3rd viewing. What? Daughter came back from school for t-day so we went to see it again along with son (they're 21/19). We all enjoyed it and it was fuel for good conversation. Finished Kip Thorne's book. It's an easy quick read but fails to satisfy certain plot questions (i.e. how old were they at the end?). He makes a valiant effort to "explain" what happens in the singularity and in doing so imparts a lot of knowledge about how mathematics can predict physical properties of black holes, and what we have inferred about extra dimensional physics. It's quite an exciting field (I may go see The Theory of Everything to learn how astrophysicists do it. Coincidence this came out at the same time as Interstellar? could be.) But Thorne's book ultimately left me less satisfied with the movie. The area that left me unhappy after reading the book is understanding how unlikely travel between the planets around the black hole "Gargantua" was. The plot was given dramatic foils at the expense of reality. Thorne provides details about how it could be possible, but at the same time the reader learns how unlikely any of it is. The removal of SF's veil making the impossible, possible, doesn't help. There is quite a lot of explanation of how and why they were able to pass through the event horizon of a black hole without being torn into sub-atomic particles. This does help. There is a lot of discussion on tesseracts and how they could be used by 5th dimensional "bulk" beings to provide a human a 3 dimensional interface to the universe where we live with a nod to Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (where I first read about them). Here's a lovely animated tesseract I came across on wikipedia. Has nothing to do with anything but I like looking at it. and yeah, this is a recycled post. Compost if you will.
Because he didn't. If he had it would have already happened. I didn't like the morse-code-second-hand. While you could posit gravity waves can travel interdimensionally and transcend time I really don't see them being able to vibrate the second hand of a 40 (70?) year old Hamilton watch with an automatic (pendulum wound sprung movement) for 30 years with a complex message solving the "gravity problem." sheesh.
But he'd also know that sending "Stay" wouldn't be enough to keep him from going, and so would be inclined to send something else. If he had sent something that only he would know, like his wife's birthday or something, that would have gotten the attention of his younger self. Then he could have sent a longer message warning about the douchebag. Well that's the beauty of dealing with the bleeding edge of physics, you can postulate pretty much whatever you want. Overall, I thought it was a decent film, but a bit on the long side. And to answer some of the questions which have been raised in the spoiler tags, I'll put them below: I'd had two strong whiskey's before I saw the film, so those of you who failed to pick up on these things should be ashamed of yourselves. Now, the questions I have are as follows: And I think Nolan, or Hans Zimmer, must have had Brian Eno's Apollo album (which is the soundtrack to the documentary For All Mankind) in mind when selecting the music for the parts on Earth during the beginning. Oh, and they showed the Star Wars trailer before the film (amongst the 30 minutes of other trailers and Coke ads which ran before it, thanks, guys, as if the movie wasn't long enough already), and it looked awesome at that size.
I will address number two and the one about beer. Are you really questioning the necessity of beer? Number 2: Somehow Murph knew that Hathaway was alone. Maybe the all good signal went out. They showed Hathaway standing over a grave. So I can only assume that he died at some point and the signal stopped. Hathaway got there. Then fast forward to Cooper showing up on Cooper station many years have past. Murph tells Cooper to go after her. At that time she had just arrived.
Asked and answered (and some of my own). I'm going from some of Kip Thorne's extrapolations. He was involved with the making of Intersteller since its initial conception. I may be extrapolating some too: I've seen the damn thing 3 times and read the book. I'm not happy with the answers, I think there could have been better writing, but it was the work of a committee: at least two Nolan's and teams of scientists advising them. They did set a foundation of rules for the movie: no matter how improbable, it had to adhere to known laws of physics. Stephen Hawkings is a peer of Kip Thorne's. Thorne has the cred and was an executive producer on the movie in addition to being the main science consultant.
When you can use many of the same ingredients to make whiskey, yes, yes, I am. That's my question. How'd she know? But how's Murph going to know that her daddy is gonna wanna get freaky with Hathaway? Granted, she's a babe, but maybe Coop had a thing for redheads? Yeah, I got that.
I think the all good signal went dead and that's how Murph knew Hathaway was alone. Maybe Murph knew Cooper would feel out of place on Cooper station and he and Hathaway had become really close by the end of the movie, it stands to reason Cooper would want to make sure she's still out there.
Oh, and I feel compelled to point out that the only person who gets murdered in the movie was the black guy. Just sayin'.
Implying racism in any manner about this movie is just beyond stupid. If it had been Dr. Brand would you point out the only person who gets murdered in the movie was the lone female astronaut?
Just saw the movie on IMAX screen. Big and loud but no where are loud as the complaints of some who said they couldn't hear dialogue. Wonderful movie. Glad that it was different from the script I read.
We already do....... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/20...-seed-vault-is-fort-knox-for-the-worlds-seeds There are more out there. And the blight even if it had run it's course would still have resulted in a uninhabitable Earth. As the amount of Nitrogen would have choked off any remaining ability to breathe. Unless you have a way to introduce oxygen into the environment the Earth was toast. And terraforming Mars would take centuries if not thousands of years. Finding a planet where you can immediately set up shop would be far better. As for not bringing the blight with them that could be accomplished. I bet they had plenty of ways to kill the blight but none that wouldn't also kill the plant and that's where they were screwed on the planet.
He wasn't however thinking rationally. He was throwing a bit of a temper tantrum. It's only towards the end he starts to calm down and Tars tells him that "they" don't want him to change the past that he goes and changes the future by handing off the information that Murphy needs.
As was discussed in the Star Wars thread, its a trope. It always seems to happen in movies that the "black guy gets it." The only way it could be considered racism is if we knew, which we don't, that the part was written with a black actor in mind.
I was thinking of it in terms of the Chris Rock routine, "Ever notice that if there's a bunch of white guys and one black guy in a movie, and they go off to confront some kind of danger, like a serial killer or something, the brother is always one of the first ones to die?" (Quoted from memory, so not 100% accurate.)
During the movie I wondered where this guy suddenly came from. Cooper goes to NASA, meets hot NASA boss' daughter, boom, cut to space ship, black guy's there. I was like, WTF. But hey, why not.
ummm............ You don't remember the black guy in the NASA meeting room who was talking to Cooper? Along with Doyle and Brand. Both Brands in fact plus some other unidentified bigwigs.
Reminds me of the characters of Jessica and Ashley, two girls on the singing team in Pitch Perfect. They're just background characters to fill out the team; they have no dialog or role in the plot. At one point, one of the main characters is angry at the team and singles everyone out for complaints. Then she gets to Jessica and Ashley and says: "It's like you haven't been here all year long." And the two girls react angrily: "We've literally been here the whole time!"
Romilly had a bigger part then Doyle who was the first one killed thanks to Dr. Brand's screw-up on the water planet. He wasn't a background character.
No, but an awful lot of the characters in the film were rather "generic" and could have been played by any random actor. Even Matt Damon's part could have been done just about anyone. (Granted, putting someone like Nicolas Cage in the role would have tipped you off early that he was batshit crazy, but you get my point.)
I think you get rid of that entire other planet scene with Matt Damon and have a more coherent movie. It really didn't fit all that well.
The point of that scene was to reinforce the statement that they'd made earlier about how mankind brings its evils with it (or words to that effect). It certainly could have been handled a little bit better, however. Instead of Cooper and Damon going off and Damon trying to kill him, they should just have had the thing blow up while Cooper and Damon were preparing to leave. They could have dispensed with the whole wandering on the ice sequence that way.
They wandered on the ice so Matt Damon could trick Cooper into believing there was a surface and so Matt Damon could kill Cooper and explain it away some how.Basically, there would be no witnesses, so he could make something up.
Right, but there's no need for that, so far as the overarching plot goes. Damon's just as dead if they go over the ice or if they hang out by the shelter. If the explosion happens as they're just setting out and Cooper and Damon then have their fight, nothing's lost by them not spending time hiking over the ice.
Well, what I'm wondering is what the second planet sub-plot accomplished that you couldn't have done just with the first planet, where Dr. Mann could have just as well been found, if he's even really needed. It seems to me there could be a more straightforward way to get from arriving at the first planet to probing the black hole and then finding and using the time vault. Perhaps they could have found a dead Dr. Mann along with singularity measurements he'd already taken on the black hole, but was unable to make use of them or return them. So they leave the first planet to try to get back to Saturn but on the way get in some trouble with their course around the black hole and then encounter the vault, leaving the end of the movie pretty much unchanged - except for the second planet.
