Interstellar 2 - My God, it's full of SPOILERS

[Galactus]

So did 2001.

Well, yeah. As did Star Trek: The Motionless Picture. But at that point it's not really Hard SF any more.

[Shryke]

Well, yeah. As did Star Trek: The Motionless Picture. But at that point it's not really Hard SF any more.

By that definition, nothing is. It was hard for sci-fi.

And also, of course, it literally doesn't matter how hard the sci in the movie is. It's got zero to do with it's quality.

[Shryke]

Yeah I believe that was the whole gist of the schism between Murph and her brother. She mentions that many people are moving underground, tries to get them to safety there, but Tom refuses to go or allow his family to go. A lot of people would rather die in the open air than live in a cage.

The schism is more that her brother doesn't want to leave. "This is where we grew up, this is where the people who raised me are buried" and so on.

He is, essentially, the human who can't let go of where he came from. When one of the biggest themes/ideas of the movie is doing so.

[Arthmail]

Without reading through this thread too deeply, is the movie worth seeing? I'd like to think it is but the reviews have not been...stellar.

[Shryke]

Without reading through this thread too deeply, is the movie worth seeing? I'd like to think it is but the reviews have not been...stellar.

It's an amazing semi-hard sci-fi epic imo. It's definitely big and the kind of thing that really makes you appreciate what a movie theater is for.

It has it's quirks though and whether you will like it depends in large part on your tolerance for Nolan's style.

[Arthmail]

I'd felate him on a non-shower day. So. Yea, i'll go see this.

[williamjm]

Without reading through this thread too deeply, is the movie worth seeing? I'd like to think it is but the reviews have not been...stellar.

It's definitely a film that benefits from the big screen. While I had a mixed reaction to some parts of it I'd still say it was worth seeing overall.

[Raja]

Yeah, despite my numerous criticisms of the film, I've seen it twice and enjoyed it both times. Certainly something you should catch in the theatre, even if some parts are a bit strange and the writing is not the best.

[Sivin]

Took my sister last night 'cause she wanted to see it. I really enjoyed it on second viewing, strangely enough. The score was just fantastic, and the visuals were great of course. I think I just mentally checked out during the Grown Up Murphy scenes and after the tesseract.

Coming out the second time, I was much more impressed with Mathew McCaughnahay. Start to finish, I think he was really good.

Personally, though, I think I could make this movie perfect if I just edited a few things.

1) No grown up Murphy scenes after Dr. Brand dies.

3) Rearrange the order of scenes in the tesseract as such: Cooper realizes that he's looking into Murphy's room, and that he can bang on the bookshelf to crudely communicate. Show Dr. Brand's scene of landing on her boyfriend's planet to find him dead but the planet to be habitable. Cut back to Cooper as he tries to get himself to stay, and fails. We see the shot of him screaming out in emotional anguish as past Cooper leaves Murphy's room. Cut to credits.

[Galactus]

By that definition, nothing is. It was hard for sci-fi.

And also, of course, it literally doesn't matter how hard the sci in the movie is. It's got zero to do with it's quality.

Oh, agreed. The risible sentimentality condemns the film on it's own :p

[Whiskeyjack]

Just saw the movie this weekend. It was pretty good. Definitely enjoyed it. Especially the epic scale of the story.

That said, I'm going to focus on one criticism and one question.

Criticism

I hated the way they handled Cooper leaving his family. The way its presented in the film, he finds out about the mission, and very quickly decides to leave. There's some conflict in that his daughter doesn't want him to go, but we don't see any internal debate in Cooper. He's going, and everyone has to deal with it, even if it means that his kids will have to live without their father for years in a best case scenario.

I almost felt like he was excited to go - because it was the fulfillment of his dreams before the blight hit and changed everything. And maybe that's realistic, given that there are some people out there who prioritize career/discovery/etc over family. But the stakes were pretty huge here - losing 20+ years of your children's lives, at minimum. As a father, it's difficult for me to understand how Cooper could react by jumping on board with that, without a second thought. If the movie had shown him agonizing over the decision, and going back and forth over it, before ultimately deciding that the only way to save humanity and his family was to leave, in spite of the massive personal sacrifice that would entail.....then I would have bought it. But the way they did it, I ended up feeling that the emotional connection to Murphy and the reliance on "love" wasn't earned.

Question

There's one thing I don't understand, and I'm hoping somebody can clarify it for me. Maybe I just missed the explanation in the movie.

The wormhole was created/placed there by advanced/future humans who were trying to help the people on Earth. Is that right? Were those advanced/future humans the descendants of the people on Earth? If so, then how did they ever survive and become so advanced, to get to the point where they could go back in time and place the wormhole? Wouldn't the Endurance have to travel through the wormhole first, to establish life on the Edmunds planet, to then allow humanity to survive and become advanced? But with the creation of the wormhole tied to the existence of the future humans....it creates a chicken/egg type of paradox.

Basically -

Future humans required to create the wormhole.

Wormhole required to get to a point where future humans exist.

How are both possible? Or am I missing something? I'm guessing that I must be.

[Galactus]

.it creates a chicken/egg type of paradox.

Yes, it's a closed time-loop. Those are perfectly consistent :p

[felice]

But the stakes were pretty huge here - losing 20+ years of your children's lives, at minimum. As a father, it's difficult for me to understand how Cooper could react by jumping on board with that, without a second thought. If the movie had shown him agonizing over the decision...

The stakes on the other side were pretty huge too - the end of human civilisation and probable horrible death for himself, his family, and everyone he knows, if the mission doesn't succeed. There's not really any question as to which decision is the right one, just whether or not he can bear to make it. And it is obvious the movie is skimming over this part (most obviously in cutting straight from leaving the house to leaving the planet).

The wormhole was created/placed there by advanced/future humans who were trying to help the people on Earth. Is that right?

That was Cooper's speculation, as I recall; I don't think there was any actual evidence for it.

But with the creation of the wormhole tied to the existence of the future humans....it creates a chicken/egg type of paradox.

More or less the same paradox as Cooper's manipulation of past gravity being the thing that leads to him being stuck in the black hole in the first place. But I'm not keen on closed time-loops where the ability to travel in time is itself a product of the loop rather than merely enabling it.

[Whiskeyjack]

The stakes on the other side were pretty huge too - the end of human civilisation and probable horrible death for himself, his family, and everyone he knows, if the mission doesn't succeed.

Yeah, no question. I can definitely understand why he would choose to go on the mission. My problem is with him not struggling with the decision at all.

And it is obvious the movie is skimming over this part (most obviously in cutting straight from leaving the house to leaving the planet).

Sure....but I don't think that changes anything, unless you make assumptions regarding the time off-screen. They don't show us anything that indicates that he's weighing the options or even very torn up about leaving his kids for such a long period of time. At least not at the time when he's deciding to leave - it does impact him more later. He's upset that Murphy is upset, but personally I'd expect the decision itself to be agonizing for him.

That leaves me concluding that either (1) they failed in their attempt to depict his connection to his daughter, or (2) they showed exactly what they intended to show, and he's kind of an asshole. If #1 is true, then I think the intent behind the story is coherent, but its execution was problematic. If #2 is true, then it becomes a bit contradictory - how could he so easily decide to leave, without any struggle, but then at the same time love his daughter so much that it creates a connection to her through space/time?

I don't know - maybe #2 is true, the love part is bullshit/irrelevant, and the reality is that the future humans created a connection to her in the tesseract based on her intelligence/capabilities/familiarity, rather than on any sort of emotional connection.

[DaveSumm]

It's your basic Johnny Be Good paradox: if Chuck Berry stole it from Marty, then who actually wrote the song? BTTF makes for handy references cos it contains both destiny fulfilment (aforementioned, Goldie Wilson becoming Mayor) and alterations (most other parts of the film, parents becoming happier in 1985). Plus everyone's seen it, and it's awesome.

I had a friend who couldn't stand the end of The Terminator because of the arm they find (another closed loop, where did the actual knowledge come from?) but it's nigh on impossible to write a film without them. If you do anything at all to change the past, you lose the motivation to ever change it in the first place, so you have to throw in some paradoxes here and there.

[Jace, Extat]

It's your basic Johnny Be Good paradox: if Chuck Berry stole it from Marty, then who actually wrote the song? BTTF makes for handy references cos it contains both destiny fulfilment (aforementioned, Goldie Wilson becoming Mayor) and alterations (most other parts of the film, parents becoming happier in 1985). Plus everyone's seen it, and it's awesome.

I had a friend who couldn't stand the end of The Terminator because of the arm they find (another closed loop, where did the actual knowledge come from?) but it's nigh on impossible to write a film without them. If you do anything at all to change the past, you lose the motivation to ever change it in the first place, so you have to throw in some paradoxes here and there.

But Miles Dyson says that they were already working on the AI technology, the Arm and the Chip just jumped their progress forward. The date that the T-800 gives Sarah for Judgment day is only relevant to the timeline in which the Arm and Chip were found. Kyle Reese just gives her a vague '30 years' estimate.

[Shryke]

Yeah, no question. I can definitely understand why he would choose to go on the mission. My problem is with him not struggling with the decision at all.

He clearly struggles with the decision. He's basically trying to assuage his conscience by getting his daughter to make the decision for him throughout that whole scene.

[Whiskeyjack]

He clearly struggles with the decision. He's basically trying to assuage his conscience by getting his daughter to make the decision for him throughout that whole scene.

That's not how I saw it. Seemed to me that his mind was made up, and he was trying to convince her to support it.

If he was trying to get his daughter to make the decision for him.....well, she made it pretty clear what her decision would have been. She wanted him to stay. He ignored that, and went anyway. He didn't want her to make the decision - he wanted her to agree with his decision.

And before you say "regardless, the scene proves he cares and felt guilty about leaving" - I'm not arguing that he didn't care about her at all. I'm saying that it should have been an extremely difficult and emotional decision for him, and the movie didn't show that.

[Kalbear]

Yeah, I didn't like that either. It didn't ring true for me at all.

[Shryke]

That's not how I saw it. Seemed to me that his mind was made up, and he was trying to convince her to support it.

If he was trying to get his daughter to make the decision for him.....well, she made it pretty clear what her decision would have been. She wanted him to stay. He ignored that, and went anyway. He didn't want her to make the decision - he wanted her to agree with his decision.

And before you say "regardless, the scene proves he cares and felt guilty about leaving" - I'm not arguing that he didn't care about her at all. I'm saying that it should have been an extremely difficult and emotional decision for him, and the movie didn't show that.

It's not regardless of that, the very fact that he wants her to agree with his decision is what proves he is conflicted. If he wasn't conflicted about it, he wouldn't care what she thought. He wants her to give him permission to go to assuage his guilt.

The movie spends a long scene and the rest of the pre-launch scenes showcasing his conflict over the trip (and some of them before it too when Old Brand has to convince him why he has to go). That's the last thing we see before the space adventure begins for a reason and it's a point they come back to over and over again right up until the very end.