StriKe Posted November 10, 2014 Author Posted November 10, 2014 Interstellar explained http://i.imgur.com/MgwWMFU.jpg
hhunaeh Posted November 10, 2014 Posted November 10, 2014 Once again Nolan had a good science fiction concept, but the story used to present the concept wasn't good enough, specifically the way it was presented wasn't good enough. Why try to wow the audience with just a concept, why not give equal importance to the story and the way it is told. Cooper drives to the secret nasa center, with his daughter,to explore, and the next day he is taking off and leaving planet earth? Some things felt hurried and not well directed. Interstellar explained http://i.imgur.com/MgwWMFU.jpg The concept here could have been made incorporated into a better story. But it was still a big improvement on inception.
hhunaeh Posted November 10, 2014 Posted November 10, 2014 I was reminded of this article, published many months back, when i was watching the movie, I Was Promised Flying Cars AS an astronomy-obsessed kid in the 1970s, I subsisted on a steady diet of science fiction. It promised a future filled with technological wonders: talking computers, bionic limbs, flying cars. Forty years later, though much of that future has arrived, it’s still missing what I consider its most important ingredient. Sure, we’ve got the iPhone’s Siri, and the Food and Drug Administration just approved a prosthetic arm controlled by signals from the brain — but where are our smooth-gliding flying machines, our Landspeeders (“Star Wars”) and airborne DeLoreans (“Back to the Future”)? You may think that the absence of such cars speaks to a failure of engineering or distorted incentives in the marketplace. But the humbling truth is that we don’t have these vehicles because we still don’t know, even in principle, how to directly manipulate gravity. Indeed, the cars missing from our skies should serve to remind us that, to a degree rarely appreciated, we have surprisingly poor control over most of nature’s fundamental forces. Physicists have compiled a comprehensive inventory of all the ways things can pull or push on other things, a complete itemization of nature’s forces. They’ve found just four. The first is gravity, the force that keeps your feet on the ground. The second is electromagnetism, which is responsible for anything involving light or the arrangement of atoms. The third is the strong nuclear force, which binds protons and neutrons together inside every atom. And the fourth is the weak nuclear force, which (among other things) helps guide the fusion reactions that power stars. And that’s it. Just four forces, just four ways to make things happen. For all the power of modern science, we are masters of only one of these forces: electromagnetism. Laptops, smartphones, wirelessly connected thermostats, Google Glass — all our high-tech miracles exist because we’ve learned to control the electromagnetic force at the subtlest of levels. We routinely nudge electrons around circuits with the precision of an atomic watchmaker and coerce light to do our bidding with the barest of whispers. When it comes to electromagnetism, we have powers that are almost godlike. With the other three, we’re not even close. Consider nuclear power plants. Yes, they rely on our remarkable knowledge of the strong and weak nuclear forces. But when all is said and done they simply use the heat generated by splitting atomic nuclei to boil water, which then spins turbines, which then generate electricity. That’s not so different from a 19th-century steam engine. Compared with the precision of an electron microscope (or even a grocery-store laser scanner), our handling of nuclear forces is still at the level of slamming rocks together. The same is true of gravity. Obviously, we can make a plane fly by forcing air to flow over a wing, which generates the pressure to lift it off the ground. But the interaction of those air molecules is a result of electromagnetic forces. And the fuel we use to power planes (and blow rockets off the planet) is a result of our understanding of chemistry, which again is a matter of electromagnetism. In other words: All our ways of flying involve a heavy-handed application of the electromagnetic force through fuels and engines. The noise, the danger, the pollution and the inefficiency that accompany the current ways of flying are a testament to our crude approach to defying gravity. The problem is that we don’t really understand gravity at its most fundamental level. Much as a seemingly smooth shoreline is actually composed of quintillions of individual sand grains, every aspect of the world — matter, energy and motion — is actually parceled into infinitesimal building blocks. The four forces that shape the world come in little packages, too. With electromagnetism and the nuclear forces, we understand how the parceled behavior — the quantum mechanics — of these forces works. And the digital culture we’ve built rests directly on our ability to understand and manipulate electromagnetism’s quantum manifestations. But with gravity we remain in the dark. We have no theory of quantum gravity. And without the ability to manipulate the quantum gravitational world, we won’t be gliding around in the silky hush of hover-cars anytime soon. Instead we will have to fly the old-fashioned electromagnetic way. The lesson here is that for all our technological powers, we are still constrained by the deepest structures underlying physical reality. If one force can be easily manipulated at room temperature but another requires the power of a cosmic explosion, then those are facts we just have to work with. So the next time you’re squeezed in the middle seat in row 37 and your bones are vibrating with the whine of the giant engines, remember: The fault is not with the airline, but with the universe.
Desi Cartman Posted November 11, 2014 Posted November 11, 2014 'Big Hero 6' outpaces 'Interstellar' http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/10/showbiz/movies/big-hero-6-interstellar-box-office/ The weekend's battle between two big-budget science fiction adventures wasn't quite as close as expected. Disney Animation's "Big Hero 6" scored a solid win, with the tale of a boy and his inflatable robot ringing up an estimated $56.2 million in ticket sales. Ads for the movie played up the connection to the studio's recent hits, including "Wreck-It Ralph" and especially "Frozen." The Christopher Nolan space epic "Interstellar" couldn't keep pace, bringing in an estimated $50 million -- and most observers think that number is more likely to fall than to rise when final numbers are released Monday afternoon. Matthew McConaughey stars as the pilot of a space expedition which leaves a dying Earth to search for a new home for humanity. rofl
rkt.india Posted November 11, 2014 Posted November 11, 2014 http://ghantaguy.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/interstellar-the-symbology-of-interstellar-and-the-things-you-might-have-missed/
rkt.india Posted November 11, 2014 Posted November 11, 2014 http://www.businessinsider.in/The-Physics-Refresher-You-Need-To-Read-To-Understand-Interstellar/articleshow/45053136.cms
rkt.india Posted November 11, 2014 Posted November 11, 2014 lack holes such as Gargantua are widely accepted as objects in our cosmos. But scarcely more than half a century ago, many physicists bitterly rejected the very existence of black holes. What helped turn the tide was a pivotal science meeting in Dallas in December, 1963, held despite the traumatic aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, according to Charles Misner, an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Maryland, in College Park, who was also my guest at a preview screening of "Interstellar." The architect of the physics in "Interstellar" is one of Misner's long-time colleagues, theoretical physicist Kip Thorne. Thorne was the movie's science consultant and is credited as one of the film's executive producers. His book, "The Science of Interstellar," comes out on Friday, along with the wide theatrical release of the film. But Thorne has been a physicist since the 1960s, before black holes went Hollywood. Thorne and Misner co-authored the 1973 textbook "Gravitation,” with famous physicist John Wheeler, their former graduate school advisor, who is credited with popularizing the term "black hole." http://www.insidescience.org/content/interstellars-black-hole-once-seen-pure-speculation/2256
rkt.india Posted November 11, 2014 Posted November 11, 2014 Neil deGrasse Tyson was pretty cool about it, but there are still plenty of people out there with a scientific bone to pick with Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, all of them, of course, professional astrophysicists and not college sophomores with a Twitter handle and many, many things to prove. But in a new interview with The Daily Beast, Nolan says not only does he not have time for that sort of nitpicking criticism, but that, half the time, his critics aren’t even nitpicking right: “My films are always held to a weirdly high standard for those issues that isn’t applied to everybody else’s films—which I’m fine with. People are always accusing my films of having plot holes, and I’m very aware of the plot holes in my films and very aware of when people spot them, but they generally don’t.” Nolan went on to address criticisms of Interstellar’s depiction of the physics of black holes and time dilation (a couple of which, it should be noted, have since been withdrawn): “That’s completely accurate, so there’s no hole there at all. Those issues are all buttoned-up, and [theoretical physicist and Interstellar executive producer Kip Thorne] has a book on the science of the film about what’s real, and what’s speculation—because much of it is, of course, speculation. There have been a bunch of knee-jerk tweets by people who’ve only seen the film once, but to really take on the science of the film, you’re going to need to sit down with the film for a bit and probably also read Kip’s book. I know where we cheated in the way you have to cheat in movies, and I’ve made Kip aware of those things.” So, in other words, if you didn’t like Interstellar, go see it again and then buy his executive producer’s book. Well played, Nolan. Well played. http://www.avclub.com/article/christopher-nolan-responds-scientific-criticism-in-211676
hhunaeh Posted November 11, 2014 Posted November 11, 2014 nolan has to answer more for his bad story telling. I cannot fault Kip thorne, because as a layman i don't know enough of the science to fault anything. I felt it was good enough for science fiction. I will give one more example, the man who loves his daughter so much leaves her within a few minutes of meeting her to go rescue anne hathway, what was that about ??
rkt.india Posted November 11, 2014 Posted November 11, 2014 nolan has to answer more for his bad story telling. I cannot fault Kip thorne' date=' because as a layman i don't know enough of the science to fault anything. I felt it was good enough for science fiction. I will give one more example, the man who loves his daughter so much leaves her within a few minutes of meeting her to go rescue anne hathway, what was that about ??[/quote'] This thing was established already at the start, in first few scenes. Another things, because of the Blight, world was going to end soon. People were dying. He did not go save Anne Hathway but with Anne Hathway to find a new world for humans where they could live including his own family he loved. Otherwise, he had to see them die due to Blight.
hhunaeh Posted November 11, 2014 Posted November 11, 2014 This thing was established already at the start' date=' in first few scenes. Another things, because of the Blight, world was going to end soon. People were dying. He did not go save Anne Hathway but with Anne Hathway to find a new world for humans where they could live including his own family he loved. Otherwise, he had to see them die due to Blight.[/quote'] The final scene made it look like his daughter was dying. After talking so much about survival and love, the way he left, made it felt a little hurried. His new family, he just scanned them once like us scanning pictures on a website. Hadn't people already left earth with the new science his daughter had helped discover , so why the hurry? Humans already left earth in about 30-40 years it took him to be found but suddenly he has to find a new planet within minutes of meeting his daughter, who looked like she was dying? He has to improve things like this in his story telling. People like me can spot things like this and it can take somthing away from the over all experience, not his science, even if he makes a few mistakes i'll not be able to spot it.
rkt.india Posted November 11, 2014 Posted November 11, 2014 http://www.planetary.org/blogs/mat-kaplan/20141109-interstellar-the-movie.html
Precambrian Posted November 11, 2014 Posted November 11, 2014 The final scene made it look like his daughter was dying. After talking so much about survival and love, the way he left, made it felt a little hurried. His new family, he just scanned them once like us scanning pictures on a website. Hadn't people already left earth with the new science his daughter had helped discover , so why the hurry? Humans already left earth in about 30-40 years it took him to be found but suddenly he has to find a new planet within minutes of meeting his daughter, who looked like she was dying? He has to improve things like this in his story telling. People like me can spot things like this and it can take somthing away from the over all experience, not his science, even if he makes a few mistakes i'll not be able to spot it. :two_thumbs_up::two_thumbs_up: Meeting your descendants for first time, and the immediate thought is to go and rescue Anne. Seems like Nolan has lost it. First was TDKR. Now this is utterly shoddy. :(( And his girl, who loves him so dearly,didn't bother to communicate with her dad till she was in her late 30s or early 40s. Fist fights between the two guys :(( on an extra terrestrial planet - use of cliched 'deranged scientist who's been alone too long" - worst being the scientist, who knows how to fly spacecrafts, not bothering to check whether proper coupling has been made. And convenient dispatching of two co-scientists in utterly frivolous ways to continue with the oldest cliche in such movies, i.e only the main protagonists will survive.. :(( Inexcusable was the rationale to check out a planet with a haphazard orbit around a ****ing black hole. Who the **** would do that? Especially when aware about time dilation and stuff? They could've sampled the other two planets before going down this route. That would make logical sense. Absolutely zero character development. End of the movie, we don't even know anything about anyone apart from McCaughney and his family. Not even Anne Hathaway's character. Reduction of the most crucial aspect,i.e how did they find answers to all establishing the Saturn colony by making offscreen reference about some utterly ridiculous **** about TARS falling through the blackhole and finding solutions to everything. Seriously? Is that a treasure trove out there? Cooper has access to his daughter's bedroom at all points in her life. Ignoring the worrying aspect of him peeping at his own daughter, why couldn't he continue to try and tell her much earlier. He had unfettered access to all seconds of his daughter's life. Jeex, whata waste of time.
rkt.india Posted November 11, 2014 Posted November 11, 2014 http://nofilmschool.com/2014/11/interstellar-discuss 10 Things to Discuss After Seeing 'Interstellar' I'm an unabashed Christopher Nolan fan, and while I've written here about Batman Begins, Inception, The Dark Knight, and my favorite film of Nolan's, The Prestige, this is not a review. We don't do reviews in the traditional sense at No Film School because I don't believe it is a filmmaker's job to criticize the work of a peer — not that Nolan is a peer to any of us, as he's operating at his own level — but I often find criticism to be based on assumptions. When a critic attributes a film's shortcomings to the screenwriter, for example, what if unbeknownst to the critic it was heavily rewritten by the director? A DP may have carried a lot of weight for an insecure director. The producers may have had their film re-cut by the studio after audience testing. An uncredited writer may have been responsible for pivotal changes. An editor may have pieced together a heralded performance in the edit room. If you weren't there, you don't know! Watching a film as a filmmaker is different from watching a film as a critic. We watch the work of other filmmakers to learn from each other, to try to discern what did and didn't work for us (and why), to reflect on our emotional response, and to talk about the story, structure, craft, and meaning of a film. One of the reasons I started this site was to have an elevated conversation about movies — more elevated than what I felt I was able to have with my friends at the time. So let's do that with Interstellar — only if you've already seen it (spoiler alert!). Let's talk about: 1. The first act As many know, Interstellar was originally developed as a film for Steven Spielberg, and the on-the-nose sentiments in the opening act had me worried that the entire film was going to feel like it was done in a "Nolan does Spielberg" voice. Thankfully, as soon as the characters take off, the film does too. Was it just me? Did the film feel especially uneven, and awkwardly paced (possibly just by trying to cover so much ground) in the first act? 2. The (written) dialogue Nolan's films generally take place in a heightened reality where every line feels like it was written, as opposed to approximating how people actually speak (as seen in the work of filmmakers like Cassavetes, or any number of "mumblecore" films). To me the lines are often too perfect, in that I feel like I'm listening to Nolan using his characters as mouthpieces to address the themes of the film directly, as opposed to a film like 2001 where you are left to do much more of the interpretation on your own. Would a studio put up nine figures to make a more ambiguous film like 2001 today? No. This is as close as we get, and frankly, I'm surprised that Warner Brothers and Paramount made this film in its current form... but I'm glad they did. 3. The (unheard?) dialogue I couldn't hear a lot of the dialogue, and reports of this are widespread. Do you buy that it was a creative choice to have the ever-present Hans Zimmer score and/or rumble of spacecraft drown out the dialogue in the mix? Did it detract from your enjoyment of the film? 4. The box office In the New York Times profile of Nolan, Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes of the director: His loyalists have consistently and strenuously defended him against critics who claim that although he may be a masterful technician, he’s not a visionary or true auteur. Regardless of the visionary question, however, it’s pretty much impossible to think of a film that grossed more than a billion dollars and is better than “The Dark Knight” — or, to think of it in the way that Nolan prefers, a better film that was seen, so many times over, by so many people. It’s also hard to see how “Interstellar” won’t make another billion-plus dollars and thus deepen Nolan’s mystique as the one studio director who’s not a studio hack, as the solitary Hollywood icon who somehow does enormous, surprising, profitable things his own way. Interstellar is undeniably a blockbuster, and was certainly budgeted as such (with a reported budget in the $165-200 million range). But it is also a movie for adults, in an industry currently dominated by "four-quadrant" or kid-oriented films. Look no further than this weekend's box office results, where Interstellar came in at #2 in the U.S., behind Disney's Big Hero 6. Of Nolan's own films, this opening ranks seventh, after The Prestige. While Interstellar doesn't have the franchise recognition of Nolan's Batman films, and should never have been expected to surpass his comic book movies, it also does not seem to have as broad an appeal as his more action-oriented film Inception, his other recent original IP. Will this affect Nolan's ability to get future original IPs off the ground, or at least force him to use slightly lower budgets? We'll see. Thankfully, the rest of the world made Interstellar #1. But the New York Times' assertion that it's "hard to see how “Interstellar” won’t make another billion-plus dollars" may prove to be false. Gravity had a larger opening, and a 3D ticket surcharge to boost it, and has topped out at (an amazing) $716 million. 5. The "franchise unto himself" Warner Brothers has to be happy about the international box office for the film, given how much they gave up to get the rights. From The Guardian's profile (also embedded as audio above): The deal that Paramount and Warner Bros negotiated was anomalous to say the least. For the right to distribute Interstellar internationally, Warner Bros traded the rights for two of their franchises, Friday the 13th and South Park, plus “a to-be-determined A-list Warners property”, while its subsidiary, Legendary, agreed to trade Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice for a further piece of the pie... For Warner Bros to hand over the rights to two of its well-known properties, representing money in the bank, for the opportunity to take a spin on an original idea – a film with no sequel potential and few merchandising opportunities, based on the dimly understood recesses of quantum physics – speaks both to the value placed by the studios on Nolan, and also the extent to which he has become a franchise unto himself. 6. The structure (of space-time) 7. The 70mm (and film in general) Following our post about where to see Interstellar on 70mm film, I saw it at the Ziegfeld theater in New York City — the last large single-screen theater in Manhattan — projected in 70mm (Lincoln Square's 70mm IMAX presentation, which I'm sure is superior, was sold out). And guess what? The top third of the screen was out of focus for the first ten minutes. My friend went to tell the projectionist and they eventually fixed it, but this should not happen, especially for a single-screen theater. You had one job. And while I've experienced problems in plenty of theaters featuring digital projection as well, anecdotally I have endured a lot more problems and human error for films projected on actual film. One projection lens error notwithstanding — and I'm sure many will disagree with this — I was not hugely impressed with how the film looked... on film. This is not to say I was not impressed with how the film looked! That's not what I'm saying — what I'm saying is that I don't know that I gained a lot by seeing it on celluloid. This is not to say that 70mm and film in general is not a great format for acquisition, but the last two times I saw a film projected in 70mm I walked away disappointed, per my high expectations (The Master being the other recent release). Maybe I'll have to go to the Lincoln Square screen to see Interstellar a second time, in IMAX, to compare it to Gravity's digital depiction of space — but I do not agree with Quentin Tarantino that digital projection as a travesty, and at this point I would rather see a film on a great 4K digital projector than projected on 35mm film. The problem is, despite a surge in 4K cameras and projectors, most post pipelines and deliverables are still 2K. But that's a problem for another day... 8. The plot holes I haven't read these yet, but eat your heart out if that's your thing. 9. The brothers' approach to co-writing I've often wondered what the working relationship is like among the Brothers Nolan, and this THR interview offers some insights into how Jonathan "Jonah" Nolan works: Jonah, you make movies with your older brother, Christopher Nolan, directing, and your sister-in-law, Emma Thomas, producing. How does that dynamic impact the filmmaking process? NOLAN There's no politics. No bullshit. You just create. Famously in Hollywood, your friends stab you in the chest. If you can trust the people you collaborate with the most, then hopefully you can reach for that higher level with the material. What happens when you get rewritten by your brother? NOLAN It's a conversation. (Laughs.) I grew up with him watching movies, thinking about movies and always understanding movies. I think of film as a director's medium, with no disrespect to the writing aspect of it, but it's f—ing light in a box. He goes on to talk about their "serial" collaboration, which is to say that Jonah is writing the next film while his brother is off directing the current one, and then he hands off a script and Chris revises it on his own — they are not in the same room co-writing. Chris always does the last pass before going into production. 10. The significance of the ending Is the ending that we experience in the film what actually happens, or is it the manifestation of what Matt Damon's character, Dr. Mann, foreshadows earlier: that the last thing a dying person sees is their children? Via CinemaBlend: I think Matthew McConaughey’s character, Cooper, dies after he ejects out of his craft and floats off into outer space. And I think the events that take place after that ejection – including the Morse Code Bookshelf and the "reunion" with Future Murph (Ellen Burstyn) -- are nothing more than manifestations of a death dream… images that are flashing before his eyes as he’s dying, or after he’s already dead. I just made it through a list of "ten things to discuss" without even talking about the themes of the story, the cinematography, or the cast... but really I just wanted to get the conversation started. TL;DR version: what did you think of Interstellar?
rkt.india Posted November 11, 2014 Posted November 11, 2014 http://screenrant.com/interstellar-ending-spoilers-time-travel/ ‘Interstellar’ Ending & Space Travel Explained Interstellar follows humanity’s last-ditch effort to find a new habitable planet – after Earth is ravaged by environmental catastrophe. When former NASA pilot-turned-corn farmer Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) finds the coordinates to a top secret government project, he’s brought in on the secret that the government has secretly been working to send a crew through a recently discovered wormhole in the hopes that humankind can find refuge in a new galaxy. However, in order to help save the remaining people on Earth, Cooper must leave his own family behind – and journey into unknown regions of space. Like many Christopher Nolan films, Insterstellar presents a number of complicated story ideas that may be confusing for certain moviegoers – especially after a first viewing. For that reason, we’re here to help breakdown how space travel works in the movie, as well as explain Interstellar‘s ending. Our discussion is going to be full of SPOILERS for Interstellar, so READ NO FURTHER unless you’re all caught up. You have been warned.
rkt.india Posted November 11, 2014 Posted November 11, 2014 The final scene made it look like his daughter was dying. After talking so much about survival and love' date= the way he left, made it felt a little hurried. His new family, he just scanned them once like us scanning pictures on a website. Hadn't people already left earth with the new science his daughter had helped discover , so why the hurry? Humans already left earth in about 30-40 years it took him to be found but suddenly he has to find a new planet within minutes of meeting his daughter, who looked like she was dying? He has to improve things like this in his story telling. People like me can spot things like this and it can take somthing away from the over all experience, not his science, even if he makes a few mistakes i'll not be able to spot it. Such movies are not as simple or straight forward as you think as this end was left unexplained. There is a whole lot of explanations about this. This whole climax might just be a dream he is seeing while falling and dying.
rkt.india Posted November 11, 2014 Posted November 11, 2014 15 maddening 'Interstellar' plot holes You just saw Interstellar. You have questions. It’s almost impossible to watch Christopher Nolan’s space epic without having one or two. Below are a bunch. About half of these could be considered plot holes. Others are more like plot contrivances, things that seemed slightly maddening despite possibly having some explanation within the story’s layers of exposition. And while there was plenty to love and admire about this wildly ambitious and gorgeous film, it’s also a tale where a man in space suit survived going into a black hole, communicated with himself back in time via a fifth dimensional library, got spit out into our solar system, and was rescued by a passing ship with a couple minutes to spare on his air tank — all because of something about love. So some brow-furrowing is justified. Bonus: We promise not to make you listen to Michael Caine recite “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” again. 1. Wouldn’t it have been way better for Professor Brand (Michael Caine) to just send the super-robots? Sure, we’re told bots can’t improvise. But they also don’t freak out about being stranded, want to check out planets where their lovers are stationed, and make decisions based on getting home in time for their daughter’s birthday. Plus, having people on the ship requires more oxygen, food, water, fuel and ways to watch Survivor videos from home that rip your heart out. 2. There’s a reference to land wars having come and gone, but still: Wouldn’t the starving hoards of desperate humanity kill the farmers and take what was left? Are we really supposed to believe, in a society where the military has collapsed, they’d just slink away in their dusty cars to die? Or are the very least, wouldn’t they raid the corn fields for all the food? Clearly Nolan has never worked in a restaurant — you put suburbanites on a 40-minute wait for a booth and by the end of it they’re ready to claw your eyes out. Even the nice hobbits stole from Farmer Maggot. GET MORE EW: Subscribe to the magazine for only 33¢ an issue! 3. Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) gives his daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy) a soothing explanation of the origin of Murphy’s Law. This isn’t actually true. The term means pretty much what you thought it meant — if anything can go wrong, it will (like, for instance, your dad taking off for 80 years, leaving you behind to eat corn with dust sauce). Speaking of: Cooper shows up randomly at NASA and suddenly he’s piloting the craft? If he’s so ideal for this incredibly important Earth-saving mission that’s just about to happen, and even knows the professor, and is just a day’s drive away, you would think they might have already known he was working the farm down the street and reached out to him. Did NASA not have a pilot before he showed up? 4. Why are the watery vacuum-seal sleep chamber containers so filthy? Did Murph leave the window open on the space station during a dust storm? And did Nolan lift that the paper-and-pencil explanation of wormholes from Event Horizon? 5. Was this the first movie where aliens played a major role, but we did not see any aliens? Or wait: There were no actual aliens, and it was just humanity in the future, right? Either way: Cooper is definitely revealed to be Space Ghost, supplying his daughter (and his younger self) with information. How is that not a cap-P Paradox? 6. So you can receive depressing videos from your loved ones about how you’re a crappy father on the other side of the galaxy and through a wormhole, but nobody could send Earth back any detailed information about the habitability of the prospective planets that mankind is depending on? And would Murph really continue being so angry with her dad for participating in the save-humanity project when she’s spending her life devoted to the exact the same project? 7. How is Romilly (David Gyasi), who waited 23 years for Cooper and Brand (Anne Hathaway) to get back to the ship, not totally insane? He took a couple sleep breaks but clearly spent well over a decade alone. Wouldn’t he be collecting jars of his urine and wearing tissue boxes on his feet by now instead of looking like a dad who’s mildly perturbed at his kids for staying out too late? Why not, after finishing his complex math homework, didn’t he just stay in the sleep chamber and trust Cooper and Brand to eventually wake him up rather than remaining for years roaming around the ship looking out the window, waiting for the headlights of their returning shuttle? Romilly is the most tragic character in this movie. Murph lives a long life and has a ton of distractions to keep her occupied — such as her grouchy brother, Michael Caine, a surprise Topher Grace and a meaningful job — yet we’re supposed to feel really sorry for her. But Romilly waits around for 23 years in space, bored out of his mind, somehow manages to keep his wits together, only to get blown up by sad Matt Damon. From Romilly’s perspective, this movie was a total tragedy. 8. Speaking of which, let’s talk for a minute about Damon’s character Dr. Mann (Get it? Man’s greatest enemy is Mann — the Waterwold planet was a man vs. nature challenge, then the Hoth planet was a man vs. Mann challenge). Did anybody else get the impression if Mann just would have opened with, “Sorry about the pings, I was crazy lonely and going nuts,” the other astronauts would have thought he was super unprofessional, but still let him tag along to the next planet? And how come, with a few scientists, a couple incredible robots and a spaceship flying around, Cooper’s team couldn’t tell anything about the planet’s inhospitable conditions without trekking out to a glacier? And how would seeing that one glacier really tell you anything about the rest of the planet? Like with the videos-from-Earth device, the answer seems to be: Technology in Interstellar only works as much as the plot needs it to work. Which is true in all movies, particularly sci-fi films, but it’s not supposed to feel like it. 9. Ultimately, if aliens/future humans wanted to save us, couldn’t they have simply given the professor the secret equation? Especially if the solution is apparently simple enough to be delivered by Morse Code? Or perhaps give humanity way to grow some food? Rather than orchestrating a spectacular protracted and complication mass starvation family melodrama mind-f—k? Cooper was almost killed a dozen ways before he gets into the tesseract; it just really seems like a lousy plan. 10. We’re somewhat sure a planet, and very sure a ship, and absolutely sure a person, can’t get as close to a black hole as they do in this film. Unless we’re playing by the rules of Disney’s The Black Hole. And if love is a powerful inter-dimensional force, do other emotions power other dimensions? Like is there a sixth dimension fueled by shame? 11. Where is the robot when Cooper is in the library den of the fifth dimension tesseract? Because he’s talking to it but the robot doesn’t appear to be in the same place. And what sort of radio works inside a black hole anyway? I guess the answer is “because the fifth dimension makes everything everything.” And do we buy that brilliant scientist like grown-up-Murph decide that the answers for solving humanity’s crisis all reside in her childhood’s poltergeist bookshelf? 12. What’s on the bottom of the robot’s legs, exactly — are there wheels? Wouldn’t it be scraping along crazily against everything with those big square metal ends? At the very least making a lot more noise? Still, I want one of those robots. The robots were rad. 13. So at the end of the movie, Cooper is 124 years old in Earth-time. Enough time has passed so that humans have created awesome circle-vision space stations with softball fields and are growing fields of crops that they apparently couldn’t grow on Earth. But are we to understand they still haven’t gone to Planet Hathaway yet? And since Brand didn’t do the time-slowing black hole plunge with Cooper, and isn’t on a planet on the edge of that black hole, wouldn’t she have also aged several decades too by the time Cooper reaches her? Did anybody else want McConaughey to paraphrase Dazed and Confused: “That’s what I loves about space travel: The women get older, but I stay the same age”? (Perhaps Cooper, as one theory goes, actually died). 14. Since it’s been established you cannot truly communicate from the settlement planets back to our solar system beyond rudimentary pings, how did Cooper know Brand wouldn’t be living happily on the planet with the other guy — Edmunds. For all Cooper knew, he’s going to show up and be like an awkward third wheel on her date for the rest of his life. Or was he just banking on the other guy to have died by then, but Brand still be alive? An even better question than how does Cooper know all this about Brand: How does his 95-year-old bedridden daughter, who just woke from two-year nap, know all this about Brand? And did anybody expect Edumnds to be played by a surprise appearance by Joseph Gordon-Levitt? Which leads us to…. 15. Cooper spends the entire movie trying to get back to his daughter … and his daughter spends the entire movie yearning to be reunited with him. He spends two minutes with her … and then then they both agree he should split to go have presumed only-guy-on-the-planet sex with Brand? http://popwatch.ew.com/2014/11/08/interstellar-plot-holes/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+entertainmentweekly%2Flatest+%28Entertainment+Weekly%3A++Today%27s+Latest%29
Precambrian Posted November 11, 2014 Posted November 11, 2014 http://popwatch.ew.com/2014/11/08/interstellar-plot-holes/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+entertainmentweekly%2Flatest+%28Entertainment+Weekly%3A++Today%27s+Latest%29 Awesome.
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