Interstellar, the movie... Spoiler alert?

discuss.

Great movie. Was not bored with it at any point. I really liked how it was the future, but not that far into the future.

I liked that they took a 2014 Dodge Ram and made it look like it was a 25 year old farm truck.

I also really liked the two robots Tars and Case. A really different take on robots.

Honestly, I think Christopher Nolan is a good storyteller.

I did not like it. I would describe it as a modern day 2001:A Space Odyssey. When the movie was over, everyone was shuffling out in total silence. SWMBO asked what I thought as she said it looked interesting. She is not the science fiction type. I described it to her and she was very glad to have not seen it.

I felt like someone had been messing around with inside my head after it was over.

But I agree with SBF about how it was interesting how i it was set in a not far distant future. I think that may be what made it such a mind trip. A little too close to reality....

I saw it this last weekend. I liked the sound mix yet it was a different approach. I do wish it was longer.......kidding.

It was great until the last 30 minutes when Mr. Nolan decided that magic and a really loud soundtrack would allow him to make some tenuous plot leaps

In reply to calteg:

You mean it wasn't a science fiction movie?

I liked it but after the black hole entry it got pretty nuts.

I was impressed that there was actually some real SCIENCE in it. Go into space, shot from outside the ship... silence. THANK YOU. Yes, there is no sound in space! Despite Gravity's claim of silence in space, there was a LOT of noise in that shuttle scene!

The relativity was nice (certainly a bit fudged) but still reasonably realistic. The spin to match docking was nice. BIG miss on the thrusting after that though. Clearly the thrust vectors of the attached ship would just make it spin. The dropping of mass AFTER accelerating to get more speed was just silly. "soft" black hole?, sorry, if light ain't leaving it, there ain't nothing "soft" about the event horizon!! Spaghettification

To be fair though, this movie was not really a movie about science, the future or some statement on society. It was a story about the effect those things have on the life of a man and his family.

I did think the ending was clearly rushed (love story?, I don't really know) and didn't make a lot of sense realistically (NO one else bothered to go there?).

(Definitely don't read this if you have not seen the movie):

I don't think I like the sort of circular creation thing going on though. I get that the 5D thing could be built in the future to help speed things up, but are they suggesting the WH was also created by the future? That is a bit of a self-creation thing. Without it, no one would be around, so how would the future make it? This is an unfortunate trend in many T Travel style movies.

I thought it was long. I liked parts of it, but overall thought it was just so-so.

In reply to aircooled:

Honestly, we don't have evidence of wormholes, but it's always been a hypothetical thing that likes to be used in sci-fi movies involved with space, as are black holes. We still don't know much about them or even if they do actually exhaust.

If anything, it's still a sci-fi movie. It's mere speculation, nothing more. What's in a black hole? Well nothing.

Or is there?

It doesn't really mater what's in a black hole in the case of Spaghettification. The fact that there is a enough gravity to stop light from exiting means bad news for anything that gets near it.

Yes, I believe worm holes are entirely conjecture. In the case of the movie though, it was created by an advanced society (I think, I am not entirely clear on that part of the movie), so it's certainly allowed.

Trivia: Since black holes can absorb light, that also means that light can orbit a black hole. I believe this was shown in the movie in the form a sort of halo around the black hole.

Even with all the errors still WAY more science then most movies (which is a bit sad). I am glad that it might serve as some sort of inspiration for future generations to want to explore out there.

Cool article about how they used this opportunity to actually make a scientifically based visual of a black hole and learned stuff from it that they didn't know before:

http://www.wired.com/2014/10/astrophysics-interstellar-black-hole/

This is a good shot too

The ending was a little odd and maybe a little forced. I enjoyed it however. The reasonable depiction of science was nice. My wife was a little bored however.

singleslammer wrote: Cool article about how they used this opportunity to actually make a scientifically based visual of a black hole and learned stuff from it that they didn't know before: http://www.wired.com/2014/10/astrophysics-interstellar-black-hole/

That's a great article. To know that an Astrophysicist was a Producer of the movie. To know that the Black Hole they created for the movie is the closest we will see what a Black Hole could actually look like.

Did anyone else have trouble hearing the dialog? I couldn't make out any of Michael Cain on his deathbed...

I noticed that and was wondering if the theater levels were wrong. Apparently though, it was a choice by the director to represent how everything in life is not perfectly audible. Most noticeable in the louder rocket scenes.

I don't mind it, but it was a bit confusing not knowing if it was on purpose or not.

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: In reply to calteg: You mean it wasn't a science fiction movie?

Point taken, but as SyntheticBlinkerFluid noted, they had an Astrophysicist onboard as a producer. My issue is that they spent the first 2.5 hours building up a plot that, while fantastic, at least had a basis in reality.

Then when Christopher Nolan wrote himself into a corner, all of that goes out the window just so matthew mcconaughey can deliver the after-school-special line "Love is the only thing that transcends space and time." Jesus? Really? That's when I knew mcconaughey was a good actor, when he was able to deliver that bullE36 M3 line with a straight face.

I won't even bring up the gigantic unexplained plot holes...wait, yes I will.

How did mcconaughey escape the black hole?

You expect us to believe that mcconaughey communicated immense amounts of data via a watch dial.

Grown up Murph receives this data, then uses it to solve some mystery equation (never explained). What problem, exactly, did that equation solve that allowed everyone on Earth to survive?

I'd like to believe that mcconaughey got squished down to the size of a quark the moment he crossed the event horizon, and everything that occurred afterwards was actually his death throes. They reference seeing your kids right before you die a few times in the movie. The next to the last scene is mcconaughey visiting Murph in a hospital....

In reply to calteg:

I will go back and say that we don't know what a black hole really is. We do not know what would happen if any person entered it. Nothing most likely.

I believe that they played with an idea. That's it. Maybe he was dead. Maybe he wasn't.

When the 5th Dimension started to come apart, he accepted his fate for a second time (the first when he entered the black hole), but ended up alive, floating right outside of Saturn.

How did he leave it? That's a good question.

calteg wrote: ....How did mcconaughey escape the black hole?....

I believe the movie said something about the 5D space being created by future humans, so the "how" there is pretty open. Now, of course, they do take on the old school concept of a black hole being a sort of a gateway. Of course, space is so warped at that point, who knows.

The 5D space thing did not bother me that much (very interesting representations) and I can understand how future humans might create that to help things along a bit quicker. The wormhole though could not have been created by them unless a small population eventually survived on earth and created the wormhole and 5D space to avoid the prolonged suffering they must have endured. (a bit vague on this point, which is probably good as noted below)

...You expect us to believe that mcconaughey communicated immense amounts of data via a watch dial...

Yeah, I picked up on that also. Had to be an immense amount of data, communicated by morse. I guess it's certainly possible, but it would take a LONG time and an LOT of patients.

...Grown up Murph receives this data, then uses it to solve some mystery equation (never explained). What problem, exactly, did that equation solve that allowed everyone on Earth to survive?...

I am pretty sure they equation was some sort of gravity solutions. I am guessing it means they could then harness and control gravity. Being able to do that would open up a lot of possibilities, especially around space travel.

I actually did like the fact that they were a bit vague about a number of things so that it made it harder to call BS on things and just accept them as a possibility (and of course, realistically, a plot driver)

We have come a long way since Disney's attempt at a black hole. Which of course was very 2D.

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: In reply to calteg: I will go back and say that we don't know what a black hole really is. We do not know what would happen if any person entered it. Nothing most likely. I believe that they played with an idea. That's it. Maybe he was dead. Maybe he wasn't. When the 5th Dimension started to come apart, he accepted his fate for a second time (the first when he entered the black hole), but ended up alive, floating right outside of Saturn. How did he leave it? That's a good question.

This explanation http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2008/09/what_happens_if_you_fallinto_a_black_hole.html is closer to what I've always heard. Basically, you'd be shredded, first on a cellular, then molecular, then atomic level due to the differing effects of extreme gravity on your body.

Saw the movie with my son a few weeks ago. We both liked it, but neither of us was over the moon about it.

Some more info on the science aspects of the movie:

neil-degrasse-tyson-breaks-down-interstellar-black-holes-time-dilations-and-massive-waves

One of the points he makes is about the "soft" black hole (or whatever they called it in the movie). He mentions if the black hole is large enough (as in the size of the solar system, SUPER big) the gravity gradient would actually be pretty light. Still a LOT of gravity, just that from point to point near it, the change would be less.

One interesting aspect about the black holes I was thinking about was that the event horizon really is not any sort of barrier at all it just simply the point where light can no longer escape. Thus, if you entered the event horizon of the survivable (maybe?) super massive black hole, you really should see no effect other then the fact that the event horizon seems to retreat in front of you (until you hit whatever's at the center of course).

You would be able to look back and see where you came from (photons are still coming from that direction) and you would be able to see wildly distorted light coming from the sides as it warps around.

Just something weird I was thinking about. Probably would have been hard to put in the movie if they wanted to, it would have required too much explanation.

In reply to calteg and aircooled: I take your point about trying to send lots of data by Morse (and how is Murph supposed to know where the sequence starts, anyway?) but, just to play devil's advocate, we see her using her notes to fill in the equation, as if that's what she received. Suppose Tars was able to boil the data down into a formula? (I know Coop says, "Send me the data," but bear with me here.) It really doesn't take that much bandwidth to transmit "f = ma," or, for that matter, "E = mc^2."

Certainly possible. I am sure it was a bit of a "quick fix" solution film wise to figure out how to move the information over anyway. Not a huge deal film wise for me.

Oh, I should also point out there is a Discovery Channel The Science of Interstellar (hopefully bumping some other drama show) that has the physicist that consulted to for the film.

I loved the movie but the thing I didn't get was when they went down on the water world, they said one hour on planet was 7 years in orbit. They ended up being gone 23 years for the guy left behind. Now I'm no dummy, but I didn't think there would be time dilation from planet to orbit, no matter how close to Gargantua it is. Sorry if this is a spoiler for others who haven't seen the movie but that was a point I couldn't get.