INTERSTELLAR - Grading & Discussion

[Ensign_Redshirt]

One of my favorite lines of dialogue in the movie is possibly this exchange during the emergency docking scene:

Amelia: What are you doing?
Cooper: Docking.
TARS: Endurace's rotation is 67…, 68 RPM.
Cooper: Get ready to match up spin, retro thrusters.
TARS: It's not possible.
Cooper: No, it's necessary.

While some may consider this a bit too macho and cheesy, it perfectly sums up Cooper as a character as well as the general philosophy of the film. For the whole movie, Cooper is told that things are impossible and that he has to accept settling for a less ideal solution (his son can't go to college, Earth's population can't be saved and hence they'll have to go with Professor Brand's "Plan B" etc.). But the message of the film that the human spirit can overcome all obstacles.

Despite a "harder" stance on the science, Interstellar conveys a very Star Trek-like feel. In the Star Trek universe, Earth was devastated in a nuclear war, but humanity survived by inventing warp drive and going to the stars. It's basically the same story with Interstellar (environmental catastrophe instead of nuclear war, wormhole instead of warp drive).

It may not always be the most realistic message, but it's a very positive one.

 

[Warped9]

^^ Yes, I also felt something of classic Star Trek from Interstellar. It wasn't blatant, but there was a resonance there.

Man, to have a Star Trek film done with a similar mindset and overall approach as Interstellar. Well, we had TMP which almost made it. If only TMP had had a stronger emotional core like Interstellar.

 

[drt]

I thought it was disappointing that after the entire movie he's finally reunited with his daughter and she immediately says I've got my family go get Catwoman

The reasoning is visual shorthand, in a single scene you get the reunion, plus the realization that she has her own family and there's really nothing left for Cooper at all in the Solar System, he's been left behind by the passage of time. However, I agree that it's too abrupt, I think it would have worked better if he first met her alone, then fade out of them takling, fade back in later with her family arriving, then she remind him that Brand is out there. The scene basically still plays out as shot, but it looks like they spent more than three minutes together after 80 years.

There were cornfields and dust bowls, which implies a midwest setting, Coop's farm was within a day's drive of Colorado Springs, which suggests eastern Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, or Northern New Mexico. There were also mountains in the background of the farm, probably the foothills of the Rockies.

Coop's truck had Colorado plates.

 

[Unicron]

Isn't it funny how the main topic in media outlets is the accuracy (or lack of) of the science in the movie!? What other movie is held to this standard?

Gravity, last year.

For a film's science to be discussed and critiqued seriously is a compliment, whether that's how the critic intended it or not. Few bother to go out of their way to point out the scientific inaccuracies in most genre movies because they're expected. The fact that the scientific in/accuracies of this film are getting so much attention is a testament to that fact that audiences, critics, and scientists recognize and appreciate that the film strove to be more than the average genre film. It might not have achieved the (unrealistically) complete accuracy some demand, but it at least made a major effort. The fact that it can be used to broaden understanding and encourage further study of relativity/time dilation and wormholes/black holes through using it as a teaching tool or pointing out its mistakes is a good thing, not a bad one.

People who get upset at Neil DeGrasse Tyson's tweets about this (which he's been very positive about) and Gravity, for instance, should keep in mind that he's trying to use popular culture to increase the layman's understanding of physics and to make complex scientific issues relatable to the general audience. Teacher frequently use scifi movies as teaching tools for students as a gateway to gain their interest before hitting the harder subject matter.

Can anyone please explain how that rocket can take off from NASA without, like, destroying the conference room where they spoke about Wormholes and Saturn? I mean the rocket was not on the vehicle to be moved anywhere, and it was right next to that conference room (note when Michael Cain opened the door)

The remnant of NASA in the film was based out of the nuclear bunker of the former NORAD command center under Cheyenne Mountain (it's still maintained as an alternate command center), so the conference room door would be a hardened steel door anchored into the surrounding rock roughly similar to the one below and the entire room would be on shock absorbing springs. It was designed to survive several hits from multi-megaton nuclear warheads, so the rocket blast would be child's play by comparison, especially with vents directing the bulk of the thrust away from the room. I just figured Nolan was a fan of Hugo Drax's killer conference room under a launchpad from Moonraker (see bottom). NORAD makes sense as a base of operations for NASA once the military collapses due to its being the home of US Space Command and already set up to monitor spacecraft and incursions into North American airspace (which could be used to pick up the gravitational anomalies).

Also, Michael Caine was Batman's butler in another movie.

 

[BigJake]

Just saw it. Nine parts awesome to one part not-quite-as-awesome, I gave it an A-.

Spoiler: Awesome and Not-Quite-As

The Awesome.
Loved, hard, the hard SF presentation of space exploration, which delivered plenty of awe-inspiring, thrilling and at times terrifying content. I get why people find it reminiscent of 2001 (though for my money it was both less pretentious and less padded than that Kubrick classic). I hope that's something that more SF learns from: that you don't need to completely jettison science to tell a thrilling story.

Liked the characters for the most part. Including the much-maligned Dr. Brand, who I see is being touted as an example of "Chris Nolan doesn't know how to Women" but actually seemed to me like a strong, flawed and interesting character; a lot of whether one sees it this way seems to depend on whether you're willing to take the movie's overarching themes about Love seriously -- in which case she's a prescient proponent of a genuinely useful philosophical angle -- or prefer to dismiss it all as Hallmark sentimentalism, in which case she's a weak female being ruled by her ladybits or some such. I don't see how one can reach the second conclusion based on what's in the film but it seems some people do.

The robots kind of steal the show a bit, especially TARS. Thoroughly enjoyed them.

Yes, I enjoyed the intergalactic fistfight with Dr. Mann. And it was cool to see Matt Damon show up in a largely unannounced role. And I'm not on board with those claiming it doesn't make sense or belonged in a different movie.

The Not-Quite-as-Awesome.
Yes, I could have done without some of the plodding "as you know, Bob" exposition... but by now I know it's there because Nolan understands that if it wasn't, there'd be far more people claiming the movie was "hard to understand" or "inaccessible" (indeed, cue the claims in this very thread that the relativity planet "wasn't explained enough" ) or, in the case of middlebrow hacks mistaking themselves for highbrow critics, claiming to have detected "plot holes" because they do not know what "plot hole" means.

Predictability. I do kind of miss the Chris Nolan who could deliver surprises that were genuinely surprising. Again, I get why he ties everything so carefully together, explains and even telegraphs it all so carefully and is careful not to go outside that structure: he is careful (unfortunately correctly, it would seem) never to overestimate the attention span of blockbuster audiences. And most of what happens in Interstellar is enjoyable and awesome in the most literal sense of that word to watch...

...but let's face it, any good Star Trek fan could see from a mile away that Dr. Mann was going to turn out to have gone nuts and try to kill everyone (it was even obvious that his data was falsified from the first moment the team find themselves flying through "frozen clouds" above his "promising" world), or that the moment Dr. Brand starts talking about the cosmic significance of Love we were going to have some time-loop shenanigans at the end about Cooper being the ghost in his daughter's bedroom and the aliens being super-evolved humans. It wasn't a dealbreaker for me (it really pissed off the buddy I saw it with ) but it did detract a bit.

Oh, and FFS, someone needs to tell Hans Zimmer there are dynamics other than fortississimo. Grandiose, cathedral-worthy soundscapes are all well and good but my ears shouldn't be ringing when I leave the theatre.

 

[BigJake]

This was utterly soulless. Very very cold, which was a shame as it tried so hard to be emotional and failed. Utterly.

Huh. I'd find it hard to apply "cold" to a film that spent so much time on the emotional agony the travellers (especially Cooper) go through on being dislocated in time from their loved ones, and that has as its climax the hero being reconnected to his past (and ultimately to saving his planet) through his love for his daughter, with whom he has an emotional reunion by her deathbed at the end. I understand the claims that it's too sentimental far more readily.

 

[wulfio]

also it was sure was convenient that Cooper lived in the middle of nowhere yet was about an hour's drive away from the super secret NASA base...

He wasn't an hour away. He left in the day time and got there in the middle of the night. So it was a 6-12 hour drive, or possibly more. They did 2 scenes to emphasize the point his kid was dead tired. Not to mention that they left when the sun was up, and got there in the pitch black.

1st being when they arrived, she was in that state kids get in where you have to carry them to their room while they magically double or triple their mass. 2nd was she needed to go sleep in hathaway's office.

The other point for me, was that it was somewhat a commentary on communities. We now live in a global village, where someone living in australia can feel as if they are in Toronto(an example for me). communication is so easy. this future society seems to have regressed to a point where communities are more like they were 50 years ago. contained and self sustaining, where someone living in Toronto can feel as if they are living as far away as Australia.

So the fact that we are no longer in a global village, to me, makes it feasible that someone they aren't looking for, and has an occupation that everyone and their mother has(farmer), could go unnoticed.

edit: I've also noticed a few people making comments about future humans affecting past humans. That is a temporal paradox theory called retrocausality, where effect precedes cause. It's not some plot hole that Nolan pulled out of his ass. It might be pseudoscience, but t's actually a thing, and like everything else in this movie, has a basis in actual physics.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Isn't it funny how the main topic in media outlets is the accuracy (or lack of) of the science in the movie!? What other movie is held to this standard?

Gravity, last year.

For a film's science to be discussed and critiqued seriously is a compliment, whether that's how the critic intended it or not. Few bother to go out of their way to point out the scientific inaccuracies in most genre movies because they're expected. The fact that the scientific in/accuracies of this film are getting so much attention is a testament to that fact that audiences, critics, and scientists recognize and appreciate that the film strove to be more than the average genre film. It might not have achieved the (unrealistically) complete accuracy some demand, but it at least made a major effort. The fact that it can be used to broaden understanding and encourage further study of relativity/time dilation and wormholes/black holes through using it as a teaching tool or pointing out its mistakes is a good thing, not a bad one.

People who get upset at Neil DeGrasse Tyson's tweets about this (which he's been very positive about) and Gravity, for instance, should keep in mind that he's trying to use popular culture to increase the layman's understanding of physics and to make complex scientific issues relatable to the general audience. Teacher frequently use scifi movies as teaching tools for students as a gateway to gain their interest before hitting the harder subject matter.

Can anyone please explain how that rocket can take off from NASA without, like, destroying the conference room where they spoke about Wormholes and Saturn? I mean the rocket was not on the vehicle to be moved anywhere, and it was right next to that conference room (note when Michael Cain opened the door)

The remnant of NASA in the film was based out of the nuclear bunker of the former NORAD command center under Cheyenne Mountain (it's still maintained as an alternate command center), so the conference room door would be a hardened steel door anchored into the surrounding rock roughly similar to the one below and the entire room would be on shock absorbing springs. It was designed to survive several hits from multi-megaton nuclear warheads, so the rocket blast would be child's play by comparison, especially with vents directing the bulk of the thrust away from the room. I just figured Nolan was a fan of Hugo Drax's killer conference room under a launchpad from Moonraker (see bottom). NORAD makes sense as a base of operations for NASA once the military collapses due to its being the home of US Space Command and already set up to monitor spacecraft and incursions into North American airspace (which could be used to pick up the gravitational anomalies).

Also it was sure was convenient that Cooper lived in the middle of nowhere yet was about an hour's drive away from the super secret NASA base...

Convenient or by design? The future humans were using the gravity waves in the atmosphere to communicate with NASA, and likely directed them to NORAD in Colorado Springs which is within a day of where Coop and Murph --who they knew solved the gravity equation that allowed for the mass evacuation of Earth if you believe in a bootstrap paradox-- lived.

There were cornfields and dust bowls, which implies a midwest setting, Coop's farm was within a day's drive of Colorado Springs, which suggests eastern Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, or Northern New Mexico. There were also mountains in the background of the farm, probably the foothills of the Rockies.

I thought they were saying that the big circular structure we saw them working in was the space station they were going to launch into orbit if they could only solve the gravity equation.

It was.

My guess is they started building it in the existing hollowed out portions of Cheyenne Mountain and then excavated the rest of the mountain as they went on to provide aggregate for use in the concrete forming the interior superstructure of the station, and to eventually leave a hole in the roof for the ship/station to launch out of.

But...

But...

The door to the conference room wasn't any where near as thick as that door. (I think the door in your pics was used in WarGames)

 

[Locutus of Bored]

The door to the conference room wasn't any where near as thick as that door. (I think the door in your pics was used in WarGames)

I didn't say it was the same door, I said it would likely be something similar designed for blast resistance. It wouldn't have to be as thick just to deflect rocket exhaust.

Yes, the door in the pics was used in WarGames, because WarGames filmed the actual door to the nuclear bunker at NORAD. It's not fictional, despite Cheyenne Mountain's often fanciful appearances in genre fiction (like Stargate).

 

[Relayer1]

This was utterly soulless. Very very cold, which was a shame as it tried so hard to be emotional and failed. Utterly.

Huh. I'd find it hard to apply "cold" to a film that spent so much time on the emotional agony the travellers (especially Cooper) go through on being dislocated in time from their loved ones, and that has as its climax the hero being reconnected to his past (and ultimately to saving his planet) through his love for his daughter, with whom he has an emotional reunion by her deathbed at the end. I understand the claims that it's too sentimental far more readily.

Oh I agree, it spent a lot of time and effort on the emotional aspect, it just failed to resonate for me. There was a distance or 'remove' to to the film that didn't draw you close. The whole movie struck me as vast and empty - the cinematic equivalent of walking through a huge deserted aircraft hangar.

 

[DarthTom]

Finally saw Interstellar at an IMAX theatre over the weekend. I gave it a B+. The film is visually stunning and many of the scenes are an obvious homage to 2001. Matthew McConaughey's performance was solid, but something about his acting since he did the HIV film and the series with Woody Harrleson on HBO now strikes me as he's becoming more wierd, in his old age - as a person and as an actor.

I also liked the fact that they used models as opposed to CGI for most of the visuals - especially related to any of the docking sequences between the space craft. This IMO bods well for JJ.'s decision to use models as well for the upcoming wars movie.

Anne Hathway's character I didn't feel emotionally connected with at all and quite frankly I thought she delivered a stronger performance in the Devil Wears Prada and as a viewer I identified more with her character than in Interstellar. OH and related to the grandfather paradox you'd think the super advanced humans of the future would come up with a more clear for Cole to impart the formula to his daughter than a watch.

Nolan's attempt at sentimentailiy and emtions in this film fell somewhat flat for me. I didn't even break a tear in the final secenes of the film when the viewer was supposed to be overcome with a connection with the characters. Even McConaughey's attempt to connect with his daughter didn't resonate for me.

I think this films biggest failings - and as others have said - are the terrible plot holes in the script. They never make it clear why the magical gravity formula [at least from what I can recall in the dialogue] will solve all of their problems on evacuating Earth? Also, as someone else said earlier in this thread - if they had the resources to create huge habitats and were able to simulate a artificial gravity through spinning an object - why were they unable to do it on a larger scale until the gravity formula was found?

The whole premise of the planet caught outside of normal time was never fully explained as well - or at least not sufficiently. Was it because of the planets proximity to the worm hole or the black hole?

Like all time travel plot schemes the grand-father paradox comes into play which is always a problem to get around. The film did however explore Einstein's theory of relativity far better and with more complexity than any film I've ever seen before.

Additionally, that Murphy was able to solve the gravity equation using a watch at least for me stretched my disbelief to about the breaking point.

Without the beauty of the visuals, this film IMO would have likely fallen flat. But because of them, I gave it at B+. It definitely is not a film I'm going to watch again anytime soon at nearly 3 hours long and with a lot of very slow moments.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

I think this films biggest failings - and as others have said - are the terrible plot holes in the script.

None of the things you have listed below are plot holes. Some are kind of goofy and extremely far-fetched ideas, but that doesn't instantly make them plot holes. Nor does missing or not understanding the explanations given in the film make what you missed plot holes.

They never make it clear why the magical gravity formula [at least from what I can recall in the dialogue] will solve all of their problems on evacuating Earth?

Chemical rockets like the one that first takes the astronauts into space (based on NASA's real upcoming SLS rocket family which will replace the space shuttle) and the plasma-jets used on the Rangers and Landers are powerful but constantly straining against the planetary gravity they're trying to lift people and cargo off of, so their payloads are severely limited. You can evacuate limited numbers of people to some small piecemeal space stations slowly assembled in orbit, but you're not going to be evacuating the populace of Earth en masse. It's going to be a triage where only a few survive to carry on the species.

But if you could perfect some form of anti-gravity shielding that cancels out the gravitational effect on your spacecraft and drastically lowers the weight, you could lift an entire space station with the mass of the Pentagon, for example, carrying tens of thousands of people instantly into orbit easily with those same chemical rockets.

That was the difference between saving just the chosen few astronauts and repopulating humanity with cryogenically frozen fertilized human embryos and artificial wombs in the "population bomb" on their new homeworld in Plan B, and savings tens of millions of people in giant space habitats lifted directly from Earth's surface once the gravity equation was solved in Plan A. Only Dr. Brand (Caine) and some of the astronauts knew that they didn't think Plan A was actually feasible because it required gravitational data that would have to be acquired by actually encountering the black hole singularity itself and sending the data back to them, something they did not believe it was possible to survive for robot or human. Cooper was able to do this with the assistance of the 5th dimensional future humans from the dawning of the age of Aquarius and their creepy peeping tom Tesseract looking into a little girl's bedroom though time, allowing Coop to send a message using gravity manipulation.

It's assumed that the 5th dimensional humans from the other galaxy are in fact the distant descendants of the population bomb left on the third planet by Dr. Amelia Brand (and possibly Coop if he rejoins her as he intended at the end of the film), who are insuring that not just a chosen few survive this time but that most of the human species gets to live, by giving them the gravitational key to complete Plan A.

All of this (with the exception of the exact origin of the future humans which is left vague --whether they're Plan B descendants only helping save the rest of humanity despite their survival already being assured or Plan A & B descendants who met later through the wormhole ensuring their own survival) is explained in the film, by the way, contrary to what you say above.

Also, as someone else said earlier in this thread - if they had the resources to create huge habitats and were able to simulate a artificial gravity through spinning an object - why were they unable to do it on a larger scale until the gravity formula was found?

Because building massive space stations in orbit able to house tens of millions of people would take more time than Earth's surviving populace had left before they ran out of breathable air and food. That's why they needed to build massive stations in one piece on the ground and lift them up at once with anti-gravity carrying millions of people to safety.

The whole premise of the planet caught outside of normal time was never fully explained as well - or at least not sufficiently. Was it because of the planets proximity to the worm hole or the black hole?

There's nothing wrong with not getting it, because it's complex, but it was explained in the film. The cause of the time differential was gravitational time dilation caused by the planet's extreme proximity to the Gargantua black hole.

Like all time travel plot schemes the grand-father paradox comes into play which is always a problem to get around.

Actually, in this case it would be called a bootstrap paradox, but that only applies if the future humans are descendents of the people from the space habitats too (Plan A) in addition to Plan B. If they're only the descendents from the population bomb on the planet Brand went to in the distant galaxy, then they're not actually assisting their own survival which already happened, they're assisting the survival of the rest of Earth's populace in our own solar system, so there's no actual paradox.

Additionally, that Murphy was able to solve the gravity equation using a watch at least for me stretched my disbelief to about the breaking point.

The fact that her father had a librarian-like eidetic memory of the order of her books as seen from the unmarked back ends of them, and that that order apparently never changed over the span of decades of her life so he could send a vague Riddler message based on the first letter of the titles that she wouldn't be able to understand until she was an adult with a background in theoretical physics who just happened to visit the farm she hated that day and Coop just happened to fly to that exact room in the poly-dimensional perv palace thanks to the expert guidance of Exposition Bot who was not with him but could be heard everywhere (TARS is God!) seemed more out there than using the gravity waves to manipulate watch hands, but yeah, that works too.

 

[KGator]

Actually, in this case it would be called a bootstrap paradox, but that only applies if the future humans are descendents of the people from the space habitats too (Plan A) in addition to Plan B. If they're only the descendents from the population bomb on the planet Brand went to in the distant galaxy, then they're not actually assisting their own survival which already happened, they're assisting the survival of the rest of Earth's populace in our own solar system, so there's no actual paradox.

Actually, this would not be a "bootstrap paradox" but rather a "reverse grandfather paradox" as the movie led us to believe that the 5th dimensional beings were the ones who created the wormhole that saved humanity (for the Plan B embryos). They also created the scenario allowing the passage of the gravitational information that saved humanity (for all the Plan A folks).

Sooooo . . . if the future humans didn't create the wormhole for Brand to travel through to save humanity, humanity wouldn't have been saved and the future humans couldn't have existed.

Now if the 5th dimensional beings were aliens then it wouldn't be such a paradox. However, that's not what the movie intimated to the viewers.

 

[DarthTom]

None of the things you have listed below are plot holes. Some are kind of goofy and extremely far-fetched ideas, but that doesn't instantly make them plot holes. Nor does missing or not understanding the explanations given in the film make what you missed plot holes.

OK, fair enough. I'm taking it you loved this film and all of its,'far fetched,' ideas? Meh, I thought it was at best B+ material - if only because of the visuals. The film IMO was very slow at some points. And I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't have at least a passing interest in science. My partner Ronald who does not, fell asleep in about hour 2 of the film.

As an aside, what does it say about American film tastes that in week #1 that this film was released a childrens animation movie beat it at the box office and in week # 2 - Dumb and Dumber To did.?

IMO - likely that this film was too complex for most average movie goers.

 

[BigJake]

None of the things you have listed below are plot holes. Some are kind of goofy and extremely far-fetched ideas, but that doesn't instantly make them plot holes. Nor does missing or not understanding the explanations given in the film make what you missed plot holes.

OK, fair enough. I'm taking it you loved this film and all of its,'far fetched,' ideas?

Whether Locutus did or not, he's correct that too many people seem prone to talk about "plot holes" when they don't really seem to understand what the term means. (For my money an even more widely-abused term than "ad hominem.")

likely that this film was too complex for most average movie goers.

Wasn't "too complex" to do three hundred mil at the box office and counting, although there's no doubting that any complexity at all is too much complexity for some. But I understand why Nolan put in all that careful exposition that some critics complained about; it was precisely so it wouldn't be obscure enough to threaten its box office take, and that seems to have worked just fine. Of course, there's clearly no amount of exposition that can please every viewer or capture every attention span.

 

[drt]

The fact that her father had a librarian-like eidetic memory of the order of her books as seen from the unmarked back ends of them, and that that order apparently never changed over the span of decades of her life so he could send a vague Riddler message based on the first letter of the titles

I believe the only message he sent with the books was "STAY", which was in Morse code based on the spacing of books, to represent dots and dashes, that he pushed out of the case, not the titles.

 

[DarthTom]

Whether Locutus did or not, he's correct that too many people seem prone to talk about "plot holes" when they don't really seem to understand what the term means. (For my money an even more widely-abused term than "ad hominem.")

Here are 15 what someone labels, 'Plot contrivances,' with the film. Do you agree with any of these?

1. Wouldn’t it have been way better for Professor Brand (Michael Caine) to just send the super-robots? Sure, we’re told bots can’t improvise. But they also don’t freak out about being stranded, want to check out planets where their lovers are stationed, and make decisions based on getting home in time for their daughter’s birthday. Plus, having people on the ship requires more oxygen, food, water, fuel and ways to watch Survivor videos from home that rip your heart out.
2. There’s a reference to land wars having come and gone, but still: Wouldn’t the starving hoards of desperate humanity kill the farmers and take what was left? Are we really supposed to believe, in a society where the military has collapsed, they’d just slink away in their dusty cars to die? Or are the very least, wouldn’t they raid the corn fields for all the food? Clearly Nolan has never worked in a restaurant — you put suburbanites on a 40-minute wait for a booth and by the end of it they’re ready to claw your eyes out. Even the nice hobbits stole from Farmer Maggot.
3. Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) gives his daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy) a soothing explanation of the origin of Murphy’s Law. This isn’t actually true. The term means pretty much what you thought it meant — if anything can go wrong, it will (like, for instance, your dad taking off for 80 years, leaving you behind to eat corn with dust sauce). Speaking of: Cooper shows up randomly at NASA and suddenly he’s piloting the craft? If he’s so ideal for this incredibly important Earth-saving mission that’s just about to happen, and even knows the professor, and is just a day’s drive away, you would think they might have already known he was working the farm down the street and reached out to him. Did NASA not have a pilot before he showed up?
4. Why are the watery vacuum-seal sleep chamber containers so filthy? Did Murph leave the window open on the space station during a dust storm? And did Nolan lift that the paper-and-pencil explanation of wormholes from Event Horizon?
5. Was this the first movie where aliens played a major role, but we did not see any aliens? Or wait: There were no actual aliens, and it was just humanity in the future, right? Either way: Cooper is definitely revealed to be Space Ghost, supplying his daughter (and his younger self) with information. How is that not a cap-P Paradox?
6. So you can receive depressing videos from your loved ones about how you’re a crappy father on the other side of the galaxy and through a wormhole, but nobody could send Earth back any detailed information about the habitability of the prospective planets that mankind is depending on? And would Murph really continue being so angry with her dad for participating in the save-humanity project when she’s spending her life devoted to the exact the same project?
7. How is Romilly (David Gyasi), who waited 23 years for Cooper and Brand (Anne Hathaway) to get back to the ship, not totally insane? He took a couple sleep breaks but clearly spent well over a decade alone. Wouldn’t he be collecting jars of his urine and wearing tissue boxes on his feet by now instead of looking like a dad who’s mildly perturbed at his kids for staying out too late? Why not, after finishing his complex math homework, didn’t he just stay in the sleep chamber and trust Cooper and Brand to eventually wake him up rather than remaining for years roaming around the ship looking out the window, waiting for the headlights of their returning shuttle? Romilly is the most tragic character in this movie. Murph lives a long life and has a ton of distractions to keep her occupied — such as her grouchy brother, Michael Caine, a surprise Topher Grace and a meaningful job — yet we’re supposed to feel really sorry for her. But Romilly waits around for 23 years in space, bored out of his mind, somehow manages to keep his wits together, only to get blown up by sad Matt Damon. From Romilly’s perspective, this movie was a total tragedy.
8. Speaking of which, let’s talk for a minute about Damon’s character Dr. Mann (Get it? Man’s greatest enemy is Mann — the Waterwold planet was a man vs. nature challenge, then the Hoth planet was a man vs. Mann challenge). Did anybody else get the impression if Mann just would have opened with, “Sorry about the pings, I was crazy lonely and going nuts,” the other astronauts would have thought he was super unprofessional, but still let him tag along to the next planet? And how come, with a few scientists, a couple incredible robots and a spaceship flying around, Cooper’s team couldn’t tell anything about the planet’s inhospitable conditions without trekking out to a glacier? And how would seeing that one glacier really tell you anything about the rest of the planet? Like with the videos-from-Earth device, the answer seems to be: Technology in Interstellar only works as much as the plot needs it to work. Which is true in all movies, particularly sci-fi films, but it’s not supposed to feel like it.
9. Ultimately, if aliens/future humans wanted to save us, couldn’t they have simply given the professor the secret equation? Especially if the solution is apparently simple enough to be delivered by Morse Code? Or perhaps give humanity way to grow some food? Rather than orchestrating a spectacular protracted and complication mass starvation family melodrama mind-f—k? Cooper was almost killed a dozen ways before he gets into the tesseract; it just really seems like a lousy plan.
10. We’re somewhat sure a planet, and very sure a ship, and absolutely sure a person, can’t get as close to a black hole as they do in this film. Unless we’re playing by the rules of Disney’s The Black Hole. And if love is a powerful inter-dimensional force, do other emotions power other dimensions? Like is there a sixth dimension fueled by shame?
11. Where is the robot when Cooper is in the library den of the fifth dimension tesseract? Because he’s talking to it but the robot doesn’t appear to be in the same place. And what sort of radio works inside a black hole anyway? I guess the answer is “because the fifth dimension makes everything everything.” And do we buy that brilliant scientist like grown-up-Murph decide that the answers for solving humanity’s crisis all reside in her childhood’s poltergeist bookshelf?
12. What’s on the bottom of the robot’s legs, exactly — are there wheels? Wouldn’t it be scraping along crazily against everything with those big square metal ends? At the very least making a lot more noise? Still, I want one of those robots. The robots were rad.
13. So at the end of the movie, Cooper is 124 years old in Earth-time. Enough time has passed so that humans have created awesome circle-vision space stations with softball fields and are growing fields of crops that they apparently couldn’t grow on Earth. But are we to understand they still haven’t gone to Planet Hathaway yet? And since Brand didn’t do the time-slowing black hole plunge with Cooper, and isn’t on a planet on the edge of that black hole, wouldn’t she have also aged several decades too by the time Cooper reaches her? Did anybody else want McConaughey to paraphrase Dazed and Confused: “That’s what I loves about space travel: The women get older, but I stay the same age”? (Perhaps Cooper, as one theory goes, actually died).
14. Since it’s been established you cannot truly communicate from the settlement planets back to our solar system beyond rudimentary pings, how did Cooper know Brand wouldn’t be living happily on the planet with the other guy — Edmunds. For all Cooper knew, he’s going to show up and be like an awkward third wheel on her date for the rest of his life. Or was he just banking on the other guy to have died by then, but Brand still be alive? An even better question than how does Cooper know all this about Brand: How does his 95-year-old bedridden daughter, who just woke from two-year nap, know all this about Brand? And did anybody expect Edumnds to be played by a surprise appearance by Joseph Gordon-Levitt? Which leads us to….
15. Cooper spends the entire movie trying to get back to his daughter … and his daughter spends the entire movie yearning to be reunited with him. He spends two minutes with her … and then then they both agree he should split to go have presumed only-guy-on-the-planet sex with Brand?

 

[drt]

I'll take a crack at a few of those:

2. That there are no standing armies doesn't mean there aren't police and militias to keep the peace (standing armies are actually a relatively recent human invention, with one of the biggest issues in the past being able to feed them).

7. Romily wasn't completely alone, he was with TARS, which probably helped.

13/14. Brand's arrival at Edmund's planet is concurrent with Cooper's at Cooper station. Eighty years have passed, so more than likely he's dead as well. Why the Cooper station humans haven't visited is more the question. The wormhole offered access to nine other worlds as well, which I'd assume aren't orbiting Garganua, which may have made them attractive for more immediate exploration, if there's a presumption that Endurance didn't find anything there.

15. Addressed that in a previous post.

 

[BigJake]

Here are 15 what someone labels, 'Plot contrivances,' with the film. Do you agree with any of these?

From EW, yes? Yes, whoever wrote that list does not understand what a "plot hole" is:

Spoiler: EW's List of Supposed Plot Holes

1. Wouldn’t it have been way better for Professor Brand (Michael Caine) to just send the super-robots?

No. Inattentive viewing. They refer to having sent probes already, since the wormhole was discovered fifty years before the film. Point of the mission was to establish human ability to operate on and settle planets, so at some stage you have to send humans. These stages are what the movie is about.

2. There’s a reference to land wars having come and gone, but still: Wouldn’t the starving hoards of desperate humanity kill the farmers and take what was left?

No. It's alluded to that the major wave of starvation and violence (all but the final extinction phase) has already happened and humanity is living in a precariously-stabilized aftermath. (NB when Coop's father-in-the-law talks about "six billion people" like it's an unimaginable number.) There is certainly a bit of an arm-wave here in assuming that shared desperation has persuaded humanity to stop fighting, but that's a setting choice, not a "plot hole."

3. Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) gives his daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy) a soothing explanation of the origin of Murphy’s Law. This isn’t actually true.

Not a "plot hole." (Not the inspirational choice I'd have made in Coop's place, if it had been my kid I'd have just told her she was named after a totally different Murphy. But being awkward at the dad stuff is part of his character and his arc.)

Speaking of: Cooper shows up randomly at NASA and suddenly he’s piloting the craft?

No. Inattentive viewing. Explained painfully clearly in the film in one of those reams of exposition.

4. Why are the watery vacuum-seal sleep chamber containers so filthy?

Prop nitpick, not a "plot contrivance."

5 . . . Cooper is definitely revealed to be Space Ghost, supplying his daughter (and his younger self) with information. How is that not a cap-P Paradox?

I'm not sure what "cap-P paradox" is meant to mean since the only reference I can find to it is that EW article. But yes, it is a bootstrap paradox, which is a choice of theme, not a "plot hole."

6. So you can receive depressing videos . . . but nobody could send Earth back any detailed information about the habitability of the prospective planets?

A genuine contrivance of the Star Trek-kish "we're experiencing some sort of interference, Cap'n" variety, but a minor one necessary to setting up the "which planet do we gamble on?" scenario when they get through the wormhole.

7. How is Romilly (David Gyasi), who waited 23 years for Cooper and Brand (Anne Hathaway) to get back to the ship, not totally insane?

Not a plot hole, just a stupid question. He spent long stretches in hibernation (length unspecified) and had work to occupy him when he wasn't. No reason for him to be insane.

8. Speaking of which, let’s talk for a minute about Damon’s character Dr. Mann . . . Did anybody else get the impression if Mann just would have opened with, “Sorry about the pings, I was crazy lonely and going nuts,” the other astronauts would have thought he was super unprofessional, but still let him tag along to the next planet?

Did anyone get the impression that Mann was maybe not thinking rationally? Also not a "plot hole."

9. Ultimately, if aliens/future humans wanted to save us, couldn’t they have simply given the professor the secret equation?

Not really a "plot hole," though it's certainly a bit of a handwave: the super-evolved aliens/futurehumans are basically supposed to have drifted too far from their roots to be able to communicate easily with humans, which is why they need intermediaries. Plausible enough to buy with a bit of suspension of disbelief.

10. We’re somewhat sure a planet, and very sure a ship, and absolutely sure a person... can't get as near a black hole...

Not a plot hole, though definitely a handwave. Explicitly mentioned that they're able to survive through some arcane manipulations of gravity and the black hole / singularity by the wormhole creators.

11. Where is the robot when Cooper is in the library den of the fifth dimension tesseract?

Chilling in the Artificial Sarcasm Tesseract. Or floating "outside" the tesseract somewhere. Who knows? Not every unanswered question is a "plot hole." This one isn't.

12. What’s on the bottom of the robot’s legs, exactly — are there wheels?

&*!#ing seriously? This a props question, not a "plot hole."

13. So at the end of the movie, Cooper is 124 years old in Earth-time . . . But are we to understand they still haven’t gone to Planet Hathaway yet? And since Brand didn’t do the time-slowing black hole plunge with Cooper, and isn’t on a planet on the edge of that black hole, wouldn’t she have also aged several decades too by the time Cooper reaches her?

Yes to both, apparently. Both are plot elements, neither are "plot holes." Presumably humanity has been busy in the interval evacuating hundreds of millions of people from Earth and feeding them.

14. Since it’s been established you cannot truly communicate from the settlement planets back to our solar system beyond rudimentary pings, how did Cooper know Brand wouldn’t be living happily on the planet with the other guy — Edmunds.

Why would he care? He didn't have a romantic interest in Brand. Stupid question, not a "plot hole."

15. ... He spends two minutes with her … and then then they both agree he should split to go have presumed only-guy-on-the-planet sex with Brand?

She appears to have been on her deathbed. They agree he should split so as not to have to watch her die. No, not a "plot hole."

Most of it is kind of just inept nitpicking.

 

[drt]

Oops, I forgot I was going to comment on 10 as well. Garganua is a supermassive black hole, the diameter of which should be about the orbit of the Earth. Oddly enough, the tidal forces are gentler for a SMBH than a stellar mass black hole. So you can get much closer to the event horizon. In fact, spagettification for such a black hole doesn't occur until you've passed the horizon and get much closer to the singularity - the tesseract assumedly has picked Coop and TARS up before that point and transferred them to the bulk.