How Interstellar Crashes in Its Third Act

[Biran53]

The Power of Love is a common thread with more improbable science fiction, but It requires a delicate touch to make it work without insulting the audiences' intelligence. I liked Interstellar, but to a point. Nolan handles certain emotional aspects alright, but completely misses out on something special with the final half hour. A father's love transcending space and time is a beautiful idea (and I like the idea of keeping the aliens hidden), but we are never allowed to react to it with the film constantly stuffing fluff exposition into the film. Let me react to something, dammit! And shut it with the monologues!

 

[Sanunes]

The Power of Love is a common thread with more improbable science fiction, but It requires a delicate touch to make it work without insulting the audiences' intelligence. I liked Interstellar, but to a point. Nolan handles certain emotional aspects alright, but completely misses out on something special with the final half hour. A father's love transcending space and time is a beautiful idea (and I like the idea of keeping the aliens hidden), but we are never allowed to react to it with the film constantly stuffing fluff exposition into the film. Let me react to something, dammit! And shut it with the monologues!

I think that is a very good description of the movie and its problems, heck the first 30min feels like they cut out about half the content for it just jumps all over the place. A couple of actors could have been removed from the movie and it wouldn't have made a difference.

At the end of the day, I think the biggest problem with the movie is that Christopher Nolan wasn't the best solution for a director for his style doesn't match up with how the movie was written. Maybe if it felt more of a "clinical" take of the subject instead of trying to have an emotional impact they attempt with it, I would have enjoyed it more.

 

[lastjustice]

Well if Christopher Nolan ever became a super villain, you d be able to defeat him by getting him to monologue hehe.

 

[gorfias]

All you nay sayers just wait for the sequel. It is going to be awesome.

But seriously. As noted above. Really? The black guy gets killed again? At least he wasn't wearing a red shirt. And

Spoiler

so is this sorta like a terminator thing? We're the "they". The Future us is sending us information to the past to save the future if the past doesn't use future science in which case there would be no future to be sending information to the past so that... oh dear. I've gone cross eyed.

This was a freaking 3 hour movie that should have been 90 minutes of fun. 15 min. story set up, 1 hour action, 15 min wrap up. Instead, 1 unnecessary HOUR of set up, 1 hour action that almost feels out of place given the rest of the movie, 1 hour wrap up.

A more interesting failure than most successes though.

 

[Ipsen]

I think people are putting too much stock in the concept that "love" was the singular force that allowed Cooper to send the messages. They state pretty explicitly multiple times that gravity transcends time (which makes sense as gravity is both the weakest and yet most pervasive force, hell we still don't fully understand it), but its Cooper's personal connection that allows him to be in a position to make this interaction. They pair this with love because it has similar fundamentals. Matt Damon's character talks a lot about empathy only "extending to the edge of our vision" yet the brain fights for survival when shown those we love/empathize with and Dr. Brand discusses how love transcends space and time, characterizing it in the same way as gravity (transcending space/time, being both weak and yet powerful). Coupled with how good it looks when the theme is personal love vs. scientific reason, and it makes sense that they would go with using love and gravity to explain the climax.

If we can't attribute Cooper's messages to the 'power of love' then the only other aspect that would make sense to explain along for this movie would be a scientific one. Even if you state that gravity was the real force behind all the benevolence, or even just allowing Cooper to be in a position to relay those messages, how do you get to that from falling in a black hole, ending up in fractal-bookshelf sector? Is it his thoughts of his daughter that somehow translate into positioning himself? Do you call that love? I'm only (failing to) rationalizing to myself at this point; the science of the matter I can't even touch upon.

But that's the thing about this movie. It lets two tones speak openly: science and human love, and when put together carelessly or coarsely can REALLY confuse audiences, because we approach both quite differently. And it's not that I don't think the tones never mix but both CAN easily speak over each other, in a sense, and this movie didn't escape from this, unfortunately. I almost wonder what it would be if, say, Spielberg worked together with Nolan on this.

I still enjoyed the movie; great acting, beautiful shots and use of physical props, but I find it decidedly nonresonant.

 

[irishda]

If we can't attribute Cooper's messages to the 'power of love' then the only other aspect that would make sense to explain along for this movie would be a scientific one. Even if you state that gravity was the real force behind all the benevolence, or even just allowing Cooper to be in a position to relay those messages, how do you get to that from falling in a black hole, ending up in fractal-bookshelf sector? Is it his thoughts of his daughter that somehow translate into positioning himself? Do you call that love? I'm only (failing to) rationalizing to myself at this point; the science of the matter I can't even touch upon.

Both his and TARS explanation seemed to be that they realized humans at a future point had transcended time and physics(?) and so created the realm within the singularity for Cooper to reach out to her. I take it more as they chose to use him so that she would realize it was him and wouldn't be afraid.

But that's the thing about this movie. It lets two tones speak openly: science and human love, and when put together carelessly or coarsely can REALLY confuse audiences, because we approach both quite differently. And it's not that I don't think the tones never mix but both CAN easily speak over each other, in a sense, and this movie didn't escape from this, unfortunately. I almost wonder what it would be if, say, Spielberg worked together with Nolan on this.

I still enjoyed the movie; great acting, beautiful shots and use of physical props, but I find it decidedly nonresonant.

This is the thing for me though. Do we HAVE to approach both things differently? Science is treated as this separate entity on so many levels from faith and the irrational, because it's established itself as rational. The paradox arrives with the realization that science is founded on the irrational, at least in the case of natural sciences. Consider the foundation, the scientific method. Either a hypothesis is formulated and then data is gathered to determine proof, or data is observed and then a conclusion is reached. In either case, the logical failing is the assumption that the data gathered is complete. But there's no possible way of knowing whether or not the tools we have will remain the best possible tools for garnering that data, ergo it's impossible to know that the data is correct. Scientists operate on the FAITH that it is the best data.

Science often mocks religion for its lack of proof. But ironically, in attempting to prove itself, science is only ever fated to disprove itself continuously. Stretched to an infinite length of time, the tools to gather data, and subsequently the data, will expand forever. And that's what we call the "rational" institution?

So approaching this movie with that in mind, I found it amazing at how much it speaks to how similar the rationality of science is to the irrationality of faith/love.

 

[pearcinator]

"hence why his best film by far, Inception"

Stopped reading right there. Inception is by far Nolan's WORST film. It is so pretentious and poorly written that it's no wonder people thought it had a complex plot (when it really didn't, it was just executed poorly). I liked Interstellar but I agree that the ending was pretty silly and didn't make a whole lot of sense but it is certainly a better film than Inception.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

I assume Nolan was thinking something along the lines of, "Well, my target audience here is Nerds, and judging by how popular CinemaSins is (Neil DeGrasse Tyson went on there and did a whole video picking apart every scientific mistake in Gravity, and that's one of the most popular things online!), nerds apparently don't care about things like stories or characters at all. Apparently, nerds only want to smugly gloat about how superior their body of scientific knowledge is, over that of the unwashed masses who go see girly movies about icky girly things like emotions and character development."

More like he's saying "You DO realize that 90% of the time most 'emotional' moments in films are done to disguise the fact that the screenplay has a lack of logic, consistency, and intelligence and thus reveal themselves as manipulative, cynical, and shallow, right? If you cannot balance them, you are just a shitty writer and director." I think that's why most people like him; he isn't afraid to confront that too many films have put emotion first and intelligence DEAD last in order to seem more powerful and evocative than they really are.

 

[Casual Shinji]

More like he's saying "You DO realize that 90% of the time most 'emotional' moments in films are done to disguise the fact that the screenplay has a lack of logic, consistency, and intelligence and thus reveal themselves as manipulative, cynical, and shallow, right? If you cannot balance them, you are just a shitty writer and director." I think that's why most people like him; he isn't afraid to confront that too many films have put emotion first and intelligence DEAD last in order to seem more powerful and evocative than they really are.

I'd say Nolan is more guilty of this than anyone else. In each of his movies (that isn't Memento), the dialoge is so steeped in boring, colourless computer exposition, that when something actually emotional occurs it feels like someone suddenly thew a squid in your lap. The dude just can't do emotion at all (except in Memento).

OT: So from what I've heard this movie pulls the same shit Sunshine did, where it just unnecessarily throws in a villain when the characters inner turmoil was enough to sustain the tension. [sub]Fuck you, Sunshine![/sub]

 

[Gerishnakov]

To anyone else who saw the movie, tell me when Matt Damon appeared, there was a group of people doing the Team America MATT DAMON impression, because a bunch did in my theatre.

I was almost one of those people, but no one else in the cinema did it, so I'm glad I didn't.

TARS and CASE are definitely two of my new favourite robots; right up there with GERTY from 'Moon'.

 

[walrusaurus]

OK, i didn't really understand what you meant about the movie being too focussed on explaining the science when i watched your review. But after reading this, now i get it and i completely agree. If he hadn't tried so hard to explain the fundamentally un-explainable, that black hole sequence would have been so much better. Instead in trying to explain that the Power of Love allowed him to control time and space, somehow... If it had simply let it happen and allow the audience draw their own conclusions it would have felt much less contrived and shark-jumpy.

 

[Tojumaru]

Just before anyone accuses me, I am not a Nolan fanboy. Actually, I didn't love any of the BATMAN films(the 1st one being the best, 2nd being the worst and 3rd being somewhere in the middle),liked Inception, didn't like the Prestige, and only ones I really like are Insomnia and Memento.
OK, so, diregarding Moon, this is the best sci-fi film since Event Horizon(for me). It felt like it was going for Sunshine(which came apart completely in the last 30 minutes, much like The Dark Knight actually) and 2001, but managed to avoid being the utter dullness of the Kubrick film. It stayed true to itself, and I had a weird Moon flashback when I saw Cooper recieving those vids from his daughter and son. Also, that "power of love" thing? Didn't he refute Hathaway once on that exact ground? Was he sent into the teseract because of love or because of well... physics?
Also, Nolan has always been the director that is esentially doing a less whimsical Spielberg. I mean Jesus, every film I saw of his after Insomnia is about emotion, and that is his shtick.
Also, I told the friend I went to the movie with "Wanna bet we're getting a cameo?" just as they revealed... Matt Damon. And yes, we did a Team America World Police reaction.

 

[Kahani]

The big problem with films that make the "Based on real science! No, really, there was a physicist involved and everything." claim is exactly the same as those that make the "Based on a true story" claim - it's complete and utter bullshit and everyone knows it. As long as it doesn't get in the way of the actual film, that's not a problem. But all too often it ends up like this, where nonsensical Trek-esque technobabble is constantly spouted at us while insisting that it's all totally real and that love actually is one of the fundamental forces of the universe. A film like The Fifth Element can get away with it because that was a fundamentally silly film that didn't care how unrealistic something might be as long as it fit (although its attempt to convince us that Chris Tucker is an actor fell rather flat). If The Fifth Element had a narrator constantly interrupting the action to insist that it was all totally real and look, here are the equations proving it, it would have been shit.

Here's a free hint for any writers or directors who happen to be reading this - if your film involves interstellar travel, time travel, or the power of love, it is not in any way realistic and you should employ a physicist whose sole job is to punch you in the face every time you claim it is.


Captcha - which of these is a country? A: France. Captcha error. No captcha, I'm pretty sure France actually is a country.

 

[cynicalsaint1]

Wow these days I find myself disagreeing with Movie Bob than not.
But this time I'm wondering if we even watched the same movie, I mean

Did they really think that audiences wouldn't engage with Cooper as a hero if they couldn't plot-generate a Bad Guy for him to conquer in a fist fight?

Never actually happened. Cooper doesn't conquer anyone - he gets his ass kicked, barely survives, and Dr. Mann ends up unwittingly taking himself out. Cooper completely fails to do anything to stop him.

Furthermore I really feel like the whole "Power of Love" thing is being seriously overstated here - the only thing it allowed him to do is find his daughter in space/time while he was stuck in the tesseract, and thus transmit the data needed for the "Save The World Equation".

I also don't feel like the weight of "twist" was so much that the movie depended on not figuring it out in advance.
All said I really enjoyed the movie.

 

[Sylocat]

I assume Nolan was thinking something along the lines of, "Well, my target audience here is Nerds, and judging by how popular CinemaSins is (Neil DeGrasse Tyson went on there and did a whole video picking apart every scientific mistake in Gravity, and that's one of the most popular things online!), nerds apparently don't care about things like stories or characters at all. Apparently, nerds only want to smugly gloat about how superior their body of scientific knowledge is, over that of the unwashed masses who go see girly movies about icky girly things like emotions and character development."

More like he's saying "You DO realize that 90% of the time most 'emotional' moments in films are done to disguise the fact that the screenplay has a lack of logic, consistency, and intelligence and thus reveal themselves as manipulative, cynical, and shallow, right? If you cannot balance them, you are just a shitty writer and director." I think that's why most people like him; he isn't afraid to confront that too many films have put emotion first and intelligence DEAD last in order to seem more powerful and evocative than they really are.

Uh, The Dark Knight, Nolan's most popular movie, makes zero logical sense, it gets by solely on its thematics and emotional intelligence.

 

[Skee]

I really liked this movie. So much so that I have the urge to refute some of the points made against it here. First, the thing transcending time is gravity, not love. The expositionary dialogue Bob so hated explained the role of love quite nicely. It is just very hard to aim gravitic manipulations of past, so they needed an insider to do it. Secondly, as stated before, the "bad" guy was not defeated by the dad. In addition I thought he was very throughly foreshadowed with all the talk about all evil in space being that brought there by people and about how extra supper good guy he was. (The explosion was a fail safe for when someone tried to look at the data he had faked) This being a tale of survival, he felt very much thematically appropriate. I even really liked the music, though not all the loud noises.

 

[9of9]

For anyone who's into anime, I very much recommend looking up Makoto Shinkai's Voices of a Distant Star for comparison (twenty-minute short made pretty much entirely by one guy). While I found there were a few things I enjoyed about Interstellar, overall I feel like a large part of my disliking this film is that so many of the key thematic beats of Nolan's film (the awe of interstellar travel, relationships and relativistic space travel, love across time and space etc.) are all hit upon much more effectively in Voices of a Distant Star's twenty minutes, than they get explored in the nearly three-hour run-time of Interstellar.

It's more Ender's Game than Interstellar, but it knows just when to stop and just how to hit the right notes, which Nolan's opus absolutely does not.

 

[Starik20X6]

I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.

I can't get behind the criticism of the movie for explaining too much of the science, and this is why. Why can't we also understand the science behind the light show? Especially when the whole 'hard-science' angle was part of the movie's appeal from the beginning.

If anything, I'd say they'd have to explain it, because the alternative seems like it would be "science science science SPACESHIP science science SPACESHIP SPACESHIP" for the majority of the movie, only for it to take a sharp turn into "suddenly MAGIC". When the movie spends so long setting up its scientific foundation, withholding the science behind the most out-there part of the movie would make that moment feel spectacularly ham-fisted and out of place.

 

[Vigormortis]

I can't get behind the criticism of the movie for explaining too much of the science, and this is why. Why can't we also understand the science behind the light show? Especially when the whole 'hard-science' angle was part of the movie's appeal from the beginning.

If anything, I'd say they'd have to explain it, because the alternative seems like it would be "science science science SPACESHIP science science SPACESHIP SPACESHIP" for the majority of the movie, only for it to take a sharp turn into "suddenly MAGIC". When the movie spends so long setting up its scientific foundation, withholding the science behind the most out-there part of the movie would make that moment feel spectacularly ham-fisted and out of place.

Precisely. And more over, the entirety of the explanatory 'science-y techno-babble'[footnote]Which most of it barely qualified as.[/footnote] took all of a few minutes across the length of the entire film.

Honestly, I do NOT get Bob's criticism in this regard. At all.

Nor do I get why so many keep getting hung up on this whole "the endless power of love!" nonsense. I mean, did we watch the same film? It was made abundantly clear by the end of the film that love had virtually nothing to do with the final solutions, save for providing a reason Murph would be in that bedroom at the appropriate times. Every thing else was a combination of gravity and time, as manipulated by the 'mysterious' fifth-dimensional beings.

Don't get me wrong. The film has it's issues, that I can attest. It's just that...well...a LOT of the criticisms I've been hearing, notably from Bob, don't make any sense.