Interstellar

[SpaceXray]

No wonder Interstellar won an Oscar for best Visual Effects:

http://imgur.com/a/UHic1

[dryer_lint]

Closing ourselves up in habitats on Earth is just regression and adaption to changing environments around us. We're that to happen we would be no different from bacteria. Do you want humanity to just regress to that state and completely forget about any progress and space colonization whatsoever?

The way I interpreted it, the blight wasn't the problem. They knew how to cure it, or maybe make GMO blight-resistant plants and get them onto the spaceship.

The problem was that the blight would kill all the other plants, and then Earth would run out of oxygen. That whole "blight breathes nitrogen" part was just trying to say that blight didn't need oxygen to survive. It could kill all the plants, wait for the oxygen to dry out, and it would still be perfectly fine.

This is just my interpretation, of course. I still feel like they could have done it much better...

[vger]

The problem was that the blight would kill all the other plants, and then Earth would run out of oxygen. That whole "blight breathes nitrogen" part was just trying to say that blight didn't need oxygen to survive. It could kill all the plants, wait for the oxygen to dry out, and it would still be perfectly fine.

This is just my interpretation, of course. I still feel like they could have done it much better...

It would've been cool to see this investigated further, but gosh, the film was already long enough. The build-up to the events of Interstellar could easily be sufficient for a prequel film.

[dryer_lint]

The build-up to the events of Interstellar could easily be sufficient for a prequel film.

intrastellar

[Bill Phil]

Wouldn't Nikola 7007's interpretation be fairly accurate? Perhaps a different neutral gas could be used in the habitats...?

[Pipcard]

intrastellar

That would mean going inside a star.

[Asharad]

I just watched this movie. It was tedious. It wasn't awful, but I will not see it again. It could have been good at 1-1/2 hours, but 3 hours was too much for so little plot.

Also there was a lot of bad acting. The little girl is the best actress/actor in the movie. She was great! But the action sequences, the robots, personal relationships, the buick.... all kinda boring.

[Solarapple]

I really liked it, especially the docking scene and the tesseract.

"MMUUURRRPPPHHH"

[UnionPacific1983WP]

I've watched it once. Honestly, that whole 5th dimension thing was just... I understood it once what's-his-name in the movie understood it.

[Asharad]

I'd rank it below Prometheus and above Buckaroo Bonzai.

[kookoo_gr]

here is the latest trailer of the movie. Warning spoilers

[dryer_lint]

"MMUUURRRPPPHHH"

This is starting to develop into a new meme. I hope it does, it'll be the first one I saw in its beginnings...

[Albert VDS]

There might be spoilers in this post.

It started good, but ended with plot magic. It gets you in a mind set "This is a space movie.. this is a space movie",

last 45 mins of the movie "This is a fantasy movie".

It's not believable where he ends up, descendants of humans building a 5 dimensional place?

And man there was a lot of drama which feels like filler more than anything else.

It somehow gave me the impression that it tries to be 2001: A space odyssey.

The mistakes in the movie didn't bother me at all, maybe I was too focused on all the drama.

Well there was one thing; Needing a rocket to launch your ship from Earth, but on an exoplanet they just use the lander.

Either the rocket equation doesn't exist in an other galaxy or they've got their launching facts from "Space Chimps".

Anyway, I wouldn't want to see it again. If I want to see a space drama then I'll watch "Moon", now that's a good movie.

Or "The Astronaut Farmer", there's not a lot of being in space in that movie, barns are made of indestructible material and

firing retros causes capsules to fall straight down. But at least the happy ending makes you feel good.

Interstellar has a happy ending, but it doesn't feel like a happy ending.

Or go watch "Gravity", at least the "You have to let me go" mistake had a reason to be in the film.

...

And mentioning the moon landings... calling it fake. Shees, what point did that have?

NASA in a secret base launching rockets in secret? Of course no one on Earth would every notice a huge rocket being launched.

Almost forgot about the robots! The first time I saw one move, it looked like someone made a cardboard box suit(to be honest: a very well painted cardboard box suit) and was walking around in it.

It seemed so out of place.

The only good thing about the movie how it's shot and the CG.

But you shouldn't watch it because of that.

TLDR; This movie sucks and I'm gonna burn it in my backyard.

Edit: and NO, love is NOT something that transcends space-time or reality as a whole. It's caused by chemicals in your brain!

Edited June 10, 2015 by Albert VDS

[tater]

I saw it recently (was on sale and I made the mistake of buying it). I find it hard to believe anyone here (interested enough in space to play KSP) could like this film at all.

[Kerbart]

I saw it recently (was on sale and I made the mistake of buying it). I find it hard to believe anyone here (interested enough in space to play KSP) could like this film at all.

It had a compelling story, it was entertaining, and most of the physics where a few magnitudes better than, say, Transformers or Star Wars. So yes, I liked the movie.

[benjee10]

It started good, but ended with plot magic. It gets you in a mind set "This is a space movie.. this is a space movie",

last 45 mins of the movie "This is a fantasy movie".

It's not believable where he ends up, descendants of humans building a 5 dimensional place?

I disagree that it's not believable - wormholes are artificial by their nature so if you accept that part of the plot the humans-in-five-dimensional-space thing isn't that much of a stretch. The problem with the ending is just that it isn't satisfactory. It feels too neat and contrived for it to work. The ending of Gravity works because it feels well-earned and has a bittersweet feeling to it; Interstellar's ending is too much of a plot device (I feel that the last half hour or so is pretty much devoid of emotion.)

Well there was one thing; Needing a rocket to launch your ship from Earth, but on an exoplanet they just use the lander.

Either the rocket equation doesn't exist in an other galaxy or they've got their launching facts from "Space Chimps".

I believe it's explained in one of the Science of Interstellar books that the Ranger escapes the exoplanet so easily because of the gravitational pull of the supermassive blackhole nearby. They fly up to a reasonable height and then get pulled away by the tidal forces. Or you can chalk it up to saving a little bit of fuel. Or perhaps Nolan just wanted a proper rocket launch scene in it for the emotional/semi-symbolic value.

And mentioning the moon landings... calling it fake. Shees, what point did that have?

NASA in a secret base launching rockets in secret? Of course no one on Earth would every notice a huge rocket being launched.

What point did that have? WHAT POINT DID THAT HAVE? Did you even watch it? The point of that was that humanity had, by and large, stopped looking up. In hardship they had given up on the stars and on technology. The government had suppressed space exploration deliberately to focus people on farming instead of stuff like science and engineering - "We didn't run out of planes or television sets, we ran out of food." Pretty explicit to me. The movie isn't saying the moon landings were fake. It's using it to show how people have lost hope and faith in technology.

The only rocket launch that NASA does in secret is the one that sent Cooper and the others up to the Endurance. Endurance is an aging interplanetary craft that was reused, not built from scratch.

The only good thing about the movie how it's shot and the CG.

There is almost no CG in this movie compared to most others of the same type. Almost entirely used miniatures or full scale models on gimbal rigs. No greenscreen at all.

TLDR; This movie sucks and I'm gonna burn it in my backyard.

That seems pretty harsh. It's pretty much unmatched visually and McConaughey gives a good performance. It's worth watching for the ocean planet scene and the scientifically accurate blackhole alone.

Edit: and NO, love is NOT something that transcends space-time or reality as a whole. It's caused by chemicals in your brain!

*sigh* well done for using your brain and taking that as a literal expression of love being a supernatural force. It isn't. Love transcends time and space because we can love people who aren't in the same room as us at the same time. It transcends time and space because it is able to pull on us to do things that we wouldn't normally do. It gives Cooper the will to survive and to save the Earth where he may otherwise have given up, losing his humanity like Damon's character did by relying on technology and reason and logic - the movie actively dispels ideas of faith in the supernatural but not faith in emotion. Notice how there's a load of religious symbolism about Damon's character and those missions (it's even called Lazarus - pretty blatant) - Damon is a sort of Christ-figure, sacrificing himself for the good of the world and then returning from the dead, but he is a false Christ-figure. People put faith in him and he fails them. Cooper and Murph treat the 'ghost' of the first act like something supernatural, but it ultimately has a non-supernatural explanation.

I'm also willing to bet that if you'd watched it on a 70mm IMAX screen the first time you would have had a much more positive reaction to it. Seeing the raw, visceral power of the universe evoked on that scale, in that immense clarity, with Hans Zimmer's beautiful score in the background was probably the best cinematic experience of my life. Watching it on DVD at home was a disappointment. In IMAX it was probably a 9/10, on it's own 7.5/10, and that's boosted by the fact I'm a space geek in general. To the average person probably a 7/10 would be reasonable. Certainly I don't think you could say it sucks. Considering the amount of thought and effort that went into it it's elevated above the majority of films made these days. You can read into it a huge amount. I think it definitely thinks that it's cleverer than it really is, and lacks the impact it tries to have in some places, but it isn't a bad movie. It is a worthy attempt at something more thoughtful and intelligent than the seemingly endless tide of drivel and remakes we get at the moment.

[PakledHostage]

TLDR; This movie sucks and I'm gonna burn it in my backyard.

I went to see it in the theater last fall and, at the time, I reported on these forums that I thought it was better than Gravity... I still maintain that it was better than Gravity but I also have to agree with Albert's sentiment.

And while I know that people's enjoyment of movies is entirely subjective, I did see one recently that I was pleasantly surprised by: Europa Report. I was expecting it to suck royally but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be... It was certainly better than Gravity and Interstellar.

- - - Updated - - -

About 6 months ago, SpaceXray found Interstellar at #13 on IMDB's list of top movies of all time. I was skeptical because it was listed among some true classics. I suspected that it had been up-voted in a campaign by fans and I posted that I would check back in a year to see where it was on the list by then. After 6 months, it has fallen to #26 on the list. Stay tuned...

Edited June 10, 2015 by PakledHostage
Updated

[Shpaget]

One big beef I have with Interstellar is how that science guy behind it vehemently defends the science in the movie, trying to portray it as the most accurate piece of hard SF ever to come out of someone's head, yet the movie fails to deliver that realism even on basic Newtonian physics, something a 15-year old should be capable of doing.

[tater]

The physics might be worse, actually, since someone might watch it and think it was realistic at some level, whereas no one thinks SW is anything but fantasy.

The GR aspects are bizarre as a plot device since they go through a black hole... Which gives them more relativistic effects than the stupid water planet ever would. They should have written off the water planet anyway since it is bathed in insane amounts of high-energy radiation.

[Whirligig Girl]

The physics might be worse, actually, since someone might watch it and think it was realistic at some level, whereas no one thinks SW is anything but fantasy.

The GR aspects are bizarre as a plot device since they go through a black hole... Which gives them more relativistic effects than the stupid water planet ever would. They should have written off the water planet anyway since it is bathed in insane amounts of high-energy radiation.

If you recall, going through the black hole does cause a lot of time dilation. Cooper becomes 140 something years old when he comes out of the wormhole.

Okay, so here's my thoughts.

The only major problem with the physics of the movie is that slowing down from the immense speed you would have at Miller's planet would be very very very very expensive delta-v wise. Like, fractions of the speed of light expensive. The rest is excusable. General relativity is something you often don't see used as the element of time travel in a movie. This one does it very well. It's really beautiful, the docking scene was great, and all of that jazz. The part about love being a dimension is so dumb, for a literal-minded person such as myself, that it's my bathroom break. I have literally yet to see that whole scene, after at least two viewings of the movie. That just leaves the tesseract. Obviously the black hole in the movie is not a purely natural one. The film is not implying that black holes have tesseracts. Wormholes are very much not natural either, and are specifically stated to be artificial, and implied to be created by the 5D descendants of humankind. So just as a skyscraper is not something any reasonable space entity would think to find on Earth, the tesseract is built in the wormhole because the 5D descendants of humankind needed there to be one there. These beings can manipulate space, time, and gravity, for Kraken's sake! So yeah, it's silly, but I don't hate it.

In fact, Interstellar is still one of my favorite movies.

[Albert VDS]

I disagree that it's not believable - wormholes are artificial by their nature so if you accept that part of the plot the humans-in-five-dimensional-space thing isn't that much of a stretch.

The whole 5th dimension part only rests on the comment "We'll learn how to eventually".

I believe it's explained in one of the Science of Interstellar books that the Ranger escapes the exoplanet so easily because of the gravitational pull of the supermassive blackhole nearby.

You shouldn't need a book to explain your movie. If the black hole did help the lander get of the planet, then why doesn't it partially counter act the planets gravity on the astronauts?

What point did that have? WHAT POINT DID THAT HAVE? Did you even watch it? The point of that was that humanity had, by and large, stopped looking up.

That isn't a good reason to use it to help the story. The NASA bombing humans took care of that point. I'll type that again NASA BOMBING THE EVER LIVING DAYLIGHT OUT OF RIOTING PEOPLE!

How can any space nerd take that seriously? Basiclly the movie is saying "Hey NASA we respect you but... in our reality everyone thinks the Moon landings were fake and you kill people".

There is almost no CG in this movie compared to most others of the same type. Almost entirely used miniatures or full scale models on gimbal rigs. No greenscreen at all.

But there was CG and it looked good.

It's worth watching for the ocean planet scene and the scientifically accurate blackhole alone.

The ocean planet scene was only a few minutes with the astronauts shouting, a big way, a death of someone who was closer to the ship and a cliché last minute save.

*sigh* well done for using your brain and taking that as a literal expression of love being a supernatural force. It isn't. Love transcends time and space because we can love people who aren't in the same room as us at the same time. It transcends time and space because it is able to pull on us to do things that we wouldn't normally do.

Quoted from the movie:

When I say that love isn't something we invented, it's... observable, powerful. It has to mean something.

Maybe it means something more, something we can't... yet understand.

Maybe it's, some evidence, some... artifact of a higher dimension... that we can't consciously perceive,

I'm drawn across the universe to someone... I haven't seen in a decade. Who, I know, is probably dead.

Love is the one thing we're capable... of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.

Maybe we should trust that, even if we can't understand it yet.

The tiniest possibility of seeing Wolf again excites me. But that doesn't mean I'm wrong

They are trying to make it something magical, which is good for a romantic movie, but not for a movie about black holes.

I'm also willing to bet that if you'd watched it on a 70mm IMAX screen the first time you would have had a much more positive reaction to it.

No matter how big the screen would be, the drama would still make me cringe.

[tater]

The time dilation was general, not special relativity.

Any my word close enough to experience substantial dilation would likely be shredded to atoms and added to the accretion disk by tidal forces. Even if towed just outside the Roche limit by unicorns, it would be utterly unlivable due to x ray flux. They should have popped out, seen where that world was, and wrote it off as uninhabital. Now they are left with 2 worlds, neither near the BH.

ps 140 years is nothing, he shouldn't have worried about a dead daughter, more like the heat death of the universe.

[benjee10]

The whole 5th dimension part only rests on the comment "We'll learn how to eventually".

That isn't my point. I'm not saying it's possible in the real world or anything. The idea of wormholes only being artificial is set up early on. That implies beings that can manipulate spacetime. Why shouldn't they be humans from the far far future? It fits within the context of the plot. I don't personally like it. I think the movie should have ended in less of a transcendental way. But it doesn't break the tone of the movie, it doesn't contradict the rules set up in the movie, and it looks gorgeous.

You shouldn't need a book to explain your movie. If the black hole did help the lander get of the planet, then why doesn't it partially counter act the planets gravity on the astronauts?

So, everything in a movie should be perfectly clear and explained immediately? Like, you know, the whole ending of 2001 isn't?

They're deeper in the planet's gravity well at that point. Maybe the blackhole is counteracting the planet's gravity. Maybe, in non-curved spacetime, the gravity of the planet is ridiculously strong and the effect of the blackhole makes it bearable. That isn't a niggle for me. Put it down to artistic license if you must. The movie gets a whole lot less practical if they have to lug a Saturn V around them. It would probably have been better just to have them SSTO in the first place, but that's less dramatic. I can forgive things.

That isn't a good reason to use it to help the story. The NASA bombing humans took care of that point. I'll type that again NASA BOMBING THE EVER LIVING DAYLIGHT OUT OF RIOTING PEOPLE!

How can any space nerd take that seriously? Basiclly the movie is saying "Hey NASA we respect you but... in our reality everyone thinks the Moon landings were fake and you kill people".

That isn't a good reason to use it to help the story? What does that mean? It's part of the setting. The setting is that people have neglected space travel. One of the messages of the movie is STOP NEGLECTING SPACE TRAVEL IT'S IMPORTANT. I don't get your argument.

NASA refused to bomb people. That's why the government sidelined them. They refused to bomb innocent people to reduce food shortages. Good job paying attention and getting it completely wrong.

The ocean planet scene was only a few minutes with the astronauts shouting, a big way, a death of someone who was closer to the ship and a cliché last minute save.

If you say break anything down like that it sounds rubbish. The end of Star Wars is just a clichéd last minute lucky shot. The pod bay doors scene in 2001 is just a robot not opening a door for someone.

Quote from the movie about love being from a higher dimension:

maybe

That's Brand trying to justify why they should visit her lover instead Dr Mann. She's trying to convince them. Doesn't mean she's right or the movie thinks she's right. As I pointed out before, the movie's message is overall against faith in the supernatural, but pro faith in emotion. Just because following emotions is ultimately the correct route it doesn't mean that the movie is saying that love is a transcendental force. Just like all the other seemingly supernatural things in the movie it has non-supernatural causes.

[tater]

The end of 2001 was awful. Yes, absolutely, a movie should be 100% self contained. Make a bizarre movie about the beginning of ww1 that makes no internal sense, then tell people, "it's much better if you've read The guns of August.

It also depends on the book actually answering the obvious plot holes and science. What's the hand waving for them returning via the black hole without experiencing time dilation that has the Sun burn out long before they return? (Forget 140 years, lol). Every single thing about Miller's planet (that's the water one, right?) is stupid. You can make a BH big enough to get whatever dilation you need, but there is no difference between orbit and the surface at all. It's distance from the SMBH (forget the 50% c orbital speed, and just consider gravity for simplicity). Yeah, they could use slingshots to get there (which necessarily involve near passes of earth-sized BHs, also with possible time dilation), but they then have to leave... A gravity well so deep just being there substantially dilates time. Their ssto shuttlecraft can manage this, but needs SLS to get to LEO, lol. Aside form the physics here, you'd want a JPL guy, not a "pilot" to calculate the required geometry.

The science of this is absurd, and they could have the same plot without the stupid BH stuff. Here is how: Wormhole is a created object, no time dilation, or some fixed amount for each round trip because "science fiction." Other end is in a binary system. If they wanted a BH, just because, make it a trinary system with 2 normal stars, and a close BH companion to one of them (would look cool, too). 2 of the worlds are around 1 star, 1 is around the other, along with the wormhole. Simple dv and orbital parameters drive their possible choices of 2 worlds to visit, and travel time is the time involved. Millers at opposition from wormhole, and ideal window for transfer to 2d star orbits... Complex orbit to hi nearest world, then one of the other 2. Transit to companion star could easily take 20 years each way based on 2 year time to Saturn at 10 AU.

So same story, no BS. All the bookshelf nonsense could be a wormhole artifact , since that is the only physics we are breaking.

Edited June 10, 2015 by tater

[Albert VDS]

That isn't my point. I'm not saying it's possible in the real world or anything. The idea of wormholes only being artificial is set up early on. That implies beings that can manipulate spacetime. Why shouldn't they be humans from the far far future? It fits within the context of the plot. I don't personally like it. I think the movie should have ended in less of a transcendental way. But it doesn't break the tone of the movie, it doesn't contradict the rules set up in the movie, and it looks gorgeous.

I don't care about the wormhole, that one is acceptable. But the film wants us to believe that humans went from 3D creatures to 5D. How can matter in a three dimensional universe cross over to exist in a five dimensional universe?

I guess they must be so smart, to do something like that, that they can't figure out how to communicate with their ancestors. Why do they need to hide a tesseract in a black hole? Who would ever look in there?

Their very existence depends on it to be found. Well that and Murph knowing morse code.

So, everything in a movie should be perfectly clear and explained immediately? Like, you know, the whole ending of 2001 isn't?

They're deeper in the planet's gravity well at that point. Maybe the blackhole is counteracting the planet's gravity. Maybe, in non-curved spacetime, the gravity of the planet is ridiculously strong and the effect of the blackhole makes it bearable. That isn't a niggle for me. Put it down to artistic license if you must. The movie gets a whole lot less practical if they have to lug a Saturn V around them. It would probably have been better just to have them SSTO in the first place, but that's less dramatic. I can forgive things.

2001 had a bizarre ending. But at least it didn't look like they hastily resolved mysterious situations.

They could at least mention why their super shuttle/lander was capable of such marvelous feats.

That isn't a good reason to use it to help the story? What does that mean? It's part of the setting. The setting is that people have neglected space travel. One of the messages of the movie is STOP NEGLECTING SPACE TRAVEL IT'S IMPORTANT. I don't get your argument.

NASA refused to bomb people. That's why the government sidelined them. They refused to bomb innocent people to reduce food shortages. Good job paying attention and getting it completely wrong.

Part of the setting would be "Why do we need space travel if we are starving down here?", you don't need to add "The Moon landings were faked, it says so in this corrected book!".

OK I missed the refused part. That still leaves the question on why they need NASA to do it? If they can fund an interstellar mission then they can fund a small army to do it.

Also NASA is part of the government, if someone refuses to follow orders then they can be replaced.

If you say break anything down like that it sounds rubbish. The end of Star Wars is just a clichéd last minute lucky shot. The pod bay doors scene in 2001 is just a robot not opening a door for someone.

They land on the water planet.

They look for the probe.

A huge tidal wave heads towards them.

Cooper saves Brand and the red shirt dies.

Another tidal wave heads towards them and they are saved at the nick of time.

There's nothing exciting happening there, and so predictable once they land on the planet.

Quote from the movie about love being from a higher dimension:

maybe

That's Brand trying to justify why they should visit her lover instead Dr Mann. She's trying to convince them. Doesn't mean she's right or the movie thinks she's right. As I pointed out before, the movie's message is overall against faith in the supernatural, but pro faith in emotion. Just because following emotions is ultimately the correct route it doesn't mean that the movie is saying that love is a transcendental force. Just like all the other seemingly supernatural things in the movie it has non-supernatural causes.

She is the chief scientist and biologist of the expedition and she thinks that love is "Maybe it means something more, something we can't... yet understand.".

So a scientist out to save the human race wants to follow her love instead of using here brain.