This is my review of Christopher Nolan's Interstellar.
It was directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, and Michael Caine, while Nolan produced the film with his wife Emma Thomas (Syncopy) and Lynda Obst Productions. Caltech theoretical physicist Kip Thorne executive produced and was the scientific consultant, which is important to know, since the actual and theoretical sciences thrown forth in the story are factual. Sometimes a little confusing, but real.
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Interstellar opens to a bleak and dreary world. A world where crops around the world are dying and humanity is living on or in a dust bowl. It's a dark and bleak prophecy for our future, one that Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is determined to fix or find a way to save, inspired by his love for his family, his children and the future of all. (Nolan never says it out loud in the story, but is this some vision of our future from global warming?)
A Professor Brand (Caine) has been working on a secret NASA program that is looking for a planet to relocate humanity to. But to get to one like Earth, they need to use a black hole to transport to distances that would otherwise be unreachable. They had already sent manned missions through the black hole, but communication is iffy from the other side. So any mission out there is dependent on guesses on our side.
Meanwhile, Cooper's daughter Murph, has a poltergeist in her bedroom, leaving her messages. (More on that shark alert later.)
Cooper goes on the mission with a few other astronauts looking for the right planet for humanity. The astronauts are accompanied by two fairly cool robots named TARS and CASE. Also on the trip they have 'Plan B' with them, 5,000 frozen embryos to provide for humanity's survival.
To me, TARS is like R2-D2. He's the co-pilot, the hiking partner, the savior when needed. He looks extremely boring and limited, but watching this bot in action and how versatile it really is, is a pleasurable surprise. He's pretty funny at times too.
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I love how they deal with the premise of time during their rescue journey. At the speeds that they experience, the theory of relativity kicks in, meaning the faster you travel the slower your time moves, compared to home back on Earth.
In one example, they land on a planet that is so close to a singularity its orbit spins at such incredible speeds that one hour on the planet's surface equaled seven years on Earth.
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To be honest the first and second act are incredibly compelling and the first half of act three is the same, but the second half of the third act jumps the shark for us and almost pulled us out of the momentum of how gripping the story was.
It's like Christopher Nolan creates one hell of a story, then suddenly realizes, "Oh shit, now what do I do with this plot?" Remember Inception and that spinning top ending? Or that last half of act three of The Dark Knight Rises, where Batman blows up but does he? Yea, well, the ending of Interstellar got weird too and very distracting.
SO distracting that I can only give Interstellar a dramatic 7 (out of 10).
It's still a fantastic film and story mostly, and I think some will find it pretty compelling. Interstellar is a great movie with another mysterious and inexplicable Nolan ending.
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For me to explain the story and my movie review rating, SPOILERS need to exist from here on out...
So at some point it is mentioned that "someone" put the singularity or black hole out there for them to travel through.
Murph's "poltergeist," through the years, seemed to spell out the word "stay," but we don't know why. There is also a gravitational anomaly in her room that helped them find the secret NASA headquarters.
So When Cooper and Brand (Hathaway) are returning, I am not sure if Brand (Hathaway) chose to stay behind or got flung back out to the new universe, but she ends up far out there, on a new planet, all by herself.
They also drop one of the robots down the black hole in the hopes he can get the scientific observations that are impossible to detect if one is outside the event.
Then Cooper finds himself needing to eject from his flight capsule while he's coming through the black hole.
HERE COMES THE SHARK JUMPING
Once Cooper ejects, he finds himself falling through some sort of "Escher staircase" looking structure, and finds himself in his house, behind his daughter, murph's, bookcase in her bedroom, watching her through the wall.
He starts hearing TARS telling him he's discovered what they need to know to help humanity.
TARS: They did not built it to change the past.
Cooper: Say that again?
TARS: The beings did not built this to change the past.
Cooper: They did not change anything! All this while I thought they chose me. They chose her. For me to send her the message.
TARS: I don't understand. Then who built it?
Cooper: We built it. We sent ourselves here.
TARS: People couldn't build this.
Cooper: No, not people from our time.
He then starts pushing books out of her bookcase. Through the years of her life, he's there, acting the part of her "poltergeist."
Yep... somehow he goes back in time and communicates the critical and necessary communication to his daughter, so in her adult life, she finds the answers to help humanity escape their ill-fated planet.
He later wakes up in a space station hospital where humanity moved to, to save themselves. He then steals a spaceship to go find Brand, who is still on the other side of the black hole. We see her living on that last planet they never checked out.
OR
As some folks have suggested, Cooper died when he ejected from his ship while in the worm hole and this delusion was what he saw while dying or after he was dead. There was a conversation earlier in the movie where it's noted that when a man dies, the last thing he will see are his kids. And thus, as he "died," he saw his daughter.
Though this does not fully explain how she did receive her morse code message from her bookcase through the years, while he did seemingly deliver these messages.
My conclusion is that Nolan does not know how to finish a complicated story, but that may not be a bad thing, because he likes his 'prestige' endings. (Yes, his Prestige film had a fantastic ending. But it had an ending.)
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Interstellar opens to a bleak and dreary world. A world where crops around the world are dying and humanity is living on or in a dust bowl. It's a dark and bleak prophecy for our future, one that Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is determined to fix or find a way to save, inspired by his love for his family, his children and the future of all. (Nolan never says it out loud in the story, but is this some vision of our future from global warming?)
A Professor Brand (Caine) has been working on a secret NASA program that is looking for a planet to relocate humanity to. But to get to one like Earth, they need to use a black hole to transport to distances that would otherwise be unreachable. They had already sent manned missions through the black hole, but communication is iffy from the other side. So any mission out there is dependent on guesses on our side.
Meanwhile, Cooper's daughter Murph, has a poltergeist in her bedroom, leaving her messages. (More on that shark alert later.)
Cooper goes on the mission with a few other astronauts looking for the right planet for humanity. The astronauts are accompanied by two fairly cool robots named TARS and CASE. Also on the trip they have 'Plan B' with them, 5,000 frozen embryos to provide for humanity's survival.
-
I love how they deal with the premise of time during their rescue journey. At the speeds that they experience, the theory of relativity kicks in, meaning the faster you travel the slower your time moves, compared to home back on Earth.
In one example, they land on a planet that is so close to a singularity its orbit spins at such incredible speeds that one hour on the planet's surface equaled seven years on Earth.
-
To be honest the first and second act are incredibly compelling and the first half of act three is the same, but the second half of the third act jumps the shark for us and almost pulled us out of the momentum of how gripping the story was.
It's like Christopher Nolan creates one hell of a story, then suddenly realizes, "Oh shit, now what do I do with this plot?" Remember Inception and that spinning top ending? Or that last half of act three of The Dark Knight Rises, where Batman blows up but does he? Yea, well, the ending of Interstellar got weird too and very distracting.
SO distracting that I can only give Interstellar a dramatic 7 (out of 10).
It's still a fantastic film and story mostly, and I think some will find it pretty compelling. Interstellar is a great movie with another mysterious and inexplicable Nolan ending.
-
For me to explain the story and my movie review rating, SPOILERS need to exist from here on out...
So at some point it is mentioned that "someone" put the singularity or black hole out there for them to travel through.
Murph's "poltergeist," through the years, seemed to spell out the word "stay," but we don't know why. There is also a gravitational anomaly in her room that helped them find the secret NASA headquarters.
So When Cooper and Brand (Hathaway) are returning, I am not sure if Brand (Hathaway) chose to stay behind or got flung back out to the new universe, but she ends up far out there, on a new planet, all by herself.
They also drop one of the robots down the black hole in the hopes he can get the scientific observations that are impossible to detect if one is outside the event.
Then Cooper finds himself needing to eject from his flight capsule while he's coming through the black hole.
HERE COMES THE SHARK JUMPING
Once Cooper ejects, he finds himself falling through some sort of "Escher staircase" looking structure, and finds himself in his house, behind his daughter, murph's, bookcase in her bedroom, watching her through the wall.
He starts hearing TARS telling him he's discovered what they need to know to help humanity.
TARS: They did not built it to change the past.
Cooper: Say that again?
TARS: The beings did not built this to change the past.
Cooper: They did not change anything! All this while I thought they chose me. They chose her. For me to send her the message.
TARS: I don't understand. Then who built it?
Cooper: We built it. We sent ourselves here.
TARS: People couldn't build this.
Cooper: No, not people from our time.
He then starts pushing books out of her bookcase. Through the years of her life, he's there, acting the part of her "poltergeist."
Yep... somehow he goes back in time and communicates the critical and necessary communication to his daughter, so in her adult life, she finds the answers to help humanity escape their ill-fated planet.
He later wakes up in a space station hospital where humanity moved to, to save themselves. He then steals a spaceship to go find Brand, who is still on the other side of the black hole. We see her living on that last planet they never checked out.
OR
As some folks have suggested, Cooper died when he ejected from his ship while in the worm hole and this delusion was what he saw while dying or after he was dead. There was a conversation earlier in the movie where it's noted that when a man dies, the last thing he will see are his kids. And thus, as he "died," he saw his daughter.
Though this does not fully explain how she did receive her morse code message from her bookcase through the years, while he did seemingly deliver these messages.
My conclusion is that Nolan does not know how to finish a complicated story, but that may not be a bad thing, because he likes his 'prestige' endings. (Yes, his Prestige film had a fantastic ending. But it had an ending.)
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