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

o1s1n

the_monkey wrote: »

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 .

A scale rating system does not work on exponential growth, that's ridiculous.

If that's the case, then your scale makes zero sense.

If you're giving something '9.5' you're saying it's almost perfect. 0.5 away from being perfect.

To say you're disappointed by a film you gave a 9.5 to is as ridiculous as an 'exponential' rating scale.

Nervous Wreck

Quick note on the audio: A lot of people are saying the soundtrack was too intrusive and drowned out a lot of the dialogue etc.. This wasn't a problem with the film, it was a problem with the cinema you saw it in. The sound in the screen I saw this in was perfect, with nothing drowned out, music not intrusive at all. I'd say that would pretty much ruin the (well, any) film tbh... :-/

Dan_Solo

pixelburp wrote: »

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.

We're obviously looking for different things from the movies we watch. It's plot and story that I want to be grand, not the booms and whooshes. Like I said, I expect sensory overload at the big screen for $150,000,000, which Transformers and X-men etc can do just as well even though they are definitely and unashamedly garbage.

Nervous Wreck

Dan_Solo wrote: »

We're obviously looking for different things from the movies we watch. It's plot and story that I want to be grand, not the booms and whooshes. Like I said, I expect sensory overload at the big screen for $150,000,000, which Transformers and X-men etc can do just as well even though they are definitely and unashamedly garbage.

Hmmm.... I think you're still missing pixelburp's point....

Dan_Solo

eviltimeban wrote: »

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".

I still don't get this blight thing. Arguing astrophysics and time travel mechanics is a bit irrelevant when the entire premise of the film is a black box.

Dan_Solo

Nervous Wreck wrote: »

Hmmm.... I think you're still missing pixelburp's point....

I don't think so. I reckon we're just different people.

johnny_ultimate

I saw the 35mm print, and the dialogue was undoubtedly drowned out on a number of occasions by the music. But, on most occasions, I think it kind of worked - during action sequences or setpieces, the amplified music (and the environmental sounds) obscuring the dialogue made sense because the manic intensity of the scenes. There were one or two scenes were the sound mix felt off, though - not sure if the professor's death scene, which I thought was barely comprehensible, was a result of Caine's performance or the mixing (both, potentially!)

I'd be curious to hear what shape the film was in when Spielberg was attached. If it was broadly similar to what we have here, I can see how he would have been attracted to the material. The shameless sentimental streak and extended epilogue (which IMO was another example of the film's tendency towards over-explanation and was less impactful for it) put me in mind of A.I. more than anything - wearing its heart on its sleeve and committing to the fantastical destination of the story without so much as a cheeky wink. There's something commendable about a director trusting the material enough to be so earnest about it and committed to it, but Interstellar and A.I. suffer from trying to wrap up the unexplainable and mysterious in a nice little package.

Both films are actually riffs, variations on or at least affectionately indebted to Stanley Kubrick material, come to think of it, although obviously we don't know how his take on A.I. would have turned out.

Duggy747

jones wrote: »

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

When TARS was alone looking at Murph's video where she was angry and told them there was no hope for the earth I was certain the sneaky robot would've deleted / manipulated the footage. I've a feeling Nolan kept them ambigious enough to have people question them when it became apparent they had no malice to them.

In the end they were the good guys who had no problem sacrificing themselves for the greater good :pac:

MickeyD

The sound problems probably stem from the audio EQ in the cinema - apparently for most IMAX movies they really up the volume and bass.

Squeedily Spooch

Dan_Solo wrote: »

I still don't get this blight thing. Arguing astrophysics and time travel mechanics is a bit irrelevant when the entire premise of the film is a black box.

Who cares? the planet is dying, the why and what of it is irrelevant. Same with Sunshine, the sun is dying and scientists have to save it, it's never explained why because it doesn't matter.

pixelburp

Dan_Solo wrote: »

We're obviously looking for different things from the movies we watch. It's plot and story that I want to be grand, not the booms and whooshes. Like I said, I expect sensory overload at the big screen for $150,000,000, which Transformers and X-men etc can do just as well even though they are definitely and unashamedly garbage.

Again, this really wasn't the point I was making in the first place when you quoted me about re-watching Interstellar from my sofa. If you crave plot and story above all, then fair enough, we're not as different as you're thinking we are, but nor was I making the point that bangs and whooshes were trumping any problems in the script.

Nor is it about sensory overload really. If I want overload I'll go on a rollercoaster; a joy of cinema, imo, is the experience of being enveloped in a film, being part of its narrative. Strip that away and - potentially - deficiencies in a story might become that bit more stark when the context of the screening itself is lost.

That's the beauty of cinema and why it's such an individual, unique medium: if anything, for me, cinema is about sensory deprivation, being enveloped by a narrative, your outer senses being relegated while the ultimate in visual media uses its 2D surface to suck you into the emotion and context of a story using sight and sound. Yeah it can be used to for pure thrills and whooshes, but it's also used to sell a story.

Fysh

Dan_Solo wrote: »

I still don't get this blight thing. Arguing astrophysics and time travel mechanics is a bit irrelevant when the entire premise of the film is a black box.

The premise as I took it is that as a result of commoditised farming standardising the crops grown by farmers in large areas, crop blights became a bigger issue - with one in particular devastating corn. (The characters talk about "blight" as a singular thing, but I assume that's because they're primarily corn-growers). There's a sort of Non-Specific Background Post-Apocalyptic Scenario going on, where around a billion people have died (the film mentions something about having 6 billion people on earth) as a result of Environmental Issues such as the dust storms and crop blights. Whether they're due to global warming, some unspecified nuclear exchange affecting the environment or any other factor is unspecified, and largely irrelevant. The point to take away is, The Earth Is Banjaxed And Humanity's Only Hope For Survival Is To Take To The Stars.

Apparently the inspiration for the initial setup is taken from a Ken Burns documentary called The Dust Bowl, named after a phenomenon that occured during the Great Depression. The interview clips shown during the start of the film are taken from this documentary.

Crop blights are real, dust storms are real. I'm not sure why they would be a particular issue in terms of suspension of disbelief, especially when they're a rightly-backgrounded mcguffin to set up the film.

eviltimeban

The only plot hole I thought of was....






.... if they could only grow corn, what kind of beer were they drinking? Corn beer?

Dan_Solo

Squeedily Spooch wrote: »

Who cares? the planet is dying, the why and what of it is irrelevant. Same with Sunshine, the sun is dying and scientists have to save it, it's never explained why because it doesn't matter.

It only matters if you want science in your science fiction I guess. I'm just never sure why they even pretend at "realism" and hire science consultants for these types of movies though when it's very clear from your and many other comments here that nobody cares. Is it just good advertising for a movie to say it has real science in it, whether true or not?

Dan_Solo

eviltimeban wrote: »

The only plot hole I thought of was....






.... if they could only grow corn, what kind of beer were they drinking? Corn beer?

Soylent beer? :-)

Dan_Solo

Fysh wrote: »

The premise as I took it is that as a result of commoditised farming standardising the crops grown by farmers in large areas, crop blights became a bigger issue - with one in particular devastating corn. (The characters talk about "blight" as a singular thing, but I assume that's because they're primarily corn-growers). There's a sort of Non-Specific Background Post-Apocalyptic Scenario going on, where around a billion people have died (the film mentions something about having 6 billion people on earth) as a result of Environmental Issues such as the dust storms and crop blights. Whether they're due to global warming, some unspecified nuclear exchange affecting the environment or any other factor is unspecified, and largely irrelevant. The point to take away is, The Earth Is Banjaxed And Humanity's Only Hope For Survival Is To Take To The Stars.

Apparently the inspiration for the initial setup is taken from a Ken Burns documentary called The Dust Bowl, named after a phenomenon that occured during the Great Depression. The interview clips shown during the start of the film are taken from this documentary.

Crop blights are real, dust storms are real. I'm not sure why they would be a particular issue in terms of suspension of disbelief, especially when they're a rightly-backgrounded mcguffin to set up the film.

Blights and dust are real, yes, but limited in global effect. I'd say the earth has seen worse over the last billion years though and it's still going strong.

Edit: this sort of eco-collapse was better addressed in No Blade Of Grass.

brevity

What I liked:

The look and the sound of the whole move was excellent.
I loved some of the silent shots of the ship moving/docking etc
The ship and suits looked suitably worn...and lived in. For what of a better phrase, it felt real.
The cast for the most part all worked well together.
The spinning docking scene was bracing and very done.
The robots!
2001, Event Horizon, HHGTTG references/nods
Felt like a sci-fi movie.

What I didn't like so much:

Matt Damon was miscast imo. While he was good, I think having him there kinda snapped me out of the movie a small bit. It was like "Oooo Matt Damon's in this"
Some of the writing, dialog was...off. A bit too much melodrama.
Maybe the whole bookshelf stuff at the end...still on the fence about that.

More good than bad for me!

cloud493

Didnt have any audio problems myself, the score was one of the highlights of it.

SuprSi

I had major audio issues, with the voices being drowned out and to make matters worse, a rattling subwoofer! I've had a day to reflect and still absolutely love the movie. I'll be sneakily popping back to watch it again on Thursday week when wifey heads to London for the night. I haven't watched a movie in the cinema more than once since Gladiator, and the Matrix before that (although I very nearly went back to see Inception)

Drumpot

brevity wrote: »

What I liked:

The look and the sound of the whole move was excellent.
I loved some of the silent shots of the ship moving/docking etc
The ship and suits looked suitably worn...and lived in. For what of a better phrase, it felt real.
The cast for the most part all worked well together.
The spinning docking scene was bracing and very done.
The robots!
2001, Event Horizon, HHGTTG references/nods
Felt like a sci-fi movie.

What I didn't like so much:

Matt Damon was miscast imo. While he was good, I think having him there kinda snapped me out of the movie a small bit. It was like "Oooo Matt Damon's in this"
Some of the writing, dialog was...off. A bit too much melodrama.
Maybe the whole bookshelf stuff at the end...still on the fence about that.

More good than bad for me!

Pretty much agree with that. .

I had extremely high expectations for this movie and came out of it not feeling disappointed, but not blown away like I was with other Nolan movies.
This isn't an insult to the movie, Nolan has set the bar so high, I still rate this movie 8/10. To come out of one of his movies and not feel disappointed will usually garner this score for me.

I will prob go and see it again in the cinema and for anybody thinking of waiting for it to come out on DVD, don't . . Its a movie made for the big screen and will be best enjoyed in the cinema .

FlyingIrishMan

SuprSi wrote: »

I had major audio issues, with the voices being drowned out and to make matters worse, a rattling subwoofer! I've had a day to reflect and still absolutely love the movie. I'll be sneakily popping back to watch it again on Thursday week when wifey heads to London for the night. I haven't watched a movie in the cinema more than once since Gladiator, and the Matrix before that (although I very nearly went back to see Inception)

I had the rattling subwoofer too, are we sure it wasn't for effect? Only happened every time they went through the wormhole/blackhole.

the_monkey

o1s1n wrote: »

A scale rating system does not work on exponential growth, that's ridiculous.

If that's the case, then your scale makes zero sense.

If you're giving something '9.5' you're saying it's almost perfect. 0.5 away from being perfect.

To say you're disappointed by a film you gave a 9.5 to is as ridiculous as an 'exponential' rating scale.

I don't know ... sorry for me it works.


I can't give this film a 7 , I was absolutely AMAZED and enthralled during this film, but was a little bit annoyed about the whole watch and morse code stuff ...

that's why I gave it the 9.5 ... as said when expecting greatness the smallest thing can niggle at you.

SuprSi

FlyingIrishMan wrote: »

I had the rattling subwoofer too, are we sure it wasn't for effect? Only happened every time they went through the wormhole/blackhole.

Yeah that's true for me too - maybe it was for effect? Weird if so as it genuinely sounded like a defective speaker.

S.M.B.

Nervous Wreck wrote: »

Quick note on the audio: A lot of people are saying the soundtrack was too intrusive and drowned out a lot of the dialogue etc.. This wasn't a problem with the film, it was a problem with the cinema you saw it in. The sound in the screen I saw this in was perfect, with nothing drowned out, music not intrusive at all. I'd say that would pretty much ruin the (well, any) film tbh... :-/

I don't think it was a problem with the cinema I saw it in. I watched it in the BFI IMAX which would have highly trained staff on hand to calibrate everything as intended. I'm certainly not chalking this down to inept local cinema staff/sub standard equipment.

The movie has been mixed to maximise low level frequencies which may have had a big effect.

The sound on INTERSTELLAR has been specially mixed to maximize the power of the low end frequencies in the main channels as well as in the sub woofer channel. This effect is present is in all available presentations of INTERSTELLAR, all of which have been designed to play back at the volume level designated by the industry at 7 on the Dolby cinema processor.

There was also minimal use of surround sound.

There are stories of people having issues with the sound in a theatre that Nolan himself chose as the optimum place to watch the movie.

http://www.slashfilm.com/interstellar-sound-issues/

johnny_ultimate raises a valid point that the inaudible moments may be a fully intentional artistic decision though.

the_monkey

eviltimeban wrote: »

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.

Sure is, but we have a precedent depending on the show/film.

For example I love 24 - I suspend disbelief a lot for this show
it's within it's own limits if Jack Bauer kills a group of 20 armed
mercenaries with his bare hands and dodges all their bullets.


I also like Downton Abbey , it would be a bit ridicolous if Lord Grantham
did the above in an episode - and you couldn't say "You need to suspend disbelief" for me to accept it.

So for some people here they felt parts were maybe outside this movies
limits - for me the watch / bookcase thing was crossing the line (but im accepting it more and more as the days go on)

Others maybe the exaggerated time dilation on the lagoon world - whatever- point being suspension of disbelief doesn't always validate a films flaws.

eviltimeban

the_monkey wrote: »

So for some people here they felt parts were maybe outside this movies limits - for me the watch / bookcase thing was crossing the line (but im accepting it more and more as the days go on) .

For me, this section took the movie to another level. I was absolutely enthralled, gripped, worried and delighted by that whole scene. I was expecting a deus ex machina but it wasn't that (not quite anyway) and I thought MMC's acting was fantastic here. The graphics were amazing (one fair use of CGI in the movie) and I pretty much had no idea what was going to happen. Was he going to be stuck there forever? Die? "Reset" and go back to the start?

The visuals stick with you - the bookshelves, the massive waves (awesome!), the robot turning into a spinning wheel. Cool stuff.

The "23 years later" part was *amazing* - the whole cinema, as I noted before, were entirely bazinga-ed by that part. It was like something from Star Trek TNG, one of their crazy what the hell's going on / is Riker really old / time is frozen episodes. I always thought they were cool, and Interstellar had a few nods to that I reckon.

the_monkey

brevity wrote: »

What I liked:

The look and the sound of the whole move was excellent.
I loved some of the silent shots of the ship moving/docking etc
The ship and suits looked suitably worn...and lived in. For what of a better phrase, it felt real.
The cast for the most part all worked well together.
The spinning docking scene was bracing and very done.
The robots!
2001, Event Horizon, HHGTTG references/nods
Felt like a sci-fi movie.

What I didn't like so much:

Matt Damon was miscast imo. While he was good, I think having him there kinda snapped me out of the movie a small bit. It was like "Oooo Matt Damon's in this"
Some of the writing, dialog was...off. A bit too much melodrama.
Maybe the whole bookshelf stuff at the end...still on the fence about that.

More good than bad for me!

Funny , I agree with all your post except the Matt Damon part, I think he was fantastic, that speech he gave Coop when they went on their trek was amazing ...

Drumpot

the_monkey wrote: »

Funny , I agree with all your post except the Matt Damon part, I think he was fantastic, that speech he gave Coop when they went on their trek was amazing ...

Particularly when he says "I thought I would watch, but I don't want to watch" and then starts asking "do you see your children" . . Really unnerving conversation given the context. .

FlyingIrishMan

Neil DeGrasse Tyson spoke postively about the science behind the whole film.

http://www.hugecool.com/2014/11/interstellar-gets-unexpected-twitter.html

Obviously not past the black hole part as that was all fictional, but up until that.

K-9

Thought it was pretty good, only felt it dragged for maybe 10/15 minutes.

Some of the editing was brilliant to juxtapose scenes in space and on earth, cleverly knitted together.
Probably an 8/10 overall.

I loved John Lithgow in it, very understated. Caine just didn't work for me in it, but I suppose maybe the character isn't supposed to really!