could only send back tiny amounts of data? The second team, Coop's team, didn't even know Waterworld was closer to Gargantua than they first thought, because none of that information was sent back.  WTF.

 

Perhaps those on the planets had older technology than the ship and thus didn't have the capability?

 

I can't remember when the first wave of scientists went out to the planets, but, as we know, science advances a lot in a short period of time, so I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that Cooper's crew had better tech than the first wave. That, or getting data back to Earth was somehow more difficult than getting data FROM Earth??

Edited December 16, 2014 by NoWillToResist

[arc]

Perhaps those on the planets had older technology than the ship and thus didn't have the capability?

 

I can't remember when the first wave of scientists went out to the planets, but, as we know, science advances a lot in a short period of time, so I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that Cooper's crew had better tech than the first wave. That, or getting data back to Earth was somehow more difficult than getting data FROM Earth??

Nah, Mann had a robot of his own (KIPP) that was basically the same level of tech as (decommissioned former military robots) TARS and CASE, and if memory serves it was CASE (or TARS?) who was the final (technological) recipient of Murph's last vid-mail.  Besides, an expedition that can't send information back is basically just throwing a lot of money away extravagantly.  So the script had some handwaving about how only a tiny amount of information could be sent back, but there's no logical reason at all for it.

[NoWillToResist]

The answers to all the science-y question were given in the movie though...it was explained when the scientist(s) said <INSERT SWEEPING ORCHESTRAL SCORE>  ;)

Edited December 16, 2014 by NoWillToResist

[Emily Thrace]

I finally got around to watching this and I have to say Iiked it more than I though I would. I definitely thing it was a little long and slow. Its one where I'm glad I waited to watch it at home. Its a lot easier to be patient with something like this when you can just hit pause and go the bathroom if you need to. I could definitely agree that Matt Damon's part should have been cut down  and was more than a little self indulgent. The visuals though were amazing and I will forgive a movie a lot if it looks as amazing as this one did.

 

 

Perhaps those on the planets had older technology than the ship and thus didn't have the capability?

 

I can't remember when the first wave of scientists went out to the planets, but, as we know, science advances a lot in a short period of time, so I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that Cooper's crew had better tech than the first wave. That, or getting data back to Earth was somehow more difficult than getting data FROM Earth??

I actually think that might have had more to do with Coopers crew being so close to the black hole. The mentioned Miller's data was caught in a loop due the relativity effects I wonder if their transmissions weren't doing the same things. If they were using any kind of radio waves it could be bent into all kinds of pretzel shapes by a black hole. The transmissions from earth would have been coming from far enough away to be less affected. Its like shooting a bullet through a whirlpool if you try and shoot through it while its sucking you in and tossing you around your probably not going to shoot straight.  But if stand on a cliff overlooking the whirlpool the bullet would be going fast enough the water isn't going to push it around as much. The twelve scientists on the planets would have been helped by the fact that they were on a more fixed point as well as being on the surface away somewhat away from the effects of the blackhole. 

 

Cooper surviving the black hole didn't really bother me. No one knows what happens inside a blackhole so for all we know it is possible to survive it.

 

The only part of the ending I didn't get was how Cooper was supposed to get Brandt if the wormhole had collapsed. Or was just the part the Cooper was what collapsed?

[nobodyyoucare]

If you want answers you may want to look up the screenplay before the movie was made. The Robots were human like and the expedition through the wormhole was a secret Chinese one. Also all life on Earth is dead hence why the humans are living in space.

 

As for the blight it was affecting all food crops causing them to die slowly but surely. Corn was one of the last food crops that was resistant but would die out. The anti-science stuff is explained more. Basically its human stupidty at work. You have a good percentage of Americans today that deny basic science and are rewriting textbooks.

 

http://leonardlangfordlexicon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/INTERSTELLAR-Jonathan-Nolan.pdfis the 2008 screenplay. 

[Bruinsfan]

People should have switched to growing kudzu. Its leaves are edible and if anything other than hacking it apart even slows its growth down I've yet to hear of it.

[jcin617]

The only part of the ending I didn't get was how Cooper was supposed to get Brandt if the wormhole had collapsed. Or was just the part the Cooper was what collapsed?

 

Only the tesseract within the black hole (where Cooper was able to interact with the past) collapsed.  The wormhole, presumably, was still in place.

[paramitch]

I liked the movie, even loved parts of it, but I was just annoyed at Nolan's insistence on upstaging one of the grandest possible story ideas imaginable with a rude, unsympathetic, unlikable teenage daughter's snit-fit.

 

The film would have been so much better (not to mention markedly shorter), without the constant pouting scenes with Cooper's daughter (who suffered badly from Snotty Movie Kid Syndrome and was played accordingly).

 

I hated that scenes of real gorgeousness and thought were juxtaposed with terrible, ham-handed scenes in which Idiot Plotness took over. For instance, poor Wes Bentley's utterly needless death. Or the incredibly moving moments (and pointlessly, beautifully acted by McConaughey) in which Cooper is viewing his messages even if (of course) yet again, his daughter is a total asshole who evidently even as a grown "brilliant' scientist still cannot see the urgency, reason or sacrifice behind his actions and who still insists on treating his mission as petty and cowardly desertion of their family. (Seriously?)

 

I honestly think "Contact" was far superior in both its science and in its explorations of the internal issues of its heroes. Ellie Arroway was flawed and human yet always likable, and her conversations about science and religion with Palmer Joss (also played by McConaughey!) are some of my all-time favorites on film. Ellie even got to explore her daddy issues without the film devoting extraneous hours to them.

 

Whereas, even in the very end, Cooper's daughter was an asshole who actually sends him away from her deathbed when he's barely had a moment to reunite. He deserved every moment he could have gotten with her. It's one of the things that I think Nolan thought would be "complex" but which to me just read as "asshole."

[SmithW6079]

Whereas, even in the very end, Cooper's daughter was an asshole who actually sends him away from her deathbed when he's barely had a moment to reunite. He deserved every moment he could have gotten with her. It's one of the things that I think Nolan thought would be "complex" but which to me just read as "asshole."

I thought it was more like "my life is over, but you need to go on and live yours," but still, she hadn't seen her dad for decades; you think he'd get more than 30 seconds at the end of her life. Edited October 17, 2015 by SmithW6079

[arc]

^ which is why stuff like that ends up making it feel like some characters are 'real' and some are just decoration for the real characters.  If you only care about Cooper, then writing in a token reconciliation with his daughter probably seems like enough.  And hell, that's still more than onscreen character arc than his son got.

 

Unless getting that truck counts for more than I think it does.

[SmithW6079]

^ which is why stuff like that ends up making it feel like some characters are 'real' and some are just decoration for the real characters. If you only care about Cooper, then writing in a token reconciliation with his daughter probably seems like enough. And hell, that's still more than onscreen character arc than his son got.

Unless getting that truck counts for more than I think it does.

Yeah, the son got the shit end of the stick. He's the one who kept writing to the father, and his reward is a dead son and burned crops thanks to his sister.

[lion10]

Upon watching The Martian, this movie looks a lot worse.  Fifth dimensional beings and love being time transcendent?  Love is also at the heart of The Martian, but in a much more realistic way.

[AimingforYoko]

Upon watching The Martian, this movie looks a lot worse.  Fifth dimensional beings and love being time transcendent?  Love is also at the heart of The Martian, but in a much more realistic way.

Well, The Martian is SCIENCE Fiction and Interstellar is Science FICTION.

[andromeda331]

I watch the movie last night and really didn't like it. There were parts that were interesting I love seeing space and different planets. I wanted to see more and learn more about what was happening on Earth and how it happened.  I hated MM's character, Murph, and didn't really like AH's character either except for when she asked tore into him about choosing between seeing his kids again or saving everyone. That was one plot point that was annoying but could have been interested AH basically did the same thing to see her boyfriend and MM really wasn't any different.

I felt really bad for Cooper's son his sister was clearly the favorite and his dad always talked about his daughter. Never his son even though he was the only one sending videos. He was the one trying to the work the farm and apparently lost a son. 

I would have liked the ending with Cooper seeing Murph except she tells him to go find Brandt and he does. Really? So after all that he's happy with a few seconds with his daughter? He doesn't want to be with her until the end? He doesn't want to meet any of her kids, grandkids and spend time with them? He doesn't ask about what happened to her brother and his family? Who cares.

Good thing the teachers were both horrible so that MM could act like an ass and its okay because he's right. I'm not sure why the one teacher was so insisting that the entire space program never happened. 

[paramitch]

15 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

I watch the movie last night and really didn't like it. There were parts that were interesting I love seeing space and different planets. I wanted to see more and learn more about what was happening on Earth and how it happened.  I hated MM's character, Murph, and didn't really like AH's character either except for when she asked tore into him about choosing between seeing his kids again or saving everyone. That was one plot point that was annoying but could have been interested AH basically did the same thing to see her boyfriend and MM really wasn't any different.

I felt really bad for Cooper's son his sister was clearly the favorite and his dad always talked about his daughter. Never his son even though he was the only one sending videos. He was the one trying to the work the farm and apparently lost a son. 

I would have liked the ending with Cooper seeing Murph except she tells him to go find Brandt and he does. Really? So after all that he's happy with a few seconds with his daughter? He doesn't want to be with her until the end? He doesn't want to meet any of her kids, grandkids and spend time with them? He doesn't ask about what happened to her brother and his family? Who cares.

Good thing the teachers were both horrible so that MM could act like an ass and its okay because he's right. I'm not sure why the one teacher was so insisting that the entire space program never happened. 

I hated Murph too. There was just so much about her character that didn't hang together when I rewatched it. For instance: Murph is mad at Coop for leaving but runs after him, repenting her last words. And yet she still will not relent and even send him a message for decades? Who does that?

Not to mention: WHY does Murph hate her father (who is out in the vast loneliness of space trying to save his planet) even after she goes to work for NASA and his actual mentor on his ACTUAL PROGRAM? Even after she presumably knows EXACTLY what their mission is? Her cruelty to her father simply makes no sense to me.

And while I thought AH was great as Brandt (despite some truly heinous dialogue), she begins as a no-nonsense scientist and astronaut then ends by endangering the mission repeatedly because she believes tearily in the power of LOOOVE? Ugh.

And you make such a great point about Coop -- he is alone in the universe now, his dying daughter (the one he has spent a lifetime trying to return to) just sent him away from her bedside without even INTRODUCING HIM to his only remaining family in the universe? Who does that? Who -- further -- assumes a romance that was never even slightly present -- and sends Coop off to the ends of the galaxy to be with starry-eyed love-believer Brandt, when he has a huge extended family he will now never get to know?

Honestly, the characters that moved me most (other than Coop, who I did like, his father-in-law, and the other astronauts) were the two robots. TARS especially -- when Coop finds TARS again near the end, that was the only time I got even a little verklempt. I also thought Matt Damon was really good in a tricky role.

The movie does have these gorgeous moments -- I loved all the other planets they touched down on, although I question how they weren't able to ascertain that the water planet was all water (and giant waves) from even cursory analytics. I especially loved the design and AI personalities of the robots (and when the robot spun into a circle to return to the ship I basically yelped in delight), and I also loved the tech presented of the spacecraft living spaces and sleep/hibernation beds. 

My favorite moment in the entire movie is the one in which Coop manages to recouple the module with the larger space station. It's just a gorgeous, cinematic moment where the cinematography and music all came together for me.

[andromeda331]

3 hours ago, paramitch said:

I hated Murph too. There was just so much about her character that didn't hang together when I rewatched it. For instance: Murph is mad at Coop for leaving but runs after him, repenting her last words. And yet she still will not relent and even send him a message for decades? Who does that?

Not to mention: WHY does Murph hate her father (who is out in the vast loneliness of space trying to save his planet) even after she goes to work for NASA and his actual mentor on his ACTUAL PROGRAM? Even after she presumably knows EXACTLY what their mission is? Her cruelty to her father simply makes no sense to me.

That's a good question. Why did she still hate her father? Even if for some reason believed he wasn't coming back as a kid (which still makes no sense) but still thinks that after getting a job for NASA? After working hard to figure out the problems and how help the crew. She still hates him. For what? Then at the end she's all 'I knew you'd come back'. Then why was she so mad? Its odd that his son ends up being the one who keeps sending messages even though he didn't believe. You'd think it should be Murph sending him messages all the time and his son is the one who refuses. 

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And while I thought AH was great as Brandt (despite some truly heinous dialogue), she begins as a no-nonsense scientist and astronaut then ends by endangering the mission repeatedly because she believes tearily in the power of LOOOVE? Ugh.

And you make such a great point about Coop -- he is alone in the universe now, his dying daughter (the one he has spent a lifetime trying to return to) just sent him away from her bedside without even INTRODUCING HIM to his only remaining family in the universe? Who does that? Who -- further -- assumes a romance that was never even slightly present -- and sends Coop off to the ends of the galaxy to be with starry-eyed love-believer Brandt, when he has a huge extended family he will now never get to know?

Its hard to believe after all those years to get back to her that a few seconds is enough. From what the doctors said about her health she probably didn't have that long. You'd think he'd stay until the end meeting her family, asking her all about her childhood, adulthood, marriage, kids, etc. All about his son and his family. He cries over seeing his grandson but then is fine not even meeting them and heading off to find Brandt. Who cares about his grandkids now right? 

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Honestly, the characters that moved me most (other than Coop, who I did like, his father-in-law, and the other astronauts) were the two robots. TARS especially -- when Coop finds TARS again near the end, that was the only time I got even a little verklempt. I also thought Matt Damon was really good in a tricky role.

I liked his father-in-law too and the two robots. Seeing TARS again was really great. 
Matt Damon's role was tricky and didn't make a lot of sense. But they could have tied his story into Coop and Brandt. Brandt wanted to go to the planet because her boyfriend was here, she asked Coop if he could chose between seeing his kids again or saving everyone, with Matt Damon who was stuck on planet until he died but then got the idea that he faked information maybe they'd come and pick him up. If they stuck with that. That would be interesting. Its one thing to agree to sign up and go to a planet and risk your life. Its a lot harder when it happens and your on a planet until you die. Nothing to do, no one really around and no hope for rescue unless you lied.  But they went off on the more tricky and crazy for MD.
 

Quote

The movie does have these gorgeous moments -- I loved all the other planets they touched down on, although I question how they weren't able to ascertain that the water planet was all water (and giant waves) from even cursory analytics. I especially loved the design and AI personalities of the robots (and when the robot spun into a circle to return to the ship I basically yelped in delight), and I also loved the tech presented of the spacecraft living spaces and sleep/hibernation beds. 

My favorite moment in the entire movie is the one in which Coop manages to recouple the module with the larger space station. It's just a gorgeous, cinematic moment where the cinematography and music all came together for me.

I love that too. Seeing the other planets. I don't understand how they couldn't tell the water planet was all water or how they mist took the giant waves as mountains. Unless the waves never came down. It doesn't make sense. We can tell those things now. If they had enough information to decide those ten planets would be the ones most likely to have life or things needed to support and sustain life. Then they would have been watching them long enough to tell the difference between waves and mountains. 

Another thing they didn't answer unless I missed it was why no one was trying to start a colony on the Moon, Mars, Pluto or some of moons in our solar system. That's kind of what we're working towards now at least with the Moon and Mars (if not very, very, very slowly) but some of the other moons have been suggested as possibilities. When things started to go bad or even get worse why was no one trying to get something going on the Moon, Mars or other places? They never explained it. I thought maybe the whole solar system was having problems which was why they sent people to ten different planets outside our solar system. But then at the end Coop wakes up on one of Saturn's moons where they built a colony. Why didn't they do that in the first place? Or try to do both? Getting to the point where things are that bad on one planet that would certainly make you'd want to try and colonize as many as you can.