INTERSTELLAR - Grading & Discussion

[Trekker4747]

^^^

I get most of that, but at the same time.... We *know* how to put things into Earth orbit, you accelerate it up faster than the Earth is pulling you down.

Would launching giant space-ships carrying countless people, supplies, materials, animals, equipment, etc. require a lot of fuel and effort to move? Sure it would, but not an impossible amount unless the fuel needs are greater than what exists but the movie doesn't state that. Maybe it should have at some point? "With our plan we cannot launch or space-craft to save humanity as the fuel we'd need to move such massive ships is far greater than the amount of fuel we have available, that's why we need to solve this equation!"

Instead it seemed like, "Uhhh, we need to launch these ships but we can't because of gravity. Now let us launch you up in a ship to get the answers we need."

I may have missed something, and I plan to see the movie again, but that's the part that had me scratching my head. I understand most of Relativity and theoretical physics, things like time distortions around gravity (the black-hole's time distortion was very, very extreme. Probably a level of distortion that'd be impossible without crossing the event horizon) but the movie didn't seem to make it too clear why the equation was so important to solve. It seemed more like a pseudo-MacGuffin for certain plot elements to work than attempt to shadow real-world physics problems.

 

[chrisspringob]

Would launching giant space-ships carrying countless people, supplies, materials, animals, equipment, etc. require a lot of fuel and effort to move? Sure it would, but not an impossible amount unless the fuel needs are greater than what exists but the movie doesn't state that. Maybe it should have at some point? "With our plan we cannot launch or space-craft to save humanity as the fuel we'd need to move such massive ships is far greater than the amount of fuel we have available, that's why we need to solve this equation!"

Instead it seemed like, "Uhhh, we need to launch these ships but we can't because of gravity. Now let us launch you up in a ship to get the answers we need."

Launching hundreds of millions or billions of people into space is cost prohibitive. There aren't the resources available to do it. But more than that, the idea was that once/if they find a habitable planet on the other side of the wormhole, then they'd relocate everyone there, provided that they solve the gravity equation, which allows them to transport all those hundreds of millions of people off the Earth, to Saturn, through the wormhole, and to the new planet (Plan A). Without solving the gravity equation, they don't have the resources to do that. They can only send a handful of people to the new planet, with the frozen embryos (Plan B).

At least, that was my interpretation through the first 90% of the movie. What I'm a bit confused about is the fact that in Cooper Station at the end, it seemed like the humans living up there were still OK growing their own food, and I wasn't sure if that meant that they weren't actually going to go back to Edmunds' planet or not. I thought Plan A meant moving everyone to a habitable planet rather than moving everyone up to space and staying there. Not clear why just moving to space solves the problem, since whatever corn they brough with them to plant up there should still be infected by the blight. I thought the idea was to move to a new planet and grow indigenous food there.

You also asked what this has to do with the black hole. Well, the idea as presented in the movie was that they could only solve half the equation with the information at hand. The data needed to solve it completely could only be gotten from inside a black hole (presumably because a black hole's a unique environment in which space is curved in on itself by gravity). But you can't cross the event horizon of a black hole and get the information back out, so it's hopeless…..or so they thought.

But at the end of the movie, Tars and Cooper are jetissoned into the black hole to save Anne Hathaway's character, presumably where they'll die. But they discover that the future humans built this structure there that allows them to communicate outside the black hole and eventually escape…..seemingly impossible according to our current understanding of physics, but not to physics as understood by those future humans (or whoever "They" are).

 

[Campe]

I give it a solid B. The performances were great all the way around. The effects and cinematography were amazing. There were some very big and intriguing ideas presented here but some of the ideas I think would have been better left a little more ambiguous (a la 2001). That's a problem in general I have with today's cinema that everything needs to be explained -- that audiences are apparently too dumb to bring things from point A to point B. The entire sequence in the 5-D to 3-D, while very cool and interesting was a prime example of this. It was unnecessary for Coop and TARS to have the conversation they did. It was pretty obvious (at least to me) this was where it was going.

Also, let's be honest... The film was about 30 minutes too long. There were many scenes and sequences that did nothing for the plot or character development that could have been trimmed or deleted in their entirety. In that regard, it reminds me a lot of The Dark Knight Rises which makes me think Chris Nolan, while an excellent filmmaker, is too in love with his work (a very understandable thing) to be able to see past sequences that just don't go anywhere or could just stand to be trimmed. I think the studio might need to take final edit away from him. Just my $0.02 and I'm sure there will be disagreement.

Not a bad film. Just one with some flaws.

 

[KGator]

First off, let me say that this was a very ambitious movie that I'm happy was made. It was fairly enjoyable. I did enjoy the questions and thoughts sparked by the relativity concepts expressed (time dilation). Alas, at the end of the movie I was wishing I could send a message back through time to go see John Wick instead and wait for Interstellar on DVD.

My thoughts on the movie.

1) ROBOTS

Like many on this board, I thought the robots were fantastic and possibly stole the movie though . . . like some . . . I didn't entirely buy into how they were able to walk. Still, I went with it.

2) THE BLIGHT AND SUFFOCATION

I thought that someone in the movie said that the earth's air was becoming too nitrogen rich because and eventually humans would suffocate. The blight that was destroying certain food crops lived off of nitrogen. Well . . . if they lived off of nitrogen then wouldn't they be REMOVING nitrogen from the atmosphere instead of creating more? Maybe I misheard that but it didn't make sense. And on the drive to the secret NASA station there seemed to be a lot of plant life left creating oxygen so where was the nitrogen coming from? Maybe them meant to say the blight was "creating nitrogen" though that would be killing a lot of life on earth, not just humans. It doesn't seem likely that nature would create something that kills off all other life and then can't even sustain itself (a planet killing plague that destroys itself too!).

3) SPACE TRAVEL

Humans couldn't travel between star systems here but if you go to another galaxy you can travel to 6 or more DIFFERENT solar systems? Sure, one with a giant black hole (hey, a habitable world revolving around a black hole? Sound promising, lets move there!!!) There were three around the black hole which I assume was close to the other end of the wormhole . . . but how close were the other solar systems that NASA expeditions could get there in a few years rather than decades or hundreds of years? Apparently solar systems are a lot closer together in this new galaxy or the wormhole can take you wherever you want to go depending on your trajectory of entry (different destination wormhole?).

4) WAVE PLANET

I thought the time dilation effects of the first planet was very thought provoking, I loved it. However, I am pretty sure if you are close enough to a black hole to experience something like that you would be crushed to dust. Even if you got to the planet, you couldn't get off (the black hole's gravity). Plus fellas . . . that planet is probably very close to getting sucked into a black hole!!! How could they think life could develop or exist on a planet that's temperature is constantly varying because its orbit is always changing (duhh . . . orbital decay towards a black hole)? Not to mention, what caused those giant tidal waves? Is gravity just really strong at one point and as the planet rotates you run into that big tidal wave? The planet must be spinning pretty fast because those waves seemed to move awfully damn quickly. Plus gravity doesn't really work like that. The best part was the idea that they had landed just minutes after the original mission because of the time dilation effect. Though did nobody notice that the readings sent from that planet occured decades after the others were received? And she really made some fast determinations and sent them (thought decades would have passed in our time) since the time between those first two waves was only like . . . what . . . 25-30 minutes? Just given the location of the planet and inherent problems with it . . . would that really be your 1st choice of a planet to investigate?

5) NO MILITARIES

Cooper or someone stated that because of the mass starvation (I understood that a majority of the population had starved after Lithgow mentioned there were once 6 billion people on the planet and acted like that was an amazing number) there was no need for armies anymore. So am I supposed to believe that in a world where food is a resource that can mean the survival or extermination of entire nations or areas of the globe that no one attempted to take over a neighbors resource by force? And that time of war (when NASA was asked to drop bombs on starving people) didn't damage the ecology or atmosphere at all? If it did, at least it didn't effect small town Iowa or Kansas (or wherever they were). Plus the NY Yankees sometimes visited to play there!!! I assume the dust storms were caused by drought and blight (destroying vegetation) rather than the lingering effects of a war. But I guess people are all peaceful now even though food is still a problem (Hell, Okra just went out the window last year) so a military isn't a problem.

6) THE UAV

What was the point of the UAV? My son asked me this after the movie. Sure, it was a cool scene and interesting but did it have anything to do with the actual plot? Was it explained? Did the UAV just go off flying on its own for decades without an owner simply because it was solar powered until Cooper caught it? Am I mistaken or was that the gist of it? Was it meant to show how advanced AI had become at that time in place (since I definetely expected to see more electric cars and fewer cars that were built in the early 2000s. Remember, Lithgow said that when he was a boy the Yankees had real ball players while Coop said that when he was younger they didn't have time to play baseball (or something to that extent). This suggests a lot of time has passed since well . . . when that truck he drove was first developed. But I digress, was the UAV scene at all necessary to a movie that did seem a bit too long?

7) SPACE STATION

Weren't they building the space station underground at NASA and actually working within what they were going to take into space (after they solved the Gravity equation or something)? Is it me or did there seem to be a lot concrete in that building (station). Based on the strengths and weaknesses of concrete this would seem to be a terrible material to use to build any part of a space station out of unless it was entirely on the inside surrounded by metal. Then again, maybe I misunderstood that part of the dialogue and the two weren't one and the same.

8) PROFESSOR MANN

Yeah, I get it. He went crazy and thus he isn't expected to be logical. I assume he disabled his robot because he wanted to broadcast (after a couple of years) that his planet was awesome and great for life but the robot wouldn't let him broadcast false information. Or maybe KIP just pissed him off somehow. But either way, Mann decided to configure Kip to explode if his memory was accessed by another human. Hmmm . . . so what if after he went to sleep the first people arrived tried to access Kip before waking Mann? I guess he goes bye-bye too. Or, how ironic, if as he's waking up from cryosleep he hears another astronaut in the background saying, "Okay, I'm accessing KIP's memory now!" Kaaah Bloooey! Because the fact is, he must have set the self destruct when KIP still had a functioning power source and KIP wouldn't have a new power source until AFTER new astronauts had arrived. This is a minor complaint but for a man now obsessed with living, setting an active booby trap in your life habitat seems a bit of a risky proposition when you could still be unconcious when its activated.


9) COOP REVIVED IN THE FUTURE

So Cooper exits the black hole and is rescued by the humans who went to space. Now he's recuperating to find out that mankind is living out in the stars in giant space stations (at least two since his daughter was in another one). And they were near Saturn (or at least their patrols are). He enters his daughter's room. The rest of her family is there (which is his family too) but don't seem to care that superhero grandpa is alive and returned from another galaxy despite her grandma's Murph's everwhelming obsession with him. He might as well have been an orderly the way they reacted to him. I found that odd. Then she tells him to go back and find Brand who is all out there by herself starting up a new human colony. Did Murph mean that she had "started up" a colony . . . like 50-60 years ago? Because outside of the Wave planet time is pretty consistent between the two galaxies. Coop was 120ish now and his daughter 100. So she figured out the Gravity equation around Coops age when he left in her 40s (give or take a decade) and Coop shows up when mankind is already out in space. Well the time that passed between his entering the black hole in its galaxy and in ours would be pretty much the same. So either Brand landed on the planet and set up for raising the future of humanity or she said "F**k it" and went into hybernation. Either way, how the hell would Murph know? So humans are out into space in giant space stations, patrolling Saturns moons but they NEVER bothered to go back through the wormhole to check on Brand or the other astronauts? ("Ehh, f**k em! We have the gravity formula now anyways.) Did she just get this knowledge from future humans and only she knows? Is Coop not only supposed to get to Brand in a patrol craft (that you can steal pretty damn easily I might add) but also travel back in time while doing so he can get there when she's alone (because she's she's in her 70s with a bunch of other humans she created with the Plan B embryos or she scrapped the mission and decided to just sleep for as long as her chamber lasted which would contradict what Murph somehow knew). And how does Coop know that Brand's boyfriend isn't still alive and just had a radio malfunction? Talk about being a 3rd wheel. Stuck on a planet with the girl you like and her . . . *cough, cough* . . . boyfriend. Seriously, WTF???

10) ALIENS (SUPERHUMANS FROM THE FUTURE)

Here's the big problem. If humanity survived the crisis on earth, why the hell are they going back in time to help humanity survive? Isn't the real danger that you accidentally alter the timeline to something that DOES end up with the extinction of the human race? If you do nothing, its cool. If you try to help them you might never exist. Doing nothing sounds like a win-win. Doing something seems like a potential win-lose so . . . why?

Plus, with all that advanced knowledge and technology they sure left a lot to chance. If you want humanity to spread to other galaxies when they are on their deathbed why not find a nice planet and set the exit to the wormhole close enough that it's pretty obvious where you want your ancestors to go. Why all the BS? I guess when you are almost super advanced and intelligent you forget how to communicate with your earlier, stupid ancestors. And really, without the robots we humans are f**ked. TARS is really the one who solved the Gravity equation. Coop just morse coded it into Murph's watch (somehow). Superadvanced human race who's master plan doesn't work unless a human eventually gets sucked into a black hole . . . with a robot. Whew, talk about having everything break your way!!!

And lets disregard the time travel quandry that the human race doesn't survive without the help of future humans who don't exist unless humans survive who don't survive without the help of future humans who don't exist unless humans survive and so on, and so on, and so on . . .


I had a great time thinking about all the plot holes of the movie but that is not why I only gave this movie a B-/C+. It just seemed to drag a bit to much at times and the flashbacks of the space climax with Murph on earth just didn't match up well. I wasn't even sure if those things were supposed to be happening at the same time. It worked better in Inception than here.

 

[The Doctor]

I loved this movie. I was breathtaking, awe-inspiring, emotional and imaginative.

Even now, after mulling it over for the past few days, it holds together pretty well. To me, the part of the film that really moved the needle was Cooper and Brandt, sitting helplessly in the Ranger, waiting for the engines to restart. Watching them panic over the minutes turning into weeks, months and years was hearbreaking.

I had studiously avoided any information about the film going in, so the appearance of Damon as Dr. Mann was a shock. As soon as he awoke and sobbed into Coop's shoulder, I knew that Mann had cracked. I knew the fix was in. It was painful and extremely stressful to watch them waste time with Mann as he drew them into his web of crazy. It was a great supporting performance and a entirely believable depiction of a man who just couldn't take the strain.

As for the black hole ending, I don't think it's clear now that humans necessarily built the wormhole in the far future. That's certainly Coop's assumption but there's no real evidence either way. I thought that the visualization of his timeline was well-constructed and thought the solution to the central question was consistent with what we'd seen before and made internal sense with the story. I could have taken or left Coop surviving the black hole encounter and popping out of the wormhole, but it made for a nice hopeful ending as he zoomed through the wormhole to find Brandt and her new planet.

It's rare for a movie to successfully combine all of the elements found in Interstellar, but it worked for me on every level. This is probably my favourite film of the year.

A+

 

[Romulan_spy]

I don't think it was necessary for the wormhole to lead to another galaxy. Space is vast enough that it could have taken them to a star system on the other side of our own galaxy and it still would have been quite impressive and far enough away that humans could not get their on their own. It seemed like it was done just to make the trip sound even more epic for the benefit of the casual viewer. If you say that you are traveling to another galaxy, it immediately sounds more amazing.

 

[davejames]

Interesting read as to all the differences with Spielberg's original script. Originally there was no prior NASA expedition through the wormhole, they visited only the ice planet, there was no Matt Damon character, they discover a prior Chinese expedition on the ice planet whose robots built an underground base, there are no cutaways back to Earth, no mysterious bookshelf ghosts, there is another wormhole and strange alien distortion creatures, Cooper and Brand fall in love.... The craziness just goes on and on.

As many issues as I have with Nolan's version, after reading this I'd say he definitely improved it quite a bit and made the story a lot more focused and credible. At least from how it started out.

http://www.slashfilm.com/interstellar-script-differences/

 

[Romulan_spy]

As many issues as I have with Nolan's version, after reading this I'd say he definitely improved it quite a bit and made the story a lot more focused and credible. At least from how it started out.

http://www.slashfilm.com/interstellar-script-differences/

I think Spielberg's version would have been way too convoluted, messy and much less "hard science" as Nolan's script. A lot of the plot twists in Spielberg's script seem way too convenient. Our heroes are stuck on a planet about to die? Oh look, there is a secret underground base. Our heroes have no way to get back to Earth? Oh look, there is a second wormhole that was never mentioned before! etc...

Plus, I think having Brand and Cooper fall in love and have sex in zero g because they believe they are the last humans in the universe would have come across as rather cliche and cheesy.

 

[Snaploud]

Then she tells him to go back and find Brand who is all out there by herself starting up a new human colony. Did Murph mean that she had "started up" a colony . . . like 50-60 years ago? Because outside of the Wave planet time is pretty consistent between the two galaxies.

I'm pretty sure they mentioned time on Edmon's planet as running extremely slow versus the rest of the universe. It's part of the reason why they didn't go to Edmon's planet first (as it would mean going back when humanity was likely dead on Earth).

Edit: Brand's youth could also be the result of her being near the black hole (when they're trying to get readings beyond the event horizon).

 

[Agent Richard07]

I had studiously avoided any information about the film going in, so the appearance of Damon as Dr. Mann was a shock.

I didn't know that Damon was going to be in the film either.

As soon as he awoke...

I didn't recognize him until after he was done sobbing.

PROFESSOR MANN

Yeah, I get it. He went crazy and thus he isn't expected to be logical. I assume he disabled his robot because he wanted to broadcast (after a couple of years) that his planet was awesome and great for life but the robot wouldn't let him broadcast false information. Or maybe KIP just pissed him off somehow. But either way, Mann decided to configure Kip to explode if his memory was accessed by another human. Hmmm . . . so what if after he went to sleep the first people arrived tried to access Kip before waking Mann? I guess he goes bye-bye too. Or, how ironic, if as he's waking up from cryosleep he hears another astronaut in the background saying, "Okay, I'm accessing KIP's memory now!" Kaaah Bloooey! Because the fact is, he must have set the self destruct when KIP still had a functioning power source and KIP wouldn't have a new power source until AFTER new astronauts had arrived. This is a minor complaint but for a man now obsessed with living, setting an active booby trap in your life habitat seems a bit of a risky proposition when you could still be unconcious when its activated.

Maybe Mann thought that if anyone found him, they'd revive him before attempting to fix the robot. That's a safe bet.

Interesting read as to all the differences with Spielberg's original script. Originally there was no prior NASA expedition through the wormhole, they visited only the ice planet, there was no Matt Damon character, they discover a prior Chinese expedition on the ice planet whose robots built an underground base, there are no cutaways back to Earth, no mysterious bookshelf ghosts, there is another wormhole and strange alien distortion creatures, Cooper and Brand fall in love.... The craziness just goes on and on.

As many issues as I have with Nolan's version, after reading this I'd say he definitely improved it quite a bit and made the story a lot more focused and credible. At least from how it started out.

http://www.slashfilm.com/interstellar-script-differences/

I haven't checked the link yet but what you said in your post does sound good. I like the idea of there not being a previous expedition as well as Coop and Brand falling in love.

 

[KGator]

Then she tells him to go back and find Brand who is all out there by herself starting up a new human colony. Did Murph mean that she had "started up" a colony . . . like 50-60 years ago? Because outside of the Wave planet time is pretty consistent between the two galaxies.

I'm pretty sure they mentioned time on Edmon's planet as running extremely slow versus the rest of the universe. It's part of the reason why they didn't go to Edmon's planet first (as it would mean going back when humanity was likely dead on Earth).

Edit: Brand's youth could also be the result of her being near the black hole (when they're trying to get readings beyond the event horizon).

No, the only planet that had the time dilation effect was the one closest to Gargantua (the wave planet). And it was explained as a gravity induced effect. The other planets were just normal planets. You have to be very close to a black hole to feel these effects (so close in fact that a planet probably couldn't exist). The time involved with Edmunds planet was simply the travel time getting there (and fuel used during the trip), not that time wouldn't be as it was everywhere else. And they weren't travelling close enough to the speed of light for there to be any significant time issues while in the trip.

As for your second theory, Brand was leaving the black hole per slingshot as Coop was falling towards the hole. So if anything, Coop should be even younger than Brand with all the other things being equal (awakening after 60 years or so when he could be found by the earth space rangers).

 

[Trekker4747]

4) WAVE PLANET

I thought the time dilation effects of the first planet was very thought provoking, I loved it. However, I am pretty sure if you are close enough to a black hole to experience something like that you would be crushed to dust. Even if you got to the planet, you couldn't get off (the black hole's gravity). Plus fellas . . . that planet is probably very close to getting sucked into a black hole!!!

Time dilation due to gravity and is a very real thing that happens all of the time our GPS satellite network has to continually make time adjustments to account for not only their speed but for how from Earth's surface they are. Now, there, we're talking about fractions of a second but it needs to be done to keep the GPS network working correctly.

Orbiting a black-hole is one theoretical way to time-travel to the future as seconds on a ship may translate to days, months, or years on Earth. The ratio depends on the size of the black-hole and it certainly wouldn't be one hour=7 years, for it ti be that they'd need to be well past the event horizon.

On that, don't let crummy J.J. Abrams Star Trek movies confuse you. Black-holes don't "suck" things innto them anymore than Earth's gravity is "sucking" you to the surface. That's all a black-hole has is gravity. Stick your arm out, feel that tug? That's gravity, it's weak. But, if you were on Jupiter your arm would be (IIRC) 16 times heavier, taking more energy to lift it, further away from Jupiter you get, easier it us to lift your arm. Somewhere there's a point where your arm us 16x heavier in one side and 15.999...x hwavier on the otherside and for this example we'll say 16x is too much for you to lift. This is the event horizon fir our example.

When we're talking about black-holes everything from our example is increased by orders of ridiculous magnitude. Somewhere there is a point you can go 99.99999......% of the speed of light and still escape, go past that point and you are trapped, because nothing can go as fast ad, let alone fasrer than light other than light (and a smattering of metaphysical particles without mass.)

As long as you don't cross that line you're safe and a planet would orbit it as any planetary body would orbit any other stellar body.)

It should be noted that your head is pulled slightly less than your feet (further your head is older than your feet) since it's closer to a gravitational source. In a black-hole this effect is magnified by orders of magnitude. This would stretch you body out into long strings and ribbons of charged energy.

Black-holes may not suck, but being in one does

 

[drt]

A few plot-clarifying thoughts raised by questions above:

1. The Blight and nitrogen, when Brand mentioned the Blight's use of nitrogen, it's in the context of nitrogen being the most abundant gas in Earth's atmosphere, saying that Earth is almost better suited to host the Blight than humanity
2. Coop's age at the end, there was additional time dilation caused by the slingshot manuever, so both he and Amelia aged a couple more decades (this is why her boyfriend had already died when she reached that planet). The problem is that the alternating scenes of Coop in the teseract and Murph finding the watch make it seem like the process is happening concurrently, but Coop actually fell into the black hole decades into her future, but the timey-wimey aspects of the tesseract allow him to program the watch, which she only finds when she's in her thirties (recall that when she first goes into her room, before the fight with her brother, she notices the watch ticking funny - it's only later when she goes back after starting the fire that she realizes the signifigance)
3. It's funny, while the movie spoonfeeds a lot of the science to make it more understandable, it misses the one point that I see causes the most confusion, the public's misconception that black holes are rogue, giant cosmic vaccum cleaners, sucking everything around them up. But a black hole is like any other massive stellar object, stable orbits around them are possible.

 

[Trekker4747]

When Coop was in the tesseract did he ever give Murph the coordinates to the NORAD/NASA station? I recall him giving her the "Stay" message and dicking with the watch but I don't recall him relaying the base coordinates.

 

[drt]

Yes, they showed him relay the coordinates.

My understanding that as a supermassive black hole, it's possible to have Miller's planet exist in that level of time dilation. What's fanciful about that sequence is I don't think there would be that sort of tidal effect to cause the giant waves unless the planet itself was rotating and not tidally locked - and there would have to have been a day-into-night period to encounter two waves (assuming they are tidal in nature, I'd think they should be at "noon" and "midnight"). I also doubt that little Ranger spacecraft carried enough fuel to climb back out of that point of Gargantua's gravity well and reach Endurance, it would have made more sense to bring Endurance into orbit, and then say that going to Miller's planet cost them the fuel to visit more than one additional planet.

 

[Trekker4747]

Ah, I remember now, it was the sand onthe floor that made the coordinates for the NORAD/NASA base.

 

[davejames]

I'm not really clear though why, if he regrets the decision so much that he frantically types out the word "STAY" and pleads with himself not to leave, that he still gives his daughter the secret NASA coordinates that started the whole thing off in the first place.

Obviously the story needs him to fulfill the events of the time loop and set everything in motion the way it originally happened, but the impression I got was that he really had his mind set (once he understood what was happening) on changing those events entirely, since the entire adventure was pretty much a complete bust and he wanted back all that time lost with his kids.

 

[Trekker4747]

I'm not really clear though why, if he regrets the decision so much that he frantically types out the word "STAY" and pleads with himself not to leave, that he still gives his daughter the secret NASA coordinates that started the whole thing off in the first place.

Obviously the story needs him to fulfill the events of the time loop and set everything in motion the way it originally happened, but the impression I got was that he really had his mind set (once he understood what was happening) on changing those events entirely, since the entire adventure was pretty much a complete bust and he wanted back all that time lost with his kids.

Oh, you, thinking in your simple 3-dimensional ways.

In the tesseract time was meaningless, he tells Murph to get him to stay when he's first panicking and trying to get himself to stay. But once he talks to the robot-thingie and puts his plan together he sets into motion his plan to tell Murph/"himself" the coordinates to the NASA facility but he does it an an earlier time (though later for him and us) where it'd be of a benefit and then he gives adult Murph the solution to the equation through the watch.

We could ask why he didn't remember not believing Murph telling him what the "ghost" was saying (to stay) and maybe, I dunno, trying giving more of a message than "stay", but again the movie had to fulfill the time loop/paradox.

Which was interesting actually, I did wonder how it was happening though I knew it had to have something to do with the trip and it either being aliens or some other power doing it, just didn't quite get "how." Interesting in how it was all revealed with it being him inside the black-hole/tesseract. I sort of was expecting aliens or other humans in some manner (based on the original treatment for the movie, which was just bonkers! Seriously, there were some massive changes, and vast improvements, made between the original script and this movie.)

Just some an interesting, quick and dirty, look at something.

Pioneer 11 took about 6 years to get to Saturn, traveling at around 107,000 miles an hour. The ship our heroes take in the movie gets to Saturn in 2 years, so it's likely traveling -this- 3 times faster, over 300,000 miles an hour! Quite the feat, really!

 

[davejames]

Ah, that's right. He was bouncing around from place to place and seeing her at different ages. Guess I just wasn't paying enough attention to when exactly he sent the various messages.

And yeah, given that he can type out entire coordinates, you'd think he'd be able to squeeze in a simple "It's your dad" somewhere as well. Or maybe a "Hey dumbass, I'm stuck in a time-dimension behind your bookshelf."

 

[Warped9]

I think what we saw in the tesseract was how Cooper perceived or interpreted it. Someone else (TARS for example?) might percieive it quite differently.