Interstellar (Christopher Nolan) *SPOILERS FROM POST 458 ONWARDS*

Sad Professor

Re: the eagles in LOTR

The reason as I recall is that the eagles are a very proud race who don’t involve themselves with the affairs of the rest of Middle Earth, who they see as primitive and beneath them. They do owe Gandalf but that debt is paid when they save him from Saruman. Why they choose to intervene at the end isn’t clear. I guess the destruction of the ring forced them to take notice.

Not that it has to make sense. Deus ex machina is a perfectly valid plot device. It’s particularly effective when everything that follows it has an air of transcendence, which the endings of LOTR and Interstellar have IMO. Notice that Cooper never returns to the Earth and takes little solace in the artificial recreations of his home at Cooper station. He is briefly reunited with his daughter but she no longer needs him. His victory, while significant to the human race, feels hollow to him. He leaves for another place, much as Frodo does.

Mister Vain

Is this not the music from the docking scene?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdComTp7KsA

Adamantium

the_monkey wrote: »

Sad Professor

Mister Vain wrote: »

Is this not the music from the docking scene?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdComTp7KsA

No, it’s very similar but lacks the crescendo of the docking scene, which can be heard in the video I posted earlier.

DoYouEvenLift

Mister Vain wrote: »

Is this not the music from the docking scene?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdComTp7KsA

Nope, but the actual tune is apparently being released for free. Not sure what the thought process was behind not releasing it as part of the album to be honest

mewe

Thargor wrote: »

Yeah but there's music like even recently with Man of Steel that you can instantly identify as Zimmer even if you didn't know it going into the film it still makes the hair on your neck stand up whereas this is more like the music you'd expect by some random producer in the trailer for a new Halo game or something, its nowhere near any of his classic stuff. Hearing at painfully loud volume in IMC Dun Laoighre probably didn't help my opinion.

That was a plus point for me personally. I usually love a Hans Zimmer soundtrack and i thought his music in Inception and 12 Years A Slave was brilliant but also quite similar whereas in Interstellar it wasn't as predictable a soundtrack from Zimmer.

I thought he did an excellent job on Interstellar and the soundtrack is top notch for me but different strokes for different folks i guess.

Memnoch

orubiru wrote: »

I agree with you (and HER is an amazing movie, good call!) but on the other hand you have people criticizing when the movie tries to introduce a concept like "love" into a film with a lot of effects.

I can see why people object to things like the seemingly "Hollywood" love angle but why should explaining things like love in the same context as we'd explain gravity etc be off limits for a screenwriter? Kind of makes sense that our "soul", if such a thing exists, would not be restricted to 3 dimensions in the same way that out bodies are. I guess that we do have 4 dimensional movement through our ability to remember, predict and dream. So why shouldn't Brand discuss love?

Also, it's the characters opinion. If a character in a film holds an opinion that we don't agree with does it automatically make the idea pathetic or lame or whatever? We're not obligated to agree. Even when Cooper concludes that it's his love for his daughter that allows him to send messages back in time to her... WE don't have to agree with that.

In a straight action film we don't have to bother with such issues. We are going from A to B and that's the end of it.

I think Her escaped a lot of criticism because it didn't get a lot of publicity. Cloud Atlas, for example, got trashed because it was marketed as that kind of "action" type film.

If they throw a lot of effects into a film then I think it encourages us to go into "look, don't think" mode. I find myself doing this all the time. Some movies provide an instant visceral experience and you know you are watching one of those films when there are like a billion moving parts on the screen. So you switch off and by the end you've either enjoyed the experience or you haven't and you move on.

Interstellar is sort of marketed as the big blockbuster movie of the year but at the same time it's trying to be the deep and profound movie you'd think and talk about for years. Maybe it's just not possible to be both?

There are films that succeed in doing both, but they are, naturally, very rare.

Off the top of my head, I would say, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is the best example of a block buster action film that was also powerful, transcendent and thought provoking. I also remember crying a lot at the end of Black Hawk Down, though I was young and for some reason, themes of brotherhood just hit a soft spot within me.

For a more mainstream example, I would say Gladiator.

Inception isn't too far behind as a thought provoking block buster, but even though I loved it, I felt it was ALMOST touching greatness but not quite.

The Dark Knight is one of my top ten films of all time but I'm not sure it can really be classified as transcendent and thought provoking. But a great blockbuster.

Weak filmmaking is weak filmmaking and sadly interstellar falls into that category. And I was really hoping for it not to, considering how two of his films are favourites of mine.

A couple of things that bothered me regarding plotholes. spoilers ahead.

These supposedly evolved, transcendent beings, with control over time and space are not able to pin point a particular time and moment in the girl's life to give her the message, yet they can put this wormhole in a very specific place, just when humanity needs it? Basically it seems very contrived to me. A forced reason to justify the basic conceit of the film and the necessity of the 'hero's journey' that the protagonist has to take. When such a major event and explanation is there solely for the reason - 'there would be no movie otherwise' I think it's fair enough to say that it is a pretty major plothole. Note this has nothing to do with hard sci-fi but with consistency in the internal logic of the fiction, which I found severely lacking.

Then the whole gravity sequence of docking with the endeavour, chasing Mann. A few days ago we landed a probe on a comet, all done by remote control. And we do so much else. Yet these guys can't communicate with their ship to lock the docking ring? Or to simply move it away, or try and fire its propulsion to stabilise it? But they can patch in remotely through the PA and control that non essential system to try and appeal to Mann before he blows the airlock?

There are more but these were the most obvious ones that bothered me. Please note I'm not really interested in getting in a protracted back and forth debate about them.

By the way, I thought Her was boring and Calvary was expositional rubbish. But I can see why a lot of people liked Her and even though I didn't enjoy it I can see why many people think it's a good film. Cloud atlas was just rubbish and the action was mostly stale.

Speaking of mainstream action films that are though provoking. The Matrix was another one. By the makers of cloud at last no less.

thegreengoblin

Finally got to see it today. What a huge let down.

I'm a big sci-fi fan and I stayed away from all the trailers and the reviews and threads like this one so it would be relatively fresh for me. But I left the cinema hugely disappointed. In fact, the disappointment had set in long before the end. The scene where Cooper, a trained NASA pilot clearly well versed in astrophysics, has the wormhole concept explained to him on a folded piece of paper was cringeworthy in the extreme.

I'm sure all the questions I have about this film have been debated endlessly in this thread already but I do have one which I would be very grateful to get an answer to: Why were NASA the only people to be aware of the existence of the wormhole? Had astronomy in general fizzled out as a hobby, thus ensuring that no one else would have seen this celestial anomaly, which in relative terms, suddenly appeared just down the road?

I was waiting for something to grab me in this film and it never happened. And as for the lauaghable reunion scene between Cooper and Murph...It was like he was just paying a visit to his poorly grand-auntie or something, certainly not the cherished daughter who he had thought he would never see again. What some people saw as moving and affecting I just saw as badly written schmaltz.

I applaud Christopher Nolan for trying to reach for the sky and beyond but to me he has fallen flat on his face with this one.

Mark Hamill

Sad Professor wrote: »

Re: the eagles in LOTR

The reason as I recall is that the eagles are a very proud race who don’t involve themselves with the affairs of the rest of Middle Earth, who they see as primitive and beneath them. They do owe Gandalf but that debt is paid when they save him from Saruman. Why they choose to intervene at the end isn’t clear. I guess the destruction of the ring forced them to take notice.

I read a convincing fan theory that Gandalf's plan the entire time was to use to the eagles, he just kept it secret because he was afraid of Sauron finding out too soon and being caught by the nazgul mid air. The eagles lived on/near the Misty Mountains, ie the mountains above Moria, they were supposed to meet up when the fellowship crossed them.
When Gandalf is fighting the Balrog and realises he is about to fall, his "Fly, you fools!" is a cryptic clue to try to get them to find the eagles.

DoYouEvenLift

thegreengoblin wrote: »

Finally got to see it today. What a huge let down.

I'm a big sci-fi fan and I stayed away from all the trailers and the reviews and threads like this one so it would be relatively fresh for me. But I left the cinema hugely disappointed. In fact, the disappointment had set in long before the end. The scene where Cooper, a trained NASA pilot clearly well versed in astrophysics, has the wormhole concept explained to him on a folded piece of paper was cringeworthy in the extreme.

I'm sure all the questions I have about this film have been debated endlessly in this thread already but I do have one which I would be very grateful to get an answer to: Why were NASA the only people to be aware of the existence of the wormhole? Had astronomy in general fizzled out as a hobby, thus ensuring that no one else would have seen this celestial anomaly, which in relative terms, suddenly appeared just down the road?

I was waiting for something to grab me in this film and it never happened. And as for the lauaghable reunion scene between Cooper and Murph...It was like he was just paying a visit to his poorly grand-auntie or something, certainly not the cherished daughter who he had thought he would never see again. What some people saw as moving and affecting I just saw as badly written schmaltz.

I applaud Christopher Nolan for trying to reach for the sky and beyond but to me he has fallen flat on his face with this one.

I actually agree, but it's sad to say that the majority of audiences probably need to be spoonfed like that

Oregano_State

thegreengoblin wrote: »

Why were NASA the only people to be aware of the existence of the wormhole? Had astronomy in general fizzled out as a hobby, thus ensuring that no one else would have seen this celestial anomaly, which in relative terms, suddenly appeared just down the road?

The wormhole is a relatively small perturbation in space-time located close to Saturn, I don't think hobby-level enthusiasts would be able to detect it.

Bacchus

thegreengoblin wrote:

The scene where Cooper, a trained NASA pilot clearly well versed in astrophysics, has the wormhole concept explained to him on a folded piece of paper was cringeworthy in the extreme.

Necessary scene to make sure the audience is all up to speed. I agree it doesn't make sense that it needed to be explained to Cooper while he is ON THE WAY TO A FRIGGIN WORMHOLE! It was a necessary evil though, the only better way I can think that it could have been done would be for someone to explain it to Murph but I'm not sure where that'd fit in the narrative.

thegreengoblin wrote:

I'm sure all the questions I have about this film have been debated endlessly in this thread already but I do have one which I would be very grateful to get an answer to: Why were NASA the only people to be aware of the existence of the wormhole? Had astronomy in general fizzled out as a hobby, thus ensuring that no one else would have seen this celestial anomaly, which in relative terms, suddenly appeared just down the road?

Yes, this was established in the scene at the school. The moon landing was a "hoax", the world needs farmers not engineers, NASA is undercover for fear of public outcry. Only NASA knows about the wormhole, though IIRC was there some mention of the Chinese knowing about it too when they were on the way to it? Oh no... that was from the original script floating around the web... it that the Chinese knew too.

thegreengoblin wrote:

I was waiting for something to grab me in this film and it never happened. And as for the lauaghable reunion scene between Cooper and Murph...It was like he was just paying a visit to his poorly grand-auntie or something, certainly not the cherished daughter who he had thought he would never see again. What some people saw as moving and affecting I just saw as badly written schmaltz.

This scene did fall a bit flat, particularly from Coopers perspective. Murph has had a lifetime to come to terms with the situation and has a family of her own. Cooper is a ghost so to speak and that brief encounter was all she needed. However, for Cooper, he left is daughter a couple of weeks ago (I think) from his POV and now she is an elderly woman. I think that scene was missing something to hammer home the loss he surely must have been feeling.

TBH, the one and only thing I'd change in the movie is those final 5 minutes or so. I think it would have been cool (in an 'ultimate sacrifice' kind of way) for Cooper never to have seen his daughter again (or at least not show us it). He could have been 'sent' to Brand's planet and we could have been left with Murphy and the ship on the way to the wormhole thinking "will they meet". Or Cooper could have been left in the Tesseract drifting through time in his daughter's bedroom but never being able to break out (that'd be an ultra bitter-sweet/depressing ending).

the_monkey

Exactly, Wormholes emit nothing, what amateur would be able to spot it ?

Also on the explanation of the wormhole - come on for the audience's info - I can't believe people complain about it - the only thing that surprised me about
the scene is it's an exact copy of an explanation of a wormhole in Event Horizon


Again these are things that really should be overlooked for the enjoyment of the story, there would be no story without it.

ktulu123

In fairness it's probably the most dumbed down way to explain what a wormhole is. It was necessary for the audience

Iwannahurl

thegreengoblin wrote: »

Finally got to see it today. What a huge let down.

I'm a big sci-fi fan and I stayed away from all the trailers and the reviews and threads like this one so it would be relatively fresh for me. But I left the cinema hugely disappointed. In fact, the disappointment had set in long before the end. The scene where Cooper, a trained NASA pilot clearly well versed in astrophysics, has the wormhole concept explained to him on a folded piece of paper was cringeworthy in the extreme.

I'm sure all the questions I have about this film have been debated endlessly in this thread already but I do have one which I would be very grateful to get an answer to: Why were NASA the only people to be aware of the existence of the wormhole? Had astronomy in general fizzled out as a hobby, thus ensuring that no one else would have seen this celestial anomaly, which in relative terms, suddenly appeared just down the road?

I was waiting for something to grab me in this film and it never happened. And as for the lauaghable reunion scene between Cooper and Murph...It was like he was just paying a visit to his poorly grand-auntie or something, certainly not the cherished daughter who he had thought he would never see again. What some people saw as moving and affecting I just saw as badly written schmaltz.

I applaud Christopher Nolan for trying to reach for the sky and beyond but to me he has fallen flat on his face with this one.

ktulu123 wrote: »

In fairness it's probably the most dumbed down way to explain what a wormhole is. It was necessary for the audience

The folded paper analogy is the standard one used, so I wouldn't call it dumbed down. But the scene, like many others in the movie imo, did not work.

Sci-fi obviously requires major suspension of disbelief, but there was too much cringeworthy material for me to allow myself to be taken in. The pseudoscientific gobbledegook was painful, and the reliance on unnamed beings with higher powers was irritating given the attempt to base the drama on real earthly troubles, as evidenced by the use of people's actual memories from the Dustbowl years and imagery reminiscent of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. The theorising about the power of love etc was painful.

Interesting to see Ellen Burstyn reappear as the aged Murph in a new movie with poltergeist allusions, albeit benign ones this time.

Otacon

I thought the wormhole-explanation scene was actually to do with its appearance, rather than how it works. Cooper was confused by why it would appear as a sphere - like most of us, he probably expected a traditional looking vortex or something.

When it was explained to him, it seemed the emphasis was on why it appeared spherical, rather than how the wormhole itself worked.

That is why I didn't really mind that scene.

Kiith

Plus, even as the pilot, he probably doesn't have a PHD in theoretical wormhole physics.

expectationlost

they had the guy doing the voice for TARS working the robot on set aswell! http://www.wired.com/2014/11/interstellar-droids/#slide-id-1639687

jones

Some great comments on here and it has me dying to see this again, i'm listening to the soundtrack all week and I keep thinking about the movie.
There's not many movies that stay with me after I've seen it and I think that is a testament to what Nolan & co have done.

There's been a lot of negativity surrounding Interstellar about all these plot holes and honestly it just seems like looking for flaws for the sake of it. I don't think interstellar is the perfect film (far from it) and I can see why some wouldn't like it but I still think with all its flaws that its brilliant.
It seems popular to over examine Nolan's films more than any other auteur's, so much so that the story that's being told is almost forgotten in the scramble to find something negative to say about a plot device.

Mister Vain

Bacchus wrote: »

TBH, the one and only thing I'd change in the movie is those final 5 minutes or so. I think it would have been cool (in an 'ultimate sacrifice' kind of way) for Cooper never to have seen his daughter again (or at least not show us it). He could have been 'sent' to Brand's planet and we could have been left with Murphy and the ship on the way to the wormhole thinking "will they meet". Or Cooper could have been left in the Tesseract drifting through time in his daughter's bedroom but never being able to break out (that'd be an ultra bitter-sweet/depressing ending).

That would have been a great ending.

jones wrote: »

There's been a lot of negativity surrounding Interstellar about all these plot holes and honestly it just seems like looking for flaws for the sake of it. It seems popular to over examine Nolan's films

I think you're right, but there's also the other side of the coin where you have people endlessly praising him with statements like, "Nolan has done it again, what a genius." But yeah there are definitely people who seem to be over critical in their analysis of his films also.

expectationlost

jones wrote: »

Some great comments on here and it has me dying to see this again, i'm listening to the soundtrack all week and I keep thinking about the movie.
There's not many movies that stay with me after I've seen it and I think that is a testament to what Nolan & co have done.

There's been a lot of negativity surrounding Interstellar about all these plot holes and honestly it just seems like looking for flaws for the sake of it.

how is cooper going to get back to brand?

S.M.B.

the_monkey wrote: »

Exactly, Wormholes emit nothing, what amateur would be able to spot it ?

Also on the explanation of the wormhole - come on for the audience's info - I can't believe people complain about it - the only thing that surprised me about
the scene is it's an exact copy of an explanation of a wormhole in Event Horizon


Again these are things that really should be overlooked for the enjoyment of the story, there would be no story without it.

That last paragraph is very subjective.

Why should certain flaws be overlooked? Some people clearly give more weight to solid storytelling than others. Moments like this just took me out of the movie and there were plenty of them.

And there could just as easily be a story without scenes like this, possibly not a concrete enough story for all viewers to latch onto.

Elessar

Saw this again the other night. I like it a lot more this time around but I do have a few questions:

1) When Cooper was back at the station at the end, they mention Murph took a 2 year journey to see him once she found out. So, was he asleep for 2 years after they found him??

2) How did they expect TARS to relay data from the black hole when they make it clear NOTHING comes out of a black hole?

3) Why attempt to get humanity to live near a black hole where every hour is 7 years on earth? It will eventually be swallowed anyway.

Anyway maybe I'm just being pedantic.

I do like it. I want to love it. But something is missing.

5uspect

I didn't really have any issues with the sci-fi parts of the movie, I was willing to go along with most of it. I grumbled at the sudden transition form Saturn V to magic hoverships but that was more of an observation. Also the Ranger looked like more o a waverider.

Does anyone else think McConaughey's character was based on Gordo Cooper? In particular his manual landing on the first planet.

Toward the end of the Faith 7 flight there were mission-threatening technical problems. During the 19th orbit, the capsule had a power failure. Carbon dioxide levels began rising, and the cabin temperature jumped to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38°C). Cooper fell back on his understanding of star patterns, took manual control of the tiny capsule and successfully estimated the correct pitch for re-entry into the atmosphere. Some precision was needed in the calculation, since if the capsule came in too steep, g-forces would be too large, and if its trajectory were too shallow, it would shoot out of the atmosphere again, back into space. Cooper drew lines on the capsule window to help him check his orientation before firing the re-entry rockets. "So I used my wrist watch for time," he later recalled, "my eyeballs out the window for attitude. Then I fired my retrorockets at the right time and landed right by the carrier."[7][8] Cooper's cool-headed performance and piloting skills led to a basic rethinking of design philosophy for later space missions.

I liked the wormhole explanation to explain its spherical shape, I wonder was it ever planned to revisit that later to explain a hypercube?

I watched Europa Report last night. Though it was awful, but then again I also hated Sunshine.

jones

Mister Vain wrote: »

I think you're right, but there's also the other side of the coin where you have people endlessly praising him with statements like, "Nolan has done it again, what a genius." But yeah there are definitely people who seem to be over critical in their analysis of his films also.

Ha fair point I know there are plenty of people out there like that - its one extreme or another with Nolan it seems. (apart from us of course)

As for how is cooper going to get back to brand - who knows? the wormhole again possibly? As I mentioned previously Interstellar is not perfect it does have issues but any issues I picked up on didn't really bother me. Show me a sci fi film with no plot holes or leaps of logic.

As mentioned above by someone its like the whole eagles in LOTR's not just dropping the ring into Mount Doom - if you look hard enough you can find holes in any story. Each to their own but I really enjoyed Interstellar definite bluray purchase for me.

Ps I loved sunshine maybe I just have a thing for space haha

thegreengoblin

Oregano_State wrote: »

The wormhole is a relatively small perturbation in space-time located close to Saturn, I don't think hobby-level enthusiasts would be able to detect it.

Fair enough but what about the other space agencies? Are we to assume that Russia, the European Space Agency, China, India have all abandoned any notion of keeping an eye on what's going on out there? I just thought it was way too convenient that NASA were the only ones to detect it.

Fair enough about the wormhole explanation, but it could have been a bit less Tomorrow's World-like in the way it was shown!

DoYouEvenLift

jones wrote: »

Ha fair point I know there are plenty of people out there like that - its one extreme or another with Nolan it seems. (apart from us of course)

As for how is cooper going to get back to brand - who knows? the wormhole again possibly? As I mentioned previously Interstellar is not perfect it does have issues but any issues I picked up on didn't really bother me. Show me a sci fi film with no plot holes or leaps of logic.

As mentioned above by someone its like the whole eagles in LOTR's not just dropping the ring into Mount Doom - if you look hard enough you can find holes in any story. Each to their own but I really enjoyed Interstellar definite bluray purchase for me.

Ps I loved sunshine maybe I just have a thing for space haha

It's also been explained that the eagles not bringing the ring is not a plot hole.


I wonder if there'll be an extended/directors cut edition of Interstellar on bluray...or did Nolan actually get to choose final cut?

thegreengoblin wrote: »

Fair enough but what about the other space agencies? Are we to assume that Russia, the European Space Agency, China, India have all abandoned any notion of keeping an eye on what's going on out there? I just thought it was way too convenient that NASA were the only ones to detect it.

Fair enough about the wormhole explanation, but it could have been a bit less Tomorrow's World-like in the way it was shown!

Did they confirm that? They could've said something about China or Russia also knowing about it also but why would they? Even today China and Russia are competing against America in areas like this and I'm sure they all don't know everything that the other ones know, and in the movie they're very secretive about even talking about space exploration to the general public so could be the same in Russia and China and they keep everything secret too. For the plot of the movie though I actually think they could've expanded on your point and it could've been better if they explained that all Space agency's were working together as a joint effort between everyone in the world who could help, since the issues on Earth affected everyone. A Russian or Chinese character could've been cool too lol

indough

the explanation was a nod to a scene in event horizon, which i thought was pretty cool

PhiloCypher

Mister Vain wrote: »

That would have been a great ending.



I think you're right, but there's also the other side of the coin where you have people endlessly praising him with statements like, "Nolan has done it again, what a genius." But yeah there are definitely people who seem to be over critical in their analysis of his films also.

Yeh there is ample hyperbole on both sides it's neither the best thing ever nor the worst. It's an ambitious but flawed film.

5uspect

thegreengoblin wrote: »

Fair enough but what about the other space agencies? Are we to assume that Russia, the European Space Agency, China, India have all abandoned any notion of keeping an eye on what's going on out there? I just thought it was way too convenient that NASA were the only ones to detect it.

Fair enough about the wormhole explanation, but it could have been a bit less Tomorrow's World-like in the way it was shown!

The original script makes reference to the Chinese. In the film itself there's talk about NASA refusing to bomb the population from the stratosphere, this and the significant population deduction would suggest a war of some sort. So perhaps there is no one left.

In a way this somewhat similar to the Star Trek back story.