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

Verlander

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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

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Apr 16, 2013
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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

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May 18, 2014
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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

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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.
 

musim

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Nov 22, 2009
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I had a hunch this movie was bad. I'm tempted to see it just because I love Nolan's IMAX work but eh, I can probably do without. I've enjoyed most of Nolan's films but I've only made it a point to own the first two Batman's, Memento and The Prestige. Top that off with the fact I can't stand Matthew McConaughey and I thought The Dark Knight Rises was lousy outside of not-Catwoman, and he just doesn't get a free pass with me anymore. Inception I enjoyed but the movie felt lifeless to me by the end. And the ending itself was a "this is just how you have to end it" moment with no real depth in my opinion. The whole stab at Marvel movies not being movies just came across as the idiotic cherry on top. But you know what? Most of the great directors only have a few revered films. Doesn't mean he can't be great again and it doesn't mean the movies he's already made are suddenly bad.
 

RedDeadFred

Illusions, Michael!
May 13, 2009
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Ark of the Covetor said:
RedDeadFred said:
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.
See, most of the other reviews I've read have said that it isn't derivative like that and that the emotional core of the movie is actually quite moving. But you know, differing opinions and all that. I'm not saying that Bob isn't raising any good points, I'm just saying that I wouldn't be surprised if he went in with a certain level of bias against it, which, to be fair, is hard for any reviewer to avoid. Anyway, I haven't seen it yet so my comments obviously don't really matter. I'm just saying what I'm perceiving. I've enjoyed all of Nolan's movies so far, so I'll probably like this one, but who knows, maybe this is his worst yet (it's just the majority of other opinions seem to suggest otherwise).
 

Nimcha

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Dec 6, 2010
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I knew this would happen. Trying to marry hard sci-fi with regular movie family tropes never works out.

Either do one or the other, and for the love of god would someone try to make an actual hard sci-fi movie for once?
 

Hungry Donner

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Mar 19, 2009
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It's difficult to do hard sci-fi without constantly throwing data at the reader/audience. If you can restrain yourself, you lose half of what makes hard sci-fi fun.

This is one reason why I love Robert L. Forward's books so much, so much of the data and the detailed scientific explanation is put in an appendix at the end. This way the reader can enjoy the science side of things, but it doesn't have to interrupt the story. This doesn't really work for film unless you have some sort of multi-media experience or you release a book or documentary as an extra.
 

Steve the Pocket

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Nolan does have a habit of Explaining The Joke as it were. No disagreement there. Even the good Batman movies did that. Almost feels like he'd be better off analyzing films for a living than making them; as it is, he seems to be insistent on doing both.
 

jFr[e]ak93

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Apr 9, 2010
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Had you asked me what Movie Bob would say about this film last week, I would have guessed he'd dislike it.

I haven't seen it yet, however I take his word on this subject with a large grain of salt. He's expressed a LOT of contempt for Nolan's style.

Which is fine... just as long as he doesn't go all Man Of Steel for the next 8 months using this movie.
 

truckspond

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Oct 26, 2013
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So if that scene in CoD:AW invalidates games as an art form entirely then that scene from The Wisard of Oz did the same for movies and that scene in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince did it for books
 

PunkRex

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Bob doesn't really like Interstellar ---> Interstellar was made by Nolan ---> Nolan made the Batman films ---> Batman is DC ---> DC is Marvel's rival ---> Bob loves the MCU ---> Half-Life 3 confirmed???

Can we not do this today people.

OT: The film looks visually interesting enough and the science heavy dialogue is something I might actually enjoy so I'll probably give it a watch.
 

JarinArenos

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Jan 31, 2012
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Sorta sad that they try so hard to fact-check their science, to the point that it's a notable story hindrance, then screw up basic orbital mechanics.

It's falling from orbit! Wait, now it's escaping! Wait, it's falling again! How much delta-V have we used now? I thought we were limited on fuel!
 

Zakarath

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Mar 23, 2009
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Much as I love some good hard-scifi exploration and adventure, I was pretty turned off by how hard the trailer was pushing the bland & uninteresting family/emotion aspects. Too bad, it sounds like they narrowly dodged making a movie I'd really like. Bah, too many sci-fi works get ruined for me by their BS metaphysics.
 

Tim Chuma

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Jul 9, 2010
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I am still looking forward to seeing this at my local theatre as they are doing a season of Christopher Nolan movies including Inception, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar on concurrent Thursdays. I can't post a link as the forum mods have frowned on such things in the past.
 

Canadamus Prime

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Jun 17, 2009
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I don't know what all you people are talking about. Bob didn't say anything in this review that was a slight against Christopher Nolan, he even said that Nolan is a very capable film maker. What he also said however is that Nolan isn't capable of delivering the kind of emotional dramas that Speilberg is known for. He didn't say this was a terrible movie, he just said it wasn't a great movie. So would all you Nolan fans just chill already?
 

LarsInCharge

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canadamus_prime said:
I don't know what all you people are talking about. Bob didn't say anything in this review that was a slight against Christopher Nolan, he even said that Nolan is a very capable film maker. What he also said however is that Nolan isn't capable of delivering the kind of emotional dramas that Speilberg is known for. He didn't say this was a terrible movie, he just said it wasn't a great movie. So would all you Nolan fans just chill already?
I think it's more like

1/3 of people pissed about his deliberately click-bait news piece

1/3 of people are Nolan or DC fans claiming bias

1/3 of people hate Bob for one of many reasons:
A) Social Justice Warrior (I WANT TO KILL THE PERSON WHO STARTED THIS "SJW" SHIT)
B) His complete and total devotion to Nintendo and hate of everything else (Understandable)
C) Pretentiousness (Understandable)
D) One of the many colossally stupid things he has said or done (Understandable).
 

Sylocat

Sci-Fi & Shakespeare
Nov 13, 2007
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MovieBob said:
Unfortunately, the filmmakers don't seem content to simply have made one of the most hard-science-heavy speculative-fiction blockbusters ever... they're also very, very concerned that we know how much homework they did in getting it all right. Which means that scene after scene that might've delivered a high-impact sense of awe, transcendent transportive wonder or even simply a powerful, iconic visual is undercut and undermined by reams and reams of intermittently-interesting but most deathly-dull explanatory exposition -- as though instead of worrying about telling a compelling story, Nolan and company were petrified that Neil DeGrasse Tyson was going to burst into their editing bay and ask to see their figures.
Gee, I wonder why they could possibly be petrified of that... oh, right, Tyson went on CinemaSins to dogpile Gravity.

I don't think we have any right to be surprised by this kind of thing anymore. Nolan and crew got so bogged down in show-their-research details that they forgot to tell a story or develop the characters? Of course they did, their audience was GEEKS, and after that CinemaSins mess, the filmmakers understandably thought that geeks don't care about stories or characters at all.

CinemaSins is a show made by and for the people from Yahtzee's poem, "The Keretic, Part III."
 

Darth_Payn

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Well, this is...disappointing to hear. Nolan's got the chops to make a hard sci-fi film that doesn't talk down to the audience about its hard science, but I didn't know Interstellar was originally meant for Spielberg. I can understand the sheer amount of expositional hand-holding would bore most audiences. I did get a good laugh at that screenshot from Captain Planet when Bob said "Heart", and using Dr. Venture to represent scientists. Both those shows sound like candidates for future Big Picture episodes.
ThingWhatSqueaks said:
MarsAtlas said:
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 just know, deep in the back of your mind, he has a costume ready for just that occasion. And his battle-cry will be "FOR SCIENCE!"

After credits: not just one but two Take That's to the latest CoD? Casting Kevin Spacey in that must have touched a nerve for Bob. He might as well have a sign over his head saying "I well turn out to be evil and the last boss fight in this game that wishes it was a movie."