Interstellar SPOILERS ALLOWED Discussion thread

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Oh i agree. Just would not have hurt him to put in a few more long shots. Nolan never had the strongest peripheral as a director and it shows up here more then his other films, apary from maybe Batman Begins.

[karelm 2,911]

Saw it for the second time and have some questions, observations.

Not a nit, just an observation. Coop and his father and law are seen drinking beer on the porch. But since grains has died out, and only corn is growing, it must be a different brew then what we think of as beer right?

Murph solve the problem of gravity, enabling people to leave earth and live on space stations, right? But the movie never actually addresses how they are going to feed those people. Getting away from the dust is one thing. But the blight was killing most types of eatable vegetation. I suppose samples that were not infected were preserved for possible future us, so it's not a plot error. Just interesting that the film doesnt mention this.

While the film claims scientific accuracy, it does take a lot of apparent liberties when it comes to either distances, or the time it takes to traverse distances. The Endurance crew spend 2 years in hibernation on their way to Saturn, which is fine. But after they passed the wormhole there is no mention of them ever going into hibernation again, apart from Rom occasionally, when he wait onboard Endurance for 23 years while the rest are on Miller's planet. Remember, space is big, really big. They have to travel from the location of the wormhole, to Miller's planet and then to Mann's planet on a craft with no FTL capability. The shortest distance from Earth to Mars is 100 days, and those planets are really close together. The problem of distance or the time it takes to travel isnt really addressed that much once they pass the worm hole. So either the distances were much smaller than in our solar system, or long periods are omitted from the film, with the crew in hibernation even though that wasn't shown or mentioned.

That's not really so bad, but it does get a problem near the end of the film.

Mann blows the airlock of Endurance, sending it into a spin and it's caught by the gravitational pull of Mann's world. Fine. Cooper manages to dock his ship and pull Endurance away from the planet's pull. However one of the robots tell Coop pretty much while they are still flying away from Mann's world that Endurance is being caught by the gravitational pull of Gargantua. So Endurance goes from being pulled one way to being pulled another in seemingly no time or distance at all.

This begs the question. How far away are the planet and Gargantua? Now Gargantua is described as a large black hole. And it's powerfull enough to suck in all matter, even light. For Mann's worlds, or Miller's world to be in a stable orbit of Gargantua, they would have to be quite some distance from it. Yet Endurance are pulled in by its gravity and Cooper reached it's even horizon in what seems like a very short time in the film. Hours maybe.

Interstellar's scientific accuracy just doesnt seem to hold true when it comes to traversed distances. and travel times.

Once the tesseract closes future humans send Cooper back through the wormhole where he encounters Endurance from earlier in the film and touched Brand. How does this work? Does this mean the future humans are able to send people back through time? If so, why does Cooper return near Saturn 124 years after he was born? Does time not exist in the wormhole and are all the events taking place at the same instance? If so then why didnt we see any of the 12 Lazarus mission ships that also passed though?

Early in the film a drone gets caught off course and end up near Coops land. Some combine harvesters are thrown off course for some reason. This points to possible alien or ghost influences early on in the movie. But it's never made clear what it is. Possible a side effect from Coopers meddling with gravity? We see that in the tesseract he only has access to Murphs bedroom, so it's not something that he was doing on purpose.

KK and TGP talked about how it was possible for Cooper to get to the event horizon because of the large, slow spinning nature of Gargantua. But his ship is actually torn to shreds to its force while he ejects and survives unscathed. No way a space suit can take the punishment a spacecraft can. So it would have had to have been the future humans.

Don't overthink it. Just accept it as genius. Seriously, I liked your beer comment.

So Cooper uses code in the Tesseract to try to prevent himself from leaving earth. He sent a signal stay. Why did he then give himself the coordinates to find NASA? Wouldn't have been better to just leave that part out?

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

Because he realizes that he can't change the past, nor is he meant to.

[karelm 2,911]

I'm genuinely astonished that no other films have the power to spark this level of ANALysis. You'd think Nolan invented the fucking plot hole.

Barring Inception I've never encountered a single stumbling block in his films like people are with this one.

You don't understand why an unchecked director presents pastiche as art and science invites criticism?

I finished reading making of book. It's not terribly detailed, as i hoped, but still good.

What's interesting, when they built the farm house, it actually was.... a house. With all interiors and stuff.

Not a lot of CGI, a lot of big scaled model work. They didn't use any blue/green screen. Instead, they decided to go with front projections. There is a cool picture of Coop levitating around Saturn and there was actually a giant Saturn projected behind him. And if you see something behind in the cockpit windows, then it was exactly what actors saw on set.

The spaceship sets had no fake/removable walls, so they had to cram in the crew in the actual spaceship. The endurance was constructed in the same way you see in the film. Which means it was essentially the ring with compartments that they would rotate if needed. And they were also shaking and other stuff like that - to make it more real for actors.

Robots were mostly pupeteered, not a lot of CGI.

Overall, they weren't going for the grand vistas sort of s-f. They wanted us to feel as if we were actually on board of those vessels. So the mundane look was part of that.

Cool stuff.

Karol

Yes, that is cool and deserving of praise. The effects and visuals are great.

Because he realizes that he can't change the past, nor is he meant to.

But he was the cause of the past he can't change, no?

Because he realizes that he can't change the past, nor is he meant to.

But he was the cause of the past he can't change, no?

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

Despite having access to simultaneous time, anything he does is going to be consistent with the events that led him there. It's not coincidence, it's not choice. It's just what happens. The universe abhors a paradox. It just can't happen. Same principles as Lost's time travel.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Grey is right. Everything that happens in the film up till the moment the tesseract dissolves is predetermined.

The morse code message of STAY was sent by Coop before he realized why he was put in the tesseract in the first place. The STAY message is ignored because if it wasn't all the event in the movie affer that would be impossible and Coop would never have been able to send the message in the first place.

[crocodile 7,999]

Bought IMAX tickets for yet another showing. Since I'm in London in about three weeks (11th of Dec), it might be a good chance to catch a performance at biggest screen in the UK (BFI IMAX). It's this just after noon, then Desplat/LSO concert in the evening, then midnight showing of The Hobbit. It's going to be a loooooooong day.

Karol

[King Mark 3,630]

Alright, I had time to think what's wrong with this movie

As soon as he reaches the black hole where time doesn't exist and he alters the future by warning her daughter in the past, while the while "future humans" have already created the place he's in ,it just becomes another "time travel" movie that involves some kind of looped action in various timelines with flimsy logic supporting it. I don't need to read 14 pages of this thread of people trying to explain it.

At least when something like that happens in Star Trek ,Harry Potter or X-Men , it's not something meant to be looked at too closely with thorical physics theories or taken at face value like Nolan asks you to.

[Jay 37,336]

I hear you on the loop thing:

Not really a fan of those time travel paradoxes where a character learns something from a time traveler, and that time traveler originally learned it that way, so it's a loop.

I agree. That was probably the least interesting part, and I saw it coming for miles.

It's not a loop!

Coop knows the coordinates to tap out because he's been there. He learned how to get there from Murph writing down the coordinates. Murph wrote them down because Coop tapped them out. It's a loop.

Yeah but not a paradoxical loop. Thought that's what you were implying.

[King Mark 3,630]

when the hell does this movie happen in the future. They have the exact same technology as today, except they have super advanced robots and Star Wars style spacecrafts

I assume it's somekind of post apocalyptic Fallout style world

how many people have they fitted on the space station? The entire world, the population of the mid-west US?

[Jay 37,336]

It wasn't clear to me what % of the earth was on that space station at the end either

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Supposedly there were many other space stations. old Murph was traveling from another one to the one Coop was on when she heard he returned.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Does it really matter? It's about saving the species, not everyone. Hence Plan B. And just because this film has a lot of clout for being fairly accurate scientifically, everyone acts like the whole damn thing is supposed to be real and able to happen. Nolan doesn't want you to accept a human surviving a black hole as scientific fact. It's called science fiction.

[KK 3,307]

Yeah. Some of the "criticisms" I've read make me wonder if people think Interstellar is a documentary or something...

[RedBard 71]

It wasn't clear to me what % of the earth was on that space station at the end either

I don't think any of it was. It was just elements of Earth reconstructed (including atmosphere, which seems the most difficult challenge of the entire project) for the purpose of sustaining life on a colossal generational ship.

[BloodBoal 7,538]

I think LeBlanc meant "what % of earth population was on that space station".

[Jay 37,336]

Yup.

[RedBard 71]

I think LeBlanc meant "what % of earth population was on that space station".

Oh.

You didn't literally mean "earth." Gotcha.

My guess is, it would have to be at least 50 different families (for minimal genetic diversity).

And who knows? That could've been one vessel in an entire fleet of generational ships.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

*cough* I believe what Jason means is that Interstellar's message has always been one of peace.

[RedBard 71]

*cough* I believe what Jason means is that Interstellar's message has always been one of peace.

Are you sure it wasn't one of discovery? We all watched the same Interstellar, right?

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

In any case, we know where leaving the Earth is leading. The annihilation of our culture!

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Break this information down succinctly...Earth has roughly 50 years of life left.

[BloodBoal 7,538]

Let them die!

[RedBard 71]

Break this information down succinctly...Earth has roughly 50 years of life left.

Only if the greedy idiots are running everything.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives.

[BloodBoal 7,538]

Don't tell me they don't use money in Interstellar.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

That much is certain!

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[RedBard 71]

That's right, BloodBoal.

Now live long and prosper, dammit!

[King Mark 3,630]

I think LeBlanc meant "what % of earth population was on that space station".

Oh.

You didn't literally mean "earth." Gotcha.

My guess is, it would have to be at least 50 different families (for minimal genetic diversity).

And who knows? That could've been one vessel in an entire fleet of generational ships.

whaat? Plan A was about saving EVERYONE and Plan B was about planting eggs. If you bring only select families and leave everyone else to die both plans are exactly the same and they go through all the crap in the film for nothing

but those things looked sparsely populated at the end with most space occupied by crops

[RedBard 71]

"Planting eggs"?

And I hypothesized that that wasn't the only generational ship at the end of the movie.

[King Mark 3,630]

well you know what I mean

Again, "I hypothesized" isn't good enough for this film

Plan B was the strictly "saving the species" plan and the professor was viewed as an evil mass murderer at the end

[RedBard 71]

well you know what I mean

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

[King Mark 3,630]

Anyways, now the movie only makes sense if the only people left on earth were those farmers and everyone from other countries died before the movie started (from the crop plague thing)

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

Nope.

[RedBard 71]

Nope.

Is there a reason for your answer? Or is that it?

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

That's it.

[RedBard 71]

Aww...

[King Mark 3,630]

He's still mad at my LOtR comments

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

I'm not mad at anything. Disappointed, yes.

Doesn't change the fact that you're wrong. Don't worry, Stefan will be along to defend you shortly.

[RedBard 71]

I just might be a fool for asking and getting into the midst of this, but...

what exactly did king mark say in the LOTR comments that is wrong and was therefore met with disappointment?

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

This is the culmination of about a year of various BS from various people, not just the latest dumbfuckery.

[Wojo 2,453]

TGP, I apologize for ever being a dumbfuck to you.

[BloodBoal 7,538]

You've been here for more than a year, already? Wow. Time flies.

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

TGP, I apologize for ever being a dumbfuck to you.

As far as I know, you've never been anything but pleasant, to me, anyway.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Really the only bullshit that these Interstellar threads have created is from you. So far reactions on both the film and score have been overwelmingly positive. Yet as a prissy, entitled fanboy you keep defending the film against the slightest critique anyone might have. And usually in a way that involved insulting the person you respond too.

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

You'll notice I only started doing that jokingly after you caricatured me as doing so. But you're too self-righteous to actually notice. And that is genuine.

[RedBard 71]

What is it here with people and pissing contests? What's the attraction?

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

Human nature apparently.