Interstellar

Just wondering what everyone thought about this film. I'm a huge sci-fi fan, but I hadn't seen this. It from the looks of it seems like a film that belongs alongside the best sci-fi films, but from what I've seen in terms of consensus, it isn't quite. What holds it back? Seems like there are a lot of concepts, and it might become confusing to follow for some. What did you think of it, or have you yet to see it yourself? I wonder when it comes out on Amazon or blu ray.

It's great up until it becomes unbearably sappy. Fuck science, the power of love will save us!

@corevi: Did you basically spoil it? :P

@ntm: No. What actually happens is even dumber than that.

Yeah, mostly great, and some pretty solid science. We need more hard sci-fi movies. Unfortunately, like Corevi said, it's also eye-rollingly maudlin sometimes. It's particularly obnoxious when these "scientists" we've entrusted the future of humanity to go on about love transcending space not in a metaphorical sense, but literally. I was groaning out loud.

i like this film

It's a really solid movie, but it goes off the rails at some point and ends up being kind of a mess in the end. This did not stop me from appreciating the first three quarters of the movie though. Ultimately I think the problem is that some of the ideas were too big for a movie. Maybe it would have been better as a mini series or something.

Also you guys will never get anywhere with that attitude. Believe in the power of love!

Edit: I brought this to thaw your cold dead hearts.

It was my favorite movie of the year and yeah the story gets silly but the acting is incredible and sells it really well

The "power of love" stuff can be a little much, but overall I think it fits with the movie that Nolan is trying to make. The whole thing feels like a love letter to the sci-fi films of the 60's and 70's. I thought the entire film was excellent (barring that one speech from Anne Hathaway, which I felt was hammier than anything in the end of the film).

I haven't seen it, and I never really intend to, it just doesn't sound like my kind of film. My brother has seen it though, and he said it was really good, so it has that going for it. The plot just sounds like it'd be sad and not something I'd be up for at all.

For a brief moment though I thought you were referring to this song, which is pretty rad.

Loved it, I will be picking up the blu ray because I really want to hear the commentary.

It's a stupid film.

The film was like seeing a movie through the eyes of Mathew Mcconaughey, I was tripping balls by the end.

I wanted the movie to be just the middle part with the surprise cameo. That was a good movie, not the bullshit about love or the real bullshit of "we need farmers, not engineers." Come on.

@random45: Yeah, my brother saw it as well and said it was good. He said he liked it more than Gravity, and that he almost teared up in some parts. He's not really a fan of sci-fi like I am though, so our opinions differ in that way.

I loved Interstellar, but there were some things about it that rubbed me the wrong way. First off, the dialogue is pretty terrible throughout. There are a lot of female scientists, which is great, but they are too dependent on men for their motives (Murph feels betrayed by her father for... some reason, and Brand is willing to doom humanity to see the man she loves again).

The first act is also pretty bad. If Cooper is the only pilot capable of the mission, what were the scientists' plans to begin with? Why did they feel the need to play those dust bowl documentary clips twice in the first act and then not reference them again until the ending?

Also, the guy who died on the water planet is such a non-character and had one of the most meaningless deaths I've seen in a film in a while. Dude's just there to hang out, gets to the ship, but dies anyway for no reason? Okay.

I think the script needed a few more drafts, honestly. I still think the movie is incredible, but so many thing hold it back from being truly great.

I really enjoyed it. Watching it in imax was a pretty intense experience.

Dudes, don't spoil it too much. I saw the first 30 minutes and wondered when the hell it was going to pick up.

Is this that sci-fi movie that wasn't Gravity?

But yeah all jokes aside, I don't like it. I like that it took risks and managed to make its premise not so convoluted to meaninglessness, but it was still cheesy and mawkish in all the wrong ways.

Interstellar 5555 is an great musical movie with really nice Daft Funk songs , amazing Leiji Matsumoto character designs and....er wait there is another film named interstellar?

That's Interstella, no r. Also Daft Punk not Funk.

Fantastic film though and the best music video ever for the best album ever.

Great film, fantastic soundtrack. Has a handful of issues, one of which is pretty big.

@corevi: Whoops :/ anyway glad for the corrections

It was good. Not at all subtle with its ideas and has some serious pacing issues, but the effects are incredible. Some of the things you see are just awe-inspiring.

Dialogue can get really hokey though. To the point where you feel bad for the actors, because goddamnit they're really trying to work with what they got.

I agree that it had its fair share of problems, but I really enjoyed it. Somewhere between the beginning and the middle, it drags a bit. However I didn't mind the sappiness of the movie. The "love will save us" parts are kind of weird, but the relationship between Cooper and his family and how they "interacted" with each other during the voyage was touching, even though it seemed kind of cliche. Honestly though, the movie ends up being a fantasy more than a sci-fi. I don't really mind as the movie goes a lot farther than you expect it to, and I like it when movies do that (well, when they can pull it off in an exciting fashion).

And yes, the soundtrack was great. Zimmer said the first thing Nolan asked for was a track about the connection between a father and his kid, and that became the centerpiece around which the rest of the movie was built on.

I personally loved the film. I thought the story was enthralling the whole way through. The acting was great; I really felt for the characters and I was rather emotional at parts. Plus that soundtrack is so good. The movie, for me, draws a lot of parallels to 2001: A Space Odyssey which I also loved. Just like in that movie, the music complements the on screen visuals well. Man that part on the first planet! Damn that got me going! (You'll know if you see it).

I feel what really makes or breaks the movie for most people is the ending. It does get pretty bizarre and potentially sappy (and even I had a few initial eye rolls). However, it again reminded me of the crazy ending of 2001. Both kind of put the sci-fi off to the side for a moment and present some pretty radical imagery/ideas.

You may not enjoy it but I would definitely give it a shot, especially if you are a sci-fi fan.

As other people have said in this topic, the movie is pretty good up to the power of love stuff. Most of the sci-fi stuff is good (not scientifically correct, but they at least try), the acting is mediocre, and the visuals are hit or miss.

If you have a film trying to show fantastic concepts you can't just throw in love nonsense in there it kind of ruins the realism. I think Nolan just could not find a deep way to write the script where the protagonist dies in space so he resorted to this crazy crap. Also the earth setting didn't seem very fleshed out to me, it seemed like you could innovate against this sand storm stuff, if a house can survive them then so can a Greenhouse.

I really liked it, though I don't know if it would be quite the spectacle outside of a movie theatre.

The soundtrack is out of this world.

I must admit i'm a rare one but... I hated this movie! I expected a lot because I love Nolan, but I found the movie boring...slow...predictable!

The science behind it was actually awesome. That particular scene looked goofy, but I have to give them credit for even trying to film such a theory that has only been... well... theorized. I just didn't like the writing of the main character for that part, because it made a really awesome scientific theory come across as 'power of love' indeed.

Its a gorgeous movie but quite mediocre in everything except audio/visual spectacle. Nolan is just not good at writing dialogue or characters, I cringed multiple times in disbelief to what the characters were saying. Its unbelievably sappy, the first half of Sunshine is all together better than the entirety of Interstellar.

Soundtrack and visuals make it a must own for your blu ray collection, but just don't think too much about it.

Pretty sure there's already a thread about the movie you could check up on, but I'll just reiterate what I've already said. It's a movie that flounders around trying to be many different things and ends up not being great at either. There are some truly spectacular moments, but the overall cohesion is lacking.

Loved it!

@ntm: Interstellar is great sci-fi in a sort of olds chool sense. When I came out of the theatre I thought it had quite literally everything a movie of that genre should have. Unlike what @corevi claims there isn't an over abundance of sappiness in it, but rather a strong showing of human nature clashing with common sense - saying more would probably spoil parts of it. Maybe for some who aren't used to more classical cinema the displays of emotion can be off putting, but if you like good stories with strong characters it's an absolute treat.

First 3/4 were amazing, last 1/4 was total shite. But thats basically par for the course with my experiences with Nolan.

Is it more The Dark Knight writing, or Man of Steel writing? I liked The Dark Knight trilogies writing, and actually felt some of it was kind of inspirational, but Man of Steel's writing was like many are saying about this film, sappy, which helped lead that film into mediocrity.

@ntm: Never seen Man of Steel due to bad reviews and general apathy towards Supes but it's definitely worse than the The Dark Knight trilogy in terms of writing.

Coincidentally The Dark Knight Rises and this movie bith have something in common. Terrible endings.

@ntm: I'd say it's not similar to either because it deals with less cartoonish characters but if forced to choose it's probably more in line with the Dark Knight. Not as one dimensional as Man of Steel.

Yeah, there was a thread exactly about this about two months ago.

Either way, I enjoyed it. It's not one of the best sci-fi movies of all times like some said around it's launch, but it's a decent return to a kind of sci-fi movie that we haven't gotten in 15 years or so. Back in the 90's there were a lot of good to fantastic sci-fi movies in this vein, Contact, Red Planet, Gattaca, Mission to Mars (and to some extent Sphere and Event Horizon) etc.

I'd say Interstellar is pretty much on par with them, though at times it does feel a bit much like it's just a mashup of scenes from Contact and Red Planet with some 2001 and Tarkovsky's Solaris thrown in at the end for good measure. Not a whole lot of original content, other than the much better CGI than we used to have back in the day (I still think the micro-gravity liquid fire in Red Planet looked pretty great though).

I think it could've done without the silly "NASA is hiding and doing a space program in secret" sub plot. They really wouldn't have changed anything about the core of the movie by just setting it in a world closer to ours - everything after they go to space could've been exactly the same, only the whole background story would've come across as a lot more credible.

I do hope it's apparent success with critics and viewers means we could possibly see the return of the sci-fi movies of the 90's which weren't all just action blockbusters like the new Star Trek was. In many ways, Interstellar was a better Star Trek movie than that one.

I saw it on 70 mm IMAX and it was incredible. One of the best movie experiences of my life. I really enjoyed the movie itself, even though I had some nitpicks with some plot elements. Nothing bad can be said about the music, sound, or visuals, as all were stunning.

The movie's message wasn't, "we need farmers, not engineers". In fact many people take an opposite stance as you by saying the movie was too strong in saying that science can fix everything and dumb farmers don't get us anywhere.

It was an incredible visual experience and I liked it a lot. The complaints others have brought up are valid, though: It veers a little too hard into sappy nonsense. It far from ruined the film for me though.

Edit: Oh, right, and the soundtrack is one of my favourites of all time. Hans Zimmer makes interesting sounds like nobody else. I never thought an organ could sound so amazing.

@fisk0: Maaan, I don't know if I would technically classify Contact as sci-fi or Red Planet as a "good movie" but Interstellar certainly does harken back to those older days of sci-fi for sure.

Neither of them are flawless for sure, nor is Interstellar. That's why I'd hesitate to bring it up among the big classics like Solaris and 2001, but I really liked that era of 90's sci-fi, despite their flaws, and I think Interstellar would've fit well into that group had it been released around 1997-2002 rather than now.

I think some of the praise Interstellar has been getting comes from the fact that we haven't had movies like that in almost 15 years, without any competition it kinda wins in the genre by default.

@fisk0: I think it's impossible to compare any movie to 2001 and not because that was a flawless sci fi gem, but because it's from another era. I still think it's great in its own way, but you really cannot compare modern cinema to it at all because us so apart from where we are right now - transcendent but not through sheer quality.

As much as I enjoyed Solaris, to say that Interstellar doesn't even match it is really underselling that amazing movie. Tonally they are obviously very different although they both share the common thread of using technology as a backdrop for discussing the human condition. If anything Interstellar is vastly superior to Solaris because of its scope alone and amazing cinematography. To me it is definitely a movie that will go down as one of the classics.

Of course above I'm referencing the George Clooney Solaris remake and not the original. If you're speaking of the original then that's just crazy talk.

@ssully: I wasn't really talking about the movie's message, but I just can't believe that people could be so resistant to science. I know that the teacher and principal were meant to show how messed up the world is, but their dumb crap went way too far. The setting was the issue for me; everybody got way too stupid.

@ntm: im curious about it as well, waiting to see it on blu ray. looks entertaining at the bare minimum, always cool to look at some nice cg space like the newer star trek movies

It's a great movie that got a more negative reception because Nolan was getting too much respect. It's not a masterpiece like 2001, but it's an incredible experience.

But people are actually like that in our world, some are even worse. If the movie was based around these people I could understand you not liking the movie because of it, but these were side characters that just added flavor and contrast to the story/main characters. Good movie's(or books/games/music) challenge you and your established beliefs. They show you into different view points, experiences, and perspectives that you never had before. I feel funny talking about this because Intersteller isn't the best case of this kind of movie, but I find it silly when people dislike a movie because it says or does something that makes the person uncomfortable/upset/challenged.