Interstellar trailer

[The Nth Doctor]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7X1ntOgL70[/yt]

Clip from the movie.

Damn, that really freaks me out.

 

[Christopher]

My big concern about this film is mixing the hard 2001-esque sci fi concepts of time, worholes, black holes etc, with the overwrought sentimentality of the Earth scenes. I don't think the mixture of these two separate genres can work. 2001 is a classic because it observed humanity as if looking at it from afar as if into a fishbowl.

I don't agree that there's any incompatibility between hard science fiction and sincere human emotion. There was a perception decades ago that hard SF tended to be cold and detached and more concept-driven than character-driven, and that belief wasn't without merit back in the '50s or '60s, but modern hard SF is generally much stronger on the characterization and emotion and human drama. Today's hard-SF novelists, like David Brin and Robert Sawyer and Joan Slonczewski and Greg Egan and many others, blend hard science and strong character drama as a matter of course. I've always aspired to do the same in my own writing.

So I'm sorry, but your perception of what constitutes "real science fiction" is a couple of generations out of date.

 

[davejames]

Kinda bummed about the less than stellar reviews it's been getting so far. Most seem to think that it looks great, but that the story just doesn't work nearly as well for one reason or another.

Of course I was pretty massively disappointed with TDKR as well, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.

 

[Set Harth]

Could it be possible that the reviewers were also massively disappointed with TDKR and that this grudge has colored their reviews to some extent?

 

[davejames]

Why would anyone have a grudge? Just because some people didn't like his last movie doesn't mean they don't want his future ones to still be good.

This is still the guy who made Memento, Inception, and TDK after all.

 

[Samurai8472]

People having too much fun with an EW cover

 

[Hartzilla2007]

^Chilling. Government-approved textbooks teaching the party line.

And also a party line based on idiotic conspiracy theory bullshit.

So in the future Earth is fucked because humanity is a bunch of dumbfucks.

 

[Harvey]

The reviews seem fine to me. Stephanie Zacharek hating a Chris Nolan movie is just a day ending in "Y."

 

[Marsden]

Put simply (and apologies if this has already been explained) the movie is about Earth facing a massive famine and overpopulation, and the need for humanity to find a new home. A FTL ship has been constructed, and McConeghy's character is one of the pilots of the ship on a mission to find a new home for humanity.

Oh, the Lost in Space backstory.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7X1ntOgL70[/yt]
Clip from the movie.

All of a sudden this movie just became a prequel to Idiocracy. That explains the famines and dust bowls. They've been watering their crops with Brawndo.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Obviously, I haven't seen the film, but making McConaughey's character have this "one man against the entire planet" angle strikes me as absurd. Can't he just be the right man for the job? Is there some requirement that he be a hardcore rebel against Obvious Strawmen?

It just seems so heavy-handed.

 

[Jedi_Master]

Obviously, I haven't seen the film, but making McConaughey's character have this "one man against the entire planet" angle strikes me as absurd. Can't he just be the right man for the job? Is there some requirement that he be a hardcore rebel against Obvious Strawmen?

It just seems so heavy-handed.

Did you just really write an "I haven't seen it but I am going to criticize it based on my incomplete perception of the parts of the finished work that have been revealed" review?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Obviously, I haven't seen the film, but making McConaughey's character have this "one man against the entire planet" angle strikes me as absurd. Can't he just be the right man for the job? Is there some requirement that he be a hardcore rebel against Obvious Strawmen?

It just seems so heavy-handed.

Did you just really write an "I haven't seen it but I am going to criticize it based on my incomplete perception of the parts of the finished work that have been revealed" review?

I'm just judging that one scene which, at least out of context, looks ridiculously ham-fisted.

I'm sure I'll end up watching the whole thing in order to better judge it as an entire film.

 

[Jedi_Master]

Obviously, I haven't seen the film, but making McConaughey's character have this "one man against the entire planet" angle strikes me as absurd. Can't he just be the right man for the job? Is there some requirement that he be a hardcore rebel against Obvious Strawmen?

It just seems so heavy-handed.

Did you just really write an "I haven't seen it but I am going to criticize it based on my incomplete perception of the parts of the finished work that have been revealed" review?

I'm just judging that one scene which, at least out of context, looks ridiculously ham-fisted.

I'm sure I'll end up watching the whole thing in order to better judge it as an entire film.

I know, I know. We tease because we love.

 

[Christopher]

"Obvious straw men?" Hardly, when you consider how many factions in the United States today are pushing for exactly this kind of propagandistic revisionist history, whether it's to promote creationism or to whitewash the less admirable parts of American history. The reason I found the scene chilling is because it's so true to life. There's a lot of genuine Moon-landing denialism in the real world today, alongside a huge amount of anti-intellectual and anti-science attitudes in the American far right, and it's disturbingly plausible that we could potentially see the rise to dominance of a faction that finds it politically convenient to deny the reality of the Moon landings. There have always been people saying "We should focus on solving our problems here on Earth rather than waste our efforts on space," ignoring all the ways that space could solve our problems on Earth.

Indeed, one thing that's very plausible about that scene is that it will be impossible for us to maintain a modern technological civilization for long if we don't maintain a presence in space. We're running out of materials on Earth that are vital to our high-tech infrastructure, both rare-earth metals and helium. Liquid helium is essential for the low-temperature manufacture of a lot of important hardware and the functioning of a lot of scientific equipment, but our supply of helium on Earth is running out quickly and governments are doing nothing to stem the loss. If we don't start mining asteroids and/or the Lunar surface in the next two decades, we may very well end up regressing technologically as shown in the movie clip. And it's quite plausible that the governments whose policies led to that disaster might deny that we ever went into space in the first place, rather than admitting that it was their own screwups that kept us from taking advantage of the resources of space.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Obviously, I haven't seen the film, but making McConaughey's character have this "one man against the entire planet" angle strikes me as absurd. Can't he just be the right man for the job? Is there some requirement that he be a hardcore rebel against Obvious Strawmen?

It just seems so heavy-handed.

Did you just really write an "I haven't seen it but I am going to criticize it based on my incomplete perception of the parts of the finished work that have been revealed" review?

I'm still looking forward to the movie a great deal, but I have to be honest that that clip is the first thing that's given me reservations too.

If they had limited things to saying that anti-scientific thinking had allowed climate change to cross the tipping point and resulted in the ecological disasters affecting Earth in the film, I would be fine with that, because that's unfortunately a logical outgrowth of present day society and political thinking here and in some other parts of the world. Likewise with focusing on limited budgets for manned spaceflight. That's a natural outgrowth of present day events.

But to revert to the point of being so anti-technological that they go back to using old CRT TVs, MRI machines no longer exist, rocket ("useless machines") launches are either entirely gone or severely curtailed (I was wondering why the launch site in the trailers seemed to be right at the university or wherever Michael Caine works at), and silly conspiracy theories about the Moon landings being faked have not only gone from being fringe to mainstream, but have actually become mandatory learning and propaganda in schools and society is pretty heavy-handed as Robert says.

I'm starting to wonder now if the stuff about Indian surveillance drones flying over the continental US and the mention of the "old federal government" in the clip doesn't imply the complete collapse of the United States, with individual states possibly being independent now, or under the sphere of influence of China or something (which would be equally heavy-handed as the anti-technological stuff). Because I can't see what would motivate our own government or state governments to want to pretend that the Moon landings were fake.

I'm still hopeful, I just think the ecological disasters and decline in manned spaceflight could have been enough to accomplish the same basic storytelling goals without going completely over the top into what almost seems like satire in that clip.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

"Obvious straw men?" Hardly, when you consider how many factions in the United States today are pushing for exactly this kind of propagandistic revisionist history, whether it's to promote creationism or to whitewash the less admirable parts of American history. The reason I found the scene chilling is because it's so true to life. There's a lot of genuine Moon-landing denialism in the real world today, alongside a huge amount of anti-intellectual and anti-science attitudes in the American far right, and it's disturbingly plausible that we could potentially see the rise to dominance of a faction that finds it politically convenient to deny the reality of the Moon landings. There have always been people saying "We should focus on solving our problems here on Earth rather than waste our efforts on space," ignoring all the ways that space could solve our problems on Earth.

Indeed, one thing that's very plausible about that scene is that it will be impossible for us to maintain a modern technological civilization for long if we don't maintain a presence in space. We're running out of materials on Earth that are vital to our high-tech infrastructure, both rare-earth metals and helium. Liquid helium is essential for the low-temperature manufacture of a lot of important hardware and the functioning of a lot of scientific equipment, but our supply of helium on Earth is running out quickly and governments are doing nothing to stem the loss. If we don't start mining asteroids and/or the Lunar surface in the next two decades, we may very well end up regressing technologically as shown in the movie clip. And it's quite plausible that the governments whose policies led to that disaster might deny that we ever went into space in the first place, rather than admitting that it was their own screwups that kept us from taking advantage of the resources of space.

About 7% of Americans believe the Moon landings were faked. For comparison, 4% believe the world is run by Reptilian aliens.

You may be overblowing this a little bit.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

"Obvious straw men?" Hardly, when you consider how many factions in the United States today are pushing for exactly this kind of propagandistic revisionist history, whether it's to promote creationism or to whitewash the less admirable parts of American history. The reason I found the scene chilling is because it's so true to life. There's a lot of genuine Moon-landing denialism in the real world today, alongside a huge amount of anti-intellectual and anti-science attitudes in the American far right, and it's disturbingly plausible that we could potentially see the rise to dominance of a faction that finds it politically convenient to deny the reality of the Moon landings. There have always been people saying "We should focus on solving our problems here on Earth rather than waste our efforts on space," ignoring all the ways that space could solve our problems on Earth.

Indeed, one thing that's very plausible about that scene is that it will be impossible for us to maintain a modern technological civilization for long if we don't maintain a presence in space. We're running out of materials on Earth that are vital to our high-tech infrastructure, both rare-earth metals and helium. Liquid helium is essential for the low-temperature manufacture of a lot of important hardware and the functioning of a lot of scientific equipment, but our supply of helium on Earth is running out quickly and governments are doing nothing to stem the loss. If we don't start mining asteroids and/or the Lunar surface in the next two decades, we may very well end up regressing technologically as shown in the movie clip. And it's quite plausible that the governments whose policies led to that disaster might deny that we ever went into space in the first place, rather than admitting that it was their own screwups that kept us from taking advantage of the resources of space.

About 7% of Americans believe the Moon landings were faked. For comparison, 4% believe the world is run by Reptilian aliens.

You may be overblowing this a little bit.

Especially since there are satellite images of all the stuff we left at the landing sites, and someone in the clip's comment section on youtube pointing out that while faking the landing might be possible faking the global transmission from the moon everyone on the planet saw in 1969 would be impossible.

Plus the Chinese are apparently planning a moon mission.

So really kind of hard to take Moon landing denials seriously.

 

[Marsden]

"Obvious straw men?" Hardly, when you consider how many factions in the United States today are pushing for exactly this kind of propagandistic revisionist history, whether it's to promote creationism or to whitewash the less admirable parts of American history. The reason I found the scene chilling is because it's so true to life. There's a lot of genuine Moon-landing denialism in the real world today, alongside a huge amount of anti-intellectual and anti-science attitudes in the American far right, and it's disturbingly plausible that we could potentially see the rise to dominance of a faction that finds it politically convenient to deny the reality of the Moon landings. There have always been people saying "We should focus on solving our problems here on Earth rather than waste our efforts on space," ignoring all the ways that space could solve our problems on Earth.

Indeed, one thing that's very plausible about that scene is that it will be impossible for us to maintain a modern technological civilization for long if we don't maintain a presence in space. We're running out of materials on Earth that are vital to our high-tech infrastructure, both rare-earth metals and helium. Liquid helium is essential for the low-temperature manufacture of a lot of important hardware and the functioning of a lot of scientific equipment, but our supply of helium on Earth is running out quickly and governments are doing nothing to stem the loss. If we don't start mining asteroids and/or the Lunar surface in the next two decades, we may very well end up regressing technologically as shown in the movie clip. And it's quite plausible that the governments whose policies led to that disaster might deny that we ever went into space in the first place, rather than admitting that it was their own screwups that kept us from taking advantage of the resources of space.

About 7% of Americans believe the Moon landings were faked. For comparison, 4% believe the world is run by Reptilian aliens.

You may be overblowing this a little bit.

Well, don't forget, the US collapsed and broke apart in 2012 and parts of it were occupied by a combined force of European peacekeepers to stem the chaos.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

"Obvious straw men?" Hardly, when you consider how many factions in the United States today are pushing for exactly this kind of propagandistic revisionist history, whether it's to promote creationism or to whitewash the less admirable parts of American history. The reason I found the scene chilling is because it's so true to life. There's a lot of genuine Moon-landing denialism in the real world today, alongside a huge amount of anti-intellectual and anti-science attitudes in the American far right, and it's disturbingly plausible that we could potentially see the rise to dominance of a faction that finds it politically convenient to deny the reality of the Moon landings. There have always been people saying "We should focus on solving our problems here on Earth rather than waste our efforts on space," ignoring all the ways that space could solve our problems on Earth.

Indeed, one thing that's very plausible about that scene is that it will be impossible for us to maintain a modern technological civilization for long if we don't maintain a presence in space. We're running out of materials on Earth that are vital to our high-tech infrastructure, both rare-earth metals and helium. Liquid helium is essential for the low-temperature manufacture of a lot of important hardware and the functioning of a lot of scientific equipment, but our supply of helium on Earth is running out quickly and governments are doing nothing to stem the loss. If we don't start mining asteroids and/or the Lunar surface in the next two decades, we may very well end up regressing technologically as shown in the movie clip. And it's quite plausible that the governments whose policies led to that disaster might deny that we ever went into space in the first place, rather than admitting that it was their own screwups that kept us from taking advantage of the resources of space.

About 7% of Americans believe the Moon landings were faked. For comparison, 4% believe the world is run by Reptilian aliens.

You may be overblowing this a little bit.

Well, don't forget, the US collapsed and broke apart in 2012 and parts of it were occupied by a combined force of European peacekeepers to stem the chaos.

The idea of European peacekeepers pacifying angry Americans is not very plausible.