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I have seen numerous reviews for this movie. Some are blind praise as if anything Nolan does is from the hand of God, and others are mindless negative criticism from people who didn’t, or more likely couldn’t be bothered to try to, understand the concepts presented. On that basis, and as I have already responded to multiple reviews for this movie, I am writing a review for a movie that already has over one thousand reviews.
IF YOU DO NOT LIKE FILMS WHICH LEAVE OPEN ITEMS FOR THE VIEWER TO DEDUCE THEN YOU WILL NOT LIKE THIS FILM. This does not mean the film is bad, it means it is not your type of film and giving a one star review with the only explanation being “This movie sucked” only exhibits ignorance. Giving it a low rating because you dislike films in this style and say so is entirely justified and a worthwhile observation for others who may also dislike such types of movies and not want to see them.
First everyone needs to understand that this is a movie that is built around a framework and rule set grounded in astrophysics and relativity. Some of the latest theories present in that field are used as the ground work for this movie. Within that framework a story is built. Enough details as to the working of those rules are given to work out what is happening and additional research can only improve that but this is a film that does not lay out full explanations for everything happening as they happen. Some contributing factors are alluded to earlier or later in the film than the event being depicted. Some factors are left to the viewer to hypothesize themselves based on what is said. Just because you do not have a basic understanding of relativity and do not accept the entirely valid scientific explanations given in the film does not make this movie “stupid”. Worm holes and travel through them is an accepted theoretical possibility. The stretching and compression of time under the effects of speed relative to the speed of light and gravity fields is not only accepted but proven. One key item is nobody ever physically goes back in time. Time travel is a physical impossibility.
Non-Story Items:
Special Effects were excellent. The depictions of the worm hole and black hole were the most accurate ever shown in film to date and based directly on the models created by the physicist attached to the movie. Could they be wrong? Certainly they could but they are at least grounded in the currently widely accepted scientific theories related to such phenomena. The space craft and other hardware related to space exploration all had believable designs and concepts. I am not entirely on board with the design of the robots as the design to me looks fairly inefficient and impractical but not so much so that they detracted from the film.
Visual/Cinematography were wonderfully handled. The film is a pleasure to watch with focus regularly where it needs to be and clear.
Sound was less than optimal. Between hammering special effects, and a wonderful yet occasionally overpowering score there are incidents of quieter dialog being lost or noticeably hard to hear. Turn it way up to hear the dialog and you better be ready for the walls to rumble when the effects kick in. This is the one real issue I have with the film. It does not keep me from recommending this film to others but it is a valid criticism where post production really missed the mark.
Casting and acting were both superb. I accepted every actor in their role and all did a great job.
SPOILERS!!! From here on there are SPOILERS!!!
Story:
Earth is changing. Contrary to the mindless rants of many saying dust storms are destroying the planet that is not the case. Crops being eliminated by blights and the dust storms which ensue are symptoms of the rising nitrogen content in the atmosphere, this is explained and not conjecture. We do know that the human population is a small fraction of what it once was. Armies are gone and it sounds like most nations outside the USA are as well. What population is left that we see is heavily focused on growing as much food as possible. I hypothesize that with the collapse of food crops most of the planet’s human population has died off from starvation after fighting while they could and what remains is incapable of fighting. It is not unreasonable to see the United States, with its enormous farming capacity, the most advanced techniques and equipment to utilize that land, and a geographic location which protects it from direct invasion for that farmland, would fare well (better than others at least) in such a scenario. The government now decides what people will do for them. If the government wants you to be a farmer you become a farmer. “Luxuries” like smart phones, MRI machines, large scale professional sports, meat, and anything not tied to growing food are gone or shunned. As a part of keeping people focused on the “now” and not looking for “new and better” the history of the 20th century has been officially “rewritten” to demonize technological luxuries we can no longer afford. The rationale is obviously that people will not resent being denied something if they are taught that thing is intrinsically evil. A perfect example of this is the government revision of the Apollo program where now even the young teacher believes it was all a government propaganda piece to fool the Russians and make them waste money on the impossible. Another example is Cooper’s truck which is obviously kept running for decades rather than being replaced. People who disagree with this new groupthink are “unpopular” as exemplified by Cooper and his daughter Murph. His son, who wants nothing more than to farm, is a considered a model student.
Do to localized fluctuations in gravity noted by Murph and later decoded as binary and Morse code messages Cooper eventually finds the remnants of NASA and learns of the mankind’s impending extinction on Earth. Many reviewers who hate this film take this point to state how much nonsense it was that Cooper was selected for the upcoming mission after surprisingly walking in there. While this is convenient, there is more at work. The upcoming mission involves going through a worm hole leading to promising systems which HAD to have been artificially created. Large, stable worm holes do not just appear naturally. This had to have been created and NASA learned of it through gravitational field manipulations which began appearing right when they really needed to start looking for an escape from Earth. Since NASA knows some entity created this worm hole and guided them to it through gravitational field manipulations when one of the only pilots with experience shows up on their doorstep after having been guided there by the same type of phenomena you are going to assume he was sent there for a reason. NASA is headed by a group of scientists including Professor Brand played by Michael Caine. Professor Brand knows Cooper and explains that there are two plans.
Plan A involves solving the physics equations allowing for theoretical manipulation of gravity. This would allow the construction of large space going habitats on Earth’s surface into which the remaining population of Humans could be transported on to another habitable world.
Plan B involves transporting an enormous amount of embryos in suspended state to a habitable world. After a couple generations of “hatching” and raising them, as well as those already raised raising more, a colony of viable genetic diversity would exist and humanity could begin anew on its new planet. All of humanity on Earth though would die.
Missions, most likely one way missions, were sent through the worm hole years before to the worlds spotted. Those who went were to collect data, if it was promising set off their beacon and go into induced hibernation to wait for pick up. Any scientists sent to planets which were uninhabitable were most likely going to die there… Only three worlds in a single system out of the 10+ explored sent back promising signals. The mission Cooper, Brand (Ann Hathaway playing Brand’s daughter) two other scientists and two AI robots go on the mission on the Endurance to visit the three worlds, asses the conditions present, recover the scientists and return to Earth. By then it is hoped that Professor Brand on Earth will have solved the gravitational calculations and mankind will be preparing to leave for its new home.
After making the two year hibernated journey to Saturn, around which the worm hole is orbiting, the crew heads through the worm hole. On the other side they will need to visit three planets, then return home. At this point it is revealed that messages sent from Earth are powerful enough to make it through the worm hole and be received but aside from the signal beacons themselves from the three planets no transmitters on this side of the worm hole have the power to send complete messages back. The crew of Endurance will be spectators to the events on Earth but cannot interact.
This is the point where the first story item occurs with which I take minor umbrage with. There are three planets, the closest of which is Miller’s planet. Unfortunately that planet is far enough inside the gravity field of the black hole that one hour of time spent there equals seven years of time passage back on earth and on the Endurance. This was not clear until they came through the worm hole. The crew goes to Miller’s planet first because it is closest and has promising data. This makes no sense. Time is the enemy, not distance. They can hit the further worlds first then catch Miller’s on the way back if it looks promising. That would take 1 – 3 years. Instead they will waste a minimum of 7 years just checking Miller’s world where the astronaut who went there has only been for at most an hour relative time. The purpose of Miller’s planet though is to demonstrate relativity. Due to a mishap it is discovered the planet in uninhabitable and Miller has been dead for years Earth time, perhaps an hour Miller’s planet time. Cooper and Brand survive with the robot they took though the third astronaut dies. They make it back to Endurance, resting outside the gravity field to find twenty three years have passed. The astronaut left on Endurance did some long sleeps in hibernation but is now noticeably older. Keeping position for so many years also burned through too much fuel and resources so they can only reach one planet now and return, not two.
Why go to Miller’s planet at this point when it made no sense? They went because it helped the story. Murph on earth aged twenty three more years. She is a grown woman and a gifted physicist working under a much older Professor Brand who took her under his win when Cooper left. She now plays a much bigger part in the story. We get to see the emotion of missing twenty three years of your kids’ lives in a couple of hours. We get to see what another couple of decades on Earth has revealed as conditions grow steadily worse. Choosing Miller’s planet to be first is a plot hole present only to assist the story. It is contradictory to what anyone in this situation would have done. This was a story telling decision to bring home emotional loss, the situation at earth, allow a character to mature, and lastly demonstrate the impact of relativity. I give the filmmakers a pass on this choice although I wish they had found a better way to make these points.
There are now two planets left, Mann’s and Edmond’s. Edmond’s data is better although it has stopped transmitting. Mann is still transmitting. They only have fuel for one. Mann’s is chosen as he is still transmitting. For Brand this is heartbreaking as she is in love with Edmond and this is essentially a death sentence for him if he is still alive.
Mann’s world is cold and bleak with an inhospitable atmosphere but after awakening Mann (Matt Damon) they learn that the planet is habitable at the lower atmospheres. His robot is in a disassembled pile. He explains it had deteriorated and he had to disassemble it for parts to keep the mission going. While on Mann’s world Professor Brand back on Earth dies of old age. On his death bed he confesses to Murph that there is no solution to the gravity equations. The information needed to resolve the equation is not known and the only place where such information exists is outside normal space time, within a black hole. He kept the fraud going for decades knowing the aforementioned Plan B was the only hope for mankind’s survival. Earth and all on it are doomed. Without the hope of salvation he knew there was no way he would have support for the mission of saving man as a species (Plan B). Murph is crushed and in only her second message to Endurance relays Professor Brand’s passing and then breaks down with the belief that her father went off into space knowingly leaving her there to die. Needless to say Cooper on Endurance is crushed by this news on several fronts. Brand (Hathaway) is shocked as the equation was her father’s life’s work. Mann confirms the truth, saving all of humanity was never considered an option by the inner circle.
Cooper prepares to head back to Earth while Brand and the remaining Endurance astronaut remain to set up the “shake and bake” embryo colony with Mann. Cooper and Mann go out to scout on foot. While separated Cooper’s long range transmitter is sabotaged by Mann. Mann explains that this is a dead world. He knew that if he didn’t misrepresent it as hospitable he would die here and he was not ready for that. Obviously he disassembled the robot to keep his secret. He is going to need Endurance to survive and that means Cooper cannot take it back to Earth. In the struggle Cooper is left to die from the atmosphere with a damaged helmet while Mann heads back to base. During Mann’s trek back Cooper regains contact with Brand who takes the lander out to rescue him with one of the robots. They save him but at the same time, while trying to recover the data from Mann’s deactivated robot it explodes killing the astronaut. Mann takes the remaining craft back to Endurance while Brand and Cooper retrieve the remaining robot and race after him.
Some people thought the idea of this betrayal and fight was stupid. I think it served a purpose and made sense. Mann was agreed by all to be the best of them. He lead the missions into the wormhole as man’s salvation despite the odds against his personal salvation. What we learned though was that facing the stark reality of death, alone on that dead world when all he had to do was hit that transmitter to tell Earth this planet was habitable for a chance at rescue was too terrifying a prospect. Mann, noblest of all the astronauts, betrayed his principals and that of the entire mission to save himself. He then went on to try to kill another to further his survival when confronted with losing Endurance. Man(n)’s survival instinct is paramount.
Mann makes it to orbit but is unable to properly dock with Endurance. He ignores all instructions to the contrary and tries anyway resulting in his death and significant damage to Endurance. Cooper, Brand and the robots manage to dock then plan their next move.
Cooper agrees to travel to Edmond’s planet as a last hope for humanity. He realizes Earth and everyone there is doomed. To get there after the additional damage they must slingshot around the black hole using it gravitational pull to accelerate them. They plan to use two of the landing craft as boosters to do so. The first will have the robot TARS in it controlling the burn. It will be dropped away to fall into the black hole once its fuel is exhausted to lighten the load and allow the Endurance to escape. Cooper is in the second craft as the burns must be controlled directly in the craft due to damage throughout Endurance. Cooper then reveals his plans to detach his craft in order for Brand to continue around the black hole and to Edmond’s planet. While in close proximity to the black hole’s gravitational pull 50+ Earth years race in minutes to Brand and Cooper. Right when this scene begins Murph is back on Earth looking around her old room and trying to get her brother’s family to leave.
Cooper follows TARS into the black hole. Here is where some speculative science / science fiction happens that some take issue with. We understand now that the tidal forces of the black hole would stretch out and destroy anything dropped into it and surviving such an experience is impossible. Cooper survives entry into the black hole as does the robot TARS where they find themselves in a three dimensional structure apparently created for their benefit. This is called the Tesseract. Certainly this is a stretch but given the rules established in this movie I see it as believable. We already know some entity has significant enough control over the universe to create and maintain a worm hole. It is not a large leap to believe a species which has mastery over gravity would be able to isolate a survivable field of gravity for Cooper within the black hole.
The Tesseract is a three dimensional representation of all the time in Murph’s bedroom back on Earth. Every point in time exists there simultaneously. The problem for these extra or fifth dimensional beings is identifying key points in time and conveying information. The Tesseract allows Cooper to “interact” with the past by manipulating gravity in that localized setting. Cooper manages to send Murph Morse code messages through books knocked out of her book case telling him to “Stay” when she was young and he was preparing to leave on the mission. He sends the coordinates that allowed him to find NASA in the dust falling in her room. Earlier in the movie when Cooper flips quarter into the area of the falling dust it does not obey a normal travel path dictated by Earth normal gravity, a clue something was amiss earlier in the film. Eventually he transmits via Morse code the solutions to the missing gravitational equation which could only be deduced by observing the phenomena inside a black hole. Those observations were made by TARS and relayed to Cooper who transmitted them to Murphy via manipulations in the gravitational pull on the automatic watch he Cooper had left for her.
At this point many people mistakenly believe Cooper was in the past. Cooper was no more “in” the past than someone is “in” a house while standing outside and looking through the window. Just like standing outside the house Cooper is outside the three dimensional space in which Murph and everyone but TARS resides in. He is a spectator that can only interact using the one media which transcends space and time, GRAVITY. It is similar to being outside the house, trying to communicate through a closed one way window which cannot be opened. The occupant cannot see or touch you but they hear the banging. Cooper was “banging on the window” with gravity. Cooper is needed for this because he is the one who has a connection with Murph. He can find her and the moment in space time where, from the fifth dimension he is currently in, he can send her the information needed. It is during this scene that Cooper theorizes this whole event and place was crafted not by aliens but by humans, far advanced and evolved, who have mastered space, time and gravity to occupy dimensions outside those currently occupied by man.
People also cry PARADOX at this point. Cooper should be able to send himself a message in the past to find NASA which is true for beings occupying three dimensional physical space and experiencing time linearly(fourth dimension). Beyond those four dimensions though time is not linear. It has all happened, past future and present. That doesn’t mean you can jump in and out of physical space at different times, it just means you can observe it all happening and something like a paradox doesn’t exist when there is no beginning or end. It sounds like fantasy but it is a viable theory in advanced physics.
His work done the Tesseract collapses upon itself and Cooper is flung back into three dimensional space, through the worm hole, and out of it near Saturn. It is now 80 – 90 years after he left Earth. He awakens to find himself in a space station near the worm hole. Humanity has left Earth and is, thanks the mastery of gravity brought about by the now nearly worshipped Murphy Cooper, throughout the solar system. Cooper has a chance to meet his daughter, now an old woman who made the trip out to see him, on her death bed. She has a large family there as well, children and grandchildren. It is a touching scene. Murphy always knew it was her father who sent her the information even if nobody ever believed her. She tells him no parent should see their child die. It is her time to go and her children are there. He should go find Brand on Edmond’s world. Both Cooper and Brand are still in close sync for relative time passage. To Brand she is just getting started on her new world. Cooper takes the robot TARS, “borrows” one of the station’s craft and goes off to find Brand. The movie closes showing Brand burying Edmonds at her newly established base on the world bearing his name. She is breathing the atmosphere so it is obviously habitable.
Brand’s experience at Edmond’s world is the other notable plot hole. Murph had the gravity equations 50+ years Earth time BEFORE Brand came out of the effects of the black hole’s gravity well. We know that at the end the station has many craft capable of such a trip. There is absolutely NO WAY that Brand would have arrived at Edmond’s world to not already find people from 20, 30, 40 or 50 years after she entered the time compression effect of the black hole’s gravity well. Humanity has had DECADES to catch up to Brand and her trip to Edmond’s world. It makes no sense that she is there alone. It does though provide a nice touching ending as Cooper races off to find her. This is not as forgivable a sin as the Miller’s world decision since it really wasn’t needed. They could just as easily told Cooper that Brand has arrived and been met at Edmond’s world by the settlers there. So I give this movie one minor mark against it for a corny ending that wasn’t needed, make it an overall score of 98/100 which is nothing to sneeze at.
I think this is a fantastic movie. It has been compared to 2001 A Space Odyssey but I think it far surpasses that movie. People who hold up 2001 with its far more confusing an unscientifically supported ending while complaining about Interstellar’s ending do not make much sense in my opinion.
Watch this movie and then watch it again. It is absolutely in my list of top ten films.
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Interstellar
Interstellar chronicles the adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.
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This solves our movie night problem. Here is why.
Heidi Leatherby
Reviews with images
A glorious Movie Masterpiece! This is one film that you absolutely should not miss. Towering genius and vision abides herein.
Mere words are inadequate to describe the sweeping magnificence and scientific creativity of this modern-style, ahead-of-its-time Sci Fi jewel from Paramount Pictures.The story shows us the stark difference between two drastically-different Sapient realities one versus the other, as it switches back and forth throughout the film. One: the hope for new life in a far-flung Galaxy on one of three Earth-like planets, reached through a mysterious Wormhole near Saturn, via an ingenious bracelet-like spinning spacecraft, the Endurance; Two: the gritty (in more than one sense of the word) day-to-day hard reality of a dust-storm-ridden subsistence farming on a newly-hostile and culturally-backwards Earth, where we are a decimated and dying species at some point in history not far from now. It probably depicts about the middle of the 21st Century. It would have to be, for the presently-impossible technologies of human cryo-sleep hibernation and superior spacecraft construction, plus AI robotic self-aware intelligence, to exist.But the rugged reality of the close-knit Cooper family's farming homestead depicted in young Murphy Cooper's childhood has become the potential extinction for a rapidly-dwindling humankind, as - for unexplained reasons possibly related to Climate Change - the Earth inflicts savage dust megastorms on the populace, and the atmosphere begins to change. Young Murph's 30-something Dad, who was a pilot for NASA in glory days past, and who secretly hates farming, longs for a way to help lead Humankind from our atavistic ancient Home to new life out somewhere among the stars. Well, he's destined to make the harrowing attempt at it.Interpreting strange disturbances in her bookshelves and ley-lines in the patterns of dust on her bedroom floor, Murph reads baffling but powerfully-compelling messages in them, not to omit mention of the coordinates her Dad finds to a secret location where science still survives. And years later as an adult, Murph finds quantum answers in the movements of the sweep-second hand on a watch her Dad had given her at age ten, right before he blasted off with a select crew to explore three planets where the possibility may exist for Humankind's future.Questions flower in the viewer's mind. How did the quantum revelations get coded in binary into the simple analog watch? Why did NASA, hidden in a decommissioned underground NORAD survival-base about half a day's drive from the Cooper farmhouse, send these brave people in two small waves through this wormhole? Why is NASA building a huge space-station intended to house much or all of the remaining population in their area? Are there plans to rescue all Humankind? Why did they send scads of fertilized embryos in a special freezer technology and supplies to build a community of new-planet humans raised in this mysterious and very dangerous Elsewhere? And what impossible-to-imagine but tantalising secrets does the monster Black Hole "Gargantua," near the other side of the Wormhole, hold?Above that a still-greater mystery exists, depicted brilliantly in this actual-science-based film venture: life in a FIVE-Dimensional world, with four spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension which can be navigated by the mysterious and apparently friendly "Bulk Beings" who built the Wormhole and summoned Cooper and the robotic AI 'TARS' toward mind-bending answers.No spoilers here: just watch, enjoy, and be thrilled by the incredibly-beautiful and tensely-suspenseful big-budget scenes, and find out why 'Interstellar' is in every way a STELLAR performance! The soundtrack alone is an orchestral, pipe-organ-centered masterpiece. Find out why many die-hard fans will for years be popping out quotes like, "The Bulk Beings are closing the Tesseract!" - and marvel at the moebius-strip logic of the way this film resolves the Fermi paradox.Note the nod the film gives to the persistent "We-Never-Went-To-The-Moon" conspiracy-theorists; and learn about technology in space-stations and scientific theory existing right now. Note how this ambitious motion picture masterwork acknowledges the current stall-out between quantum logic and Relativity.Learn how vital Love and the unbreakable bonds it can form actually is to us, and see how tragic it can be when it does not exist in someone thought to be a great hero who is in reality a treacherous, potentially genocidal Villain. He is not the film's only surprise liar, and suspense is certainly not lacking as the action turns apocalyptic and the survival of our species becomes increasingly imperiled!Fly to the stars with the gifted cast of 'Interstellar'. And answers will bloom with every new unexpected plot twist and turn and switchback, by the time Murphy, who is originally unforgivingly angry at her Dad for leaving on this crucial mission, forgives him tearfully, and joyously embraces the epic future that has opened up for her in her 30s onward to live to a very old age.If you love Sci Fi - and if you love at all - you too will adore 'Interstellar'.[This review required some assistance from two of my BFFs for me to write, as this is a very special motion picture.]
