Interstellar (Christopher Nolan) *SPOILERS FROM POST 458 ONWARDS*

Ageyev

Duggy747 wrote: »

Was anyone expecting the robots to turn evil? :pac:

Yes actually. Was surprised they didn't. Also weird how there was no "evil" corporation (assuming NASA are supposed to be the good guys).

cloud493

I really liked the robots, their design and they way they move reminded me of something from a 70s movie.

And I'm absolutely a Nolan fan, just that this movie was so awful.

Mitch Connor

leggo wrote: »

So your big revelation, your trump card that proves everything I said to be untrue was...a shrewd bit of pedantry. That instead of moving the entire species to another planet, they'd moved them to another station orbiting a planet (i.e. effectively moved them to another planet - nothing about the plot or even the individual point you didn't even rebut changes)? Bravo, sir. That really changes everything.

That isn't my understanding of the plot.

They weren't just moved to a new planet near Saturn.

They had created massive space stations, on earth. They used the quantum mechenics information Cooper sends back (via the watch) to solve the Gravity equation and lift the space station (or stations, dunno about that) off earth thus moving LARGE quantities of the planets population in one go. This space station was making its way from Earth to the Worm Hole. The next stage of the plan is to travel to the planet and colonise it - they are on the way.

Plan A was to move the population to the new planet once found. They found the planet and thanks to the information in the watch they solved the gravity equation and thus Plan A was possible.

S.M.B.

Looks like everyone who loved this movie is a fanboy and everyone that disliked it is a Nolan hater who went into the movie with their mind already made up.

another hostile boards environment in which to have a proper discussion of what did and didn't work.

Shame as I do think it's a movie worth dissecting.

MayoForSam

cloud493 wrote: »

I really liked the robots, their design and they way they move reminded me of something from a 70s movie.

They looked to me like something out of Minecraft, a definite nod to HAL out of 2001 though.

I saw this yesterday, 7/10 for me.

9/10 for the overall spectacle, cinematography, sense of awe regarding the space travel. Lack of digital effects was refreshing. Score was excellent although very loud in parts. They overdid the shots of the outside of the Ranger from the same angle as well.

5/10 for the science and plot cohesiveness. There were a few too many details left unexplained. I did admire Nolan's aspirations to rekindle the audience's interest in space travel and exploration (the bit about the school text book being altered to denigrate the moon landings is something that might actually come to pass unfortunately).

8/10 for the cast - McConaughey fitted his role well, his relationship with his younger daughter was done well and pulled on the old heartstrings, Hathaway was good too (except for the speech about love being a factor in quantum mechanics). Affleck was good if a tad underused. Damon's reveal was a bit of a surprise (I had successfully avoided spoilers beforehand) although he must have been receiving plenty of sustenance in his hibernation tank (Dr. 'Michelin' Mann I presume?).

In terms of Nolan's movies, I would not rank this as high as The Prestige, TDK or Inception. Well worth a watch though on the big screen.

pixelburp

darced wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Goddamnit.
Does every negative thought on this film have to be dismissed as being contrarian, and descend into thinly-concealed personal insults? "I'm not racist but..." style comments. You say you're not accusing anyone here, yet that's exactly what you just did! "People who dislike the movie tend to be" ergo, people who didn't like it would tend to be ...

Do we all have to make some personal justification or context for our opinion, or can we not be grown-up enough to accept that a flawed film such as Interstellar has some good and bad. I hold my hands up and admit that the scientific pedantry is a bit OTT, but I still thought the film had more bad than good, and that's coming from someone who would have The Prestige in their top 10 favourite films, or thought Dark Knight Rises wasn't actually as bad as people made out -but god forbid we don't show enough fawning praise for St. Nolan, even during his most blatant cinematic misstep. Nope, easier to dismiss negativity and jump onboard the usual "movie critics are just bitter a-holes, they don't know what the people like" bru-ha-ha. It just destroys any attempt at proper, friendly discussion and rockets threads like these into stupid arguments of zealotry.

There's no agenda, there's no conspiracy or attempt to be lofty critic types, some people just couldn't get onboard this film, myself included. Heck, I don't want to watch Interstellar on the small screen because I have a sneaking suspicion that with the visual power diminished by size, all the glaring problems with the narrative will simply multiply.

Dan_Solo

Squeedily Spooch wrote: »

Ok then...

The Godfather: Mafia family son doesn't want to be involved, gets involved, takes over the family.

The Shawshank Redemption: Guy gets put in prison, gets out after making a friend.

2001: We go to space, find a slap of something, go further into space, robot goes mad, guy goes through wormhole, reborn as star baby..thing.

Alien: Bunch of truckers in space stop off at a planet, pick up alien, all but one die.

Blade Runner: Harrison Ford hunts down androids who were all going to die pretty soon anyway.

Those are the plots of those films.

They are not plots, they are premises and plot synopses. You may as well say "people do stuff" is the plot for 99% of movies if you want to take your disingenuousness to the max.

Mark Hamill

leggo wrote: »

Why did he send himself the coordinates to land him on a mission he's, at the same time, encouraging himself not to go on?

Because he was in denial at first? I think the length of time he was in the blackhole was not well represented.

leggo wrote: »

Legit question because I may have just forgotten: was there a reason Murph was inspired to go back to her old bookshelf or was it just a gut feeling? I'm sure there was, I just can't remember. But thinking about the editing again, it was edited very much like both revelations were simultaneous?

I imagine it was to do with the gravitational anomalies that kept happening there, combined with her believe that they were caused by someone (a ghost) that just led her to believe they were happening for a reason and that if she was going to figure out her equation that it would be there.

leggo wrote: »

I know he wasn't as close to the son, but why wasn't he even brought up at the end? So he's going to save Hathaway (why is this his job again?) instead of finding out what happened to his son?!?

He was probably told off-screen that his son died (not that that couldn't have happened on screen though).

leggo wrote: »

How did he not die of starvation in the time travel dimension? Surely in the time it took Murph to figure out the equation to save the human race, gather the resources, MOVE THE ENTIRE SPECIES TO A DIFFERENT PLANET, then send a crew to save him (but not Hathaway) he'd be a goner. Like, living in another dimension or not, he was still born human and has the same biological make-up. Even if you want to play the relativity card, I felt this whole aspect was under-developed for the sake of the surprise at the end (which could have still been achieved for the sake of not leaving something so gaping to the point it seems like trolling...you could've had a lad float in immediately after he sent the messages going, "Whoa, what the hell's going on here buddy? Any idea where the exit is, let's get you out of here?")

The amount of time he spent in the time-travel dimension is not well represented, assuming time even applied there, so it's perfectly possible that he simply didn't get hungry (either yet or at all).

Dan_Solo

pixelburp wrote: »

Heck, I don't want to watch Interstellar on the small screen because I have a sneaking suspicion that with the visual power diminished by size, all the glaring problems with the narrative will simply multiply.

I really don't get this mentality that says a movie gets a pass on everything because it's got a big special effects budget and is on at the IMAX. Every movie that costs $100+ million dollars looks pixel perfect, it's a given.
If I watch 2001 on an iPod the movie is now **** apparently.

Dan_Solo

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Because he was in denial at first? I think the length of time he was in the blackhole was not well represented.


I imagine it was to do with the gravitational anomalies that kept happening there, combined with her believe that they were caused by someone (a ghost) that just led her to believe they were happening for a reason and that if she was going to figure out her equation that it would be there.


He was probably told off-screen that his son died (not that that couldn't have happened on screen though).


The amount of time he spent in the time-travel dimension is not well represented, assuming time even applied there, so it's perfectly possible that he simply didn't get hungry (either yet or at all).

I think we're in Whovian territory now. Every plot hole or contradiction is explained by something that's not actually in the movie at all.

jones

Duggy747 wrote: »

Was anyone expecting the robots to turn evil? :pac:

I only just said that to my mate this morning...thats exactly what i was thinking i was waiting for them to intervenue for the "good of humanity" kinda thing. Gas to see a lot of us where thinking the same

leggo

For the record, it's a perfectly valid opinion to think, "Yeah that's a plot hole...but you know what, I don't care. I was entertained enough to overlook it." That happens ALL the time in different movies and TV shows. Nothing wrong with feeling it as a viewer. Enjoying something isn't the same as calling it perfect and flawless. This is not a flawless movie. That's not opinion - there are gaping holes in the plot, that's a flaw. Factually, it's a flawed movie.

To turn around and blame others for 'not understanding' things that then can't be rationally explained by people who claim to understand them better is just gonna cause arguments. As far as I can see, nothing that I've brought up in either of my initial posts here has been adequately explained or ruled out, it's just people choosing to overlook those aspects in favour of enjoying the movie. Again, no problem with that.

I still don't buy the whole coordinates/stay message. For me, there was no point where McConnaghey conveyed the transition (which he would've made in seconds) from begging himself to stay to 'I now accept that time is an infinite loop and that must comply with what's been done in the past'. Granted, the latter is a difficult facial expression to convey. It's certainly not one that they teach in acting school, I would imagine. There's never any motivation for him to send the coordinates. He establishes that he's made peace with the prospect of dying for this mission, that he wishes he'd never left Murph, he never at any stage establishes a good reason for him to convince his past self into leaving (btw - some memory on the chap to remember the exact coordinates after all those years away). It's another flaw. You can feel free to come up with some BS to right it inside of your head, but in doing so you'd be thinking about it more than Nolan did.

pixelburp

Dan_Solo wrote: »

I really don't get this mentality that says a movie gets a pass on everything because it's got a big special effects budget and is on at the IMAX. Every movie that costs $100+ million dollars looks pixel perfect, it's a given.
If I watch 2001 on an iPod the movie is now **** apparently.

Not sure what point you're making, but my own was that without the big canvas that the films (and many other films both blockbuster and indie) were made to live on, flaws and problems can be highlighted when the film is experienced out of context. So yeah, 2001's opening, slow-paced 45 minutes might be that bit more unbearable on a screen unsuited to its grand visuals. Oh and watching any film on an iPod is a bit of a travesty really

Dan_Solo

pixelburp wrote: »

Not sure what point you're making, but my own was that without the big canvas that the films (and many other films both blockbuster and indie) were made to live on, flaws and problems can be highlighted when the film is experienced out of context.

So a plot hole ceases to exist when the screen is above a certain size.
Interesting...:eek:

pixelburp

Dan_Solo wrote: »

So a plot hole ceases to exist when the screen is above a certain size.
Interesting...:eek:

What? No. Go back and re-read the post you first quoted. I said I don't want to watch Interstellar again on the small screen because I figure without the the cinematic experience , all I'll see will be the narrative problems that were there on first viewing. Never said plotholes stop existing, just that part of any film that grand in size and vision is the medium you watched it on.

Same with Gravity: without the experience of a cinema to envelop the watcher and suck them into space along with Sandra Bullock, the film's wonky script just stood out that bit more.

S.M.B.

leggo wrote: »

For the record, it's a perfectly valid opinion to think, "Yeah that's a plot hole...but you know what, I don't care. I was entertained enough to overlook it." That happens ALL the time in different movies and TV shows. Nothing wrong with feeling it as a viewer. Enjoying something isn't the same as calling it perfect and flawless. This is not a flawless movie. That's not opinion - there are gaping holes in the plot, that's a flaw. Factually, it's a flawed movie.

To turn around and blame others for 'not understanding' things that then can't be rationally explained by people who claim to understand them better is just gonna cause arguments. As far as I can see, nothing that I've brought up in either of my initial posts here has been adequately explained or ruled out, it's just people choosing to overlook those aspects in favour of enjoying the movie. Again, no problem with that.

I still don't buy the whole coordinates/stay message. For me, there was no point where McConnaghey conveyed the transition (which he would've made in seconds) from begging himself to stay to 'I now accept that time is an infinite loop and that must comply with what's been done in the past'. Granted, the latter is a difficult facial expression to convey. It's certainly not one that they teach in acting school, I would imagine. There's never any motivation for him to send the coordinates. He establishes that he's made peace with the prospect of dying for this mission, that he wishes he'd never left Murph, he never at any stage establishes a good reason for him to convince his past self into leaving (btw - some memory on the chap to remember the exact coordinates after all those years away). It's another flaw. You can feel free to come up with some BS to right it inside of your head, but in doing so you'd be thinking about it more than Nolan did.

When does he have the eureka moment where he realises the purpose of what was going on in the tesseract was to relay the newly found information to Murph. He explicitly stated how 'It wasn't about him, it was about her' or something to that effect. Was that pre or post communicating the co-ordinates?

Sidenote: How bad was Chastains Eureka moment?

Fysh

Dan_Solo wrote: »

I think we're in Whovian territory now. Every plot hole or contradiction is explained by something that's not actually in the movie at all.

I think there are some legitimate issues with plot holes and some questions people have that others think were well-addressed already in the film.

Of the questions leggo asked, I think the most pertinent one is "Why does Cooper change his mind in terms of the messages he sends?".

The reason, as I understood it, is that he's panicking at the time and not thinking about his actions - so he does the first thing he can think of and sends through the message "Stay". Then, seeing the reaction of himself at the time, he realises that he's dealing with a closed timeloop (ie The Terminator "nothing can be changed" time travel rules) and that he has always been the intelligence that communicated with his daughter. From this he infers that the Tesseract (higher-dimensional construct) in which he finds himself must have been built by "Them" (the lightning creatures seen when the Endurance first enters the wormhole) and that "them" must be far-future humans. This makes him realise that he was the person who provided Murph with the co-ordinates to NASA, so he does so again; and that he can use the same mechanism to encode information into the watch that he gave her when he left so that she'll be able to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics, essentially creating a unified theory.

I thought it was made reasonably clear that this was what was going on, but I'm also a keen sci-fi fan so I've watched and read a lot of stories with similar premises and so familiarity with the general ideas may have helped me fill the gaps more easily than someone who isn't so interested in sci-fi might have done.

I do think that the film's ending and epilogue were misjudged, not least because after telling us how important the Cooper/Murph bond is, she basically gets to see him again once after he's saved and then tells him to get lost and go find someone to whom he has far less of a bond. And he then shows little to no interest in any of the rest of his family and scarpers.

Personally, I think it would've been better served by ending when the Tesseract closes on Coop. We've had enough hints that the Tesseract is built by humans and that once Coop encodes the information in the watch Murph will find it and do her bit; but ending there lets it end with that same sense of wonder and travelling into the unknown, and would also save us a very clumsy ending that doesn't really tie up loose ends so much as cauterise them.

the_monkey

PhiloCypher wrote: »

The thing that surprises me most about the reaction to this film in this thread is how many people are listing off some pretty fundamental flaws in its makeup but still give it a 9.5 or call it a masterpiece. Its like due to all the goodwill Nolan has earned with the Batman films and the rest of his catalogue he gets an A grade by default.

I see these ratings as exponential , a 9.5 is a lot less then a 10.0.

A 6 is not much better then a 5.

So my 9.5 might seem high (and it is) but I was expecting a 10 ... so was dissapointed .

Mark Hamill

Dan_Solo wrote: »

I think we're in Whovian territory now. Every plot hole or contradiction is explained by something that's not actually in the movie at all.

They are not plot holes, they can be explained but just aren't explained in the movie itself. It's funny how for some people Nolan's biggest problem is exposition dumps that over explain everything and yet other people are still unsatisfied when he doesn't explain every little detail.

peteeeed

i really enjoyed it, slightly overlong but the soundtrack and visuals were wonderful

one thing matt damon looked like he was being fed very well on that planet

Mark Hamill

Fysh wrote: »

I do think that the film's ending and epilogue were misjudged, not least because after telling us how important the Cooper/Murph bond is, she basically gets to see him again once after he's saved and then tells him to get lost and go find someone to whom he has far less of a bond. And he then shows little to no interest in any of the rest of his family and scarpers.

I don't actually see the big problem with that though. Remember that Murph hasn't seen him in about 75 years, they are essentially strangers (her descendants are complete strangers to him). Frankly it would be far healthier for him to go off and find Hathaways' character (the only human left he knows) than to stay and dwell on all the time he missed with his kids.

S.M.B.

peteeeed wrote: »

i really enjoyed it, slightly overlong but the soundtrack and visuals were wonderful

one thing matt damon looked like he was being fed very well on that planet

I thought the soundtrack was far too intrusive. There were times where I missed very important lines of dialogue due to the over the top nature of the score.

Apparently, Nolan and Zimmer were trying to take maximum advantage of the technology on offer at the moment but it came at a cost.

peteeeed

S.M.B. wrote: »

I thought the soundtrack was far too intrusive. There were times where I missed very important lines of dialogue due to the over the top nature of the score.

Apparently, Nolan and Zimmer were trying to take maximum advantage of the technology on offer at the moment but it came at a cost.

yeah i agree slightly , i'll saw it on the IMAX screen , it was booming out at times

peteeeed

the 35mm version supposedly doesn't have this issue, the lighthouse i think is showing it in this format

S.M.B.

Well I saw the 70mm IMAX version and my ears were bleeding. I had no problem with the sheer volume for the majority of the movie but there were definitely times when key bits of dialogue were borderline inaudible.

Felt like more over reaching from Nolan. Or just an incompetent sound mixer. I doubt it was the latter.

Giruilla

The overall visuals and tone of the film was nowhere near the standard of Nolans previous films with Wally Pfister. All the scenes on earth felt very TV drama-ish.

darced

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johnny_ultimate

Folks, I'm going to have to ask nicely that we stop with these generalised, condescending insults against people who disagree with you (and not just because we have a charter rule about it - don't make us start enforcing it).

As soon as you resort to name calling, 'you didn't get it' or 'fanboy' type arguments, you're killing your own argument, narrowing off the potential for genuine discussion of the points you are trying to make. It truly is the case that people have different opinions to you, and one person's masterpiece is another's turd (and there are in fact a considerable amount of less polar positions, many of which have already been articulated in this thread). Respect that people will disagree with you, debate points and arguments in a civil and respectful manner. When you start dismissively attacking everyone who disagrees with you as 'wrong', the thread takes on a toxic environment that good posters with genuine insights stop wanting to read or post in - that's a ****ty outcome for all of us, because the best posts really do offer us perspectives that might enhance and challenge our own individual responses to the film.

This happens with every Christopher Nolan thread - I guess it is simply because he is a film making films for mainstream audiences that refuse to adhere to the norm. Divisiveness is to expected when dealing with someone doing something different. But please don't let this descend into another Dark Knight Rises moanfest and insultathon - these are films worthy of debate, just don't get up in arms when someone might not agree with your assessment of Interstellar's quality or worth.

eviltimeban

To everybody going on about the credibility of the science and so on: it does require suspension of disbelief, and there's some things that are just left "as is".

What gets me annoyed is everyone going on about this, yet people were fine with a machine that allowed Leonardo Di Caprio to walk around in your dreams and tell you what to do.

pixelburp

darced wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

There's nothing wrong with being a fanboy if it's all in good spirits and there's an acceptance that maybe the fanboys' favourite thing isn't for everyone or isn't perfect. I post often enough in the Dr. Who forum to understand that notion

Breathless waxing lyrical of a film isn't particularly constructive either, but it's harmless enough. If however it comes laced with put-downs and declarations that those with an opposing view, those who might feel Insterstellar wasn't that great, have agendas or pretensions, then yeah I have a problem. I'm not particularly happy about feeling pressurized into personal justifications just to warrant an opinion on a film.

There's plenty of discussion to be had about this film, and it's definitely worth it, just that particular spirit of belittling doesn't do much for the thread

edit: johnny_u, no idea if my posts come under your warning a few posts up, so apologies if this one continues that trend you're trying to avoid.