Interstellar (in 3 or so paragraphs)

[August1991]

I used to be a sucker for science fiction movies (and stupid/good comedies, foreign movies, historical biographies, romantic comedies). Lately, I've been watching documentaries on Netflix. I have no desire to pull out (as Trudeau Jnr phrased it) 40 bucks or more to watch lousy, moving Photoshopped CGI at the local Bijou. With trepidation, I chose to see Interstellar in Imax for a cheap afternoon. First paragraph: I don't regret the money spent. It's a CGI movie, obviously fake, but this is Hollywood in the 20 teens. It even has a Matt Damon cameo.

For a science fiction movie, this one at least gets the basic idea of "time" right: you can go forward at different speeds but you can't go back. The movie even shows the dimensional concept of a wormhole. But it plays loose with how gravity affects time. (I gotta get one of those spacecrafts of the movie that can survive a black hole... )

In many ways, Interstellar is derivative of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Both movies have crappy dialogue and astronauts with flashing lights in their visors and characters (HAL/Matt Damon) going postal. But wait. Kubrick filmed 2001 in 1967, before any American had walked on the moon or photographed Earth from 400,000 km. The producers of Interstellar have all the benefit of what we know: cinemawise, and satellitewise.

[August1991]

Another paragraph? In 2001, a 1967 Kubrick used Skype to have an actor speak to his (real) daughter. Interstellar uses the same screen/technique for numerous, similar conversations. Kubrick, in all of his films, never portrayed well the "human connection". IMV, Interstellar is a modern Hollywood attempt at a Kubrick movie.

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And still another paragraph? On Youtube, you can find good videos showing Einstein's specific theory of relativity. I would like to see a Hollywood movie that portrays this theory accurately. I think it could be done. (Akiva Goldsman and Ron Howard managed to present game theory - and wrongly Adam Smith - and win an Academy Award.)

Edited November 12, 2014 by August1991

[Michael Hardner]

I had more problems with it than you:

1. The Iowan Trope

I'm pretty sick of the Iowan ideal being thrown into these movies as a short-form to building character. I don't automatically equate corn farmer with being a fine person. So, they started out the movie with a hackneyed setting, which lost my interest early on.

2. Dystopia Dysconnect

So... there's dust... and it's making the air disappear ? And they can afford drones but not MRI machines ? And the New York Yankees are too expensive to exist, but they tour to Iowa ? And textbooks have been written to say the moon landings were fake ? Huh ?

3. Vague MacGuffin

We never really get what they're looking for. Fine, they're looking for a new home for earth but... it doesn't facilitate tension to do that unless you add problems in the middle, ie. running out of fuel, people stealing spaceships, a giant wave... etc. etc. But great movies have a solid MacGuffin.

4. Weird Science

Sending messages via gravity, nonsensical bafflegab, the usual... at one point somebody shows our hero a blurry picture of ... nothing ... and he looks at it knowingly and says "hmmm... is that a wormhole ?"

5. Underwhelming Worlds of non-Wonder

I like getting to see new planets in movies, because it doesn't happen to me that often in real life. So imagine my disappointment in seeing 2 new planets - one being all water... basically a shallow lake... and the other being frozen rocks... and ice clouds that don't drop from the sky for some reason. Dull dull dull.

The movie wasn't terrible but it wasn't worth the 9.2 that IMDB rated it. IMDB, you're dead to me now.

[bush_cheney2004]

.... But wait. Kubrick filmed 2001 in 1967, before any American had walked on the moon or photographed Earth from 400,000 km. The producers of Interstellar have all the benefit of what we know: cinemawise, and satellitewise.

Actually, the Earth was photographed by Lunar Orbiter 1 in August, 1966 from about that distance. Kubrick would have known about this.

[overthere]

The movie wasn't terrible but it wasn't worth the 9.2 that IMDB rated it. IMDB, you're dead to me now.

IMDB gave Birdman an 8.8 rating.

For that you get Michael Keaton baring his heart and soul, which was a far better experience than it sounds. Not many party tricks, but a unique, uneven, interesting two hours.

[Black Dog]

Christopher Nolan is a hack. Can't shoot action sequences. His dialogue is terrible. And, worst of all, his storytelling is entirely dependent on reams and reams of exposition. Most overrated guy in cinema.

Edited November 12, 2014 by Black Dog

[Michael Hardner]

Most overrated guy in cinema.

Really. Maybe the exposition is related to the complexity of the stories he puts together. I liked Inception and Memento.

[cybercoma]

Christopher Nolan is a hack. Can't shoot action sequences. His dialogue is terrible. And, worst of all, his storytelling is entirely dependent on reams and reams of exposition. Most overrated guy in cinema.

I think that honour should go to Michael Bay, J. J. Abrams, or Steven Spielberg first.

[August1991]

Christopher Nolan is a hack. Can't shoot action sequences. His dialogue is terrible. And, worst of all, his storytelling is entirely dependent on reams and reams of exposition. Most overrated guy in cinema.

I don't really know this guy, Nolan. It seems to me that Nolan's a CGI guy - attentive to image.

Kubrick was also tone-deaf for dialogue - but Kubrick was also very attentive to the image on the screen.

IMV, the difference between Kubrick and Nolan? Kubrick was working 50 years ago.

Edited November 14, 2014 by August1991

[Michael Hardner]

Memento was Nolan's and it was excellent. Also, I feel like Nolan - if he can't exactly get good dialogue from his scenes - at least has a trust in good actors. In The Dark Night, we got one of the all-time best villain performances from Heath Ledger.

But this too was something Kubrick did.

[Michael Hardner]

To add: Kubrick was sometimes seen as a cold, technical film maker but he would give Jack Nicholson the space to create another great screen villain in The Shining.

[Black Dog]

I think that honour should go to Michael Bay, J. J. Abrams, or Steven Spielberg first.

Spielberg has made some great movies, he's earned his laurels. No one rates Michael Bay. And Abrams is actually a good comparable for Nolan in terms of hackitude, but Nolan has somehow convinced people he has stuff to say about Important Themes, whereas Abrams is unabashedly all about the popcorn.

Really. Maybe the exposition is related to the complexity of the stories he puts together. I liked Inception and Memento.

There's a cardinal rule of any writing that goes "show, don't tell". That's especially true in a visual medium like film. Nolan has never heard this rule.

[cybercoma]

Spielberg has made some great movies, he's earned his laurels.

He also made Crystal Skull and Lost World.

[Black Dog]

He also made Crystal Skull and Lost World.

He's directed more than 50 films, there's bound to be some turkeys.

Speaking of Abrams, his Spielberg homage Super 8 is better than anything Nolan has ever done. Though to be fair I haven't seen Nolan's Insomnia, but have heard good things, and I did like The Prestige (both of which were based on preexisting source material).

[dre]

I found the movie worth watching, but it got really stupid especially near the end. This sappy bullshit about love transcending dimensions made me want to puke.

And the whole ending sucked... After buddy went into the place with all his daughters bedrooms in different times and influenced his daughters actions the premise of what had happened was clear, and the protagonist should have been martyred, and died floating there in space. The movie was over at that point. Instead everything had to be just perfect... a spaceship found the guy floating in space (cough cough stupid stupid), and we were forced to sit through the sappy, stupid, and boring re-introduction to his daughter. That crap seemed to take hours. Then to add insult to injury and make things even MORE stupid, we had to sit through him casually stealing a spaceship (cough cough stupid stupid) and flying back to bang whats-her-name on that other planet.

Neat idea... and Im a sucker for sci-fi movies.

Ill give it a 6 out of 10, but I would have given it a 7.5 if the credits had rolled onto the screen after whatever-his-name-was finished communicating with his daughter in the "different daughters bedrooms at different times" thingy. Everything that followed was tripe.

[overthere]

Saw it last night, it was not bad though too long. I'd give it a solid 7.

Nolan has made some turkeys, Insomnia was a snoozer.

But he has done some competent and interesting work. I'd put Interstellar in that 'interesting' group. Memento, both Dark Knight movies and Inception were all decent films.

[sharkman]

Yeah, I'd give it a solid 7 to 7.5. The story was rushed along until they got into space and the ending kept going and going but still a good yarn.

[Michael Hardner]

Ill give it a 6 out of 10, but I would have given it a 7.5 if the credits had rolled onto the screen after whatever-his-name-was finished communicating with his daughter in the "different daughters bedrooms at different times" thingy. Everything that followed was tripe.

There's a list on facebook about writing holes in the film. My favourite one pointed out that he spent the whole film trying to get back to his daughter, then spent 2 minutes with her before going out to have a beer, also presumably ignoring a room full of grandkids and great grandkids...

[sharkman]

It would have been impossible to introduce gramps, who's younger than some of the grandkids, plus he was probably under some kind of non disclosure agreement. For the people that want to find them, there will always be something to find, but such discussions and arguments puzzle me. After all, it's a movie, not real. Two people arguing in Klingon about the moons of Vulcan or something, it just strikes me as people with too much time on their hands.

[Michael Hardner]

No, it's actually really fun and a way to recoup some time lost in a lousy movie. "The Grey" with Liam Neeson was awful but reading the IMDB thread ripping the film was worth the two hours I lost watching it.

[sharkman]

I can picture you with Vulcan ears on!

[Bonam]

Just watched it. I enjoyed it a lot. In my opinion, the best sci fi movie of the last several years.

I disagree with most of the criticisms here.

MH:

2. The nature of the blight was briefly explained, moreover it wasn't the point of the movie so didn't need an in depth treatment. The drone had been flying around for over 10 years, it said in the movie, leftover from some war or something. The rewriting of the textbooks shows the inward nature of the politics/culture of the time and the propaganda that is put out, and provides an illustration of why the space program has to exist in secret.

3. There didn't seem to be a lack of tension here, and the need to find a new home for humanity was pretty clear. Not sure the point of this comment really?

4. Sending messages via gravity is not nonsensical. Gravitational waves could potentially be used to transmit information. Sending information self-consistently back in time is also not strictly ruled out by our present understanding of physics. You can't change the past, but the past could have "always happened that way" with information that came from the future. This is called a "closed timelike curve". No CTCs have been observed in nature, nor is there any theoretical understanding of how a CTC could be made... but the CTC itself is a valid solution of the equations of general relativity, and therefore could theoretically exist without violating the laws of nature.

Dre:

1. The sappy stuff about love transcending dimensions was indeed sappy... hence why Cooper rejected it out of hand when Brandt made that argument, and went to the other planet.

2. Showing his daughter super aged was necessary to fully illustrate the "twin paradox", which is great because it is perhaps the only relatively mainstream movie to try to show these types of relativistic concepts to a mass audience.

Other thoughts (both pro and con):

- This is the only movie to have ever shown a black hole as physicists actually think it might look to an outside observer, complete with all the predicted gravitational lensing phenomena. And of course it looks way cooler than all the fake black holes shown in other sci fi before.

- The planet really close to the black hole (where it was 7 years of Earth time per 1 hour on the planet) is unrealistic... to have that much time dilation, it would have to be really really close to the event horizon, where not only would it be unlikely to be able to have a stable orbit, but the hard radiation from the accretion disk would likely make any life (certainly humans walking around) impossible, not to mention the impossibility of it having a temperature allowing for liquid water or a breathable atmosphere. No one in their right mind would investigate a planet on the edge of a giant black hole's event horizon for potential human colonization. That being said, it's understandable as a plot device to try to add time pressure and generate a sense of loss.

- The whole realization that "they is actually us" made towards the end of the movie was cool, I thought.

- The sequence inside the black hole with the bookshelves was kinda lame, but I have a hard time imagining how they could have represented what they were trying to get across better.

Edited December 2, 2014 by Bonam

[Boges]

So if humans created the Black Hole communication device, they would have also created the wormhole. These future humans must be like Gods.

Could, what many see as Supernatural or a God, just be humans in the future?

Kind of speaks to the whole chicken or the egg paradox of the Universe as we know it it.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Boges