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Interstellar spoiler thread. All spoilers go in here.

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Ugh, I have to keep quoting my post because people don't seem to get it. Stop thinking of time as some linear line you go forward and back on, or you're going to keep trying to find "paradoxes"

I'm talking about from the perspective of the audience, and from Coop's. Unless he makes it into the blackhole he doesn't get into the tesseract so he can send himself the NASA coordinates. From our perspective it's a paradox, from the 5th dimensional beings perspective it isn't. From our perspective the NASA coordinates sending Coop into space, and eventually the tesseract, come from Coop himself. He uses the tesseract to navigate time, it's basically the time machine. I'm just saying that this is what it is for us.
 
I'm talking about from the perspective of the audience, and from Coop's. Unless he makes it into the blackhole he doesn't get into the tesseract so he can send himself the NASA coordinates. From our perspective it's a paradox, from the 5th dimensional beings perspective it isn't. From our perspective the NASA coordinates sending Coop into space, and eventually the tesseract, come from Coop himself. He uses the tesseract to navigate time, it's basically the time machine. I'm just saying that this is what it is for us.

Well yeah, if you're only considering it from our perspective it is, but it's more fun not to
 
I was bored out of my mind watching the movie.

Nice visuals, terrible plot that you can see coming a mile away.

And lol at that fight between Mann and Cooper. The good old scientist who fakes his data cliché.

Nolan movies are definitely not for me
 
I really liked the robot design, especially that they weren't humanoid looking, it's what i expect robots to look like when you have to design it with low funding, super simple.
 
Because "relativity"

(I facepalmed twice when they used that explanation duringt he movie).

1. The question he's asking doesn't have to do with 'relativity' as you put it. Assuming I'm reading it correctly it's about the spinning scene and the laptop though I skimmed it.

2. The science was researched. Just because it doesn't make sense to you doesn't make it stupid.

It's hard to tell what you're making fun and find stupid. Please let us know maybe we can clarify or correct as a community.
 
Who gives a fuck? That's so far down the list of potential scientific issues with the film that it might as well be in the next galaxy over.

I do? It was easily the single most jarring thing I saw in the entire movie. I laughed out loud seeing it with how ridiculous it was, and it immediately ruined the seriousness of the scene that was at hand with how ludicrous it was. Even within the confines of the universe Nolan created for this movie it was sorely out of place and obviously so.
 
I do? It was easily the single most jarring thing I saw in the entire movie. I laughed out loud seeing it with how ridiculous it was, and it immediately ruined the seriousness of the scene that was at hand with how ludicrous it was. Even within the confines of the universe Nolan created for this movie it was sorely out of place and obviously so.

I don't think anybody is wondering why a laptop can control the airlock. It probably is a manual system away from the cockpit just like the other stuff Bourne was messing with at the airlock itself.
 
I do? It was easily the single most jarring thing I saw in the entire movie. I laughed out loud seeing it with how ridiculous it was, and it immediately ruined the seriousness of the scene that was at hand with how ludicrous it was. Even within the confines of the universe Nolan created for this movie it was sorely out of place and obviously so.

So the placement of a laptop broke your immersion but not the whole tesseract bit/Cooper magically finding that communicator/Cooper docking with the Ranger when the Endurance was falling apart?

Ok.
 
Wait, there are people who hate the cool robots? WTH? They're like, the best characters!

I like the twist where Murphy message about Old Brand's lies get viewed by one of them (I think it's CASE) while the rest of the folks already flying away towards the icy planet. Totally expected him to delete the message but lo and behold! He didn't do such thing, and the message is played in its entirety.
 
I don't think anybody is wondering why a laptop can control the airlock. It probably is a manual system away from the cockpit just like the other stuff Bourne was messing with at the airlock itself.

Why is a laptop in a space ship controlling the airlocks? Yes I can easily believe that it could in fact run the software necessary to control the airlock, that is not the issue. That particular spaceship had been shown earlier in the movie to do intense maneuvers when they landed on Miranda's planet and there's just this standalone laptop in the back of the ship unintegrated whereas everything else in the ship is integrated. It is super out of place

So the placement of a laptop broke your immersion but not the whole tesseract bit/Cooper magically finding that communicator/Cooper docking with the Ranger when the Endurance was falling apart?

Ok.

Within the confines of the universe Nolan created? Yes. The laptop was easily the most out of place
 
I do? It was easily the single most jarring thing I saw in the entire movie. I laughed out loud seeing it with how ridiculous it was, and it immediately ruined the seriousness of the scene that was at hand with how ludicrous it was. Even within the confines of the universe Nolan created for this movie it was sorely out of place and obviously so.

Again, for everyone else, it's completely plausible. Laptops in space stations are commonplace. It doesn't look out of place at all.

We don't know the exact schematics of the ship. For all you know the cords and laptop could have been soldered into place. We don't know and we don't care. But I can guarantee you the engineers who built the ship probably thought about it so we don't need to.

Because "relativity"
(I facepalmed twice when they used that explanation duringt he movie).

Why? Yeah it's catch-all but it's correct. Would you prefer they be more specific? Time dilation? It's getting real nitpicky in this thread.
 
Again, for everyone else, it's completely plausible. Laptops in space stations are commonplace. It doesn't look out of place at all.

We don't know the exact schematics of the Endurance. For all you know the cords and laptop could have been soldered into place. We don't know and we don't care. But I can guarantee you the engineers who built the Endurance probably thought about it so we don't need to.

It is not a space station. The engineers who designed the Endurance just so happened to integrate every other thing into the ship itself except for this one thing. If I had to guess once the set/prop design had been finalized, someone realized they wanted a display in that location showing airlock data and so it was added afterwards in a far less streamlined manner. It directly contradicts the rest of the design of the space ship

Furthermore this magical laptop that looks exactly like a modern day laptop of normal quality has lasted what 28 years and still perfectly operational?
 
Why is a laptop in a space ship controlling the airlocks? Yes I can easily believe that it could in fact run the software necessary to control the airlock, that is not the issue. That particular spaceship had been shown earlier in the movie to do intense maneuvers when they landed on Miranda's planet and there's just this standalone laptop in the back of the ship unintegrated whereas everything else in the ship is integrated. It is super out of place

In case the normal controls are busted? In case they need to do testing which required plugging it in? In case they needed to manually override? For a variety of reasons. You're being difficult for the sake of it
 
Within the confines of the universe Nolan created? Yes. The laptop was easily the most out of place

Totally.

I was also bumped by the fact that Michael Caine is in a wheelchair. We all know you can walk, Michael... and even if you can't, within the confines of the universe Nolan has created, shouldn't one of TARS's bros be carrying you?

Terrible film.
 
In case the normal controls are busted? In case they need to do testing which required plugging it in? In case they needed to manually override? For a variety of reasons. You're being difficult for the sake of it

From best I can tell those were a part of the airlock controls. We never saw Mann place the laptop there so I would have to assume the audience were to believe it had always been there as part of the ship. I've only seen the movie once so I eagerly await a release of this I can pause on that part.

Oh so you have knowledge of every square inch of the ship now?

Of course not but are you suggesting that there is just like 10 laptops elsewhere in the ship for the numerous other systems or something that we magically don't see?

Totally.

I was also bumped by the fact that Michael Caine is in a wheelchair. We all know you can walk, Michael... and even if you can't, within the confines of the universe Nolan has created, shouldn't one of TARS's bros be carrying you?

Terrible film.

Doesn't make sense. I know you're being sarcastic but within the confines of the universe Nolan created Michael Caine's character appears to be incapable of walking at a certain point
 
From best I can tell those were a part of the airlock controls. We never saw Mann place the laptop there so I would have to assume the audience were to believe it had always been there as part of the ship. I've only seen the movie once so I eagerly await a release of this I can pause on that part.

lmao you're out of control, bruh.

You don't have to assume that. You could, instead, assume Mann plugged a laptop in to some universal interface port.

Pump ya breaks.
 
lmao you're out of control, bruh.

You don't have to assume that. You could, instead, assume Mann plugged a laptop in to some universal interface port.

Pump ya breaks.

That is perhaps the most logical explanation of it I've heard so far. Hmm perhaps I will just accept that then for now. Still looked hideously out of place though
 
Totally.

I was also bumped by the fact that Michael Caine is in a wheelchair. We all know you can walk, Michael... and even if you can't, within the confines of the universe Nolan has created, shouldn't one of TARS's bros be carrying you?

Terrible film.

I was particularly pissed off by that whole Mann sequence. We all know that real scientists that live on other planets each have a mustache. It completely threw off the mood of the movie.
I actually had to go get more popcorn to calm myself.
 
Doesn't make sense. I know you're being sarcastic but within the confines of the universe Nolan created Michael Caine's character appears to be incapable of walking at a certain point

So why doesn't he use TARS's friends? He'd get there faster, harder, and in considerable more style. He'd also never be alone if he needed someone to run over his theorems with and TARS design is even capable of hugs. At the same time, when it's "equation time" he can turn down the humour setting or even put him on mute.

The wheelchair is a total plot hole that totally broke my immersion. I find it very difficult to see the forest for the trees sometimes, so that probably explains it.

I was particularly pissed off by that whole Mann sequence. We all know that real scientists that live on other planets each have a mustache. It completely threw off the mood of the movie.
I actually had to go get more popcorn to calm myself.

Agreed. And there was no proof of masturbation. I was looking for it. There's no way he didn't masturbate, so why wasn't there proof? TARS can smell that sort of thing, I know he can... So why didn't he say anything?
 
Why is a laptop in a space ship controlling the airlocks? Yes I can easily believe that it could in fact run the software necessary to control the airlock, that is not the issue. That particular spaceship had been shown earlier in the movie to do intense maneuvers when they landed on Miranda's planet and there's just this standalone laptop in the back of the ship unintegrated whereas everything else in the ship is integrated. It is super out of place



Within the confines of the universe Nolan created? Yes. The laptop was easily the most out of place

He went over there from the cockpit because the integrated controls were locked out. Its not out of place for him to try to do a manual override (including with a laptop) at the specific location that needs a manual override.
 
Of course not but are you suggesting that there is just like 10 laptops elsewhere in the ship for the numerous other systems or something that we magically don't see?

Laptops are commonly used both standalone and to interact with system software on board modern spacecraft.

http://blog.lenovo.com/products/thinkpad-laptop-nasa-youtube-spacelab
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/space/space_thinkpad.html

Space_Shuttle1_600_388_c1.jpg
 
So why doesn't he use TARS's friends? He'd get there faster, harder, and in considerable more style. He'd also never be alone if he needed someone to run over his theorems with and TARS design is even capable of hugs. At the same time, when it's "equation time" he can turn down the humour setting or even put him on mute.

The wheelchair is a total plot hole that totally broke my immersion. I find it very difficult to see the forest for the trees sometimes, so that probably explains it.

I understand what you are doing or attempting to do but your counterexample is inherently flawed because Caine's character would most likely feel more comfortable with a wheelchair then having to depend on TARS robots for movement not to mention any potential embarrassment at being always carried, this we can understand intrinsically as humans ourselves whereas the laptop if we are to accept it as some permanent aspect of the ship's design and not a temporary aspect directly contradicts the rest of the ships design that we can see.

I do concede that if the laptop is something Mann simply broke out after failing to override the airlock or what have you makes far more sense although we never see this.

Laptops are commonly used both standalone and to interact with system software on board modern spacecraft.

http://blog.lenovo.com/products/thinkpad-laptop-nasa-youtube-spacelab
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/space/space_thinkpad.html

I've been over this. The ISS would never be required to do the type of maneuvers that the ranger would and did in the movie. Thus the fact that laptops are used in the International Space Station does not somehow change the forces that would be applied to this magic laptop in that landing scene on Miranda's world. But again I'm now accepting that it could possibly be a temporary setup that Mann had going on.
 
I understand what you are doing or attempting to do but your counterexample is inherently flawed because Caine's character would most likely feel more comfortable with a wheelchair then having to depend on TARS robots for movement not to mention any potential embarrassment at being always carried, this we can understand intrinsically as humans ourselves whereas the laptop if we are to accept it as some permanent aspect of the ship's design and not a temporary aspect directly contradicts the rest of the ships design that we can see.

I do concede that if the laptop is something Mann simply broke out after failing to override the airlock or what have you makes far more sense although we never see this.

He keeps yelling override to the computer and is denied. He then fiddles with the laptop.
 
I've been over this. The ISS would never be required to do the type of maneuvers that the ranger would and did in the movie. Thus the fact that laptops are used in the International Space Station does not somehow change the forces that would be applied to this magic laptop in that landing scene on Miranda's world. But again I'm now accepting that it could possibly be a temporary setup that Mann had going on.

They use laptops on the shuttles too.
 
See but this is what I was getting at
Although the GPCs run the spacecraft during a mission, astronauts take a number of relatively modern computers with them into orbit in the form of laptops. Crews carry modified IBM ThinkPad A31p computers into space with them and use them for rendezvous assistance, entry and landing simulations and e-mailing Earth.

The laptops also are much faster than the GPCs and connect with devices not available to the GPCs. The Thinkpads use one of these connections to relay photos of the external tank falling away after launch to mission control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

But that modernity has a trade-off: the laptops are not nearly as reliable as the GPCs due to radiation effects and use of less critical commercial off-the-shelf software, Klausman said.

The laptops, however, don't work on life-support or high-criticality systems that require the reliability found in the GPCs.

"For critical operations, I can't come anywhere close to that reliability with the laptops," Klausman said. "They are wonderful items, but they are susceptible to radiation particles, they are susceptible to badly written software. I could put five laptops on board and all five would suffer radiation upsets within the first day."

With a ThinkPad 760XD laptop, two to three memory changes due to radiation occur during a shuttle flight to the Station, Klausman said. That number balloons up to 30 for a mission to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The reason is that Hubble orbits about 150 miles higher than the station, where the radiation protection from Earth's magnetic field is not as strong.

Designers also found out that laptops would crash when the shuttle passes through the "South Atlantic Anomaly," which is an area where the magnetic field draws in to Earth, again offering less radiation filtering for spacecraft flying through it.

The GPCs don't crash for radiation concerns because the GPC hardware includes a memory scrubber that prevents the system from reading radiation-changed memory.

Well, manual opening of airlocks is not something I would consider a life support system. Its an override. The article talks about how laptops are more powerful than the GPCs. Sounds like I would try to use something more powerful than a GPC to override it.
 
Well, manual opening of airlocks is not something I would consider a life support system. Its an override. The article talks about how laptops are more powerful than the GPCs. Sounds like I would try to use something more powerful than a GPC to override it.

Right which is why I can see why you'd take one out and mess about with it but it's not just laying about in the first place. That was my assumption originally and probably mistake although the way the shots were cut, it doesn't appear that he took the laptop out and set it up but I think that can probably be safely assumed
 
Did anyone else justify the chicken-and-egg paradox in this movie with a multiverse ?

I imagined that it was not humans from Cooper's reality but people from a different reality which had prospered through other means (didn't have to deal with blight, developed advanced space travel earlier, etc.) that created the tesseract.

Having ascended to an 5th dimensional level being able to view time as a physical construct they might be able to percieve all realities.

In which case they would see Cooper's reality struggling and would deploy the worm hole and tesseract.
 
Did anyone else justify the chicken-and-egg paradox in this movie with a multiverse ?

I imagined that it was not humans from Cooper's reality but people from a different reality which had prospered through other means (didn't have to deal with blight, developed advanced space travel earlier, etc.) that created the tesseract.

Having ascended to an 5th dimensional level being able to view time as a physical construct they might be able to percieve all realities.

In which case they would see Cooper's reality struggling and would deploy the worm hole and tesseract.

It uses a bootstrap paradox. A self looping one.
The 5th dimensional beings don't view time as a line, they see all time at once.

There was no "original timeline". Cooper always got the nasa co-ordinates because he always fell into the terrasect because the 5th dimensional beings always evolved from humans and and always put the wormhole there. The concept of "before" and "after" is as trivial as north and south to the 5th dimensional human descendents. It sounds nonsensical, but that's because we ourselves are 3D beings and experience time in a flowing linear fashion.
 
I'll have to see the movie for a second time, but I really liked it the first time around. The first act was kind of long; I just wanted to see them in space as soon as possible. But once in space, the movie kept on delivering.

Sure, there were some corny bits like the infamous "love transcends time and space" anecdote and, like so many of you, while the "Daddy there's a ghost in our house" bit played out I instinctively knew that had to be Cooper in some way or form.

The soundtrack was fantastic and really helped undermine the grandiose and suspenseful moments of the movie. I really, really liked the obvious influence of Philipp Glass and his work in Koyaanisqatsi, that was just amazing. Organs and space just fit perfectly together.
 
It uses a bootstrap paradox. A self looping one.
The 5th dimensional beings don't view time as a line, they see all time at once.

There was no "original timeline". Cooper always got the nasa co-ordinates because he always fell into the terrasect because the 5th dimensional beings always evolved from humans and and always put the wormhole there. The concept of "before" and "after" is as trivial as north and south to the 5th dimensional human descendents. It sounds nonsensical, but that's because we ourselves are 3D beings and experience time in a flowing linear fashion.

Viewing time as not linear is sort of related to multiverse theory anyways isn't it ? Because if time is infinite and you can view it all at once that would mean you would view every possible universe unfold in every possible way. Or does that only work if the universe is also infinite?
 
Viewing time as not linear is sort of related to multiverse theory anyways isn't it ? Because if time is infinite and you can view it all at once that would mean you would view every possible universe unfold in every possible way. Or does that only work if the universe is also infinite?
There is only one possible way. Everything what you could change you already did. At this point there is no free will anymore. You are just a victim of your "destiny".
 
The Redlettermedia review correctly points out big time that Nolan deceived us all with this movie's title! They never travel to another star. Intergalactic would've been more accurate.

beastie-boys-intergalactic.jpg
 
The Redlettermedia review correctly points out big time that Nolan deceived us all with this movie's title! They never travel to another star. Intergalactic would've been more accurate.

beastie-boys-intergalactic.jpg

And Nolan points that out as well in still npr interview. The reason it seems that name was not use was apparently marketing found it a more resounding name
 
I pretty much love this movie and it may be Nolan's best. But since we're nitpicking...

If it was Future us, why didn't they put the wormhole closer to Earth, and make it easier for Coop to pass the data?
 
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