I disagree with that statement completely. I think there was a ton to talk about with the story, I'm still trying to take it all in because there was a lot going on. I don't think the fact that the sounds were amazing in the theater or the fact that the visuals were great detracts from anything.

11/15/2014 10:32:59 PM

I thought the implication was that a significant amount of earths resources were going into the space program, it was just in secret.

He was still paying taxes but there was no military, so they had to be spending it on something.

11/16/2014 12:38:10 AM

Quote :

"Yeah the part when they left the water planet was a huge scientific fallacy to me but I chalk that up to my engineering background, I doubt most people would have thought much about it. They needed a three stage launch vehicle to get that capsule into orbit around Earth but it was able to leave the water planet unassisted from a horizontal launch vector even though the gravity was like 1.6G. Outside of that they were pretty good with the science. As for having the cryogenic technology, I guess it is feasible to say that the technology was created before the agricultural issues started."

Sadly this was one of things I instantly thought about. My rationalization was they used the conventional rocket to leave Earth to save fuel for the mission, but yeah that was a definitely a part where they took a lot of liberty. None the less it was a minor point in the context of the story, and of course it is a work of fiction after all.

11/16/2014 10:37:25 PM

I just assumed the gravity equation they had been working on lead to some tech breakthrough that made it possible, but didn't allow for full gravity control.

11/16/2014 11:33:26 PM

After listening to the soundtrack online it has gown on me. In the theaters it was so loud I couldn't hear anything (Crossroads sucks) but as usual Hans Zimmer does great.

11/17/2014 12:50:47 AM

I thought the soundtrack was great. The water planet also reminded me of the following exchange from Futurama when they're at the bottom of the ocean:
Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Dear Lord! That's over 150 atmospheres of pressure!
Fry: How many atmospheres can the ship withstand?
Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Well, it's a space ship, so I'd say anywhere between zero and one.

11/17/2014 12:56:50 AM

There's really no effective way of exploring space without some exotic technologies. Hopefully those particle physicists can figure out something in my lifetime...

[Edited on November 17, 2014 at 2:01 AM. Reason : ]

11/17/2014 2:01:11 AM

Saw it last night. Holy shit the 70mm scenes on the square (4:3?) Imax screen were intense. I'd go see it again just for those scenes.

11/18/2014 8:12:35 AM

gonna go see it tomorrow night.... but in German because the Germans dub films here. Not that my German isn't awesome or anything , but films and music can be difficult for anybody the first go around unless they are practically native-ish fluent.


[Edited on November 18, 2014 at 9:24 AM. Reason : h]

11/18/2014 9:23:01 AM

I really liked everything up until the black hole/fifth dimension stuff... thought that was all a little hokey. young Murph was a pretty bad actor. worth seeing in a theater though.

11/18/2014 12:49:38 PM

Just got back. My immediate reaction is that since I was able to understand that 5th dimension/ending dialogue between Cooper and TARS (in German, mind you), then that means that they really spelled the ending out to the point of exposition. I was expecting more from Nolan, who has shown us before how well he can end movies with evocative imagery alone.

The only part of the dialogue that I did not understand was Mann's sabotage on the ice plant. So, what exactly was his reason to that? To take control of Plan B and restart humanity?

I really liked the story line with Cooper becoming the ghost. And, I did like the Damon scene/cameo. There was another cameo in the movie that I didn't expect. I like how he worked in those roles, as it kind of reminds me of how flawlessly it was done in True Romance.

I just wish that they had cut back on the dialogue in the end, especially TARS. It was just too much spoon fed exposition.

[Edited on November 19, 2014 at 6:10 PM. Reason : x]

11/19/2014 6:08:45 PM

^ from what I remember, and I could be completely wrong, he sent the false signals so that he would have a chance to get picked up so that he could survive. He knew that his planet was not a viable option as soon as he touched down but he did not want to just die there.

11/19/2014 6:23:26 PM

He claimed that he made it for a few years before giving into the temptation of hitting the button.

11/19/2014 9:30:03 PM

[Spoilers]





Check out this "prequel" comic, "Absolute Zero", for more information on what Mann's landing/expedition was like:
https://imgur.com/a/HnumF

Quote :

"The only part of the dialogue that I did not understand was Mann's sabotage on the ice plant. So, what exactly was his reason to that? To take control of Plan B and restart humanity? "

I think basically he was a blunt thematic metaphor to show that men -- even the best of "Mann" -- with their back against the wall, will become selfish versus altruistic to survive.

Of course, once the others showed up he claimed he was Plan B all the way, if they had just enough fuel/resources to go to the most viable planet and chose his, his sabotage of the data would have completely fucked Plan B had that been the case.

There's no way around his hypocrisy and selfishness, but he justified it all way is his "you wouldn't get it (self-preservation) because you've never been that close to dying" speech before going all violent on Cooper. At the time I don't think we (the audience) knew that he had faked the data yet.

[Edited on November 20, 2014 at 8:20 AM. Reason : .]

11/20/2014 8:17:18 AM

OMG i loved this movie.

some obvious stretching of our scientific understanding, and some "lets sacrifice realism for storytelling" but easily overlooked.

Now did they explain exactly why Earth's crops were experiencing the blight?

11/24/2014 7:34:27 AM

Quote :

"as i said, the last 20 or so minutes i did not like nearly as much. Even the idea that he got sent back and was able to use gravity to communicate back in time i didn't really have a problem with, it was that adult Murph all of a sudden figured it out when she was sitting there after she burned the crops (and before figuring out the watch code). That was the biggest leap that i just couldn't accept, it was like she looked at the broken moon lander and figured out that it was her dad sending back messages all of a sudden??"

The implication was that when Cooper was in the black hole sending those messages, he was sending them to Murph in her early life. Think of it like if you were to sit down today and have a memory artificially created and inserted into your brain (there is actually research where they are doing this today). So let's say the artificial memory is of you playing basketball on January 1, 1995. When you wake up from surgery (or however they'd do it) you would remember playing basketball on January 1, 1995 in exactly the same way you'd remember anything else from your life.

So when he uses gravity to send messages to her child self, her adult brain is instantly given the memories and then she makes the connection with her present day research.

Quote :

"I was expecting more from Nolan, who has shown us before how well he can end movies with evocative imagery alone."

Wouldn't surprise me if the studio made him do this in order to not alienate the audience at the end and thus keep the $Texas rolling in.

[Edited on November 26, 2014 at 12:15 PM. Reason : a]

11/26/2014 12:13:54 PM

Quote :

"So when he uses gravity to send messages to her child self, her adult brain is instantly given the memories and then she makes the connection with her present day research."

I don't think that's how it worked. Time in this movie was a "closed loop." Cooper didn't change the past; it had already happened.

I think what's important to remember for that scene is that Cooper's actions in the tesseract and Murph's "realization" on Earth are not happening at the same time. The movie is edited that way with the two scenes cutting back and forth for the purposes of pacing and dramatic effect, but in reality Murph has been grappling with this problem and those nagging questions about the "ghost" for 30 years. Gravity had been used to send the coordinates of the NASA facility and the message "stay." I don't think it's a stretch that she would figure it out eventually.

11/26/2014 5:15:57 PM

Hmm. I get what you're saying but, when he was in the tesseract and he was pounding on the walls, he was interacting with his daughter. I see what you're saying about the closed loop but that's literally what was so mind bending about the movie-the fact that he was able (in his "present") to affect the past back on earth.

Is there anything on the net or posted from the writers/producers that indicate it was just the realization happening over time? Remember, at the end when he speaks to his daughter he tells her he was her ghost.

11/26/2014 5:45:30 PM

He was interacting with Murph in the past as you said, but that didn't cause future Murph to have some suddenly realization as if the memory had just been planted in her brain because Cooper in the tesseract and adult Murph in the bedroom were not necessarily happening at the same time.

The story depends on time being a closed loop because that is the only way Cooper is able to discover the NASA facility to begin with, when he sends himself the coordinates from the tesseract.

11/26/2014 6:37:56 PM

Oh okay, never mind. I think we were saying the same thing but in different ways, mine being far less clear. I've got you now.

11/26/2014 7:44:32 PM

I thought McConaughey told us time was a flat circle?

11/26/2014 8:08:04 PM

Saw it last night at IMAX, visually it was great. I wanted more backstory on what exactly was happening to earth though. Why did some technology no longer work, etc. also, how did Brand actually get to Edmunds planet? They had jettisoned ranger 2 and the lander and Matt Damon destroyed ranger 1. Wouldn't she have arrived in orbit and found herself with no way to actually get down to the surface?

12/8/2014 12:18:01 PM

This movie has become a global phenomenon.

12/8/2014 1:39:31 PM

My two big flaws or questions seem to already have been brought up. First was the fact the ship just left the water planet like it was no big deal when they had already said the gravity was even more than earths. Also I dont claim to know much about wave generation but can someone explain how you would end up with waves that high from water that is that shallow especially when gravity is supposed to be higher?

The second was the fact I believe they said the tesseract was created by us way in the future and that it was us that created the wormhole. At first, my thought was like others, that maybe it was that plan B timeline group who decided to go back and help the people stuck on earth. However, this doesnt make sense to me either. Without the wormhole both plan B and the people on earth die and there is no way for there to be future us. Definitely seems like a paradox to me but maybe I am missing something.

Also was never sure why Mann didnt just confess to the people there rather than show them all the fake data and basically nearly fuck the whole thing up. Why not just simply say I know I am a total asshole but I lied, this place is not habitable lets not waste any more time or fuel and just get going to the next planet.

[Edited on December 8, 2014 at 2:14 PM. Reason : .]

12/8/2014 2:12:20 PM

^ it's a self fulfilling prophecy. The future humans exist because they created the wormhole for current earth. The same way that cooper was Murphy's ghost. Its a pretty common time travel theme, most notable similar example I can think of is the terminator universe. Skynet exists because it sent a terminator to the past to kill Sarah connor

12/8/2014 3:28:32 PM

^^https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce24uorjGj0

12/8/2014 8:13:28 PM

Quote :

"Also I dont claim to know much about wave generation but can someone explain how you would end up with waves that high from water that is that shallow especially when gravity is supposed to be higher? "

The interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson just above answers the this question well. In short, the water planet's orbit near the blackhole creates really strong tidal forces.

12/10/2014 6:05:27 PM

Interesting article regarding TARS and CASE

http://www.wired.com/2014/11/interstellar-droids/

12/10/2014 10:58:52 PM

saw it a few days ago and loved it for the most part

additional things that got me/I found funny:

The classic time-travel movie blunder. Nothing can convince me otherwise. They should have left it to "aliens" saving us. I read some explanation about spacetime going in all directions (backwards to us, normal for a 5th dimensional being) but meh...

The Dodge dually and house leaked sand like mofos, but hey! the Jeep Wrangler is perfectly sealed

Horrible robot design unless you think pounding 500 lbs of metal into the ground with every step is a good idea. Good luck scaling a mound of dirt. I did enjoy them as characters.

The massive amounts of fuel on the little transport ships

The water planet being close enough to a black hole to warp time would have all sorts of internal/seismic activity from the massive gravity rending it back and forth. There would be no water at all.

The aged Romilly made me think of Uncle Drew lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DnKOc6FISU

Only the water planet being time-warpingly close to the black hole, yet
1) the ships were pulled into Gargantua from Dr. Mann's planet within hours. I imagine it should have taken years.
2) Dr Brand was on the 3rd planet at the end of the movie (after 70+ years after separation?) unaged. It would only make sense if she experienced similar time dilation. I think someone already mentioned the now-completely-spent fuel needed to land on the planet in one piece.

I'd love to see how some high-level quantum physics equation would look translated into Morse

1/3/2015 12:12:38 AM

^^^also, the water is only that shallow because most if it is pulled up into the wave by the tidal forces. It's like if you grab cloth at the center and pull it up off the table. The ends retract towards the depression you created

1/3/2015 2:22:21 PM

I would imagine a tidal wave that huge would only come around once a "day," not every few minutes

the wave crest would always align with Gargantua and the planet sort of rotates into it

[Edited on January 3, 2015 at 4:49 PM. Reason : ]

1/3/2015 4:49:03 PM

^I could be remembering incorrectly, but I think the planet was orbiting the planet fairly quickly, since it was so close to it. Could account for how quickly the wave moves and probably also adds to the time dilation (in addition to being in such a large gravity well).

1/4/2015 12:38:18 PM

Finally saw this last night.

Not much new to say here, but oddly enough, the biggest thing that bothered me was no real explanation no how a human could "sleep" for two years and come out looking like they did just before waking up.

You're telling me that there's no muscle atrophy, or anything else? They aren't even any skinnier.

1/23/2015 12:48:38 PM

YOU PIRATING MOVIES, BRO?

1/23/2015 12:57:42 PM

1/23/2015 1:09:03 PM

omg, that mouse is so cute

1/23/2015 1:12:25 PM

I don't own a pirated copy of this move, if that is what you mean.

1/23/2015 1:36:46 PM

lol

1/23/2015 1:49:52 PM

Quote :

"You're telling me that there's no muscle atrophy, or anything else? They aren't even any skinnier."

At least they didn't wake up and start doing pushups (Prometheus) or pullups (Aliens.

1/23/2015 5:46:27 PM

I haven't seen this movie, but the previews looked terrible.

Will probably Redbox it, if I have a free rental code.

1/24/2015 8:31:43 PM

^sounds like a die-hard republican right there

1/25/2015 5:26:17 AM

1/25/2015 5:58:13 AM

Watched this last night, mind was blown. Absolutely loved the film

4/3/2015 8:05:46 AM

So the problem is blight kills crops and Earth is dusty.

Why not just build bigass domes to grow crops in, that seems easier than building a bigass spacestation.

4/3/2015 3:57:21 PM

watched it the other night and enjoyed it. WIll read everyones thoughts on the movie later on.

4/3/2015 5:18:54 PM

^^That was a minor problem compared to the fact that the nitrogen content in the atmosphere was going to reach the point where humans could no longer breathe it.

4/3/2015 5:56:37 PM

I loved everything about this movie except for all of the exposition in the tesseract scene. Fuck all the haters that are crying about Damon's scene. It was one of the best in the movie and completely relevant to bringing the main themes together.

4/4/2015 2:36:15 PM

I personally would have tweaked the dialogue so that when he sees his daughter in the tesseract, he ponders about Brand's hypothesis that "love is a quantifiable force that can pass through space time, just as gravity" and then comes to a critical moment where he realizes that his love for her brought him there (with imagery and no exposition). Then, based off of his initial attempts at banging around books in Murph's room, he comes to the realization that gravity works in a similar manner and completes the mission relaying TARS's data. This leaves the viewer to interpret that Cooper's love for his family and his survival instincts brought him there, meaning that a further-evolved form of humanity did the same to them out of love and a need for their survival.

Other than that, it was great, but at the same time very annoying that they threw in the dialogue at the end, because this could have been a masterpiece.



[Edited on April 5, 2015 at 6:39 AM. Reason : h]

4/5/2015 6:14:29 AM

list of things easier than interstellar relocation to another planet
Everything


But without the notion you have no movie. A lot of people think this movie plot is possible but it could never play out. So much easier to make gmo to restore oxygen.

4/5/2015 10:23:16 AM

I dunno, if a wormhole was placed in reach that was directing people to a more sustainable planet? I mean, that is at least a good enough of a notion to start a self-sustaining colony.

4/5/2015 12:50:43 PM