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Interstellar spoiler thread. All spoilers go in here.

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I really enjoy it up until the last half hour, and not because I did understand it. I expected Coop to be the ghost/"them" for most of the movie, but I hate how overt they were with it. They really hit the audience over the head with it, and had Coop straight up say the he was the ghost in like five different ways to make absolutely sure the audience got it. Plus, Murph understanding that her father was the ghost was pure convenience. There's really no reason she would have figured it out when she did besides the need to move the plot along.

I also really wish Coop didn't wake up in a hospital in the end and say goodbye to Murph on her death bed. Murph's realization that Coop was speaking to her is all the closure they needed. It should have ended with Coop reaching across time to shake Brand's hand and then turning into a giant space baby.
 
Loved it. I see why some people complain about the movie, i agree that if you think about it you can find some holes in the plot but i still think is Nolan's best work. Truly amazing, the second act is superb.
 
I understood most of the movie. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the science of Relativity that they talked about. Slower and faster times. I understand THAT it happened, but I'm trying to understand HOW it happened. Like when they arrive back the ship the first time and dude waited 23 years. They were there for what... Like an hour?

What am I missing here?
 
legacyzero said:
I understood most of the movie. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the science of Relativity that they talked about. Slower and faster times. I understand THAT it happened, but I'm trying to understand HOW it happened. Like when they arrive back the ship the first time and dude waited 23 years. They were there for what... Like an hour?

What am I missing here?
Click to expand...

On that planet one hour for them was equal to seven years normal time so they were gone for just over 3 hours




I also don't understand why they went to that planet at all, I mean that scientist arrived their 10 years ago which means she was there for like an hour and a half. What good would her data be? She wouldn't have even observed the planet at night let alone a full year of seasons.

I thought the reason they were on those planets was to study them over an extended period of time? If 90 minutes worth of data was fine why did they need to send a scientist down to the planet
 
legacyzero said:
I understood most of the movie. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the science of Relativity that they talked about. Slower and faster times. I understand THAT it happened, but I'm trying to understand HOW it happened. Like when they arrive back the ship the first time and dude waited 23 years. They were there for what... Like an hour?

What am I missing here?
Click to expand...
go read a brief history of time

really
Shorty11857 said:
On that planet one hour for them was equal to seven years normal time so they were gone for just over 3 hours




I also don't understand why they went to that planet at all, I mean that scientist arrived their 10 years ago which means she was there for like an hour and a half. What good would her data be? She wouldn't have even observed the planet at night let alone a full year of seasons.

I thought the reason they were on those planets was to study them over an extended period of time? If 90 minutes worth of data was fine why did they need to send a scientist down to the planet
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they said they didnt know it was so close to the singularity with the limited data they had to go on so they probably wouldn't have picked it before hand if they knew
 
I knew there'd be complaints on GAF the second I finished seeing the movie. There always are. Anyway, I keep seeing time paradox being brought up about the part near the end. I'll say this now. A time paradox is a 3 dimensional construct.

It only exists as a "paradox" because we can only perceive time as moving in a single direction and because we can only "exist" at one spot at the same time. When you're dealing with higher dimensions it's foolish to think this is problem. Just look at 2D space and the fact we can be in multiple places in a given 2D plane at the same time. For a higher dimensional being, time would be perceived the same. They would be able to traverse it the same way we traverse 3D or 2D or 1D space.

But then you might say "Well, we can only be at 1 place at a time in 3D". Well, that's true, but go back to what I said. We (3D ppl) can be at multiple places in 2D/1D space, right? So basically, a being in an n-dimension can traverse all dimensions up to it, but can only be at 1 place in the n-dimension. Well, it wasn't just coincidence the beings in the movie were 5th dimensional, not 4th


Anyway, my only really complaint about logical inconsistency is how their small crafts were able to get into orbit on those planets. I mean, they needed a whole rocket setup for our 1G, yet on the 1.3G planet and .8G they were okay??
 
DiipuSurotu said:
Why is Cooper stealing a small ship to get to Brand's planet at the end of the movie? Isn't that the destination of the big colony ship he is on anyway? Is it just to get there faster?
Click to expand...

I actually got the impression that the search was sort of over thanks to the gravity discovery. That we could go anywhere or do anything at that point. They certainly seemed in no hurry to go anywhere. but idk.
 
legacyzero said:
I understood most of the movie. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the science of Relativity that they talked about. Slower and faster times. I understand THAT it happened, but I'm trying to understand HOW it happened. Like when they arrive back the ship the first time and dude waited 23 years. They were there for what... Like an hour?

What am I missing here?
Click to expand...

Gravity. On the planet they were closer to the black hole.

edit: BTW more about relativity.

If you travel in a space ship which is constantly accelerating at 9,8m/s2 (1G), 60 years on the ship = 5,000,000 years on Earth

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/O/one-g_spacecraft.html
 
Dreams-Visions said:
I actually got the impression that the search was sort of over thanks to the gravity discovery. That we could go anywhere or do anything at that point. They certainly seemed in no hurry to go anywhere. but idk.
Click to expand...

I think the gravity discovery basically allowed them to create wormholes, through gravitational distortion. The planet Hathaway was on at the end seemed to be that 3rd planet they couldn't reach during the mission
 
SteveWinwood said:
Not really...

there is a briefer history of time though.

I mean we're literally talking about our understanding of space time there isn't a tl dr.
Click to expand...

I figured that would be your answer. And I don't blame you LOL.

I feel like I have the understanding right on the tip of my mind, I'm just trying to make sense of it.

I think they even had a small breakdown on the new Cosmos series?
 
legacyzero said:
I understood most of the movie. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the science of Relativity that they talked about. Slower and faster times. I understand THAT it happened, but I'm trying to understand HOW it happened. Like when they arrive back the ship the first time and dude waited 23 years. They were there for what... Like an hour?

What am I missing here?
Click to expand...

Time dilation is at work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation

It doesn't even take that much for the effect to start kicking in. They actually have to account for it to keep satellites properly in sync with back on Earth because satellites "age" at a (slightly) slower rate than on the surface.
 
Mario said:
Time dilation is at work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation

It doesn't even take that much for the effect to start kicking in. They actually have to account for it to keep satellites properly in sync with back on Earth because satellites "age" at a (slightly) slower rate than on the surface.
Click to expand...

Is it because of movement and speed? I remember Coop mentioning travelling at the speed of light and not aging because of it?

EDIT: Oh, and Gravity too, huh? Reading that Wiki posted above is giving me a better understanding, thank you! I love this shit!
 
SteveWinwood said:
they said they didnt know it was so close to the singularity with the limited data they had to go on so they probably wouldn't have picked it before hand if they knew
Click to expand...

It just felt stupid to me that they decided to land on that planet at all, no one seemed to care about the fact that they'd pretty much get no useful data from it and were fully willing to give up years of time to get less than 2 hours worth of data gathered
 
legacyzero said:
Is it because of movement and speed? I remember Coop mentioning travelling at the speed of light and not aging because of it?
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation

"Gravitational time dilation is an actual difference of elapsed time between two events as measured by observers differently situated from gravitational masses, in regions of different gravitational potential. The stronger the gravitational potential (the closer the clock is to the source of gravitation), the more slowly time passes."

In the movie i believed it was because they were closer to the black hole on the surface.
 
legacyzero said:
I figured that would be your answer. And I don't blame you LOL.

I feel like I have the understanding right on the tip of my mind, I'm just trying to make sense of it.

I think they even had a small breakdown on the new Cosmos series?
Click to expand...
The twins in the Rockets example is the classic. Or the two clocks in planes...

Actually a lot of what's in the movie is kind of ripped right out it.

Space and gravity are intrinsicly tied, they'll illustrated it as a 2d grid being warped up and down around planets. Basically gravity can effect how long in time something takes. Since they were closer to the edge of the black hole time passed slower due to intense gravitational warping.

When they talk about relativity, it literally means that time is relative, not universal. one second here is not the same as one second else where. This is also tied to light where it is universal, and then you get into energy accelerating anything that has mass and then bam you're at e=mc^2. It's all tied together.

I'm actually really serious about the brief history of time recommendation. It's written for people who have no previous understanding of anything. It's meant for the layman. Written by Stephen Hawking, it's amazing.
 
Shorty11857 said:
It just felt stupid to me that they decided to land on that planet at all, no one seemed to care about the fact that they'd pretty much get no useful data from it and were fully willing to give up years of time to get less than 2 hours worth of data gathered
Click to expand...

They decided to land because the planet was in theory the best prospect.
 
Saw it today and it's just an ok movie. The entire love thing was pretty ugh. Evil Matt Damon was very predictable and the movie didn't need this stupid Hollywood moment at all. This entire thing really took the movie down a few notches for me. The movie was trying to be very serious and they put this stupid trope in it? Ugh..
 
Nuklear said:
Saw it today and it's just an ok movie. The entire love thing was pretty ugh. Evil Matt Damon was very predictable and the movie didn't need this stupid Hollywood moment at all. This entire thing really took the movie down a few notches for me. The movie was trying to be very serious and they put this stupid trope in it? Ugh..
Click to expand...

Yes, because it would have made MUCH MORE sense for him to be completely sane given his situation...
 
I think my favorite scene from this film was TARS or CASE, whoever of the two it was, "rolling" out to save Dr. Brand. That sequence catapulted the robot design into awesome territory for me.

Unfortunately the end of that scene is a bit tarnished when the other guy just decides to ride the wave instead of simply entering the spaceship :/
 
I was OK with the last part. The part I had a problem with was the part with Matt Damon.
I was like "Oh no... Nolan is pulling the Sunshine on us".
Other than that I enjoyed the movie.
 
Jarmel said:
They decided to land because the planet was in theory the best prospect.
Click to expand...

But the data they'd have on the planet would just be two hours worth of data, I mean they'd have no real data on nights or seasons or anything like that. Just something that annoyed me a little
 
SteveWinwood said:
The twins in the Rockets example is the classic. Or the two clocks in planes...

Actually a lot of what's in the movie is kind of ripped right out it.

Space and gravity are intrinsicly tied, they'll illustrated it as a 2d grid being warped up and down around planets. Basically gravity can effect how long in time something takes. Since they were closer to the edge of the black hole time passed slower due to intense gravitational warping.

When they talk about relativity, it literally means that time is relative, not universal. one second here is not the same as one second else where. This is also tied to light where it is universal, and then you get into energy accelerating anything that has mass and then bam you're at e=mc^2. It's all tied together.

I'm actually really serious about the brief history of time recommendation. It's written for people who have no previous understanding of anything. It's meant for the layman. Written by Stephen Hawking, it's amazing.
Click to expand...
Thank you for this. Starting to make much more sense. And I'm not much of a reader, so I found that book on Youtube to listen to while I'm at work prepping for my next class :D
 
So I really liked this movie but I'll start with the things I really didn't like:

  • Doyle
    's death. Guy was totally like "I wonder if I should hurry into the doorway as that massive wave is approaching?". Should've been shot better, looked like he never even tried to get in.
  • Female Doctor Brand's Power of Love speech as to why they should go to Edmond's planet and how just because we can't explain love [pretty sure we can chemically] doesn't mean it isn't somehow magically a grander universal force of note or something
  • Pretty much all the time Matt Damon was on screen. Like I knew immediatley where they were going with this charecter and it just seemed like the flattest delivery and dialgoue you could possibly expect for it.
  • LAPTOP AIRLOCK RANGER CONTROL. What the absolute fuck? You spend 95% of the movie with fairly well-crafted props for your futurisitc look and space tech then have this scene where
    Dr. Mann
    tries to force open a airlock he shouldn't and suddenly out of freakin' nowhere is a laptop plugged in on a little shelf probably running like windows WTF? Who thought "yeah this will work"? I mean is that literally where they ran out of budget either financially or time-wise?
  • The meeting between father and daughter at the end.
    Cooper
    literally just leaves without so much as meeting his numerous grandchildren there, like what?

Things I did like:

  • I liked the overall theme of survival even if I don't really think the execution and communication of the point was that well done
  • Matthew McConaughey was pretty great in this, not perfect but about as good as I could expect considering the role in the first place
  • The robots went from looking super cheesy to being somewhat cool. Still look horribly impractical but at least parts of the movie suggested why they might be designed as they were
  • I liked the ending with the portrayal of time within 3D space
  • I liked the 95% of the props etc. that were not that specific LAPTOP
  • The whole plan A, plan B thing. Especially as Plan B sounded far more flexible and pragmatic although I'm not sure what the colony was supposed to do for food exactly?

------------

Question: With the ending of the movie, it seems that with Murphy's gravity theorem [or whatever it is] humans were able to survive within their own solar system and even begin to thrive again without having to leave said solar system as it's clearly shown that humans hadn't left to go join Brand on Edmond's planet with the colony. How and why are we supposed to believe that this is somehow possible? Like what happens exactly that changes everything so much?
 
I find this a useful image for time dilation:

mWGJ7qJ.gif


In the context of Interstellar, the triangle timeline is space around the black hole being massively distorted by gravity. It's pinched up, relative to everything outside the zone of distortion. The water planet is the timeline bar that is moving across the pinched up line. The bouncing dot appears to move more slowly than the dot on the left (which represents Endurance outside the extreme gravity zone) because the moving dot must travel along distorted space as it goes.

So in the movie when you go down to the water planet you're actually taking "the long way" because what we perceive as the passage of time is motion. If everything was frozen and didn't move, time wouldn't exist.

If you like imagine the "faster" dot on the left is the poor guy left on the ship pacing back and forth for 23 years slowly going crazy.
 
Just got back, really really liked it. The atmosphere of it all was just overwhelming. I don't really remember having quite the same experience with any other movie and that's really all I could ask for. McConaughey was a force. That dude can seriously cry.

The only really underwhelming scene to me was the one with Affleck and Chastain arguing about leaving the house. Most of that stuff just didn't hit with me, but I get why it had to be there. And I knew the love monologue was coming but I honestly thought it was well written for what it was.

#teamtars
 
Shorty11857 said:
But the data they'd have on the planet would just be two hours worth of data, I mean they'd have no real data on nights or seasons or anything like that. Just something that annoyed me a little
Click to expand...

They only had three viable locations. Of the three, two were responding(still broadcasting), one being the water planet.

Yes the data was incomplete but that was why they were planning on talking to the Lazarus crew member.
 
SwiftDeath said:
So I really liked this movie but I'll start with the things I really didn't like:

  • LAPTOP AIRLOCK RANGER CONTROL. What the absolute fuck? You spend 95% of the movie with fairly well-crafted props for your futurisitc look and space tech then have this scene where
    Dr. Mann
    tries to force open a airlock he shouldn't and suddenly out of freakin' nowhere is a laptop plugged in on a little shelf probably running like windows WTF? Who thought "yeah this will work"? I mean is that literally where they ran out of budget either financially or time-wise?
Click to expand...

Not sure why this seems so implausible for you...A spaceship doesn't require some massive hulking room-sized computer to operate. The ship that went to the moon is less powerful than your average calculator. A laptop controlling an airlock isn't really that strange. It's not like it's running the ship itself
 
Jarmel said:
They only had three viable locations. Of the three, two were responding(still broadcasting), one being the water planet.

Yes the data was incomplete but that was why they were planning on talking to the Lazarus crew member.
Click to expand...

BeatResetsTheWorld said:
I think you missed the entire point of their mission...
Click to expand...

But the Lazarus crew member would know nothing about the planet other than what she discovered in her two hours there. I mean I get their mission is to discover a potential habitable world but I just feel like they'd get nothing worth while from that planet
 
Nuklear said:
Saw it today and it's just an ok movie. The entire love thing was pretty ugh. Evil Matt Damon was very predictable and the movie didn't need this stupid Hollywood moment at all. This entire thing really took the movie down a few notches for me. The movie was trying to be very serious and they put this stupid trope in it? Ugh..
Click to expand...

I didn't find it to be predictable, but I had the same outlook as you for my first viewing. After understanding the movie better and re-watching it a second time I realize why it's there and opened up to it more.

I will say though the part when Cooper tackles Mann and yells "Stop it!" and then Mann proceeding to crack Coopers helmet as he freaks out comes off as pure comedy. I'm not sure if Nolan was trying to add a little humor there, but if meant that part to be serious he completely failed.

SwiftDeath said:
The meeting between father and daughter at the end.
Cooper
literally just leaves without so much as meeting his numerous grandchildren there, like what?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was just thinking about this today. I can understand them leaving the room without a word at the beginning so Cooper and Murph can have a private moment but afterwards you're telling me Cooper or his entire extended family don't want to meet each other?

I'm just going to give Nolan the benefit of the doubt and pretend they did all of that but for the sake of time and editing it just wasn't shown before Cooper leaves the station.
 
BeatResetsTheWorld said:
Not sure why this seems so implausible for you...A spaceship doesn't require some massive hulking room-sized computer to operate. The ship that went to the moon is less powerful than your average calculator. A laptop controlling an airlock isn't really that strange. It's not like it's running the ship itself
Click to expand...

Oh a laptop could most certainly be used to do some of those things but when would that ever happen? A standalone laptop, completely unintegrated into the ship, controlling the airlock system? Really? Furthermore ever other element of the ship clearly indicated complete system integration within the ship itself. Why would the airlock control be the only thing to warrant some external element like that? It makes zero sense to design a ship like that and then be like "hey, you know after integrating every other system into the ship itself, I think we should put a standalone laptop to control the airlock system"

I mean that didn't seem out of place at all to you?
 
As a science fan, I loved the movie, and I especially love how it's getting people to realise stuff like the Time Dillation actually exists :)


I actually thought the matt damond stuff was well done, because even though it was predictable, his motivations were perfectly understandable (even though selfish).
 
Azulsky said:
The important given is that light has a fixed speed in all reference frames. The arrow has the same speed but it is forced along a different path, or in real cases the curvature of space.
Click to expand...

I always appreciated becoming able to get Douglas Adams' joke about space not merely being curved, but in fact totally bent.

Raonak said:
As a science fan, I loved the movie, and I especially love how it's getting people to realise stuff like the Time Dillation actually exists :)


I actually thought the matt damond stuff was well done, because even though it was predictable, his motivations were perfectly understandable (even though selfish).
Click to expand...

People who think reality makes fiction boring don't know how bizarre reality actually is.
 
BizzyBum said:
I didn't find it to be predictable, but I had the same outlook as you for my first viewing. After understanding the movie better and re-watching it a second time I realize why it's there and opened up to it more.

I will say though the part when Cooper tackles Mann and yells "Stop it!" and then Mann proceeding to crack Coopers helmet as he freaks out comes off as pure comedy. I'm not sure if Nolan was trying to add a little humor there, but if meant that part to be serious he completely failed.
Click to expand...

Cooper: "There's a 50/50 chance you'll kill yourself too"
Mann: "That's the best odds I've had in years"

Shorty11857 said:
But the Lazarus crew member would know nothing about the planet other than what she discovered in her two hours there. I mean I get their mission is to discover a potential habitable world but I just feel like they'd get nothing worth while from that planet
Click to expand...

That's really hindsight talking.
 
Raonak said:
As a science fan, I loved the movie, and I especially love how it's getting people to realise stuff like the Time Dillation actually exists :)


I actually thought the matt damond stuff was well done, because even though it was predictable, his motivations were perfectly understandable (even though selfish).
Click to expand...

The movie is about the endurance and self sacrifice of space pioneers and humans as a whole. For the best and for the worst. All of us are flawed. All of us could have acted like Matt Damon.
 
The fight scene was a bit comedic because it's awkward. Which is to be expected as it's two guys in foamy suits with little mobility in an alien planet trying to fight each other. And yeah. Somebody in the other thread said one of his complaints was how predictable the 'guy who survived going crazy' is. But he didn't go crazy. He was just human.
 
Just came back from watching this in imax. Decent movie, but could have been so much better. I left the theatre feeling quite disappointed actually. I was expecting the film to give a sense of wonder and intellectually stimulate me, but instead I got a disjointed film.
The whole matt damon sequence was pointless.
The beginning hour was boring.
How they instantly chose him to be the pilot was ridiculous.

I could write a long list of things that this movie should have done better.

Probably my favourite moment of the movie was when they travelled to the water planet and when they got back to their ship, 23 years had passed. It was the only part of the movie that made me really think about the difficulties of interstellar travel and the wonders of space.
I've been waiting for a good space movie for a while now, shame this isn't it
 
Jarmel said:
That's really hindsight talking.
Click to expand...

I don't think it is

They know that person has been on that planet for 10 years (at least I think it was 10 years)
They know on that planet time runs at a rate of 1 hour = 7 years
So they know the scientist has been on that planet for roughly 90 minutes relative

Even if they went to the planet and the scientist was alive, they'd still have way too little data to actually be able to judge the viability of the planet. I mean if they found that planet was suitable from that data, it just means they could judge it on like 2 hours of data which means the concept of needing scientists to sacrifice themselves to live on a planet could have been done by firing a probe from orbit and collecting it in 2 hours


Honestly, it doesn't even bother me that much just feel like the little things in the movie that I didn't like become worse after how much I hated the final 45 minutes or so
 
Shorty11857 said:
I don't think it is

They know that person has been on that planet for 10 years (at least I think it was 10 years)
They know on that planet time runs at a rate of 1 hour = 7 years
So they know the scientist has been on that planet for roughly 90 minutes relative

Even if they went to the planet and the scientist was alive, they'd still have way too little data to actually be able to judge the viability of the planet. I mean if they found that planet was suitable from that data, it just means they could judge it on like 2 hours of data which means the concept of needing scientists to sacrifice themselves to live on a planet could have been done by firing a probe from orbit and collecting it in 2 hours

Honestly, it doesn't even bother me that much just feel like the little things in the movie that I didn't like become worse after how much I hated the final 45 minutes or so
Click to expand...

They could take the preliminary data and come back later. Even stuff like oxygen levels and water samples could be crucial.
 
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