Interstellar (spoilers)

[Jim3k]

Sometimes there are books, plays and movies I don’t quite understand even though I enjoy them on a superficial level. That was the case when I saw Interstellar (the IMAX version) this weekend.

The concept of trying to find a successor to Earth as Earth crumbles is a fine one for sci-fi purposes. Physics, though, gets in the way… as usual. Here, relativity and five dimensions not only get in the way, they confuse the hell out of me.

Still, this is a film which is captivating despite its limited plot since it is supported by good acting and masterful visuals.

Those of us who will try to deconstruct this thing will be disappointed. It’s got too many moving parts. Those of us who are fans of the artist Walter Keane (uh…Margaret Keane) will absolutely love Anne Hathaway’s eyes. And those of us who admire Matt Damon will be shocked as he plays against type … to a good dramatic purpose. And those of us who enjoy Matthew McConaughey will find no reason to do otherwise here. Michael Caine, William Devane and Jessica Chastain (as Murph) are adequate to their roles, but nothing more. The 10-year-old Murph, Mackenzie Foy, is far more interesting.

Finally, director Christopher Nolan has created two distinct and awe-ful (almost a pun) worlds (four if you want to include the alien planets). The first is a dying American Midwest beset by drought and dust. Crops fail and mankind is in serious jeopardy. The second is interstellar space. The artwork in both worlds is outstanding. There are some nods to Cuarón's 2013 Gravity, particularly the vertigo that maneuvering a spacecraft seems to cause.

But the movie’s theme, not the one about preserving mankind beyond a failed Earth, but the introspective one about how and why dimensions beyond our ken have an impact on what we are, simply breaks apart. I didn’t get it.

Or, how does Cooper get behind that bookshelf, anyway? Better yet, how can a wristwatch run for 25 years without changing batteries?

Oh … you think there are more important questions?

You’re right.

[Reisen]

I would add "Spoilers" in the title. Maybe that's obvious to anyone clicking on the thread, but the Damon character, specifically, was very purposefully kept under wraps.

[camion]

After seeing this movie I am moved to compare it to Titanic. Both are advertised as gigantic, flashy, fill-the-screen-with-awesome-visuals-and-action movies, but both are really gooey emotional tearjerkers. Should I mention how the sacrifice by Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson in Titanic is echoed in Interstellar?. I guess I just did. Either movie would be comfortable on the Lifetime channel.

Both movies are well crafted cinema and I liked both, just not enough for them to make my watch-it-when-I-stumble-upon-it-while-channel-surfing list.

[mattman91]

Was going to watch this last week, but noticed it was over 3 hours. I don't do long movies because I tend to fall asleep during them and waste $9.50.

[YmoBeThere]

You are safe, it is just under 3 hours.

[bjornolf]

You mentioned Titanic. How does it compare to Avatar?

[camion]

You mentioned Titanic. How does it compare to Avatar?

I'd say Avatar had more of a Dances with Wolves feel. Good guys battling bad guys. Oppressed and oppressor.

Interstellar and Titanic were more about individuals and forces of nature.

[alteran]

Sometimes there are books, plays and movies I don’t quite understand even though I enjoy them on a superficial level. That was the case when I saw Interstellar (the IMAX version) this weekend.

The concept of trying to find a successor to Earth as Earth crumbles is a fine one for sci-fi purposes. Physics, though, gets in the way… as usual. Here, relativity and five dimensions not only get in the way, they confuse the hell out of me.

Still, this is a film which is captivating despite its limited plot since it is supported by good acting and masterful visuals.

Those of us who will try to deconstruct this thing will be disappointed. It’s got too many moving parts. Those of us who are fans of the artist Walter Keane (uh…Margaret Keane) will absolutely love Anne Hathaway’s eyes. And those of us who admire Matt Damon will be shocked as he plays against type … to a good dramatic purpose. And those of us who enjoy Matthew McConaughey will find no reason to do otherwise here. Michael Caine, William Devane and Jessica Chastain (as Murph) are adequate to their roles, but nothing more. The 10-year-old Murph, Mackenzie Foy, is far more interesting.

Finally, director Christopher Nolan has created two distinct and awe-ful (almost a pun) worlds (four if you want to include the alien planets). The first is a dying American Midwest beset by drought and dust. Crops fail and mankind is in serious jeopardy. The second is interstellar space. The artwork in both worlds is outstanding. There are some nods to Cuarón's 2013 Gravity, particularly the vertigo that maneuvering a spacecraft seems to cause.

But the movie’s theme, not the one about preserving mankind beyond a failed Earth, but the introspective one about how and why dimensions beyond our ken have an impact on what we are, simply breaks apart. I didn’t get it.

Or, how does Cooper get behind that bookshelf, anyway? Better yet, how can a wristwatch run for 25 years without changing batteries?

Oh … you think there are more important questions?

You’re right.

I really enjoyed it.

I went with two friends, whose experience was much more mitigated.

SPOILERS

The pacing was slow. I was okay with the languid pace of the movie but I think it would have bugged a lot of people.

To me, the movie's theme was about parent-child and specifically father-daughter relationships, and mortality. Saving humanity was kind of a byproduct to that as far as the movie went.

I'm not sure if the story was arguing that Cooper's actions were worth it or not. He sure paid a very high price in terms of relationships, and that's what they were showing.

The watch thing running twenty+ years doesn't bother me at all. We currently have mechanical watches that run up to 3 or 4 years on a battery. By the time farms are run entirely by automated equipment and all that farmers do is maintain the equipment, I don't think it's too big a leap to think that batteries might last ten times longer than they do now. Particularly in watches that were purchased with longevity specifically in mind.

I am a fanboy of quantum theory and all the current, uhm, quasi-causal sciences. Meaning, I can't even pretend to do the math, but I have read tons of stuff written for the layman. So, some of the stuff in the movie is at least "sort of true." For example, as you get close to a black hole, gravity warps time and starts passing much slower for the travelers relative to almost everyone else out there. Also, spinning black holes have eddies in them that in theory could allow all sorts of craziness. I think this is why the story specifically mentioned that the black hole was spinning, as kind of a shout out to quantum geeks, but also a hint as to what branch of theory they were hanging their hat on here.

(Let me be clear, I'm not sure that brings sufficient, uhm, truthiness to all the ideas in the movie, but at least they tried-- this isn't Lost where they gave up and said, "screw it, all the weirdness is because of a Golden Light Cave.")

In short, the physics isn't as nonsensical as it might seem at first blush.

I was intrigued by the idea of an earth basically running on borrowed time because of a nitrogen-based blight. Movies seem obsessed with dystopias lately, but they're almost always man-made. This might have been the bleakest one yet, with mankind's last generation choosing between suffocation and starvation.

I thought it was a great flick, but I wonder how much company I have.

[Wander]

I am a fanboy of quantum theory and all the current, uhm, quasi-causal sciences. Meaning, I can't even pretend to do the math, but I have read tons of stuff written for the layman. So, some of the stuff in the movie is at least "sort of true." For example, as you get close to a black hole, gravity warps time and starts passing much slower for the travelers relative to almost everyone else out there. Also, spinning black holes have eddies in them that in theory could allow all sorts of craziness. I think this is why the story specifically mentioned that the black hole was spinning, as kind of a shout out to quantum geeks, but also a hint as to what branch of theory they were hanging their hat on here.

My understanding is that having the black hole be spinning is what makes a lot of the physics plausible - you can be closer to a rotating black hole without getting torn apart by tidal forces ("spagettification) compared to a not rotating one.

[Reisen]

I really enjoyed it.

I went with two friends, whose experience was much more mitigated.

SPOILERS

The pacing was slow. I was okay with the languid pace of the movie but I think it would have bugged a lot of people.

To me, the movie's theme was about parent-child and specifically father-daughter relationships, and mortality. Saving humanity was kind of a byproduct to that as far as the movie went.

I'm not sure if the story was arguing that Cooper's actions were worth it or not. He sure paid a very high price in terms of relationships, and that's what they were showing.

The watch thing running twenty+ years doesn't bother me at all. We currently have mechanical watches that run up to 3 or 4 years on a battery. By the time farms are run entirely by automated equipment and all that farmers do is maintain the equipment, I don't think it's too big a leap to think that batteries might last ten times longer than they do now. Particularly in watches that were purchased with longevity specifically in mind.

I am a fanboy of quantum theory and all the current, uhm, quasi-causal sciences. Meaning, I can't even pretend to do the math, but I have read tons of stuff written for the layman. So, some of the stuff in the movie is at least "sort of true." For example, as you get close to a black hole, gravity warps time and starts passing much slower for the travelers relative to almost everyone else out there. Also, spinning black holes have eddies in them that in theory could allow all sorts of craziness. I think this is why the story specifically mentioned that the black hole was spinning, as kind of a shout out to quantum geeks, but also a hint as to what branch of theory they were hanging their hat on here.

(Let me be clear, I'm not sure that brings sufficient, uhm, truthiness to all the ideas in the movie, but at least they tried-- this isn't Lost where they gave up and said, "screw it, all the weirdness is because of a Golden Light Cave.")

In short, the physics isn't as nonsensical as it might seem at first blush.

I was intrigued by the idea of an earth basically running on borrowed time because of a nitrogen-based blight. Movies seem obsessed with dystopias lately, but they're almost always man-made. This might have been the bleakest one yet, with mankind's last generation choosing between suffocation and starvation.

I thought it was a great flick, but I wonder how much company I have.

Certainly plenty on this board.

For the watch, it could have been an eco-drive. Powered by light!

If you're not reading the winter movie thread, I linked to a Kip Thorne book called "The Science of Interstellar". It's on my Xmas list, and friends who have read it were fans.

Another friend was telling me about a video highlighting the work Thorne did with the special effects staff, specifically calling out the computer-generated visuals for stuff like the black hole and the tesseract.

[YmoBeThere]

Anne Hathaway waiting for me on a lonely planet is a setup I could live with.

[BD80]

Anne Hathaway waiting for me on a lonely planet is a setup I could live with.

Still can't figure out how they would still be the same relative ages after he goes back and forth through the wormhole

[AncientPsychicT]

Still can't figure out how they would still be the same relative ages after he goes back and forth through the wormhole

The cause of the age discrepancy was proximity to the black hole, not travelling through the wormhole. High gravitational fields severely bend spacetime, causing time to pass more slowly; that's why Dr. Brand and Cooper only experienced ~3 hours on that planet while everyone else aged 23 years. So unless the planet Dr. Brand is marooned on is close to the black hole, she and Cooper should age at the same rate.

[YmoBeThere]

Still can't figure out how they would still be the same relative ages after he goes back and forth through the wormhole

The cause of the age discrepancy was proximity to the black hole, not travelling through the wormhole. High gravitational fields severely bend spacetime, causing time to pass more slowly; that's why Dr. Brand and Cooper only experienced ~3 hours on that planet while everyone else aged 23 years. So unless the planet Dr. Brand is marooned on is close to the black hole, she and Cooper should age at the same rate.

I'm a few years older than she is, I'm okay if she did some catching up.

[BD80]

The cause of the age discrepancy was proximity to the black hole, not travelling through the wormhole. High gravitational fields severely bend spacetime, causing time to pass more slowly; that's why Dr. Brand and Cooper only experienced ~3 hours on that planet while everyone else aged 23 years. So unless the planet Dr. Brand is marooned on is close to the black hole, she and Cooper should age at the same rate.

During the argument as to which of the remaining planets they should bet the mission on, wasn't Brand's choice (where her boyfriend was) closer to (protected by) the wormhole and thus less susceptible to the vagaries of open space and thus less likely to have the type of events that would generate conditions for life?

And Murph aged a whole lot more than 23 years by time he went back. She was at least 80, and she had been traveling in hibernation or whatever the cryostasis device was called.

[YmoBeThere]

During the argument as to which of the remaining planets they should bet the mission on, wasn't Brand's choice (where her boyfriend was) closer to (protected by) the wormhole and thus less susceptible to the vagaries of open space and thus less likely to have the type of events that would generate conditions for life?

And Murph aged a whole lot more than 23 years by time he went back. She was at least 80, and she had been traveling in hibernation or whatever the cryostasis device was called.

I thought the planet her boyfriend went to was further from Gargantua which allowed it to experience the vagaries. The fact that Mann was still broadcasting was the compelling reason to go to his planet.

There was also the time that they spent on Mann's planet which would have aged Murph.

[AncientPsychicT]

During the argument as to which of the remaining planets they should bet the mission on, wasn't Brand's choice (where her boyfriend was) closer to (protected by) the wormhole and thus less susceptible to the vagaries of open space and thus less likely to have the type of events that would generate conditions for life?

And Murph aged a whole lot more than 23 years by time he went back. She was at least 80, and she had been traveling in hibernation or whatever the cryostasis device was called.

I thought the planet her boyfriend went to was further from Gargantua which allowed it to experience the vagaries. The fact that Mann was still broadcasting was the compelling reason to go to his planet.

There was also the time that they spent on Mann's planet which would have aged Murph.

The time spent on Mann's planet was not the cause of the additional aging. Both Mann's planet and Brand's boyfriend's planet were far enough from Gargantua to experience no appreciable time dilation. Instead, what caused the additional time skip was the slingshot maneuver around Gargantua Cooper and Brand pulled off after Dr. Mann wrecked their ship. I believe Cooper had a line while they were slingshotting that went something like this: "What'd that cost us, 51 years?" They took their ship very close to Gargantua's event horizon, close enough really where minutes there could be decades in normal gravity fields.

[BD80]

The time spent on Mann's planet was not the cause of the additional aging. Both Mann's planet and Brand's boyfriend's planet were far enough from Gargantua to experience no appreciable time dilation. Instead, what caused the additional time skip was the slingshot maneuver around Gargantua Cooper and Brand pulled off after Dr. Mann wrecked their ship. I believe Cooper had a line while they were slingshotting that went something like this: "What'd that cost us, 51 years?" They took their ship very close to Gargantua's event horizon, close enough really where minutes there could be decades in normal gravity fields.

But didn't Cooper approach the event horizon on his trip back which triggered the whole series of episode where he communicates through time with Murph?

[AncientPsychicT]

But didn't Cooper approach the event horizon on his trip back which triggered the whole series of episode where he communicates through time with Murph?

Yup! I think he even went through it. Originally their plan was to only eject the lander with TARS in it to shed weight, but Cooper pulled a fast one on Brand and ejected the lander with himself in it as well. Now, Cooper getting close to the horizon again probably should have decelerated his clock again, but the whole business of Cooper somehow getting out of the black hole alive and in one piece (i.e. the part that made the least sense scientifically) makes me think that canonically Cooper and Brand have aged at the same rate.

[JasonEvans]

Yup! I think he even went through it. Originally their plan was to only eject the lander with TARS in it to shed weight, but Cooper pulled a fast one on Brand and ejected the lander with himself in it as well. Now, Cooper getting close to the horizon again probably should have decelerated his clock again, but the whole business of Cooper somehow getting out of the black hole alive and in one piece (i.e. the part that made the least sense scientifically) makes me think that canonically Cooper and Brand have aged at the same rate.

Yeah, when he was actually inside the black hole, he was moving through time (evidenced by his communication via coded dust and books with his young daughter) so the movie can pretty much put him anywhere it wants in time once he comes out. It put him at a point where he would be perfectly aligned to go see a same-aged Anne Hathaway.

By the way, the moment he examined the dust/books to see that they gave him coordinates of somewhere to go -- confirming that someone was communicating with his daughter -- did anyone else immediately think, "this is him communicating with her from somewhere else in time." Cause I did and it sorta made the ending of the movie feel obvious to me.

That said, I didn't see Matt Damon as a bad guy coming at all until almost the very last moment.

-Jason "there is a great article on how Nolan's version of the film differs from the version Spielberg almost made... I think I prefer the Spielberg script" Evans