Escape to the Movies: Interstellar - Doesn't Live Up To Its Own Name

[RoonMian]

Great, now I can't get the idea of Neil DeGrasse Tyson bursting into the homes of writers with a whiteboard and markers to chastise them for getting things wrong in it.

I would watch the hell out of that movie.

You might enjoy this.

Spoiler: spoilered for thread health

HAH!!! That was awesome.

Also I find it funny that again loads of people have the misconception that a review is something else than always just the opinion of one guy, in the majority of cases a guy with a load of expertise on the subject. Bob has more expertise than me. That doesn't mean that I always share his opinion (I liked K-Pax, too) but what we share is a dislike of stupid twists just for twists' sake. So yeah, not gonna see this one in a theater.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

Hmm, a number of critics I usually respect seem to disagree on this one. Some find it a great film, others don't, like Bob.

I'm gonna see it anyway, hard sci-fi is sorta one of my things. But I guess I'm going in with little expectations of my own.

 

[CelestDaer]

Some find it a great film, others don't like Bob.

Had to read that sentence four times before I realized you didn't mean that an unnumbered group of critics don't like Bob...

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

Well damn. I even watched The Prestige in anticipation for this just to get really hyped about Nolan again, after having become more jaded towards him in recent years. I hope I didn't just boost my expectations beyond what Interstellar can touch by doing that.

and yeah, that CoD screenshot? If there was ever anything that could be presented as an answer to that question with the tagline "In a nutshell..." it would be that. I actually did find that bit in Arkham City kinda silly, just holding down the button and watching the camera pan around a silent, expressionless Batman to no particular end... However, at least that scene was a sick joke by the villain, meant to be emotionally impactful to Batman.

In CoD, it's a dead serious (if pathetically lazy) attempt to introduce "gameplay" into a cutscene, that's not meant to be in any way impactful to the nonentity serving as the human camera at that particular moment, but to the portion of the player-base that romanticises the idea of soldiers dying without an ounce of irony, to the extend that 'press X to pay respects' is an actual moment of wish fulfilment to them.

Just take a minute to contemplate how fucked up that is.

 

[AstaresPanda]

Get the feeling along with many here that Bob is just being Butthurt about somthing, but thats why i liked his reveiws, his angry rants about how shit the transformers movies were and the twilight movies, then he toned it down over the years. And end of the day its just his veiw on shit. Ill still give this one a go but Bob is not Jim Sterling, he gets stuff wrong at times.

 

[Ark of the Covetor]

Eh. I'm pretty sure Bob just doesn't like Nolan movies anymore. I wouldn't be surprised to see him do a revisit of all of his films so that he can talk about how he doesn't think they're that good anymore.

The general consensus seems to be quite positive and I've found all of his non-Batman movies to be quite good in the past. Still, Bob brought up some good points, though it seems that most people have seen the movie would disagree. But hey, if your opinions frequently line up with Bob's (as mine used to) his view of the movie will probably be quite similar to your own.

His perception lines up pretty much exactly what what I was expecting from the trailers; a potentially great sci-fi movie spoiled by the usual "power of love" wankery. Of course it turns out it was written as "power of love" wankery in the first place and then evidently Nolan tried to salvage it, but the end result is the same.

Protip Hollywood - if I want to be beaten over the head with all this emotions are teh awesumz, love will win the day, poorly-disguised God of the Gaps bullshit, I'll watch a Disney kids movie. When I go to see hard sci-fi, I want to see hard sci-fi. Even better, I want to see hard sci-fi in which the scientists are A; the good guys and B; competent, rather than either malicious caricatures, borderline-psychotic basket cases, or bumbling morons. Yes yes, "scientists are people and people make mistakes blah blah", we've seen that film already. Hundreds of times. We don't need a five-hundredth re-imagining of Frankenstein.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

1) Bob gets butthurt over something Nolan DIDN'T say about his beloved Marvel movies.
2) He decides to rush his show by two full days so he can badmouth his movie as soon as possible.
3) Whatever.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

Wow, that is a very unwelcome surprise... :\

 

[WarpedLord]

1) Bob gets butthurt over something Nolan DIDN'T say about his beloved Marvel movies.
2) He decides to rush his show by two full days so he can badmouth the movie as soon as possible.
3) Whatever.

1) Nolan makes a new film
2) Nolan fanboys decide said film is a masterpiece before even seeing it
3) Critics who have actually seen the film point out that it's a good, but not perfect movie
4) Nolan fans take this as a personal slight and shout "Bias!!!!" and "Personal Vendetta!!!"
5) Cycle repeats every couple of years

Not saying that Bob isn't wrong... just maybe, y'know, you should wait until you've actually seen the movie before being so adamant that his bias is showing??

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

1) Bob gets butthurt over something Nolan DIDN'T say about his beloved Marvel movies.
2) He decides to rush his show by two full days so he can badmouth the movie as soon as possible.
3) Whatever.

1) Nolan makes a new film
2) Nolan fanboys decide said film is a masterpiece before even seeing it
3) Critics who have actually seen the film point out that it's a good, but not perfect movie
4) Nolan fans take this as a personal slight and shout "Bias!!!!" and "Personal Vendetta!!!"
5) Cycle repeats every couple of years

Not saying that Bob isn't wrong... just maybe, y'know, you should wait until you've actually seen the movie before being so adamant that his bias is showing??

Saw the movie on Monday. Reviewed it yesterday.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.864462-Pros-Cons-Interstellar-2014

 

[Ishigami]

Oh Bob didn't like it. Good. That means I will.

 

[WarpedLord]

1) Bob gets butthurt over something Nolan DIDN'T say about his beloved Marvel movies.
2) He decides to rush his show by two full days so he can badmouth the movie as soon as possible.
3) Whatever.

1) Nolan makes a new film
2) Nolan fanboys decide said film is a masterpiece before even seeing it
3) Critics who have actually seen the film point out that it's a good, but not perfect movie
4) Nolan fans take this as a personal slight and shout "Bias!!!!" and "Personal Vendetta!!!"
5) Cycle repeats every couple of years

Not saying that Bob isn't wrong... just maybe, y'know, you should wait until you've actually seen the movie before being so adamant that his bias is showing??

Saw the movie on Monday. Reviewed it yesterday.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.864462-Pros-Cons-Interstellar-2014

I stand corrected then.

My comment still applies to MANY other posts in this thread, though.

 

[Vigormortis]

Should I be smug or disappointed with how accurate my prediction was of the content of Bob's review? Because I was damn near 'on-the-money', point for point. Either way, I'm certainly not surprised. Bob's just hates Nolan. I'm honestly convinced that even if the film had been a modern masterpiece Bob would have nitpicked it to death. And if it had turned out to be genuinely awful, we'd see no end to Bob alluding to the film's "awfulness" in other videos or reviews. It'd become his new Man of Steel.

I'm not sure where this ire came from, but it's certainly there. That recent article Bob posted about Nolan "insulting" Marvel's films is evidence enough.

Still, I plan to see the film and judge for myself. Reviews have been a mixed bag, but generally positive. But even among those that like, or dislike, the film, there's a lot of discrepancy on which parts of the film the reviewers thought worked and the parts they thought didn't.

If nothing else, Interstellar is shaping up to be the most divisive film of the year. That alone warrants at least one viewing.

 

[josemlopes]

Fuck you Chris Nolan shouldn't have criticised Marvel! Penalised!

That kind of went around my head while watching the review.

This review was a little harsh,sure he make good points about the movie but I thought it was still enjoyable,emotional and I'm not even sure what qualifies as a good performance to him anymore.

And to say it again if,people are going to criticise the Pay Your Respects scene then they must have laughed at this scene as well.

The one in COD is a bit worse, the "Pay your respects" didnt bug me but to have two indications (the context sensitive pop-up and the objective marker) saying the exact same thing when you can barely even move feels like what is usually present when doing a parody of COD, and in something so trivial since it is basicly a cutscene.

 

[Demagogue]

Some find it a great film, others don't like Bob.

Had to read that sentence four times before I realized you didn't mean that an unnumbered group of critics don't like Bob...

commas... a person's best friend. I took the sentence as the same thing, I just didn't put anymore thought into it after that about a bunch of critics disliking Bob. I wasn't sure why it was part of the same thought/sentence though.

OT - Still going to see it friends and I have already established that is our movie this weekend.

 

[Verlander]

Considering Nolan DID rip on Gravity in a play-by-play fashion, I can't blame them for wanting to point out up front the bits they got right

 

[b.w.irenicus]

Well, excessive exposition to the point of abundance in a Nolan movie? I'm not suprised like... at all.
PS: Yeah CoD is stupid and Bob is so enlightend. By the way, if the existence of one stupid game invalidated games as art, what about stupid movies? Or books? Or...

 

[Halla Burrica]

I'm definetely going to watch this movie, even if it may not be all that great. What Bob says definetly strengthens the suspicions I had when I watched a trailer of it. It definetely looked promising, but I raised an eyebrow when it came to the part about "love being a stronger force than anything". That doesn't sound like something from Nolan, at all. All the movies from him that I've watched, are movies that are meant to challenge the brain, not so much the heart. They've always been engaging and effecting, but more on an intellectual plane than an emotional one. It's not that the actors are bad, or that they aren't able to portray their characters and emote believeably, it's just the way the films are made.

 

[hentropy]

The idea that "paying your respects" is a physical thing like pulling a trigger or opening a box is not just silly, but can be considered pretty fucked up to people who have actually had to watch someone important to them being lowered into the ground, when done as a serious thing. That's the stuff of parody, like "press X to reflect upon your actions as a soldier in a foreign land." It's dumb whether it's done in Batman games or in CoD, though I have a feeling that in the Batman game it wasn't really meant to be a serious emotional moment.

I don't think Bob was saying it "invalidated" anything like some are implying, only that it's two steps back in trying to portray games as a medium that can address difficult subjects in mature ways, which I would say is perhaps the biggest problem, image-wise.

On topic, it is somewhat disappointing that Interstellar doesn't look super, though it doesn't much surprise me that Nolan couldn't pull off the emotional aspects. Still, I was hoping there would be some really cool concepts and probably a few twists to make up for any real emotional shortcomings. You know, like Inception.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

So, basically the film would be like if George R. Martin tried to write a Dr. Sues book.