For many that saw Godzilla in theaters, you probably noticed a new trailer for Nolan's Interstellar movie coming out this November. I know it's a little early to discuss details since we still have to get through the summer blockbuster season, but the new trailer looks great and expectations are definitely high for this one. The basic premise appears to be that some time in the near future, some sort of climate change occurs that affects Earth's plants/crops to the point where the dominant food source is corn (at least in the US anyway). The trailer suggests that man must go and find another planet to colonize by means of using "interstellar" travel through black holes/wormholes. Nolan has again collected an all-star cast including Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Topher Grace, Casey Affleck, John Lighgow and Nolan favorite Michael Caine with another Nolan favorite, Hans Zimmer, providing the music/score. The script was originally conceived by a producer and Kip Thorne - a well-known theoretical physicist and friend of Stephen Hawking. I believe the original script was written in 2006/2008 for Spielberg to direct with Nolan's brother, Jonathan, writing the screenplay.
Obviously, the web is abuzz with trying to figure out plot details and messages within the film/trailer - one of them being the continuing debate on global warming and its affect on the planet. It's not clear what caused the climate changes to wipe out most of Earth's crops from the trailers and scant plot details, but it seems the movie focuses more on interstellar space travel and I believe Nolan relied heavily on Thorne's theories on black holes/wormholes for the interstellar travel. Another plot point that many are discussing is the point that man has possibly used up most of the natural resources here on Earth (regardless of the climate changes) and must try and find them elsewhere. My mind goes back to Agent Smith's "revelation" to Morpheus in the original Matrix..."I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area...".
To me, this seems like it good be a really good film and at the very least, will leave you walking away from the theater asking questions which I really like. I'm interested in what others are thinking of this film; you can find the new trailer pretty much anywhere on the web and of course, on YouTube.
I saw this last night in IMAX (not the 70MM version though, as my local IMAX wasn't one of those that showed it in that format).
I'm very interested to see what others in here who see this think about it and quite honestly, I'd love to discuss the different explanations of the science-fiction and theories that are used to explain the story. I work in business and never took enough science classes in high school/college to intelligently understand Einstein's theories, quantum theories or anything of the sort. I'm not suggesting that people need to know these things prior to viewing the movie, but I'm sure it wouldn't hurt. Some things are explained, but I'm sure they went over my head as I was immersed enough to not pay attention to details.
That said, I thought it was well done and it still has me thinking and pondering it the day after, and I'm sure I will discuss it with friends/family who happen to see it weeks/months after. I'm not going to go into any summaries or details because even if I put spoiler tags on things, it's probably too much of a temptation to open them I think it's best to not know too much before viewing it - perhaps the discussion is more appropriate until after enough people in here have viewed it.
What I will say is that if you're up-in-the-air at all about this one, I would recommend seeing it, and if you have an IMAX near you, I would suggest seeing it in that format vs. a regular screen. The scenes in space are really well done and I think it's one of those movies that you need to see on a "big" screen with great sound.
I know there are some that are not a fan of Nolan at all and that reason might cause them to dismiss this movie entirely, and while I won't lie and say it's not a typical Nolan blockbuster film similar to past films like Inception (yes, there are some scenes and details that are very typical to Nolan), there's alot of concepts that would entertain movie-lovers of all walks of life, even if you're not a fan of science fiction movies.
Lastly, the running time is long on paper (2 hr, 49 min) but very truthfully, it didn't feel like that at all. There's so much stuff going on that I actually wanted more film and I thought there easily could have been another 1/2 hour or more added. I was engrossed the whole way through.
I know there are some that are not a fan of Nolan at all and that reason might cause them to dismiss this movie entirely, and while I won't lie and say it's not a typical Nolan blockbuster film similar to past films like Inception
This statement actually makes me want to see the film.
I'll probably do it on rental though. Nolan's a very self-indulgent director and I'm not about to watch 2 hours and 49 minutes of him. No way.
Like I said, there are typical Nolan elements in the film, but there's alot to comprehend, digest and discuss, too. It's definitely his most ambitious film with all the ideas he's presenting and I think it spurs many different types of discussion; the status of the Earth in the not-to-distant future as portraying in the film, scientific theories such as time relativity (along with many others), personal decisions in survival situations, etc. I feel like viewers could discuss a variety of topics from the film.
Now, I will say that even though I'm not a science-buff, meaning that I'm not one to truly understand Einstein's scientific theories, there are moments that you'll have to suspend your belief for a minute - I mean, it's a movie and entertainment after all and not a documentary on science itself. The fact that Kip Thorne produced the film with Nolan says alot about the accuracy of the theories presented and used, but again, someone who understands them more can better discuss that.
It's... good, I guess. I don't know. The film had me on edge and engaged all throughout, but I'm not entirely sure why in hindsight.
Honestly, the film feels incredibly bloated and self-indulgent. It's as if Nolan is going "I AM AN INCREDIBLE DIRECTOR AND YOU WILL GIVE ME CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR ANYTHING I MAKE, MUAHAHAHAHA"
There are so many plot points flying around that are never explained or addressed properly, one of the more egregious one being that no one ever bothers to explain just wtf happened to make Earth unlivable. The Dust Bowl in the American Midwest occurred because of intense droughts and over-farming/poor farming techniques.
Here we're simply told "We're dying because we can't grow enough food"/"We're dying because of some blight that wiped out wheat/okra and eventually will target corn as well/We got enormous sand storms and everything is coated in dust all that time. That's pretty much it.
This is a serious issue because we're outright ******* told that we need more farmers and that engineering/high-tech in general is an extravagance that we cannot afford, but it is never explained why, and outright flies in the face of plain facts today.
Mechanization of farming allows a couple farmers to harvest what would have taken hundreds, thousands of farmers just a century ago. We grow more wheat and corn (the two big staple crops in the Midwest, afaik) than we ever did, and we have fewer farmers than we ever had.
Hell, in the ******* film we see Cooper use a bunch of automated crop-pickers or something! AUTOMATED CROP-PICKERS.
WHY DO YOU NEED MORE FARMERS IF YOU CAN ******* AUTOMATE CROP-PICKING. Seeding and watering are already done by giant machines. Surely that could be automated as well.
Oh, I also find it incredibly weird how giant corporations that own the vast majority of the farmlands of today just... disappear.
And this doesn't even cover rice, another one of the big staple crops. Whatever happened to rice? Heck, this doesn't cover what happened in anywhere except what could only be the American Midwest...
It felt like Nolan needed to set up a premise and in doing so ignored pretty much every reality that needed to be addressed.
Let's talk about the hate for technology...
Wtf? Satellites aren't useful? Wtf? Wtf? Wtf? Faked the moon landing to bankrupt the Russians? Why did Nolan feel the need to put in what is a rather large conspiracy theory into the film?
MRIs are gone now? WTF?!@#!@$!$!!#
Again, Nolan needed to set up a premise and in doing so created a world that simply made no sense. The film NEEDED Cooper to abandon his piloting career and become a farmer, and so satellites and technology is no longer needed.
I get that the whole stuff in outer space is what's important here, but it's just bad ******* film-making when you have to create garbage scenarios for the film to start.
This is my biggest complaint with the film. It's as if Nolan had these ideas about the world ending and how humanity needs to reach out to the stars to survive. So he just took like a day to write out a stupid world for the film to exist in. It's as if he didn't care at all about anything besides some certain things and so didn't bother to work with them properly.
But the plot itself has issues. For one thing, it's incredibly pedestrian. We've seen this before. We've seen the main characters first go to some promising place, only to realize that this isn't it. We've seen the supposed good guy turn evil because he was actually a coward at heart. We've seen the main character make what is meant to be a heroic sacrifice for the betterment of humanity, only to see that he does have the opportunity to save everyone after all.
Is this really the best that Nolan could come up with? Just a whole bunch of typical film cliches strung together with what is supposed to be a fascinating premise? Of course... We've already seen the world ending and it's up to a small group of people to save it.
So the science must be the only thing that is new in this film... But I couldn't care less about the science, because the film never gave me enough information to realize how important the science is. The worm-hole was explained as "Some god-like beings did it because they wanted to help us". Of course, it apparently turns out that humanity is the god-like beings after all, but how the flying **** does that work?
What allowed Cooper to communicate with Murphy before we saw Cooper enter the black hole? The film explains that the power possessed by the god-like humans allow them to touch everything, from past to present. Ok, great, but there's a problem with this. They only way for Cooper to communicate with Murphy was for Cooper to have gone to the hidden NORAD base to begin with, which couldn't have happened unless Cooper had already gone to the hidden NORAD base, learned everything, and went flying off into space.
So the only way for Cooper to learn about the hidden NORAD base was to go to the hidden NORAD base... Lemme know when you figure that out, because I can't.
Ya... the more I write about this, the more I realize there are incredibly obvious flaws and inconsistencies.
The film enthralled me and gave me a good time, but I don't really know why. Maybe it was just the great effects.
This film is basically Nolan's best so far. I follow him since Memento came out when I was at university, and he really outdid himself. A true masterpiece, emotional both on a personal and existential level: You feel both for the characters and humanity as a whole. The films starts gaining momentum and snowballs into a moment when "all things and every thing" touch each other and from that moment till the movie ends you are stuck in your chair, unable to shake it off. It is nothing short of prophetic/Biblical, as well.
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I didn't really like the film. It was fantastic, incredibly engaging until it took a bizarre left turn about 3/4ths of the way through, and went really metaphysical. That kind of killed my enjoyment.
I didn't really like the film. It was fantastic, incredibly engaging until it took a bizarre left turn about 3/4ths of the way through, and went really metaphysical. That kind of killed my enjoyment.
I pretty much agree, but it didn't kill it for me. I think it holds up in spite of the weirdness. It's going in the column of Great But Flawed Films. And this may be slightly heretical, but even that ending I liked better than the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey, because the audience understands what's going on - partially because Matthew MacConaughey was expositing everything as it happened, but that just goes to show that there are limits to the principle of "show, don't tell". 2001 presents a grand mystery, but the story suffers from it. Interstellar tells a story.
one of the more egregious one being that no one ever bothers to explain just wtf happened to make Earth unlivable.
This is one of the best decisions Nolan makes. And it's quite contrary to his normal directorial vice of overexplaining everything. The movie emphatically is not about Earth, so Nolan doesn't linger on the situation there. He invokes our culture's very real fears of environmental collapse to hint at a scenario and set the mood of resigned fatalism and disinterest in exploration. It's a portrait of the Zeitgeist, not a prognostication.
And this doesn't even cover rice, another one of the big staple crops. Whatever happened to rice? Heck, this doesn't cover what happened in anywhere except what could only be the American Midwest...
Do you really need it spelled out for you that the rice went extinct too, and that this is a global crisis?
What allowed Cooper to communicate with Murphy before we saw Cooper enter the black hole? The film explains that the power possessed by the god-like humans allow them to touch everything, from past to present. Ok, great, but there's a problem with this. They only way for Cooper to communicate with Murphy was for Cooper to have gone to the hidden NORAD base to begin with, which couldn't have happened unless Cooper had already gone to the hidden NORAD base, learned everything, and went flying off into space.
So the only way for Cooper to learn about the hidden NORAD base was to go to the hidden NORAD base... Lemme know when you figure that out, because I can't.
It's called the "ontological paradox" or the "closed time loop". Welcome to science fiction. Whatever you do, don't go see the upcoming Predestination. (Heinlein fans will know what I'm talking about.)
[quote from="Blinking Spirit »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/outside-magic/entertainment/movies/560333-nolans-interstellar?comment=8"]
This is one of the best decisions Nolan makes. And it's quite contrary to his normal directorial vice of overexplaining everything. The movie emphatically is not about Earth, so Nolan doesn't linger on the situation there. He invokes our culture's very real fears of environmental collapse to hint at a scenario and set the mood of resigned fatalism and disinterest in exploration. It's a portrait of the Zeitgeist, not a prognostication.
In pretty much any other film this kind of handling would have been seen as idiocy. Who cares if this film is not about Earth? You need a believable setting. You state that some sort of super plant plague is destroying the world? Why? Wtf happened? Even a couple throwaway lines would have helped.
As far as I'm concerned, Nolan pretty much created a world just so he can take things into space. If you interpret it you put it in the quote above, then that's fine. I more or less interpret it the same. Unlike you, I have a problem with it.
Do you really need it spelled out for you that the rice went extinct too, and that this is a global crisis?
Yep. Again, world-building. As far as I can tell, Nolan just set the actions on Earth in the American Midwest because he wanted to evoke the feelings of the Dust Bowl.
What? Do you think Nolan was actually suggesting the theory is true?
No. I just cannot believe it that a significant portion of the population would come to believe it. Once again, world-building. We are told nothing about why they decided technology is not useful. As I mentioned earlier, I find the entire concept ludicrous. Especially the line with about MRIs. We decided that investing resources into building MRIs in this day and age is not worth it? Fine. We decided that MRIs are useless because it's technology? What? I know the teacher doesn't actually say anything about MRIs, but Cooper's wording is enough to show that they dumped MRIs in some sort of rage against higher tech in general.
It's called the "ontological paradox" or the "closed time loop". Welcome to science fiction. Whatever you do, don't go see the upcoming Predestination. (Heinlein fans will know what I'm talking about.)/quote]
Bleh.
[quote from="Blinking Spirit »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/outside-magic/entertainment/movies/560333-nolans-interstellar?comment=8"]There definitely are, but somehow you don't seem to have identified any of them.
As you can probably tell, I had a huge problem with the world-building in the film. If you don't find the world believable, then it's difficult to take entire thing believable.
Out of curiosity, what did you find flawed in the film?
This movie is definitely a spiritual successor to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and I thought it held up pretty well. I'm also thrilled any time a movie is released that engages seriously with real science as opposed to simply abandoning it, and this is definitely one such movie. I also appreciated that the alien environments in the movie were truly alien, as might be expected given the rarity of truly Earthlike planets.
However, as someone with enough knowledge of the science to nitpick at the details, there were some things that broke my suspension of disbelief:
In order to be as large as it appears on-screen, Gargantua must be a supermassive black hole, and in order to produce the gravitational time dilation that it did on Miller's planet, it must have near-c angular velocity. As a result of the Penrose and BZ processes, such large spinning black holes impart enormous amounts of energy to the matter accreting around them, heating up the gases to such high energies that they emit very brightly across the EM spectrum, including high-energy gamma rays. In fact, we deduce the existence of supermassive black holes in part from the high-energy jets and bursts they shoot out, that are visible to us across billions of light years. The upshot of this is that everything within a few parsecs of Gargantua would be bathed in hard gamma radiation. There is no way a habitable planet could exist there and certainly no way a near-future human space vessel could approach it without being disintegrated by ionizing radiation.
During the whole sequence on Miller's planet, something in the back of my mind was telling me that I knew a theorem that said water waves couldn't actually behave that way. I haven't yet actually figured out why they can't, but I haven't shaken the feeling either.
I'll repeat a popular criticism that I've heard, and that is that something doesn't add up about their ranger vehicle being able to escape high-gravity environments without rocket boosters.
While it is true that idealized infalling matter can pass through the horizon of a black hole and survive, no near-future human craft would actually be able to survive a fall into a hole with the specifics of Gargantua. In fact, even if we ignore the gamma radiation and high temperature gases, Gargantua has so much spin that the craft would be torn apart purely by relativistic frame-dragging in the ergosphere before it even got near the actual horizon.
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In pretty much any other film this kind of handling would have been seen as idiocy. Who cares if this film is not about Earth? You need a believable setting. You state that some sort of super plant plague is destroying the world? Why? Wtf happened? Even a couple throwaway lines would have helped.
What exactly is unbelievable about the idea that humanity might possibly screw up the biosphere? "Superbugs", whether evolved or accidentally engineered, are a very real concern among futurists and agricultural scientists, because of how monocultured our food production is. To say nothing of, y'know, climate change. The brilliant thing about Nolan's worldbuilding in this film is that he can invoke those fears with just a few broad brushstrokes in order to set the mood, rather than weigh down the film with explanations that are irrelevant to the story. Insofar as he does try to explain the details of the situation, that's where he breaks suspension of disbelief, like the offhand mention that the Blight "breathes nitrogen" - no, that's not very likely.
Yep. Again, world-building. As far as I can tell, Nolan just set the actions on Earth in the American Midwest because he wanted to evoke the feelings of the Dust Bowl.
Correct, but that doesn't mean he's obliged to say "Life in Asia sucks too, because the Blight got the rice" for it to be true. Hell, a couple of throwaway lines he does drop about Asia imply that it's much, much worse over there. The phrase "depopulation bomb" is used. Did you catch it?
No. I just cannot believe it that a significant portion of the population would come to believe it.
Do I really have to break out the depressing statistics on how many Americans believe in young-earth creationism, a Kennedy assassination conspiracy, a 9/11 inside job, faith healing, palm reading, astrology, homeopathy, and freaking Bigfoot? And none of these things are actually being taught in public schools.
Once again, world-building. We are told nothing about why they decided technology is not useful. As I mentioned earlier, I find the entire concept ludicrous. Especially the line with about MRIs. We decided that investing resources into building MRIs in this day and age is not worth it? Fine. We decided that MRIs are useless because it's technology? What? I know the teacher doesn't actually say anything about MRIs, but Cooper's wording is enough to show that they dumped MRIs in some sort of rage against higher tech in general.
What? They clearly turned away from high-tech production due to lack of resources. There is absolutely no indication of a Luddite rage against the machines. You are making that up. You yourself notice that it contradicts their use of tech in agriculture.
Out of curiosity, what did you find flawed in the film?
Cooper goes from ignorance of NASA's existence to orbit in what appears to be a day, two at most. Even freaking Armageddon understood that its oilmen had to spend some time preparing for the mission. For a mission of this scope, the training time would more plausibly take years.
As Crashing00 mentioned, they made a noble effort at hard science, but the math on the black hole doesn't work.
The Ranger landing and taking off from high-G planets with ease, even though it clearly needed conventional boosters to achieve escape velocity from Earth.
The way-too-dramatic scenario of having enough fuel to visit the final planet or go home, but not both. And the general handling of the prospects of a return trip in general - Cooper makes it sound like he can just leave in the Ranger and fly back to Earth if he wants.
The notion of transmitting what's likely petabytes and petabytes of raw data back to earth manually, one figure at a time, through Morse code.
And, of course, the freaking magic.
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What exactly is unbelievable about the idea that humanity might possibly screw up the biosphere? "Superbugs", whether evolved or accidentally engineered, are a very real concern among futurists and agricultural scientists, because of how monocultured our food production is. To say nothing of, y'know, climate change. The brilliant thing about Nolan's worldbuilding in this film is that he can invoke those fears with just a few broad brushstrokes in order to set the mood, rather than weigh down the film with explanations that are irrelevant to the story. Insofar as he does try to explain the details of the situation, that's where he breaks suspension of disbelief, like the offhand mention that the Blight "breathes nitrogen" - no, that's not very likely.
Fair enough. The less that's said about the setting, the less there is to criticize. And it certainly did set the appropriate tone. Earth is ****ed, and we need to get off.
That being said... I still find it jarring. As I wrote earlier, it just felt like Nolan wanted to get things off into space and so didn't bother with proper worldbuilding. As you wrote, that was probably the correct decision. It just rubbed me the wrong way.
Correct, but that doesn't mean he's obliged to say "Life in Asia sucks too, because the Blight got the rice" for it to be true. Hell, a couple of throwaway lines he does drop about Asia imply that it's much, much worse over there. The phrase "depopulation bomb" is used. Did you catch it?
I don't remember it.
I think I just found the concept of an plant devouring plague/blight that can jump from such different species to species weird. As much as you are correct about the homogenization of agriculture today, a rice plant is very quite different from a corn plant and okra.
Do I really have to break out the depressing statistics on how many Americans believe in young-earth creationism, a Kennedy assassination conspiracy, a 9/11 inside job, faith healing, palm reading, astrology, homeopathy, and freaking Bigfoot? And none of these things are actually being taught in public schools.
Not relevant. Those aren't taught in mainstream schools today. Conspiracy theories do not normally become mainstream fact.
In Interstellarverse, the mainstream schools actually went from saying the moon landings were real to "the moon landings were faked in an attempt to embarrass the U.S.S.R and cause them to bankrupt themselves". This is really big.
And, as we are told, the justification for this comes from the fact that mainstream society decided that satellites and higher tech are useless. While you're probably right (It's been close to a month since I've seen the film and memory is getting hazy) about them turning away from high-tech due to lack of resources, what with the grandfather (I think it was) saying "we ran out of food, not tech" and all that. I would imagine that's what Nolan wanted to convey. But it is rather apparent from the parent-teacher meeting and from what Michael Caine told us that the general public holds a very negative opinion towards higher tech in Interstellarverse. So negative, in fact, that they decided to blatantly rewrite history and get rid of MRIs.
And also brainwash people because the teacher cannot be that much younger (at best a decade?) than Cooper. So to have her genuinely believe in what the textbooks say... Ugh.
In any case, the entire concept is ludicrous. The value of higher tech has always been the ability to achieve things that we don't have the means to achieve. We lack farmers? We build machines that can harvest food better. We lack farmland? We use machines and chemistry to make them. So on and so forth.
More than anything else this concept breaks all immersion I could have had into the film.
But it is rather apparent from the parent-teacher meeting and from what Michael Caine told us that the general public holds a very negative opinion towards higher tech in Interstellarverse. So negative, in fact, that they decided to blatantly rewrite history and get rid of MRIs.
I did not get that impression at all. Cooper certainly isn't treated as some sort of warlock for having automated harvesters and a laptop. This isn't a Luddite world. It's a world whose infrastructure has collapsed, a world where the government really can't afford to send people into space and doesn't want people asking about it. If a hospital in rural Botswana doesn't have an MRI machine, does that mean they hate technology, or does it just mean they're poor?
And also brainwash people because the teacher cannot be that much younger (at best a decade?) than Cooper. So to have her genuinely believe in what the textbooks say... Ugh.
Find a 30-year-old and ask them their opinion on gay rights.
Cooper uses technology for farming. As far as we can tell, no one else does.
Do we even see anybody else's farm? Do we have any reason to believe that they don't? No, and it would be stupid if they didn't, for all the reasons you stated. You're premising all this on a product of your own imagination, not anything in the film. It's as if I said, "The ending of Empire Strikes Back doesn't make any sense because Force users can regenerate limbs." The fact that the movie never explicitly denied that Force users can regenerate limbs doesn't mean they can. I just made that up. And I'm using something I just made up to contradict something I saw on screen.
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I did not get that impression at all. Cooper certainly isn't treated as some sort of warlock for having automated harvesters and a laptop. This isn't a Luddite world. It's a world whose infrastructure has collapsed, a world where the government really can't afford to send people into space and doesn't want people asking about it. If a hospital in rural Botswana doesn't have an MRI machine, does that mean they hate technology, or does it just mean they're poor?
I'm pretty sure if that hospital in rural Botswana had an MRI machine and the electricity to operate it, they'd use it if they need to.
Anyways, that could just be the film not making sense. We're clearly told that they got rid of satellites because they're not useful, and the government chose to rewrite history to adhere to this. We're clearly told that higher tech has been deemed unnecessary. We's clearly shown Cooper express some quiet rage over this fact, and how folks getting rid of MRIs essentially doomed his wife.
And also brainwash people because the teacher cannot be that much younger (at best a decade?) than Cooper. So to have her genuinely believe in what the textbooks say... Ugh.
Find a 30-year-old and ask them their opinion on gay rights.
Now find a 40-year-old and repeat the experiment.
Honestly meant that more as a silly statement than anything, but you're conflating opinion with supposed established hard fact. As far as the average population is currently concerned, we went to the moon. This is what we have in the textbooks. For all intents and purposes, it is fact that we went there.
A couple of decades later, the average population changes its mind and decides that we did not. What does it take for something like this to happen? Is it really that silly for me to see this scenario as complete bunk?
Do we even see anybody else's farm? Do we have any reason to believe that they don't? No, and it would be stupid if they didn't, for all the reasons you stated. You're premising all this on a product of your own imagination, not anything in the film. It's as if I said, "The ending of Empire Strikes Back doesn't make any sense because Force users can regenerate limbs." The fact that the movie never explicitly denied that Force users can regenerate limbs doesn't mean they can. I just made that up. And I'm using something I just made up to contradict something I saw on screen.
Fair enough. We never actually saw anyone else's farm, and so we have no reason to believe that they DON'T use automation.
But the film firmly establishes that Cooper is not only very well trained in electronics and various disciplines of engineering, but he's also a true tech-nut. And the world evidently believes that high technology; a higher education for that matter!, is no longer relevant.
So, no, it is not quite the same as your Star Wars analogy. We are given no cause to ever even believe that force users can grow back limbs. We are, however shown explicitly that Cooper knows his *****. It is not quite as far-fetched to believe that he is one of the few who can automate things. Hell, we're told that he's a great farmer. Maybe he's a great farmer because he is the only one who automates things.
I'll get back on all of these when the film is released so that I don't have to pirate it to confirm anything. I don't like relying too much on my memory when it comes to specifics.
I found this film to be incredibly mediocre. Visually stunning, absolutely. Pretty good acting. Weak Deus Ex McConaughey plot.
And the dumbest scientists imaginable.
A planet could exist orbiting a black hole in a stable orbit, sure.
To imagine such a planet as a plausible place to live? Give me a break. It's going to be radiation and tidal forces from ******** to breakfast, plus the obvious problems time dilation will cause you. But even if - EVEN IF - you imagine it might be livable, it makes NO DAMN SENSE to check it before the others. Because you can get to both the others in under 35 years worth of fuel. (Indeed, it appears as if you can get to both with wildly less fuel). The odds that one of them is livable is absurdly higher.
Secondly, you get to a planet that is so cold the clouds have frozen solid in the sky.
A sane person has left this planet even before they realise "frozen solid in the sky" is not a phrase a rational person might use or that makes any kind of sense. Because no amount of hydroponics they can have with them on that tiny ship will get them past the "this planet is a hundred degress below on a sunny day" part of how absurdly cold the planet they are on is. All the oxygen is frozen solid. Even if there was a surface (which they would have been able to work out from orbit, probably)...wait, lets not even try and rationalise that insanity.
And all of this is before we get to the falling into a black hole is exactly like being able to play the piano in the past on your daughters bookshelf part of the insanity.
I feel like most of the flaws are acceptable ones, except the last (what happens in the black hole). It's a utterly non-sense way to fix a impossible situation. For me it was a anti-climax as I really couldn't swallow that part of the story...
I also believe the girl reaction after her father leaving was artificially not-human. Of course you get upset, but not to a point of not saying goodbye and specially not to a point of refusing to communicate years after the separation. It was really weak drama.
No, you could make a much more interesting film with much less stupid characters.
Hell, with the ice-planet:
All Leo D has to do is say 'yea, when I get here the world seemed livable, or more than it is currently; it went into some weird weather cycle and I had to go into hypersleep, I thought it would have improved, wow, this is a bit ****ed up, huh?
They pick him up and leave the planet and job done. No muss, no fuss, he gets to live. Weird false nonsense drama added for utterly no reason.
Literally nothing any character does after the first 20 minutes of the films makes even a tiny bit of sense.
So you're sending some people off on a seed ship to another solar system...and you've deliberately decided not to tell them. Well, that seems like an awful plan. You'd get plenty of volunteers for a one-way trip, doing it this way just ensures the people will be pissed off. Also, sending only 4 people and only one woman seems like some pretty piss-poor genetic stock; if something goes wrong with your first generation of vat-born kids, you're too old to realistically grow another set, as your access to medicine will be little or none. Plus if a single adult dies you lose an extraordinarily large percentage of you teaching/defence against the new world.
Now I'm not railing against things which are meerly slightly dodgy science. Yep, they can launch off the surface of a planet orbiting a black hole in 10 minutes, sure, no problem. What gravity well?
But so much of the film is just utterly implausible because no even slightly rational character would take those actions.
All Leo D has to do is say 'yea, when I get here the world seemed livable, or more than it is currently; it went into some weird weather cycle and I had to go into hypersleep, I thought it would have improved, wow, this is a bit ****ed up, huh?
No, he couldnt've said that because he got a world horribly unfit for civilization and it would've been a bald-faced lie. He wanted them to utterly trust him until he got off the planet, and they wouldnt've if it at all seemed like his reasons for attracting them might have been selfish. This way he simply had to overpower one person instead of having to outwit or overpower the entire crew that would come to his planet. You might say they wouldn't have any reason to stop him from going back after they'd already thawed him, but keep in mind: His goal was to get back to Earth, and even ignoring the possibility that he really wanted to avoid punishment from Earth, he probably wanted to go right back and not get roped into their journey to find a different planet after his.
Literally nothing any character does after the first 20 minutes of the films makes even a tiny bit of sense.
I think the character motivations were fine, aside from some of the stuff about "maybe love is a universal force that we should trust guys". The film had some other flaws though I think.
So you're sending some people off on a seed ship to another solar system...and you've deliberately decided not to tell them. Well, that seems like an awful plan. You'd get plenty of volunteers for a one-way trip, doing it this way just ensures the people will be pissed off. Also, sending only 4 people and only one woman seems like some pretty piss-poor genetic stock; if something goes wrong with your first generation of vat-born kids, you're too old to realistically grow another set, as your access to medicine will be little or none. Plus if a single adult dies you lose an extraordinarily large percentage of you teaching/defence against the new world.
They're a squad sent to determine which planet to colonize and to thaw embryos. They're not necessarily the only colonists, and you probably wouldn't want to send all the colonists out to figure out what planet to choose. Just a barebones squad like in the film. Remember the director thought that sending up entire space stations - being able to save the entire population or most of it - was impossible, not that sending up some limited follow-up colonists would be impossible. It is a little weird that noone explicitly mentioned this. Do keep in mind too that they were already in a pretty desperate scenario so if, for example, a follow-up crew was impossible then the risk of not having a second batch of embryos might be something they had to accept. Only the option to put everything in one basket, perhaps. Regardless the director was, until his death, still overseeing the operation and presumably would be working on such things if he could, but they weren't central to the explorers' plot so we did not see them.
Also, the reason why the director chose not to tell them was because he knew everyone would be pissed off about it. He decided to entrap those undertaking the mission instead of revealing it to them beforehand, [probably] because he didn't want to have to face the shame of giving up on saving the living humans, or didn't want to be saddled with the responsibility of the decision by future history. That part was fine and well-established in my opinion. In fact, it definitely makes sense because they needed Cooper so badly and we know that at least he would not have taken the mission if he thought his kids were doomed.
Now I'm not railing against things which are meerly slightly dodgy science. Yep, they can launch off the surface of a planet orbiting a black hole in 10 minutes, sure, no problem. What gravity well?
Yea it felt like the contrast between the huge effect on the tide and the minor effect on the craft and the people on the surface was really big. You could probably justify being able to take off at hugely increased fuel cost like they did with some sci-fi bull***** about advanced launch technology but I guess Nolan decided he shouldn't bother.
All Leo D has to do is say 'yea, when I get here the world seemed livable, or more than it is currently; it went into some weird weather cycle and I had to go into hypersleep, I thought it would have improved, wow, this is a bit ****ed up, huh?
No, he couldnt've said that because he got a world horribly unfit for civilization and it would've been a bald-faced lie. He wanted them to utterly trust him until he got off the planet, and they wouldnt've if it at all seemed like his reasons for attracting them might have been selfish. This way he simply had to overpower one person instead of having to outwit or overpower the entire crew that would come to his planet. You might say they wouldn't have any reason to stop him from going back after they'd already thawed him, but keep in mind: His goal was to get back to Earth, and even ignoring the possibility that he really wanted to avoid punishment from Earth, he probably wanted to go right back and not get roped into their journey to find a different planet after his.
But he KNEW they couldn't get back to earth! Plus, even given that IS his goal, Cooper wanted to go back to earth!
No, his plan was utterly no win. He could not possibly convince them that planet was currently habitable; his plan has a flaw that you can objectively proove there is a surface down there. A much, much better plan is to claim the planet was more habitable 40 years ago, but some kind of bizare extreme weather change had occurred. that is *much* harder to disprove, and by that time they have already moved on.
Claiming the world has gone bad is almost impossible to disprove. Claiming it is currently good is moronic.
So you're sending some people off on a seed ship to another solar system...and you've deliberately decided not to tell them. Well, that seems like an awful plan. You'd get plenty of volunteers for a one-way trip, doing it this way just ensures the people will be pissed off. Also, sending only 4 people and only one woman seems like some pretty piss-poor genetic stock; if something goes wrong with your first generation of vat-born kids, you're too old to realistically grow another set, as your access to medicine will be little or none. Plus if a single adult dies you lose an extraordinarily large percentage of you teaching/defence against the new world.
They're a squad sent to determine which planet to colonize and to thaw embryos. They're not necessarily the only colonists, and you probably wouldn't want to send all the colonists out to figure out what planet to choose. Just a barebones squad like in the film. Remember the director thought that sending up entire space stations - being able to save the entire population or most of it - was impossible, not that sending up some limited follow-up colonists would be impossible. It is a little weird that noone explicitly mentioned this. Do keep in mind too that they were already in a pretty desperate scenario so if, for example, a follow-up crew was impossible then the risk of not having a second batch of embryos might be something they had to accept. Only the option to put everything in one basket, perhaps. Regardless the director was, until his death, still overseeing the operation and presumably would be working on such things if he could, but they weren't central to the explorers' plot so we did not see them.
Also, the reason why the director chose not to tell them was because he knew everyone would be pissed off about it. He decided to entrap those undertaking the mission instead of revealing it to them beforehand, [probably] because he didn't want to have to face the shame of giving up on saving the living humans, or didn't want to be saddled with the responsibility of the decision by future history. That part was fine and well-established in my opinion. In fact, it definitely makes sense because they needed Cooper so badly and we know that at least he would not have taken the mission if he thought his kids were doomed.
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Sure, it makes some sense to lie to coop. But the director had known for some time that his magic gravity equation didn't work. And given how much difficulty they had getting one exploratory ship set up, they probably couldn't do another (and, indeed, didn't). Crew of 4 is obviously and painfully stupid for what *you damn well know* is a one way trip.
But he KNEW they couldn't get back to earth! Plus, even given that IS his goal, Cooper wanted to go back to earth!
No, his plan was utterly no win. He could not possibly convince them that planet was currently habitable; his plan has a flaw that you can objectively proove there is a surface down there. A much, much better plan is to claim the planet was more habitable 40 years ago, but some kind of bizare extreme weather change had occurred. that is *much* harder to disprove, and by that time they have already moved on.
Claiming the world has gone bad is almost impossible to disprove. Claiming it is currently good is moronic.
My reading of the character is that he was tragically overwhelmed by a hero complex: he needed to see himself as the savior of mankind. His actions don't make rational sense - of course everything would have fallen apart at some point - but they make psychological sense. No problem with that subplot.
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My problem is that the other characters should not have believed *for a second* that the surface was habitable because it makes literally no sense. He has built too complex a lie and cannot possibly help but be caught in it.
"The planet went to hell since I sent that first message" is a much more plausible lie.
My problem is that the other characters should not have believed *for a second* that the surface was habitable because it makes literally no sense. He has built too complex a lie and cannot possibly help but be caught in it.
"The planet went to hell since I sent that first message" is a much more plausible lie.
Once they've seen the surface maybe, but I don't think so beforehand.
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My problem is that the other characters should not have believed *for a second* that the surface was habitable because it makes literally no sense.
They deeply respect and trust the character, they have strong emotional reasons to want him to be telling the truth, and both their scientific training and their experiences immediately prior on the gravity world urge them not to jump to conclusions based on first impressions in alien environments.
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Obviously, the web is abuzz with trying to figure out plot details and messages within the film/trailer - one of them being the continuing debate on global warming and its affect on the planet. It's not clear what caused the climate changes to wipe out most of Earth's crops from the trailers and scant plot details, but it seems the movie focuses more on interstellar space travel and I believe Nolan relied heavily on Thorne's theories on black holes/wormholes for the interstellar travel. Another plot point that many are discussing is the point that man has possibly used up most of the natural resources here on Earth (regardless of the climate changes) and must try and find them elsewhere. My mind goes back to Agent Smith's "revelation" to Morpheus in the original Matrix..."I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area...".
To me, this seems like it good be a really good film and at the very least, will leave you walking away from the theater asking questions which I really like. I'm interested in what others are thinking of this film; you can find the new trailer pretty much anywhere on the web and of course, on YouTube.
I'm very interested to see what others in here who see this think about it and quite honestly, I'd love to discuss the different explanations of the science-fiction and theories that are used to explain the story. I work in business and never took enough science classes in high school/college to intelligently understand Einstein's theories, quantum theories or anything of the sort. I'm not suggesting that people need to know these things prior to viewing the movie, but I'm sure it wouldn't hurt. Some things are explained, but I'm sure they went over my head as I was immersed enough to not pay attention to details.
That said, I thought it was well done and it still has me thinking and pondering it the day after, and I'm sure I will discuss it with friends/family who happen to see it weeks/months after. I'm not going to go into any summaries or details because even if I put spoiler tags on things, it's probably too much of a temptation to open them I think it's best to not know too much before viewing it - perhaps the discussion is more appropriate until after enough people in here have viewed it.
What I will say is that if you're up-in-the-air at all about this one, I would recommend seeing it, and if you have an IMAX near you, I would suggest seeing it in that format vs. a regular screen. The scenes in space are really well done and I think it's one of those movies that you need to see on a "big" screen with great sound.
I know there are some that are not a fan of Nolan at all and that reason might cause them to dismiss this movie entirely, and while I won't lie and say it's not a typical Nolan blockbuster film similar to past films like Inception (yes, there are some scenes and details that are very typical to Nolan), there's alot of concepts that would entertain movie-lovers of all walks of life, even if you're not a fan of science fiction movies.
Lastly, the running time is long on paper (2 hr, 49 min) but very truthfully, it didn't feel like that at all. There's so much stuff going on that I actually wanted more film and I thought there easily could have been another 1/2 hour or more added. I was engrossed the whole way through.
I'll probably do it on rental though. Nolan's a very self-indulgent director and I'm not about to watch 2 hours and 49 minutes of him. No way.
Now, I will say that even though I'm not a science-buff, meaning that I'm not one to truly understand Einstein's scientific theories, there are moments that you'll have to suspend your belief for a minute - I mean, it's a movie and entertainment after all and not a documentary on science itself. The fact that Kip Thorne produced the film with Nolan says alot about the accuracy of the theories presented and used, but again, someone who understands them more can better discuss that.
It's... good, I guess. I don't know. The film had me on edge and engaged all throughout, but I'm not entirely sure why in hindsight.
Honestly, the film feels incredibly bloated and self-indulgent. It's as if Nolan is going "I AM AN INCREDIBLE DIRECTOR AND YOU WILL GIVE ME CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR ANYTHING I MAKE, MUAHAHAHAHA"
There are so many plot points flying around that are never explained or addressed properly, one of the more egregious one being that no one ever bothers to explain just wtf happened to make Earth unlivable. The Dust Bowl in the American Midwest occurred because of intense droughts and over-farming/poor farming techniques.
Here we're simply told "We're dying because we can't grow enough food"/"We're dying because of some blight that wiped out wheat/okra and eventually will target corn as well/We got enormous sand storms and everything is coated in dust all that time. That's pretty much it.
This is a serious issue because we're outright ******* told that we need more farmers and that engineering/high-tech in general is an extravagance that we cannot afford, but it is never explained why, and outright flies in the face of plain facts today.
Mechanization of farming allows a couple farmers to harvest what would have taken hundreds, thousands of farmers just a century ago. We grow more wheat and corn (the two big staple crops in the Midwest, afaik) than we ever did, and we have fewer farmers than we ever had.
Hell, in the ******* film we see Cooper use a bunch of automated crop-pickers or something! AUTOMATED CROP-PICKERS.
WHY DO YOU NEED MORE FARMERS IF YOU CAN ******* AUTOMATE CROP-PICKING. Seeding and watering are already done by giant machines. Surely that could be automated as well.
Oh, I also find it incredibly weird how giant corporations that own the vast majority of the farmlands of today just... disappear.
And this doesn't even cover rice, another one of the big staple crops. Whatever happened to rice? Heck, this doesn't cover what happened in anywhere except what could only be the American Midwest...
It felt like Nolan needed to set up a premise and in doing so ignored pretty much every reality that needed to be addressed.
Let's talk about the hate for technology...
Wtf? Satellites aren't useful? Wtf? Wtf? Wtf? Faked the moon landing to bankrupt the Russians? Why did Nolan feel the need to put in what is a rather large conspiracy theory into the film?
MRIs are gone now? WTF?!@#!@$!$!!#
Again, Nolan needed to set up a premise and in doing so created a world that simply made no sense. The film NEEDED Cooper to abandon his piloting career and become a farmer, and so satellites and technology is no longer needed.
I get that the whole stuff in outer space is what's important here, but it's just bad ******* film-making when you have to create garbage scenarios for the film to start.
This is my biggest complaint with the film. It's as if Nolan had these ideas about the world ending and how humanity needs to reach out to the stars to survive. So he just took like a day to write out a stupid world for the film to exist in. It's as if he didn't care at all about anything besides some certain things and so didn't bother to work with them properly.
But the plot itself has issues. For one thing, it's incredibly pedestrian. We've seen this before. We've seen the main characters first go to some promising place, only to realize that this isn't it. We've seen the supposed good guy turn evil because he was actually a coward at heart. We've seen the main character make what is meant to be a heroic sacrifice for the betterment of humanity, only to see that he does have the opportunity to save everyone after all.
Is this really the best that Nolan could come up with? Just a whole bunch of typical film cliches strung together with what is supposed to be a fascinating premise? Of course... We've already seen the world ending and it's up to a small group of people to save it.
So the science must be the only thing that is new in this film... But I couldn't care less about the science, because the film never gave me enough information to realize how important the science is. The worm-hole was explained as "Some god-like beings did it because they wanted to help us". Of course, it apparently turns out that humanity is the god-like beings after all, but how the flying **** does that work?
What allowed Cooper to communicate with Murphy before we saw Cooper enter the black hole? The film explains that the power possessed by the god-like humans allow them to touch everything, from past to present. Ok, great, but there's a problem with this. They only way for Cooper to communicate with Murphy was for Cooper to have gone to the hidden NORAD base to begin with, which couldn't have happened unless Cooper had already gone to the hidden NORAD base, learned everything, and went flying off into space.
So the only way for Cooper to learn about the hidden NORAD base was to go to the hidden NORAD base... Lemme know when you figure that out, because I can't.
Ya... the more I write about this, the more I realize there are incredibly obvious flaws and inconsistencies.
The film enthralled me and gave me a good time, but I don't really know why. Maybe it was just the great effects.
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Still, I'd rather have watched Gravity again.
Do you really need it spelled out for you that the rice went extinct too, and that this is a global crisis?
What? Do you think Nolan was actually suggesting the theory is true?
It's called the "ontological paradox" or the "closed time loop". Welcome to science fiction. Whatever you do, don't go see the upcoming Predestination. (Heinlein fans will know what I'm talking about.)
There definitely are, but somehow you don't seem to have identified any of them.
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In pretty much any other film this kind of handling would have been seen as idiocy. Who cares if this film is not about Earth? You need a believable setting. You state that some sort of super plant plague is destroying the world? Why? Wtf happened? Even a couple throwaway lines would have helped.
As far as I'm concerned, Nolan pretty much created a world just so he can take things into space. If you interpret it you put it in the quote above, then that's fine. I more or less interpret it the same. Unlike you, I have a problem with it.
Yep. Again, world-building. As far as I can tell, Nolan just set the actions on Earth in the American Midwest because he wanted to evoke the feelings of the Dust Bowl.
No. I just cannot believe it that a significant portion of the population would come to believe it. Once again, world-building. We are told nothing about why they decided technology is not useful. As I mentioned earlier, I find the entire concept ludicrous. Especially the line with about MRIs. We decided that investing resources into building MRIs in this day and age is not worth it? Fine. We decided that MRIs are useless because it's technology? What? I know the teacher doesn't actually say anything about MRIs, but Cooper's wording is enough to show that they dumped MRIs in some sort of rage against higher tech in general.
As you can probably tell, I had a huge problem with the world-building in the film. If you don't find the world believable, then it's difficult to take entire thing believable.
Out of curiosity, what did you find flawed in the film?
However, as someone with enough knowledge of the science to nitpick at the details, there were some things that broke my suspension of disbelief:
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Correct, but that doesn't mean he's obliged to say "Life in Asia sucks too, because the Blight got the rice" for it to be true. Hell, a couple of throwaway lines he does drop about Asia imply that it's much, much worse over there. The phrase "depopulation bomb" is used. Did you catch it?
Do I really have to break out the depressing statistics on how many Americans believe in young-earth creationism, a Kennedy assassination conspiracy, a 9/11 inside job, faith healing, palm reading, astrology, homeopathy, and freaking Bigfoot? And none of these things are actually being taught in public schools.
What? They clearly turned away from high-tech production due to lack of resources. There is absolutely no indication of a Luddite rage against the machines. You are making that up. You yourself notice that it contradicts their use of tech in agriculture.
Cooper goes from ignorance of NASA's existence to orbit in what appears to be a day, two at most. Even freaking Armageddon understood that its oilmen had to spend some time preparing for the mission. For a mission of this scope, the training time would more plausibly take years.
As Crashing00 mentioned, they made a noble effort at hard science, but the math on the black hole doesn't work.
The Ranger landing and taking off from high-G planets with ease, even though it clearly needed conventional boosters to achieve escape velocity from Earth.
The way-too-dramatic scenario of having enough fuel to visit the final planet or go home, but not both. And the general handling of the prospects of a return trip in general - Cooper makes it sound like he can just leave in the Ranger and fly back to Earth if he wants.
The notion of transmitting what's likely petabytes and petabytes of raw data back to earth manually, one figure at a time, through Morse code.
And, of course, the freaking magic.
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Fair enough. The less that's said about the setting, the less there is to criticize. And it certainly did set the appropriate tone. Earth is ****ed, and we need to get off.
That being said... I still find it jarring. As I wrote earlier, it just felt like Nolan wanted to get things off into space and so didn't bother with proper worldbuilding. As you wrote, that was probably the correct decision. It just rubbed me the wrong way.
I don't remember it.
I think I just found the concept of an plant devouring plague/blight that can jump from such different species to species weird. As much as you are correct about the homogenization of agriculture today, a rice plant is very quite different from a corn plant and okra.
Not relevant. Those aren't taught in mainstream schools today. Conspiracy theories do not normally become mainstream fact.
In Interstellarverse, the mainstream schools actually went from saying the moon landings were real to "the moon landings were faked in an attempt to embarrass the U.S.S.R and cause them to bankrupt themselves". This is really big.
And, as we are told, the justification for this comes from the fact that mainstream society decided that satellites and higher tech are useless. While you're probably right (It's been close to a month since I've seen the film and memory is getting hazy) about them turning away from high-tech due to lack of resources, what with the grandfather (I think it was) saying "we ran out of food, not tech" and all that. I would imagine that's what Nolan wanted to convey. But it is rather apparent from the parent-teacher meeting and from what Michael Caine told us that the general public holds a very negative opinion towards higher tech in Interstellarverse. So negative, in fact, that they decided to blatantly rewrite history and get rid of MRIs.
And also brainwash people because the teacher cannot be that much younger (at best a decade?) than Cooper. So to have her genuinely believe in what the textbooks say... Ugh.
In any case, the entire concept is ludicrous. The value of higher tech has always been the ability to achieve things that we don't have the means to achieve. We lack farmers? We build machines that can harvest food better. We lack farmland? We use machines and chemistry to make them. So on and so forth.
More than anything else this concept breaks all immersion I could have had into the film.
Cooper uses technology for farming. As far as we can tell, no one else does.
Find a 30-year-old and ask them their opinion on gay rights.
Now find a 40-year-old and repeat the experiment.
Do we even see anybody else's farm? Do we have any reason to believe that they don't? No, and it would be stupid if they didn't, for all the reasons you stated. You're premising all this on a product of your own imagination, not anything in the film. It's as if I said, "The ending of Empire Strikes Back doesn't make any sense because Force users can regenerate limbs." The fact that the movie never explicitly denied that Force users can regenerate limbs doesn't mean they can. I just made that up. And I'm using something I just made up to contradict something I saw on screen.
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I'm pretty sure if that hospital in rural Botswana had an MRI machine and the electricity to operate it, they'd use it if they need to.
Anyways, that could just be the film not making sense. We're clearly told that they got rid of satellites because they're not useful, and the government chose to rewrite history to adhere to this. We're clearly told that higher tech has been deemed unnecessary. We's clearly shown Cooper express some quiet rage over this fact, and how folks getting rid of MRIs essentially doomed his wife.
Honestly meant that more as a silly statement than anything, but you're conflating opinion with supposed established hard fact. As far as the average population is currently concerned, we went to the moon. This is what we have in the textbooks. For all intents and purposes, it is fact that we went there.
A couple of decades later, the average population changes its mind and decides that we did not. What does it take for something like this to happen? Is it really that silly for me to see this scenario as complete bunk?
Fair enough. We never actually saw anyone else's farm, and so we have no reason to believe that they DON'T use automation.
But the film firmly establishes that Cooper is not only very well trained in electronics and various disciplines of engineering, but he's also a true tech-nut. And the world evidently believes that high technology; a higher education for that matter!, is no longer relevant.
So, no, it is not quite the same as your Star Wars analogy. We are given no cause to ever even believe that force users can grow back limbs. We are, however shown explicitly that Cooper knows his *****. It is not quite as far-fetched to believe that he is one of the few who can automate things. Hell, we're told that he's a great farmer. Maybe he's a great farmer because he is the only one who automates things.
I'll get back on all of these when the film is released so that I don't have to pirate it to confirm anything. I don't like relying too much on my memory when it comes to specifics.
And the dumbest scientists imaginable.
A planet could exist orbiting a black hole in a stable orbit, sure.
To imagine such a planet as a plausible place to live? Give me a break. It's going to be radiation and tidal forces from ******** to breakfast, plus the obvious problems time dilation will cause you. But even if - EVEN IF - you imagine it might be livable, it makes NO DAMN SENSE to check it before the others. Because you can get to both the others in under 35 years worth of fuel. (Indeed, it appears as if you can get to both with wildly less fuel). The odds that one of them is livable is absurdly higher.
Secondly, you get to a planet that is so cold the clouds have frozen solid in the sky.
A sane person has left this planet even before they realise "frozen solid in the sky" is not a phrase a rational person might use or that makes any kind of sense. Because no amount of hydroponics they can have with them on that tiny ship will get them past the "this planet is a hundred degress below on a sunny day" part of how absurdly cold the planet they are on is. All the oxygen is frozen solid. Even if there was a surface (which they would have been able to work out from orbit, probably)...wait, lets not even try and rationalise that insanity.
And all of this is before we get to the falling into a black hole is exactly like being able to play the piano in the past on your daughters bookshelf part of the insanity.
all in all, not a good film.
I also believe the girl reaction after her father leaving was artificially not-human. Of course you get upset, but not to a point of not saying goodbye and specially not to a point of refusing to communicate years after the separation. It was really weak drama.
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Hell, with the ice-planet:
All Leo D has to do is say 'yea, when I get here the world seemed livable, or more than it is currently; it went into some weird weather cycle and I had to go into hypersleep, I thought it would have improved, wow, this is a bit ****ed up, huh?
They pick him up and leave the planet and job done. No muss, no fuss, he gets to live. Weird false nonsense drama added for utterly no reason.
Literally nothing any character does after the first 20 minutes of the films makes even a tiny bit of sense.
So you're sending some people off on a seed ship to another solar system...and you've deliberately decided not to tell them. Well, that seems like an awful plan. You'd get plenty of volunteers for a one-way trip, doing it this way just ensures the people will be pissed off. Also, sending only 4 people and only one woman seems like some pretty piss-poor genetic stock; if something goes wrong with your first generation of vat-born kids, you're too old to realistically grow another set, as your access to medicine will be little or none. Plus if a single adult dies you lose an extraordinarily large percentage of you teaching/defence against the new world.
Now I'm not railing against things which are meerly slightly dodgy science. Yep, they can launch off the surface of a planet orbiting a black hole in 10 minutes, sure, no problem. What gravity well?
But so much of the film is just utterly implausible because no even slightly rational character would take those actions.
Also, the reason why the director chose not to tell them was because he knew everyone would be pissed off about it. He decided to entrap those undertaking the mission instead of revealing it to them beforehand, [probably] because he didn't want to have to face the shame of giving up on saving the living humans, or didn't want to be saddled with the responsibility of the decision by future history. That part was fine and well-established in my opinion. In fact, it definitely makes sense because they needed Cooper so badly and we know that at least he would not have taken the mission if he thought his kids were doomed.
But he KNEW they couldn't get back to earth! Plus, even given that IS his goal, Cooper wanted to go back to earth!
No, his plan was utterly no win. He could not possibly convince them that planet was currently habitable; his plan has a flaw that you can objectively proove there is a surface down there. A much, much better plan is to claim the planet was more habitable 40 years ago, but some kind of bizare extreme weather change had occurred. that is *much* harder to disprove, and by that time they have already moved on.
Claiming the world has gone bad is almost impossible to disprove. Claiming it is currently good is moronic.
Also, the reason why the director chose not to tell them was because he knew everyone would be pissed off about it. He decided to entrap those undertaking the mission instead of revealing it to them beforehand, [probably] because he didn't want to have to face the shame of giving up on saving the living humans, or didn't want to be saddled with the responsibility of the decision by future history. That part was fine and well-established in my opinion. In fact, it definitely makes sense because they needed Cooper so badly and we know that at least he would not have taken the mission if he thought his kids were doomed.
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Sure, it makes some sense to lie to coop. But the director had known for some time that his magic gravity equation didn't work. And given how much difficulty they had getting one exploratory ship set up, they probably couldn't do another (and, indeed, didn't). Crew of 4 is obviously and painfully stupid for what *you damn well know* is a one way trip.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
"The planet went to hell since I sent that first message" is a much more plausible lie.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.