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Interstellar spoiler thread. All spoilers go in here.

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God I fucking hate Murph, I was thinking back on the movie last night and I realized how absolutely ridiculous Murph's reaction to her father leaving is.

Unless I am miss remembering she essentially stayed angry at him for 23 years. Which is dumb as fuck.

Being upset at 10 I can get it, but surely as she grew older she realized that her dad left to save the earth. You would think after coming to terms with the fact that he has left the earth to try and rescue the human race she would have sent a video message saying that she gets it now and wishes him all the best.

If not that THEN SURELY as she grew up to be scientist she would finally understand relativity and how it influences time. She should by this point have realized that her father didn't abandon her or anything.

Nope, Murph just stays angry at him until she is 33 then she yells at him for leaving her and tells him it would be great to come back now on the video. That shit should not have taken her 23 years, it doesn't come off as caring or endearing, it comes off as fucking rude.

I think it would have made sense for Murph to have forgiven her father for leaving by like the age of 16 or something, then get angry at him when Brand Senior dies and she learns his true intentions.

People can hold a grudge till well into adulthood especially after going through an emotional trauma
 
God I fucking hate Murph, I was thinking back on the movie last night and I realized how absolutely ridiculous Murph's reaction to her father leaving is.

Unless I am miss remembering she essentially stayed angry at him for 23 years. Which is dumb as fuck.

Being upset at 10 I can get it, but surely as she grew older she realized that her dad left to save the earth. You would think after coming to terms with the fact that he has left the earth to try and rescue the human race she would have sent a video message saying that she gets it now and wishes him all the best.

If not that THEN SURELY as she grew up to be scientist she would finally understand relativity and how it influences time. She should by this point have realized that her father didn't abandon her or anything.

Nope, Murph just stays angry at him until she is 33 then she yells at him for leaving her and tells him it would be great to come back now on the video. That shit should not have taken her 23 years, it doesn't come off as caring or endearing, it comes off as fucking rude.

I think it would have made sense for Murph to have forgiven her father for leaving by like the age of 16 or something, then get angry at him when Brand Senior dies and she learns his true intentions.

Honestly, I agree.

I think her anger is completely justified when she receives the revelation from Brand Sr., but the first "Hi dad...you son of a bitch" was...almost comical, at first? I mean, MM still completely sold the scene with his reaction, but I found the grudge to be a little silly.

I think it's mostly due to having almost no character development for grown-up Murph. By now, she HAS to know that her father left to save the world, so if anything, you'd think she would be MORE understanding.

But maybe shit on Earth has gotten even worse. Maybe she's stressed out by the constant pressure and failure to solve the equation. Maybe her brother's attitude has made it harder for her to cope with being, essentially, alone on Earth.

I guess my point is that, I think there ARE valid, logical reasons for WHY she might have held that grudge--but the movie didn't show them, so it didn't really earn it.

Again, though--I totally welled up during that scene, due to how Coop/MM reacted.
 
People can hold a grudge till well into adulthood especially after going through an emotional trauma

Logically, her being angry could makes sense. But from a character point of view (and how the audience is supposed to relate to them), I just found the character insufferable. And I don't think they really handled the "trauma" aspect well enough to make it compelling or interesting. So you are just stuck with a character you dislike for most of the film.
 
Really hope the OST comes to Spotify.

So good. Glad I didn't hear it before going to watch.

As for Murph being angry, it was a bit over the top but nothing that affected the film. Nothing really changed because of it and some people do hold long ass grudges.
 
My biggest gripe was how Ms. Brand has not aged a day by the time Coop gets spewed out of the wormhole/tesseract/Gargantua. She did leave its sphere of influence earlier than him...

And if the wormhole has been open for 90(?) years after the invention of gravity magic, why haven't they explored it? It's only implied that humanity lives on several spaceships (and fixed/recovering Earth?) across the solar system.

The inaccuracies didn't make me hate the movie but killed the immersion at times. 4 stars out of 5 at first look, I guess. And deliver us a Director's Cut on BD, please. I don't even remember the first dead guy's face, no idea what was his purpose except to die holding a door for Brand.

How's the companion book, anyone? Fluff, real science, or stories from the set? How's the balance between these?
 
People can hold a grudge till well into adulthood especially after going through an emotional trauma

They definitely can, but Murph grows up to be part of NASA, and by extension part of the mission. So either she has forgiven him on a subconscious / unspoken level or she is she being unreasonable. SHE KNOWS the state the earth is in, SHE KNOWS it will only get worse, being upset at her father when he volunteered his life away to try and save everyone back on earth is absolutely fucking ridiculous.

Like I said, it would have made perfect sense for her to forgive him and then go back and be upset at him when Brand Sr. passes away and tells her that earth was always screwed.

I guess my point is that, I think there ARE valid, logical reasons for WHY she might have held that grudge--but the movie didn't show them, so it didn't really earn it.

Again, though--I totally welled up during that scene, due to how Coop/MM reacted.

It was still a emotional scene regardless, but yeah there was no clear communication as to why she was still angry at him. The only conclusion that makes sense really is that because her mom died she had issues with people leaving her? But even that doesn't really get enough exposition (which is funny since the main complaint about Nolan is over exposition) for it to feel like a legitimate point, especially not something that she couldn't have reasoned her way out of by the time she was working at NASA.
 
Her father left. Doesn't matter why, being left behind by your father at just 10-years-old is some emotionally scarring shit.
 
God I fucking hate Murph, I was thinking back on the movie last night and I realized how absolutely ridiculous Murph's reaction to her father leaving is.

Unless I am miss remembering she essentially stayed angry at him for 23 years. Which is dumb as fuck.

Being upset at 10 I can get it, but surely as she grew older she realized that her dad left to save the earth. You would think after coming to terms with the fact that he has left the earth to try and rescue the human race she would have sent a video message saying that she gets it now and wishes him all the best.

If not that THEN SURELY as she grew up to be scientist she would finally understand relativity and how it influences time. She should by this point have realized that her father didn't abandon her or anything.

Nope, Murph just stays angry at him until she is 33 then she yells at him for leaving her and tells him it would be great to come back now on the video. That shit should not have taken her 23 years, it doesn't come off as caring or endearing, it comes off as fucking rude.

I think it would have made sense for Murph to have forgiven her father for leaving by like the age of 16 or something, then get angry at him when Brand Senior dies and she learns his true intentions.

Parent abandonment issues are very much a real thing. Her reaction was one of the more natural things in the entire film.
 
I don't agree at all that Murph "stayed the same" all those decades. It's nonsense. She clearly grew up, came to terms with what he had to do, but that doesn't mean she accepted it. She ended up staying to work at NASA and working very closely with the person who sent her father up there. If she really resented him or blamed him do you think she would do that? No. The reason why she never made videos was because that's how she chose to cope with it. She believed he was coming back, and she didn't want to talk to a camera, she wanted him to just return home to report a successful mission. She worked at NASA because she wanted to be there when he returned. That's how I saw it.

She sent two messages to Cooper. One was on the day they were the same age, because she remembered what he said. It was that important to her. She was telling him in her own way "heads up, you're late" and whatever anger she was channeling was frustration that things clearly didn't go the way they had both intended. She might be an adult but that doesn't mean she's can't be disappointed and sad, irrational or otherwise. The other message she sent was totally reactionary. She just felt betrayed and had no one else to turn to. Clearly by the last act it can be seen that she never really lost faith in her father, she didn't want to believe that he betrayed her too, but she had to say it. And it's a good thing she did, because otherwise he might not have known.

The movie might have dropped the ball when it comes to Cooper and his son, but the relationship between Cooper and his daughter was extremely real to me, and I felt it was totally believable.
 
I don't agree at all that Murph "stayed the same" all those decades. It's nonsense. She clearly grew up, came to terms with what he had to do, but that doesn't mean she accepted it. She ended up staying to work at NASA and working very closely with the person who sent her father up there. If she really resented him or blamed him do you think she would do that? No. The reason why she never made videos was because that's how she chose to cope with it. She believed he was coming back, and she didn't want to talk to a camera, she wanted him to just return home to report a successful mission. She worked at NASA because she wanted to be there when he returned. That's how I saw it.

She sent two messages to Cooper. One was on the day they were the same age, because she remembered what he said. It was that important to her. She was telling him in her own way "heads up, you're late" and whatever anger she was channeling was frustration that things clearly didn't go the way they had both intended. She might be an adult but that doesn't mean she's can't be disappointed and sad, irrational or otherwise. The other message she sent was totally reactionary. She just felt betrayed and had no one else to turn to. Clearly by the last act it can be seen that she never really lost faith in her father, she didn't want to believe that he betrayed her too, but she had to say it. And it's a good thing she did, because otherwise he might not have known.

The movie might have dropped the ball when it comes to Cooper and his son, but the relationship between Cooper and his daughter was extremely real to me, and I felt it was totally believable.

Agree with your analysis, but disagree the movie did a good job with Murph and Cooper. I think the human element of this movie was the weakest part. I don't blame Nolan entirely, because this movie had a lot to cover. But eh. I guess I can step back and logically look at Murph's actions, and agree they make sense. And I can even agree on your analysis of the character. But I didn't find the plot that well done in the larger sense.
 
I'm not really talking about the plot or the "love is the 5th dimension" bookshelf twist stuff. I just felt that their long distance relationship was really, really well done. It sold me on the feeling that there were two people galaxies apart who were in their own ways trying to do all they could so when they reunited the other person would be proud of them. That feeling worked for me.
 
I probably like it more than Inception (need to rewatch), possibly because it resonated with me emotionally far more than Inception did. It had the same types of flaws as Inception, but I think it was more ambitious and reached greater heights, as well.

I think I like Inception more for its editing, tight pacing and high concept executed with panache.

Interstellar is however FAR warmer and and emotionally resonant than Inception. God Inception is the coldest of all Nolan movies, while Interstellar is closer to the warmth of Batman Begins. Its a shame that Interstellar is really all over the place when it comes to the editing, pacing and some of the more ambitious ideas/concepts executed with flaws.
 
This bothers me because EVERY OTHER aspect of the movie was so goddamn convenient and contrived. Of course the audience is going to just assume Cooper will make it to Brand - everything else tied itself up in a bow - why not that?


blech. I loved the Science in the movie, but hated the story they tried to tell.

In my first viewing I thought of that but watching it twice more and I don't have that stance anymore because we never see the wormhole after they pass through it throughout the whole movie and IF the wormhole was there, why didn't NASA go pick Dr.Brand like they did Cooper who was frankly in a much worse state, floating in space.

The ending could be interpreted that he took TARS and set off to specefically try to find a way to reach Dr.Brand OR to explore the galaxy while looking for Dr.Brand. I prefer the latter since it fits more with his character since he always strived and dreamed for human beings to be and aim more than just their destiny in the movie, which is ending up dead.

" We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt. "
 
I really like Michael Phillips' review.

You can call "Interstellar" corny or reiterative or just plain daunting, and you'd be right. It is those things. It is hobbled by astronomy and physics seminars disguised as dialogue. But even with its vividly realized imaginings of journeys through a worm hole, or its depiction of the largest tidal wave in the history of water, what I remembered first the following morning was this: Matthew McConaughey's character crying his eyes out as he watches years and years of backlogged video messages left by his son back on Earth. Simple, elemental human feeling. More directors should try it sometime.

The first really good scene in "Interstellar" reminds us that Nolan can pull off dramatically flamboyant tricks in style. Cooper will be lost in space for years, maybe forever. His kids, especially Murph, don't want him to go. He does, though, to try to save the planet. The farewell on the farm is an anguished one, and cleverly pushing the time-acceleration idea, Nolan intercuts it with the countdown and liftoff of the spaceship helmed by Cooper.
 
Those 2 are undeniably beautiful scenes, but then there is so much stupid shit surrounding it. :((((

why nolan. why can't u learn to trim your shit better.
 
In my first viewing I thought of that but watching it twice more and I don't have that stance anymore because we never see the wormhole after they pass through it throughout the whole movie and IF the wormhole was there, why didn't NASA go pick Dr.Brand like they did Cooper who was frankly in a much worse state, floating in space.

NASA didn't go to pick her up because she was setting up the necessary things for Plan A. The colony is headed to that habitable planet anyway, so they'll just meet up with her as the "camp" will be set up to begin civilization on that planet. Cooper just happened to luck out that he was placed exactly where he could be saved with "minutes to spare" (line from the movie).

The ending could be interpreted that he took TARS and set off to specefically try to find a way to reach Dr.Brand OR to explore the galaxy while looking for Dr.Brand. I prefer the latter since it fits more with his character since he always strived and dreamed for human beings to be and aim more than just their destiny in the movie, which is ending up dead.

Because directly following the shots of him leaving it cuts to Brand, alluding to the fact that they still have a connection - or a tie that needs to be connected again. Him going off to explore would be incredibly selfish and directly conflict with all actions of heroism he exemplified throughout the rest of the movie.

" We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt. "

Place in the stars - or his place with Brand on the planet in those same wondrous stars.
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In my first viewing I thought of that but watching it twice more and I don't have that stance anymore because we never see the wormhole after they pass through it throughout the whole movie and IF the wormhole was there, why didn't NASA go pick Dr.Brand like they did Cooper who was frankly in a much worse state, floating in space.

NASA didn't go to pick her up because she was setting up the necessary things for Plan A. The colony is headed to that habitable planet anyway, so they'll just meet up with her as the "camp" will be set up to begin civilization on that planet. Cooper just happened to luck out that he was placed exactly where he could be saved with "minutes to spare" (line from the movie).

"The ending could be interpreted that he took TARS and set off to specefically try to find a way to reach Dr.Brand OR to explore the galaxy while looking for Dr.Brand. I prefer the latter since it fits more with his character since he always strived and dreamed for human beings to be and aim more than just their destiny in the movie, which is ending up dead.

Because directly following the shots of him leaving it cuts to Brand, alluding to the fact that they still have a connection - or a tie that needs to be connected again. Him going off to explore would be incredibly selfish and directly conflict with all actions of heroism he exemplified throughout the rest of the movie.

" We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt. "

Place in the stars - or his place with Brand on the planet in those same wondrous stars..

So my issue is this- If Cooper can get to Brand on that ship, then so can anyone else. Why isn't there people heading to the planet already? Why is Cooper able and willing to go there and not anyone else?
 
you guys do realize regardless of how many questions you ask, you're never gonna get an answer right?

lol. it's like the inception ending. the ending is meant to be vague. and you're never gonna rationally or logically figure it out until nolan tells you


Honestly, I think the ambiguity surrounding the wormhole is more controversial than Inception's ending.

I think most of us probably felt more connected to Cooper than Dom, and whether or not the wormhole was closed at the end would have actual, tangible implications for the characters and the fate of humanity.
 
The colony ship IS going there, per the mission for Plan A

Well, my issue is it shows her on the planet all alone. Isn't any other person on the colony ship able to get there before Cooper does? They all have the same capability to jump on a small ship and help her out as well. While he's fixing up the robot, they could have had multiple ships already there.

Just a little thing that annoyed me.
 
Well, my issue is it shows her on the planet all alone. Isn't any other person on the colony ship able to get there before Cooper does? They all have the same capability to jump on a small ship and help her out as well. While he's fixing up the robot, they could have had multiple ships already there.

Just a little thing that annoyed me.

Just one of many things that annoyed me. haha
 
So my issue is this- If Cooper can get to Brand on that ship, then so can anyone else. Why isn't there people heading to the planet already? Why is Cooper able and willing to go there and not anyone else?

Exactly. They had patrol cruisers traveling around the rings of Saturn (which found Cooper), surely they would have already sent a ship through the wormhole had it still been open.

But again, the wormhole being open is just too easy. Cooper never fit in with society. He was a creator and a dreamer. At the end, I saw that as him detaching himself completely from society, and fully embracing this intrinsic human desire to explore the unknown.

Brand was set to activate Plan B. So, at the end of the film, you have the space stations, Cooper, and Brand, all spread out among the stars, each with different destinies - showing that humanity is no longer "looking down at their place in the dirt", but spreading out to new places.

If the wormhole is still open, then that means Cooper simply took a quick little cruise through it to go get Brand, with all of humanity following right behind him. It's not dramatic, it's too easy, and it doesn't fit the thematic elements of the film or Cooper's motivations as a character.
 
The colony ship IS going there, per the mission for Plan A

I think you need to watch the movie again because all we ever get from the ending is that Murph convinces Cooper on her deathbed to go search for Amelia. In the end though, the ending is abit vague when it comes to Cooper's motivations, we have people saying he took the ship with TARS to just look for a way to get to Amelia and we have people saying that nothing for him is on the station so he wants to set out to explore the universe while also finding a way to find Amelia. I tend to prefer the latter since in the station we see sometime pass by with cooper fixing TARS, him sitting on the porch and drinking beer like what he used to do on earth looking bored.etc

In any case though, I love the ending. I just wish more time was spent with Cooper and Murph but eh, you can't have everything. The woman was dying.
 
Well, my issue is it shows her on the planet all alone. Isn't any other person on the colony ship able to get there before Cooper does? They all have the same capability to jump on a small ship and help her out as well. While he's fixing up the robot, they could have had multiple ships already there.

Just a little thing that annoyed me.

Also, during Murph's monologue at the end, she mentions that maybe Brand is settling in for the long nap, under the light of "her" new sun, in "her" new home (not "our").

I think that was a fairly intentional word selection.
 
So maybe someone smarter than me can determine whether or not the "gravity equation" would help them travel faster/warp, but here it is from The Science of Interstellar:

Early in Interstellar, when Cooper first visits the NASA facility, he is shown a giant, cylindrical enclosure being constructed to carry thousands of humans into space and house them for many generations: a space colony. And he's told there are others being constructed elsewhere.

"How does it get off Earth?" Cooper asks the Professor. "Those first gravitational anomalies changed everything," the Professor replies. "Suddenly we knew that harnessing gravity was real. So I started working on the theory—and we started building this station."

At the end of Interstellar we see everyday life back on even keel, inside the colony, floating in space (Figure 31.1).

How did it get lifted into space? The key, of course, was the quantum data (in my scientist's interpretation, the quantum gravity laws) that TARS extracted from Gargantua's singularity (Chapters 26 and 28) and Cooper transmitted to Murph (Chapter 30).


In my interpretation, by discarding quantum fluctuations from those laws (Chapter 26), Murph learned the nonquantum laws that govern gravitational anomalies. And from those laws, she figured out how to control the anomalies.

As a physicist, I'm eager to know the details. Was Professor Brand on the right track in the equations that covered his blackboards? (Chapter 25 and this book's page at Interstellar.withgoogle.com.) Did he really have half the answer, as Murph asserted before getting the quantum data? Or was he way off? Is the secret to anomalies and controlling gravity something completely different?

Perhaps a sequel to Interstellar will tell us. Christopher Nolan is a master of sequels; just watch his Batman trilogy.

But one thing seems clear. Murph must have figured out how to reduce Newton's gravitational constant G inside the Earth. Recall (Chapter 25) that the Earth's gravitational pull is given by Newton's inverse square law: g = Gm/r2, where r2 is the squared distance from the Earth's center, m is the mass of the Earth, and G is Newton's gravitational constant. Cut Newton's G in half and you reduce the Earth's gravity by two. Cut G by a thousand and you reduce the Earth's gravity by a thousand.

In my interpretation, with Newton's G reduced inside the Earth to, say, a thousandth its normal value for, say, an hour, rocket engines could lift the enormous colonies into space.

As a byproduct, in my interpretation the Earth's core—no longer compressed by the enormous weight of the planet above—must have sprung outward, pushing the Earth's surface upward. Gigantic earthquakes and tsunamis must have followed, wreaking havoc on Earth as the colonies soared into space, a terrible price for the Earth to pay on top of its blight-driven catastrophe.
Vffien Newton's G was restored to normal strength, the Earth must have shrunk back to its normal size, wreaking more earthquake and tsunami havoc.
 
We don't know what the ship is capable of since it's made by dem advanced humans so, who knows! The ship could travel at warp speed or bend gravity at will for all we know.

The ship Cooper stole was built around 80 years after he originally left Earth. It wasn't built by the advanced humans who are implied to have created the Wormhole who presumably are from thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years into the future. Brand's planet is literally in another galaxy; there's no way Cooper's getting there without the wormhole. Even traveling hundreds of times faster than the speed of light it would take him thousands of years to get there. There's a reason most of Star Trek is confined to the Alpha Quadrant even with their advanced Warp technology. The Galaxy is that big, and the distance between the Milky Way and the Galaxy Brand is could be hundreds of times the size of the Milky way for all we know.

And if it's indeed the case that the movie expects us to believe that Cooper is supposed to fly to another Galaxy in that tiny ship, well that's just another notch on this movie's neverending stream of dumb.
 
Do they ever explicitly say in the movie that the wormhole closed? Jonah Nolan has said it has in interviews, but I don't remember the movie showing or explaining that.
 
Do they ever explicitly say in the movie that the wormhole closed? Jonah Nolan has said it has in interviews, but I don't remember the movie showing or explaining that.

Either the movie didn't show it, or they did a bad enough job implying it that most people missed it.
 
So maybe someone smarter than me can determine whether or not the "gravity equation" would help them travel faster/warp, but here it is from The Science of Interstellar:

If the gravity equation lets them create gravitational anomalies wherever they choose, there wouldn't be too much they couldn't do.

1. They might be able to create their own wormholes now, essentially going anywhere in the universe.
2. I remember reading about creating gravity wells in front of a ship that it constantly falls into, as a means of travel. Or the reverse; a gravity bubble behind the ship to continually propel it forward.

Mastering gravity pretty much gets them on Mass Effect levels of space travel; since if you can alter gravity, you should also be able to alter mass.

But I'm no astrophysicist.
 
t is literally in another galaxy; there's no way Cooper's getting there without the wormhole. Even traveling hundreds of times faster than the speed of light it would take him thousands of years to get there.

If you're traveling exactly at the speed of light, any distance you travel in the universe is instantaneous for you. For a bystander on Earth, no, but for you, it would be instant.
 
The ship Cooper stole was built around 80 years after he originally left Earth. It wasn't built by the advanced humans who are implied to have created the Wormhole who presumably are from thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years into the future. Brand's planet is literally in another galaxy; there's no way Cooper's getting there without the wormhole. Even traveling hundreds of times faster than the speed of light it would take him thousands of years to get there. There's a reason most of Star Trek is confined to the Alpha Quadrant even with their advanced Warp technology. The Galaxy is that big, and the distance between the Milky Way and the Galaxy Brand is could be hundreds of times the size of the Milky way for all we know.

And if it's indeed the case that the movie expects us to believe that Cooper is supposed to fly to another Galaxy in that tiny ship, well that's just another notch on this movie's neverending stream of dumb.

I know. Maybe I should have rephrased it better but, what I meant was the ship he took was obviously built with way advanced technology than what we had back on Earth. As for traveling light speed or bending gravity or whatever is pretty much in the air left for assumptions and discussions.
 
If you're traveling exactly at the speed of light, any distance you travel in the universe is instantaneous for you. For a bystander on Earth, no, but for you, it would be instant.

But that isn't very useful if your plan is to "reach Brand" since the colony she'd established would have evolved into betentatacled, malevolent cyber-"humans" by the time he got to it.
 
If you're traveling exactly at the speed of light, any distance you travel in the universe is instantaneous for you. For a bystander on Earth, no, but for you, it would be instant.

But even if Cooper is traveling at 0.9999999 times the speed of light and the trip is nigh instantaneous to him, wouldn't hundreds of thousands of years have passed for Brand depending on how far that other Galaxy is?

EDIT: Beaten.
 
Layering the launch countdown on top of Cooper driving away from the farm is definitely one of the film's best scenes, and one of Nolan's most effective touches.
 
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