SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB: Week 146 - Interstellar

I'v no problem with it being sad, I mean look at the film I served up last week. <45>

Beyond the issues I raised one comparison that obviously comes to mind for me is Danny Boyles Sunshine which whilst it isn't perfect I do think is a better film overall because it takes a very similar premise and explores it in a more interesting way. Nolan's films drama focuses heavily on family and romance yet I think the most interesting aspect of it which Boyle focuses on more is responsibility and the extreme enviroment. The idea of giving individuals responsibility for the survival of the entire human race and the effect that kind of pressure can have on people. Brands character does definitely have a bit of this too her and I actually found her the most interesting for that reason but Sunshine I think looks more effectively at how characters deal with that weight as well indeed with the very extreme environment they've been put in.

I haven't seen Sunshine yet but I remember seeing the trailers when it was out. One of my big problems with Interstellar is that the romance was just not there. There needed to be a romantic connection between Cooper and Brand to help explain why he might travel across the universe to be with her and restart the human race and Nolan simply didn't provide that. I'll have to watch Sunshine now to see if I agree with your assessment.
 
There needed to be a romantic connection between Cooper and Brand to help explain why he might travel across the universe to be with her and restart the human race and Nolan simply didn't provide that.

Doesn't help that me made her character be in love with a guy on one of the planets. Not a good look if she's flirting with Coop on the way to see him.
 
Hathaway is like Paul Dano -- if she's in the film, she's probably taking some kind of a punch. I don't know why, but she seems to embrace heelish roles, although I tend to agree with Brand more than I don't. She's on the ship because of her father more than herself, and so I take it easier on her and feel that as she is she represents the future's potential and that's enough motivation for Coop to go and find her.

Hathaway explained to him time doesn't work like that, it can't move backwards.

I didn't watch the end, but it sounds like Nolan supports the theory that black holes are portals to the past.
Black holes contain "quantum data" that allow humans to master gravity, which gets us off earth! The tesseract is the gravity manipulating device he finds within the black hole!

The third yoooooge conceit of the film is not the blight or robots that look like chocolate bars, but rather how does buying into any of what I just said above, how does that produce a wormhole? You make love to gravity and a wormhole pops open?

*inception gong*

(I like how INTERSTELLAR is the complementary opposite of INCEPTION.)
 
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I'm not going to respond to your first post until I rewatch the film, but this I can respond to immediately and say: Why, Cubo? Why do you want to hurt? Gravity has literally nothing on Interstellar. From my one and only viewing a little over a year ago:



Now, I remember absolutely nothing about Gravity except for the asteroids at the beginning. I don't even remember how it ends, if she/they live or die. Not a single fuck was given. But Interstellar? That's straight-up Cameron-level emotionality. And you being another fan of The Abyss, I'm surprised you didn't find it similarly gripping.
I wanted interstellar to succeed badly. But then we get 3 hours of Jessica Chastain trying to take Casey Affleck's kids away with some corn and dust thrown in. Instead of you know....focusing on the fact they got wormholes and a ton of new worlds to explore.

Smh.
 
His character pissed me off at the end, but I guess that means Affleck did a good job.
It's taken me quite the while to appreciate Casey. He's definitely got the thankless task of representing the complacent and the resigned and the doomed here. Plus he's also got to make his play without drawing too much away from the Coop, Murph, and Co. He's the only one who buries a child but the film isn't thrown out of balance for it.
 
The acting is amazing. Great cast, a lot of whom I didn't know were in the movie. Some of the visuals and some of the direction Nolan took was great too. I liked that throughout this whole thing it showed people's desire to survive and people's selfish side. People suck and they are selfish and it this movie it shows and it seems real. Mcounaughey was great like always and I really love Casey Affleck these days. He's the one who made me care when he was doing the video diaries to the dad. He can really make you feel. Most of the science seemed wonky obviously but they're working with something that hasn't been worked before. They can basically make it up so whatever. Not sure I loved the end because it seemed too obvious that he was the "ghost". The love thing was a little lame solution I wish they wouldn't have even bothered saying that and just let him do the watch thing. Still super worth watching for me but it is too long. 7/10 as I'm a sucker for stories where humanity has to save itself or fight off advanced aliens or whatever. The human spirit and desire to survive and such. Quite a ramble but I watched this shit after 12 hours at work then wrote this review.
 
live note style review

- Farmer destroys acres and acres of his own crops and almost kills family to chase a drone (he just happens to be carrying a drone-hacking/piloting laptop on him (yet he doesn't carry a spare tire)
- Wait, there's no armies in this world... seriously. that's the most bizarre and far-fetched sci-fi prediction (for the future) of all time, by far.
- The schools are teaching that Apollo missions are fake, when they're not. You know public schools and their conspiracy theories, good call Nolan.
- Mumble mumble, something about apllo missions and his wife, what is he saying. I have no idea, honestly.
- This poor mans Rick Grimes (while drunk) impression isn't working for me, they should've named his daughter Carlotta. Would;ve been funny to hear him say Carlotta in his anguished Rick Grimes voice
- Cooper is always out of breath, even when sitting down, why? He's a farmer / former air force pilot, not a heavy-smoking couch potato .
- I thought farmers worked hard, no one on this farmstead is working.
- The daughter sure has a lot of books for a 9 year old, who they never show reading.
- "6 billion people trying to have it all", the grandfather describing why the food shortage happened. Finally something with a little meat to it. But lol, they basically blame the Chinese for the food-shortage.
- Dad tells daughter she's insane for thinking there are ghosts trying to communicate with her
- In the next scene, the same Dad receives coordinates written in dust, supplied by gravity/magnetics and decides the communication is extremely important, seems consistent
- Dad drives the daughter all night, through the desert and then decides to break into a chained and fenced compound to follow these dust coordinates, seems logical right?
- Ends up being Area 52 (basically) but without signs or guards or anything
- The head of NASA comes to greet him at the gate
- Talking tough to a robot... badass
- They invite him in (even though they don't know each other and he's a farmer with his daughter driving through the desert at night with mystery coordinates he got from gravity) and proceed to tell him all sorts of confidential information and give him a tour of the place, cool story bro.
- So NASA has a top-secret last-ditch attempt to save the human race, and it's leaving tomorrow, but it still needs a pilot. Man, I know they had budget cuts, but talk about dropping the ball.
- "You're one of the best pilots", what is this, Top Gun?
- Autopilot can't compete with the brilliance of Cooper, the out-of-breath, conspiracy theorist, gravity worshipping nutter.
- Instead of training for the mission he's allowed to drive his daughter home, sleep, say goodbye and drive back.
- No mental evaluation or physical testing is done to ensure this man is suitable as a candidate for the most important mission of all time. Not to mention he might be one of 5 humans to survive period.
- Cold blooded to leave his daughter, her brother lived to troll her, no mom or grandma around, and the grandad is a grumpy old fart. He has no idea how long he'll be.
- Does he really think time on earth stands still when he leaves the solar system? Talk about a god complex. Time is a measurement. It doesn't slow down when others go elsewhere. You just age slower in space, depending on gravity/pressure and shit.
- Wait, there's other astronauts, none of them are pilots? All the moon mission astronauts were pilots, NASA recruits from the air force.
- NASA is still using the same Saturn V5 rocket designed by the Nazi's today. Where'd they get this super shuttle in the movie from?
- So the air force uses these same space shuttles, or when did Cooper learn to fly this thing, not all planes and space shuttles have the same controls. Armies must've been dismantled recently.
- You know how big the US military budget is? It's enough to feed the entire world steak 365 days a year lol. No army = no food shortages, they can genetically modify dust-resistant plants or grow them in greenhouses.
- Tards is cool, or whatever the Robot is called.
- NASA's plan is to repopulate some distant world with test-tube babies, not billionaires and politicians. Ha, not buying it Hollywood.
- Wormhole was cool, I expected more, but I'm not sure what more...
- And now as if I'm not mentally frustrated enough already, I'm presented with quite the conundrum. Cooper should've asked for more details. 4 years an hour is a long time, but it's a dumb conundrum, there's a tongue-twister for ya. What were they expecting to find, what info was on that satellite? The word was a giant wave, they didn't need to waste 4 years to figure that out, they could tell that from earth, with current technology.
- There are certain universal laws, such as waves and the ripple effect they cause. You don't get 500 foot tall waves in the middle of calm waters, and then again an hour later, the smaller waves would crash on endlessly. Maybe I'm being too picky, but this is a story about travelling through a wormhole to look for new habitats for humanity. Some scientific credibility isn't too much to ask for.
- They wasted 24 years learning nothing, and that was the efficient plan. the one decided upon by Cooper, the nutter farmer, who appears to be in charge of the mission now. Those budget cuts at NASA...
- That dude deserves to die for sitting there watching the wave coming instead of getting in the damn ship. These were really the best people they could find to save humanity.
- Hathaway is good
- McConaughey sucks, apart from the one scene where he watches the videos from home. That was a great scene, very powerful, but too little too late.
- Son showed a real physical photograph of his girlfriend to Dad. Kodak will be glad to know film cameras are making a comeback in the future.
- Hidden Figures style scene where daughter stares at blackboard then solves complex equation that no one else at NASA can. Well at least the scene didn't last two hours this time.
- "Love is the one thing that transcends time and space" … not including everything else, besides time and space. Nolan level philosophy right there.
- Coughing kid we've never seen before with dramatic music. Yawn, don't care everyone is dying, and the last hope for humanity is more worried about saying goodbye to his daughter than saving mankind. Great choice NASA, really well done. Guess Nolan missed all the news stories about the very intelligent people lining up to take a one way ticket to Mars.
- We can (and likely will) colonize Mars, they can turn it back into a planet with an actual atmosphere like earths, in about 100 years. There is no need to go on some crazy wormhole mission to a far off land like depicted in this movie. They could send a rover to do it.
- When Matt Damon tells them all that the people on earth are gonna choke, Cooper is genuinely surprised and upset... Michael Caine told him this before he even decided to go. He knew his daughter was dead, he was trying to save humanity. Seriously, who goes on a mission like that without even paying attention to the NASA guy telling him about it. Considering that, he clearly doesn't care about his daughter much, so the whole "I have to get home to see my daughter" thing seems totally un-genuine.
- The daughter working for NASA freaks out when she finds out.. What did she think NASA was going to ship everyone from earth off through the wormhole to this new land. Come on now.
- Actually WTF, wormhole or not, it would still take them decades to get there, at least.
- And Hathaway is clueless and naïve too. Great choices to save humanity NASA... Matt Damon was the only one of them who wanted to save mankind.
- Wait, why did the son punch Doctor Eric from that 70's show? More empty fake drama, yawn.
- Why did Romilly blow himself up? I don't get that. Because he had the wrong conditions from Damon?
- The love of one person is more important than Humanity as a whole... this seems to be a theme in Bullitt68 movies. A very Hollywood theme, and one that I personally think is bad for humanity.

The movie starts to get meaningful and artsy here, or attempts to, but honestly my brain is numb from the madness of the premise. I don't even care anymore.

Chris Nolan is a terrible story-teller. The story of the battle of Dunkirk is very interesting, and he managed to make it a story about ships being blown up at sea, just like the myriad of other sea battle movies from his childhood. He's like a more mature version of Michael Bay, meets whoever does the casting for the walking dead. Like Dunkirk, Interstellar is another example of very poor story-telling.

I read all the way until you said Hathaway was good lol. Loss of credibility right there moving on.
 
Haven't read any comments coz it's been a busy few days. Just got back from a conference in Honolulu. I will read after I've posted.

Thoughts in general:

That robot is really awkward. It makes no sense to me how he walks so smoothly. Like the way the pads of his feet land on the ground should not result in such a rhythmic gait.

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Boy can he run though. Actually he looks kinda cool running. Does he rust? Ooooh - I love that you can program his personality! While I don't like people with attitudes, I love that the robot has one!

If I had a robot I would program her to be:
100% funny
100% snarky
100% sarcastic
100% loving
80% honest - sometimes I may need her to tell me my tush definitely does not look big in those pants.
100% responsive

What personality would YOU have your robot be?

I really, truly enjoyed it when the robot turned into an asterisk and went to the rescue!



That was the first properly cued up video I have ever posted!

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Such effective use of silence in this movie. Loved the contrast between the violent events happening in space with the utter lack of sound. It made the explosions seem even more intense and highlighted the isolated nature of the events happening on screen.

MCCon*&%#%*)(^ (I'm not gonna even try to spell it) doesn't speak. He draaaaaawwwwwwls. Even when he isn't dressed like a cowboy. Soooooooooooo American!

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Cartoonish Saturn. Does space really look like this?
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There sure are a lot of long loving, loitering shots.

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Old boy's tan is holding up real well in space :p

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Hmmm. They just hopped in that ocean. I guess they must have known the temperature, composition and depth of the water. Did they not know about the waves?

The waves were awesome! Love me some waves. But wait, why is the water where they are standing not being sucked in?



That is not how water works, dammit!

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I really wanted to see the water as they lifted away from the planet. I bet it would have looked amazing.

I find the whole “they” acceptance to be quite strange. Who are they? Extraterrestrials? Gods? Why do they care about people? Not sure i'm buying this whole Coop hanging out in that other dimension looking at his daughter bit....

Nice to see a Hollywood actor with wrinkles! He can actually look worried.

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How does a frozen cloud float? Why are our clouds not frozen? They are up high enough that they should be....Can gasses freeze? No comprendo. I may need to use the Google....

How does that hibernation chamber work? You can't just stick people in a liquid and then seal them in plastic using the immersion method like you are getting ready to sous vide them! If he’s not alive in that hibernation chamber, would the bag turn into a human soup? Just kinda gross all the way around.

This is much more my speed!

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I get that those aluminum blankets are warm, but they sure ain’t cozy.

They lost me on the black hole discussion.

So if plan B was the point all along, it makes no sense they would only send one woman. I know they said they could incubate 10 babies to start off, but they also talked about surrogates later on. Just not logical. If anything they should have been all women except for Cooper, since he was apparently the only one capable of flying the vessel.

Nice little Chekov's gun when Lois says Murphy’s room is the same it always was except for the sewing machine. Was not surprised when she went back to investigate and it became central to the story.

Why can’t Coop get up? Does inhaling ammonia make you lame?

Second time my Jeep has been on a show lately :) 'cept I have a soft top and bigger tires :p

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Ah- so that was why they belabored the difficulty of the docking before. To set up the impossibility of this guy trying to do it.

Favourite lines of dialogue, just coz they were terrible...."It’s not possible!" "No. It’s necessary!"

It’s a fucked up thought to make a decision knowing that a result of this decision is that your family will have been dead for 40 years 20 minutes after making the decision and taking action.

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That is freaking heartbreaking :(

Brutal crying in the wall scene. Gotta give it to him, old boy can act. Honestly, I never have wanted to like McCon$%&@ coz he is like a giant cartoon version of what a chisel-faced Hollywood heartthrob should be, but he can act. He was brilliant in Dallas Buyers Club. But then was a totally believable dumbass in Dazed and Confused. He should have been perfect for Walter in Dark Tower, but what a wreck of a movie that was. And then of course we have some Matthew McNaughty! Not complaining about that role

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He is even cool in those stupid car commercial he is in currently.



And it takes a lot to make a Lincoln look remotely cool IMHO. What a fuddy duddy company.

The science at the end of the movie made zero sense to me. How did Murph figure it all out? She went so quickly from angry to enlightened. How?

And what happened to Cooper's son? What was the point of his existence? To fill us in on the passage of time via the video messages? He was such a lame character. He could have been left out for all the impact he had.

How long do you think went by in the movie for Cooper? I don't really have a good sense. I'm just wondering how much time passed since he left his daughter and he saw her as an old lady? It felt a little cavalier that he was able to see her and then walk away from her. Again.

Overall, I mostly liked this movie. I do think it was longer than it needed to be. There were definitely some scenes that ran on.
 

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I read all the way until you said Hathaway was good lol. Loss of credibility right there moving on.

Well, she was believable.

Matthew's character wasn't (in all scenes) due to his accent.

His character showed almost no emotion for the first 2 hours of the movie, apart from a little bit of anger. Did he really miss his family? because there was no sign of it, until he got back from Waterworld. That's not necessarily Matthew's fault, but his character was pretty dull, considering the stakes.

Watch Killer Joe if you want to see a believable southerner played by Matthew.
 
Some of you guys are crazy. The scenes when Coop first gets back to the ship after years passing on earth and watching the videos of his kids....I’m not crying you’re crying.

It’s not perfect but it’s easily one of my favorites.
 
Well, she was believable.

Matthew's character wasn't (in all scenes) due to his accent.

His character showed almost no emotion for the first 2 hours of the movie, apart from a little bit of anger. Did he really miss his family? because there was no sign of it, until he got back from Waterworld. That's not necessarily Matthew's fault, but his character was pretty dull, considering the stakes.

Watch Killer Joe if you want to see a believable southerner played by Matthew.

I think he was kinda a realist realizing that this is what he had to do for his kids. He always went back to them. He didn't show crazy emotion until like you said after Waterworld but a lot of guys are just like that. Seemed reasonable to me because he thought he was securing their future and that he'd be back in time to experience most of it. Didn't play out that way and that's when he got sad.
 
No idea how NASA was supposed to understand his mumbling over an intercom, from across the galaxy.

I think he was kinda a realist realizing that this is what he had to do for his kids. He always went back to them. He didn't show crazy emotion until like you said after Waterworld but a lot of guys are just like that. Seemed reasonable to me because he thought he was securing their future and that he'd be back in time to experience most of it. Didn't play out that way and that's when he got sad.

He was a realist that didn't pay attention then. Michael Caine (the head of NASA) told him his daughters generation would be the last on earth, they'd choke to death. He didn't even ask the details when Caine told him the mission would take years. He showed little to no emotion as he left his kids also. The purpose of the mission wasn't to save his kids, it was to save humanity. If he did it for his kids, then the movie failed to show this, imo

The idea that they couldn't find a qualified pilot without kids is pretty ridiculous, therefore he didn't go because he had to (the mission was leaving the next day whether he discovered the base or not). He didn't go to save his kids, because the mission was to bring test tube babies, not his kids. So why did he go?

The conversation he had with his father provided insight into (what I consider to be) his characters true motivation. His dad said something about him being really good at something and not being allowed to pursue it. Which was being a pilot. This was why he lost it when they said his son was going to be a farmer. He was a dreamer, as evidenced by him chasing drones, wanting to be a pilot, hating being a farmer, wanting more for his son, following coordinates in the dust, flying off to far away galaxies without knowing the details, etc. He left to chase his dreams.

The gravity of his situation never hit home until he saw his kids all grown up, having moved on with their lives as if he was dead. The guilt caused him to jump into a black hole.

If you bought into the premise than I can see it being a great movie, but without the premise it's just frustrating, and by the time it gets good, I've kind of lost interest.

Some of you guys are crazy. The scenes when Coop first gets back to the ship after years passing on earth and watching the videos of his kids....I’m not crying you’re crying.

It’s not perfect but it’s easily one of my favorites.

No one bashed that scene. It was very powerful, and I did shed some tears. And Matthew was excellent in that scene.

Hathaway sold it too, she just had less to miss on earth, and felt less guilt for leaving.

But it was too little too late. The set-up to the story is juvenile, A few real scenes, and some interesting philosophical questions mixed into a bunch of Hollywood fluff isn't enough to constitute a great movie, imo. It was 6/10 for me.

And their reasoning for wasting 23 years on the planet was... ridiculous. The fact that they didn't even have anyone with enough intelligence to make these decisions, it's in-excusable imo, and it ruined any emotional or philosophical impact the film should've had.

I don't know, shit gets confusing. Cooper was receiving messages through the bookcase before he ever even left to go on the mission. That seems to indicate a time loop happening over and over.

It is a loop, but it started when he enters the black hole for the first time.

I would guess he went back to find Hathaway because he needed her help to re-enter the time loop, to go find his daughter (at some point in history) and make it up to her.
 
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No idea how NASA was supposed to understand his mumbling over an intercom, from across the galaxy.



He was a realist that didn't pay attention then. Michael Caine (the head of NASA) told him his daughters generation would be the last on earth, they'd choke to death. He didn't even ask the details when Caine told him the mission would take years. He showed little to no emotion as he left his kids also. The purpose of the mission wasn't to save his kids, it was to save humanity. If he did it for his kids, then the movie failed to show this, imo

The idea that they couldn't find a qualified pilot without kids is pretty ridiculous, therefore he didn't go because he had to (the mission was leaving the next day whether he discovered the base or not). He didn't go to save his kids, because the mission was to bring test tube babies, not his kids. So why did he go?

The conversation he had with his father provided insight into (what I consider to be) his characters true motivation. His dad said something about him being really good at something and not being allowed to pursue it. Which was being a pilot. This was why he lost it when they said his son was going to be a farmer. He was a dreamer, as evidenced by him chasing drones, wanting to be a pilot, hating being a farmer, wanting more for his son, following coordinates in the dust, flying off to far away galaxies without knowing the details, etc. He left to chase his dreams.

The gravity of his situation never hit home until he saw his kids all grown up, having moved on with their lives as if he was dead. The guilt caused him to jump into a black hole.

If you bought into the premise than I can see it being a great movie, but without the premise it's just frustrating, and by the time it gets good, I've kind of lost interest.



No one bashed that scene. It was very powerful, and I did shed some tears. And Matthew was excellent in that scene.

Hathaway sold it too, she just had less to miss on earth, and felt less guilt for leaving.

But it was too little too late. The set-up to the story is juvenile, A few real scenes, and some interesting philosophical questions mixed into a bunch of Hollywood fluff isn't enough to constitute a great movie, imo. It was 6/10 for me.

And their reasoning for wasting 23 years on the planet was... ridiculous. The fact that they didn't even have anyone with enough intelligence to make these decisions, it's in-excusable imo, and it ruined any emotional or philosophical impact the film should've had.



It is a loop, but it started when he enters the black hole for the first time.

I would guess he went back to find Hathaway because he needed her help to re-enter the time loop, to go find his daughter (at some point in history) and make it up to her.

Yeah maybe they didnt show it enough but i thought it was clear it was 4 his kids. Either way we didnt rate it much different i gave it a 7.
 
10/10.
I love this movie
 

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