Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar"

[ssj]

dangermouse: glad to see you have a disdain for supernatural explanations.

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i love you, man!

 

[Gaith]

It feels like his movies start with some big conceit and he fits the plot in around it like a giant Rube Goldberg Machine.

Tom Shone on Inception: "'How can we turn this business idea into an emotional concept?' asks one of DiCaprio's men in front of a blackboard, in a scene surely inspired by the brainstorming sessions for the script."

 

[dangermouse]

dangermouse: glad to see you have a disdain for supernatural explanations.

Touche! But seriously, I DO have a disdain for supernatural explanations pulled out of one's ass. I've had people assume that because I'm a Christian I'll believe any kind of nonsense as long as it has a spiritual label attached to it. I am by nature a sceptic. I became a Christian against my will because I cannot get away from the mountain of evidence for the resurrection of Christ and I cannot explain away my own experiences. And therefore I'm compelled to submit to God. I think that's what "saved by grace" means! CS Lewis described his conversion as "check mate" and described himself as "the unhappiest convert in all of Christendom".
So, rambling aside, if you're going to have a supernatural explanation, you'd better have some cold hard facts to back it up, otherwise you may as well put a shawl on, pull out the crystals, apply the mascara and fake eyelashes, and ask "do you want me to read your rainbow aura?"

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love you too ssj. GROUP HUG!

 

[ssj]

haha. muse av ekstrem fare, would you like me to read your winning lotto numbers?

seriously, if i ever visit norway, we'll share a beer, snarf smoked salmon, and go frostgiantspotting.

now, for some thread-germane chatter:

haven't seen interstellar yet, but i do wonder. . . how can anyone survive the extreme radiation and heat in the accretion disk surrounding a black hole?

also. . . astrophysicists like to play around with the idea of spaghettification with you the hapless hypothetical victim being aware of the process, but they must know that if your ship cracks open during spaghettification, you won't be conscious/alive to appreciate your new form factor.

 

[ThrowgnCpr]

the mountain of evidence for the resurrection of Christ

 

[dangermouse]

sounds good to me ssj. You and me, hunting trolls, just like the Norwegian documentary Trolljegeren (Troll Hunter). :lol:
And, why yes, I *would* like the winning lotto numbers. Just give me a call and tell me. You're clairvoyance surely stretches as far as my telephone number? ;-)

Interstellar got around the radiation and heat by shaking the ship a bit and a few alarms going off. And nobody spaghettified. Unfortunately. Maybe the 5D [strike]angels[/strike] humans held them together with the Force.

 

[dangermouse]

"I have never heard of such a thing. That boggles my mind!"

Yes. Investigating without foregone conclusions is helpful. Surprisingly, there *is* actually a reason billions of people throughout history have come to the conclusion that a man actually was raised from the dead, even though we are quite aware that that normally doesn't happen. We're not *all* mouth-breathers.
Anyway, don't want to derail the thread any further. I generally don't get into internet debates about this as no-one has ever gone "oh my goodness, I must accept Christ now" as a result of a forum post!! :lol:

 

[ThrowgnCpr]

yeah, no... let's not get into a debate about religion. Back to the movie.

 

[thecuddlyninja]

I really liked Interstellar. I look forward to the edits in the works getting finished as I think it's ripe for a few different kind of edits.

 

[ThrowgnCpr]

I really liked Interstellar. I look forward to the edits in the works getting finished as I think it's ripe for a few different kind of edits.

^ all this (including the tongue biting). I thought interstellar was a great movie, but given its runtime and range, I think a variety of interesting things could be cut from it. I don't plan on replacing the movie with an edit, but I'd love to see some other takes on the material.

 

[dangermouse]

The first act has been bothering me soooo much. It is really annoying. Like they're scrounging technology - but NASA has this HUGELY advanced project on the go. They sent was it TEN? spaceships through the wormhole. That's a colossal expense!

NASA seemed to be really desperate for a skilled pilot like Cooper (even though he hadn't piloted for years). So much so that they bumped whoever was the original pilot, or just added a complete unknown to the team with no training and no planning. Seriously?
Also, if NASA needed him so badly, why did they not contact him? He lived like down the road!!! There is clearly a bureaucracy because they have schools and hospitals and universities and pay taxes. All NASA had to do was look him up... why didn't they do that instead of some ghostly message from himself in the future. A few people have mentioned the S word in connection with this film, and I'm starting to think it may have some merit (Shyamalan!)
Nothing in the first act makes any sense! Gaaah!

(Neither does the end with the HUGE space-station. If they could build that, then they wouldn't need to leave earth at all!)

The more I think about this movie, the less it makes sense. Christopher Nolan, you twit. Maybe an edit of 10 minute first act, ALL of the second (beyond the workhole), and like 5 minutes of the ending would work?

I'm annoyed because I really wanted to like this film. Maybe I would have if I'd seen it in IMAX. Feels like that kind of experience. But we won't have IMAX here in Norway until 2017!!! :-(

 

[TM2YC]

The first act has been bothering me soooo much. It is really annoying. Like they're scrounging technology - but NASA has this HUGELY advanced project on the go. They sent was it TEN? spaceships through the wormhole. That's a colossal expense!

I'm starting to suspect you've maybe misjudged this film, as this ^ is fully explained within the movie. You must just have missed that bit.

 

[dangermouse]

Yes, they explain it- as we've been doing this "in secret" shhh. But then they have an absolutely mammoth project on the go? The government can only lend them old robots... but they seem to have unlimited cash to fritter away on sending TEN people through the wormhole, multiple spacecraft, construction workers galore, etc. etc. It stretches credibility far, far further than it ought, and makes the explanation nonsensical.
What annoys me about the film is that it is completely inconsistent with itself. There are too many things that "because plot" rather than being inherent to the characters motivation or to the world created.

 

[Vultural]

. . . The more I think about this movie, the less it makes sense . . .

Aww, man, you make good points.
I already skip past Farmville when I rewatch, and fast forward the "little girl's bedroom" bunk.
The massive space stations made no sense, either.
Where did they get brains and trained techs to design, let alone construction guys to build them?
Society seemed to be reverting to an agricultural one. Though everyone had trucks and wireless.
Perhaps the space stations were actually Elysium. For the smartest and richest.
Those without skills were abandoned.
And what was powering those stations?
I'm getting a thinkache.

 

[ssj]

ok, i'm an hour into this movie.
the acting's quite decent.
silence in space—i think this is the first science fiction movie i've seen that gets that right. (except maybe 2001? can't recall.) no aircraft-like noises to wow us as if we're eight-year-olds.

but blasting off with conventional rockets from within an office building? the place doesn't get torched?
and the secret project won't attract notice every time there's a fiery launch?
and a planet orbiting a black hole, even from a vast distance, is going to provide a stable future for humanity?
and amongst a small crew, there's no need to call the doctor by the title doctor. first names should suffice, unless the crew was being snide, which i didn't think they were.

i'm enjoying this movie enough to see it thru the end, but i sense i'm going to hit some more WTFs along the way.

 

[ssj]

finished watching. it's a beautiful mess.

a part of me submitted to this movie and enjoyed the emotional journey/manipulation and the imagery.

but the science is goofy-stupid, and the plot makes no sense once you start thinking about it, any of it.

reminds me of those twilight zone episodes in which some dude gets trapped in another dimension, is perplexed as fuck, but inexplicably and rapidly becomes an expert in this other dimension and how it connects to our world as he thinks his way through it. kind of like a paleolithic man just understanding relativity if he stares at the sky long enough, after which he provides an exposition dump.

and if we drop the scientific considerations and just go for emotions, the movie still gets stuff weirdly wrong. "you're my beloved father. here are my children and my children's children. it's best you don't interact with them." WTF? they all quietly leave when a heroic ancestor enters the room?

nolan, you glorious hack.

p.s. floating ice clouds look cool, but seriously?

 

[TMBTM]

There are plenty of things that "makes no sens" in real life too...

 

[ssj]

I'm quite ok with the notion that people can make incoherent decisions, because that's how the human mind often operates. That's why a movie like Fargo is so fascinating. But these incoherent decisions happen in the context of a coherent physical world.

but interstellar is incoherent in both world-building and story. It's as if a bunch of unrelated vignettes were mashed together with fingers crossed that these would amount to profundity, as if Michael Caine reciting poetry would give it enough grandeur so we wouldn't notice there's not much holding this story together. Each bit alone would have made for an interesting short film, but taken as a whole. . . . yeesh.

tone poems are cool. They don't have to make sense. Lynch movies, ya know? But interstellar was trying to tell a story.
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some more brow furrowing:

The vicinity of a black hole is a terrible place for a human to be. On the BH's menu are captured stars that will orbit the BH at a million miles per hour, and all that gravitational disruption + heat + radiation would be lethal for any life in the area, planet-based or not.

i was hoping cooper's bookshelf wonderland was the invention of a dying brain, and maybe I'm interpreting this wrong, but it seems the story went in a very literal direction. If so, can't 5D or 6D ghosts do more than communicate by shoving books and messing with clocks and fashioning binary patterns with dust? If cooper can do these things, why not whisper in murph's ear? Or write actual words with roman letters in the dust?
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come to think of it, maybe cooper is. . . SPACE JESUS.

 

[thecuddlyninja]

They don't have to make sense. Lynch movies, ya know?

Sorry to jump into the Interstellar talk to focus on this but I have to take umbrage with this statement. It's a sentiment I've often heard about Lynch's films and I violently disagree with it. His films make sense. If one doesn't feel like consuming art which requires a lot of thought and repeat viewings to make sense of the themes and narrative, that's cool. No harm, no foul and to each his or her own. But the constant implication that his movies make no sense or are random imagery is nonsense, in my opinion.

Anyway...

Regarding Interstellar, I think you're mostly right. Nolan's strength has always been to move people cinematically enough that they don't notice the plot holes or gaps. I find that this one didn't seem to move people as much and so those gripes were a bigger problem. For me as a physics guy, I appreciate when they tackle things realistically but I can turn that switch off (and usually have to) relatively easily. As wacky as some of the things in this movie are, I thought it was awesome to see time dilation tackled somewhat realistically in a film, which led to me explaining the concept to many people who were amazed that their GPS wouldn't work right if it weren't accounting for time's nimble nature. I dig that about it a lot.

 

[ssj]

I like* Lynch's movies but I'm no expert on his work, so I can concede that point. No need for violence, ninja!

one day, a movie will get them right—both time dilation and the emotional aspects of differential aging. Interstellar isn't that movie.


*sought out an eraserhead VHS rental back in ancient times. that was no easy task and earned me at least one Lynch stripe!