Interstellar

[axsomer]

Interstellar has been out for 5 days now.

If you have no idea what movie I'm talking about:

• Shame on you.
  
• Here ya go:
  

• Its absolutely incredible. Go see it now.
  

If you've seen it hopefully you'll agree with my opinion; although, I have heard otherwise from a few people. I'd honestly love to have some discussion about anything in the film within the comments (Use spoiler tabs please, Don't ruin it for anyone). Also, would someone please start working on a wormhole mod.

[Specialist290]

Welcome to the forums, axsomer! I've taken the liberty of merging your post with our currently active thread on the movie.

[Lundmunchkins]

I just wanted to share my review of Interstellar.

[Vanamonde]

Threads merged to keep the discussion of this film in one place.

[White Owl]

Repost what I just wrote at my channel.

Interstellar is like 2001: A Space Odyssey, only the ending makes sense. Go see it!

KSP players watching this movie have a different experience. Most of the audience around you will think "Oh crap that looks spectacular and dangerous." KSP players think "Oh holy crap I'VE DONE THAT and it was spectacular and dangerous!"

Do your best to ignore the technical inaccuracies. (Seriously, does the Ranger spaceplane have an antimatter engine or something? And why didn't they hire me to make it look cool instead that ugly wedge shape?) Enjoy the story and maybe the best looking semi-quasi-realistic depiction of spaceflight to be seen yet in a movie.

Gravity looked good, but the story was terrible. Interstellar looks good, and has an engaging (though predictable) story.

Go see it!

[tygoo7]

Yep it was a fantastic movie. I'm going to go see it again Saturday. Not gonna lie, I cried at some points of the film.

[dharak1]

Put this in the wrong Interstellar thread accidentally: This movie was filmed in Southern Alberta? That's interesting. Saw it last night and it got a little strange towards the end. I have to say the ammonia atmosphere planet event happening was a bit predictable and I didn't appreciate the orbital jump scare and loud noise. Over all, it was a pretty good movie just a bit long.

[SpaceXray]

Got my tickets for the friday re-watch session(also considering tickets in my town are 75% off on that day, yay for me).

Even the trailers, the price and my constant begging can't make anyone else from my old school go watch it or re-watch it.

They said "I'll re-watch it in a year" or "you crazy person, I'd rather go see Anabelle than Interstellar" or "you're an idiot for wanting to re-watch a movie lol". I got the same reaction last year when I told people I went to see Gravity 3 times.

I invited a group last week(I managed to gather 7 people) and 90% of them where impressed. Note no females whatsoever joined us for some reason. Apparently even Matthew Mc. couldn't draw their attention. Guess these kind of movies are appreciated only by men mainly, which is quite sad.

Btw Interstellar is the most watched movie in my country, more than 5000 people in my city saw it in 2-3 days.

Anyhow, I hope I am fulfilled with a re-watch, or I'll go broke from watching it a 3rd time.

[Danny88]

Dr. Mann's epic speech getting cut short was pretty funny.

[dharak1]

One thing I want to mention, Spoilers ahead. On the ice planet where they get Mann shouldn't his life support have failed? Even if he actually reused the power source from his robot thing shouldn't he have died? Earlier in the movie they say that the pods the original 12 were sent out with had slightly more than 10 years of life support. If we assume that the new crew arrives at the water planet just 5 years after all the Lazarus missions landed and they spent 23 years there according to the guy just outside of this crazy time dilation zone. That means 23 extra years have passed on Mann's planet too. 23+5=28. With pods designed for a bit more than 10 years it's crazy it lasted that long, of course he reused the source from his robot and CASE also had to last 23 years but the power source of CASE and the other robot are probably the same and I doubt CASE could power a whole pod for living in.

[Fingal]

I see Neil deGrasse Tyson has felt the need to peer review a work of fiction. Again.

[dbmorpher]

Gah! I saw the movie.

How did Cooper fall back into the black hole after his ship detached?

Why did they do their burn after coming past the periapsis?

Why didn't the Endevour have drop tanks?

Where were the fuel tanks?

Why did the shuttles have those strakes protruding?

If the shuttles were SSTO's why did it lift off on a Saturn V?

If the new headquarter was meant to become a spaceship why were the supporting pillars on the "floor"

How would solving the Grand Unified Theory of Gravitation create a reactionless-drive?

Why wasn't Cooper ripped apart by gravity during his decent to the black hole?

If they could build O'Neil cylinders without blight why couldn't they just create isolated environments on Earth?

For people who built an SSTO capable of exiting a world with an atmosphere 4 times more massive than earth and AI's with programmable humor settings, they weren't very smart.

[problemecium]

SpaceXRay's "awesome" IMAX trailer seems to have been taken down before I got to see it. Anybody happen to have another one lying around?

[SpaceXray]

SpaceXRay's "awesome" IMAX trailer seems to have been taken down before I got to see it. Anybody happen to have another one lying around?

I'll post it today. I made sure to back it up)

[cicatrix]

Although I would agree that it is probably the best sci-fi (real 'sci-fi', not Star Wars-like) movies so far, there are issues about relativity and travel back in time through the black hole. Really, I may sound geekish, but this has spoiled somewhat generally good impression this film made.

Also I didn't like debris and blackness within a black hole. It should be plenty of light actually once inside the event horizon because of all that light that has been absorbed by the black hole and never left it. The black hole isn't actually black inside.

[TythosEternal]

Just got back from the theaters--some meta-spoilers herewithin.

I was pretty disappointed. I heard a lot of people comparing it to the 2001 for our generation, but it didn't really have anywhere near the same impact or vision as ASO, or any of the other major science fiction epics. In fact, I felt like it's attempt to treat itself as one ensured that it wouldn't belong to that club.

I know my expectations were probably too high, partially as a result of excited science and science fiction communities and partially because I'm a big Matthew McConaughey (and Nolan) fan. There were simply too many moments of disbelief (yes, let's eject into a debris field inside a black hole--then let's count how many thing are seriously whacked about this one single sentence!), which simultaneously lacked any serious point or direction. Then they had the balls to skip over the seriously epic and interesting components of the story--what are these massive stations orbiting Saturn? how is Brandt setting up her colony? when and how did we magically reach back and configure these magical tesseracts, and how did we manage to avoid the obvious causality issues?--as if the previous 2.5 hours were better spent on poorly-constructed character development, the obligatory psychotic scientist plotline (tell me where that led again?), and bemoaning some strange and unsolvable crop issue affecting the entire earth from which an easier solution than elementary biology and crop science is apparently to transport a couple hundred embryos to another galaxy. Sigh...

Lest I come off as too picky, please consider the following: most science fiction near-future epics will take one of two approaches: either a technical approach that usually leans on personal suspense and character development, or post-discovery (aliens, revolutionary technologies, etc.) fantasy that is more broad and focused on the development and enlightenment of a culture. These are good formulae, and there's a lot of room for creativity and direction. Sometimes there are filmmakers who can combine elements of both and/or create something new, but this particular film tried and failed to do any and every one of these.

Positive points: I'm a softie for well-crafted father-daughter relationships, and this was a good one. The idea of food shortages was a good starting point, if under-developed and ultimately non-sensical. The mechanics of colony exploration and establishment were interesting, as well, if (in the long run) nearly irrelevant to the story they tried to tell.

Edited November 13, 2014 by TythosEternal
Typos and improved word insertion

[TythosEternal]

Please forgive me, Highlad, but I'm going to use your post as a template for my response, because it contains so many of the things I see being repeated in this thread. Please don't take it personally, this is just an easier way for me to hit multiple points that are coming up again and again--I'm not blaming you for any of them.

...no massive bugging physics things like in Gravity...

If there's one thing that shocks me about this community's response to Interstellar, it's how relatively minor holes in a much more realistic film like Gravity are lasered-in upon and analyzed to the high heavens, while the gaping physics cheats in Interstellar somehow get a free pass. It's like critiquing the holes in a sock while ignoring the one through which a Battlestar can fly. I'm still trying to understand why this is. Perhaps we've had enough time to analyze and memorize every single little thing that wasn't perfect in Gravity? In my mind, this made Gravity a better film, because you saw how involved people got in the fact-checking dialogue--they really became invested.

..."what is in the centre of a black hole" and, because nobody really knows...

Nobody's seen it, but we've worked out a surprisingly large amount of the math. The bigger mystery is how it relates and interacts with the universe around it. One thing's for sure--it's not full of magical four-dimensional bookcases.

...You can really see a lot of 2001 in it (there is even a wee reference to it in the film)...

I had seen this line of thought, but I didn't find the references very subtle. The copied-and-pasted organ chord (played on every main engine burn and at every point of heightened tension) was really grating on my nerves by the end of the film (or rather, by the second time the reference was used--what, five minuted in?). There's also the hibernation equipment, the reliance upon robotic support (which got flipped on its head, when you expected the robots to turn on the astronauts but they turned out to be the most reliable counterparts and teammates in the whole film), and the 2010 reference in which a robot accompanies the main character on the transcendence analogue. Overall, I felt hit over the head, repeatedly, by 2001/2010 references that ended up not having much in common with the actual storyline.

...but it doesn't quite hit that spot that makes a movie great like 2001 did...

This. See my previous post for more details, but I strongly feel like this film tried--and failed--to be The Next Great Space Epic, in no small part because of the very fact that it was trying and in doing so sacrificed a great deal of the potential and vision of the fundamental storyline. Ah, well... Sometimes a guy (me, in case that's unclear) can become too crotchety, I suppose.

[SelectHalfling0]

I'm going to see the movie this weekend. I just read a review by Joe Morgenstern:

"The last thing I expected was a space adventure burdened by turgid discussions of abstruse physics, a wavering tone, visual effects of variable quality and a time-traveling structure that turns on bloodless abstractions."

Don't you mean actual physics that a space movie finally portrayed somewhat-correctly since 2001: A Space Odessy?

[tajampi]

Hey there!

There may be some spoilers on this review!

I have seen the movie little ago, and i can confirm its a very good movie.

Some *"realistic" physics with awesome graphics, resulting in 2.5 hours of fun!

It has some issues, indeed, sometimes the history is predictable, the spaceship looks a bit... ugly and other minor issues...

It involves relativity, worm holes, and some history that can make you cry...

It has some amazing stuff, like gravity getting trought time and space, used to transfer messages to the past (and present) to save humanity...

*Remember its a sci-fi movie!

Cheers!

Edited November 13, 2014 by tajampi

[Marclev]

That docking sequence that ripped half the station apart looked rather familiar from some of my less successful docking attempts!

(also those booster stages looked strangely familiar!)

Edit: just noticed this is being discussed in the off topic forum. Mods, feel free to delete or merge this into there...

Edited November 14, 2014 by Marclev

[PTNLemay]

How did Cooper fall back into the black hole after his ship detached?

I think it was the alien forces that protected him. More importantly I was wondering how any planets could be remotely habitable with their orbits so close to a blackhole, but again... it might be the trans-dimensional aliens who are manipulating things to help the humans.

If the shuttles were SSTO's why did it lift off on a Saturn V?

Even if the spaceplanes had enough fuel for multiple landings and take-offs, it would still be a good idea to save as much as possible for the actual mission. Use the low tech stuff while still near Earth, and keep the high ISP super engines for when your far from home. Saving an extra 20 miles of range when your car normally has 800 miles in the tank can be really helpful.

[NecroBones]

Yeah, I saw the movie with a friend who also plays KSP. We both sort-of chuckled during some of those scenes. The auto-docking early in the movie had us saying "that's way too easy!" And then the scene you're referring to, had us nodding and saying "that's more like it!"

[Rolanvorxariat]

I loved the docking part. But why did it hit the STRATOSPHERE when it should of burned up in the MESOSPHERE? Or is the atmosphere of the outer icecloud planet just quite different from earth's atmosphere? And of course, HOW DID THE ENDURANCE FALL OUT OF ORBIT? But the second docking scene did make for a really epic scene. My second favorite part, right after the black hole scene.

[nli2work]

Endurance got into decaying orbit presumably because of the bad docking attempt. I guess they said Stratosphere because more people might know what that is than Mesosphere or thermosphere

[Rolanvorxariat]

I see. Now that makes sense.