There's not a topic on this in the last two pages, so I'll start one here.
If you have not yet seen this movie and have any love deep in your heart for science fiction, stop reading and go watch it. There will be some significant spoilers in this topic. These spoilers will not be marked as such.And now onto the review.
Seriously go ****ing watch it already.
I went into this movie expecting the Matthew McConahoweveryouspellit Show. I was simultaneously disappointed and not disappointed. Disappointed, because the movie was not the Matthew McConaughey Show in its entirety. Not disappointed, because holy **** was it leaps and bounds better than anything that could possibly have arisen from the Matthew McConaughey Show.
Anne Hathaway and Matthew McConaughey headline the cast, as you no doubt already know unless you've been living under a rock. What may have slipped your notice (it certainly slipped mine) is the supporting cast beside these two. John Lithgow is Cooper's (guess who) father. Michael Caine (perhaps better known as Alfred) is in charge of the whole project on the ground. Matt Damon, of all people, plays another scientist on the project (more on him later). Hands up, who knew Matt Damon was in this movie before stepping into the theater (or spoiling yourselves on this review, you rotten scoundrels)? Thought so. Jessica Chastain, notable for her role in Zero Dark Thirty, is also present as a main character.
Before going further, a synopsis. This will not be spoiled, so this is your very last warning if you haven't seen the movie.
Okay, I lied, this will still be spoilered.
The film starts on Earth, after a worldwide cataclysm that is only hinted at and never truly explained (both famine and nuclear war are briefly mentioned) has killed billions and left the rest of the world in a state where eking out a tough living amidst constant dust storms and the inevitable decline of humanity is all that's left. Cooper (McConaughey) is a farmer in such a world, with a background in aerospace engineering and piloting. A disease that infects crops has forced humanity to abandon nearly all species of vegetation for farming - eventually down to corn and only corn. As anyone who has seen the trailers can no doubt tell you, humanity is ****ed and everyone knows it.
Cooper's daughter, Murphy (nicknamed Murph) discovers an anomaly in her room that she calls a "ghost". Books fall off the shelf for no identifiable reason. At this point, we are already shown that Cooper is still dedicated to the science that the rest of his community has all but abandoned, and tasks Murph to investigate the anomaly and present her findings. Following a trip into town, a dust storm strikes. Murph's window is open, and in the falling dust is revealed another anomaly - gravity in her room is abnormal, and the dust lands in a recognizable pattern: binary. This binary leads Cooper and Murph to a top secret facility in the middle of nowhere that turns out to be NASA (briefly explained to now be a secret government agency). NASA is working on the project that every trailer made sure that everyone knew about clear as day: an attempt to find new settlements for humanity. Doctor Brand (Michael Caine) is in charge of the project, his daughter (Anne Hathaway) is a crew member. Also introduced at this point is an artificial intelligence, TARS, a former security element and current member of the team.
After a good deal of discussion, Cooper is convinced to join the mission as pilot. What mission, exactly? A wormhole near Saturn popped up nearly 50 years ago (giving a potential date exercise, along with the vague indication that the wormhole became visible just before the cataclysm), and NASA wants to send an expedition through it to follow up on a series of other (manned) expeditions, now a decade old. On the other side are several potential habitable worlds, but they must be surveyed and identified. Mentioned in all this is that the wormhole is artificial, and NASA knows it, and even has a pretty good idea of how it got there and why (and by whom). The trip to Saturn will take two years. The trip through the wormhole will take longer. Cooper tries to say goodbye to his family and promises to return, but a conflict with his daughter leaves them estranged as he drives away.
The team of Cooper, Brand, two additional crew members Doyle and Romily, and TARS launch in a craft called a Ranger (the immediately identifiable craft from the trailers) to a hybrid ship/space station called Endurance. Already waiting on Endurance are another two crew members: Williams and CASE, another robot. The Endurance departs for the wormhole, while the crew enters a form of stasis to conserve supplies. Cooper records and sends a message to his family, and is told that he will be able to receive and send such communication during the trip.
On the other side of the wormhole, three potential candidates emerge out of a dozen manned missions. All the others indicated that the planet was unsuitable; all the others are dead. The closest of these candidates is still transmitting, and is revealed to be perilously close to a massive black hole. To avoid the time dilation of such a phenomenon, the team tries to stay outside the strongest effect of the field, though the planet is caught squarely inside. Seven years to every hour. The landing team consists of Cooper, Brand, Doyle, and CASE. Across the surface is a thin, endless sea, with mountains in the far distance. Almost immediately, the team discovers the wreckage of the previous expedition. Moments later they discover that the 'mountains' are actually massive waves - a consequence of the black hole's tidal influence. Doyle is lost in the rush back to the craft. Water floods the engines, forcing the crew to wait for them to clear while another wave approaches. Back on Endurance, they receive the news: It took 23 years for them to land and return, and Williams died waiting for them. The messages waiting for them from home aren't pretty.
Low on fuel from the 15 year delay, the Endurance now only has enough fuel to visit one of the two other sites. Brand has an emotional attachment to one of the sites, in the form of being in love with the original expedition member. She gives an impassioned speech, but is ultimately overruled. The second planet is one frozen and covered in ice, with a not-quite breathable atmosphere. They discover and resuscitate the original explorer, Dr. Mann (Matt Damon). He is ecstatic to see people again for the first time in over 30 years.
During this, Murph discovers that Professor Brand never intended for the crew to return; it's a one way trip, and everyone on Earth is going to die before they succeed. She doesn't take the news particularly well, and blames Cooper for it, believing he knew all along.
The crew (consisting of Romily [aged 23 years], Brand, Cooper, TARS, and CASE) set up camp, and Dr. Mann takes Cooper on a trip to show him the proposed landing site for follow up colonization. On the way, he attacks Cooper. A struggle follows, during which Mann reveals he faked the readings in order to call for a rescue. He damages Cooper's air supply and abandons him there, heading back to the camp to steal the Ranger and maroon them. Romily is killed in an explosion - a trap set by Mann. Cooper, Brand, TARS and CASE engage in quick pursuit in one of Endurance's other craft on the surface, but Mann beats them back to the station and tries to dock. TARS, not trusting Mann, had disabled the autopilot docking, and Mann attempts to do so manually. He fails spectacularly, and dies in the resultant explosion that sends Endurance spinning out of control.
With a lot of luck and reckless piloting, Cooper manages to dock with Endurance and stabilizes the station, but it is now on a direct course for the black hole and the attempt has cost them valuable fuel. A last ditch effort to reach the last planet sends them perilously close to the event horizon - and TARS and Cooper sacrifice themselves to allow Brand and CASE to finish the mission.
Murph returns home to try and convince her brother to abandon the failing farm and to seek medical help for his family's lung disease. He's already lost one son, and his second is not healthy. The two clash and in desperation Murph sets fire to the crops in order to sneak his family out from underneath him. She visits her room one last time, trying to figure out what the "ghost" really was.
Inside the event horizon, Cooper discovers that it is an impossible convergence of time and space through which he can influence objects in the past through gravity - and that the black hole (or at least its interior) were constructed in order for him to relay information back to Earth. He discovers that he is the "ghost", and sends a message that includes information vital to solving the crisis on Earth. Murph intuits that the ghost is her father, and the two reconcile across 50 years of time and unimaginable distance. She and her brother also reconcile. The construct inside the black hole collapses, and Cooper experiences time and space in a manner reminiscent of 2001, before he appears over Saturn and is recovered.
Cooper awakens in a hospital, aboard an artificial habitat orbiting Saturn, where he discovers that humanity has survived and even thrived. TARS was also recovered, and Cooper rebuilds him while he waits for Murph, now in her 80s, to arrive. The two reconcile in person at long last while Murph is on her deathbed. The film concludes with Cooper taking a new type of Ranger back through the wormhole looking for Brand. Cut to credits.
End spoiler. There will still be spoilers hereafter, but they are unmarked.
The Good:
Matthew McConaughey. He sold every scene he was in and was quite frankly spectacular. You can see Cooper's character going through stages of determination to save his children, devastation that they believe he abandoned them, grief and guilt, and then desperation and euphoria as he communicates across time and space.
Special Effects. Welcome back, practical effects. A good bit of the camera work was done from the perspective of a camera mounted on the hull of the Ranger or Lander, and the surfaces to which the camera is attached is visibly real which lends a lot of credibility even to the fantastic backdrops those props are frequently put up against. The effects for the black hole and the wormhole were visually impressive and feel like they'll hold up as the film ages.
Music. It's Hans Zimmer, so it's very recognizable as his work. There are a lot of parallels with 2001: A Space Odyssey for the soundtrack. Several of the moments in space are totally silent, and in other places sustained high strings ratchets up the tension considerably. It's a suitably grandiose sound for a movie about traveling through a wormhole into another galaxy. Ol' Hans apparently had a pretty massive hard-on for organ sounds this time, though, so prepare for that one. I personally liked it, but I can see how it'd be a bit grating.
Characters. TARS and CASE are robots, but they come off as two of the most human members of the crew. Their banter is amusing when it should be and serious when it should be. Plus the robots are just cool designs. They also don't go haywire, which was a delightful subversion of that tired old trope. TARS at times acts as the exposition, particularly in the black hole. The two also interact well even if they're hardly ever on screen at the same time. One particular exchange struck me as I was watching.
Cooper: You sure don't talk much, CASE.
CASE: TARS talks enough for both of us.
Simple, witty banter, but it goes a long way to making them feel like real characters instead of props that happen to move and talk. Of the two, TARS gets more lines and more characterization, but CASE is not neglected.
Foreshadowing. Dr. Mann is visibly excited to see people. So excited that it's kinda creepy. The way he talks and about what gives the idea that he has a couple screws loose. Then he attacks Cooper and tries to maroon the crew in order to rescue himself. There's nothing outright
wrong about him before the actual attack, but the movie does well to subtly paint him as a little bit unstable and desperate. Additionally, "They". Murph's ghost, the beings who created the wormhole, shake hands with Brand. We get little hints through the movie about who they are - enough that I was able to pick up on what was going on well before the actual reveal - but nothing outright, and it was subtle enough to that point that I blame my realization on being genre savvy and not anything in the movie.
Time. Forget interstellar travel, this is what the movie is actually about. It does a great job of demonstrating just how
long space travel takes. Two years from Earth to Saturn, 23 years on the ocean planet, and another 50 years on the black hole slingshot. The videos from home fill in the gaps and reconcile how it doesn't
feel like the crew just spent 23 years accomplishing what amounts to **** all. All told, Interstellar takes about three hours from start to finish, and more than a couple minutes of that feels like it could have been cut. I'm interested to see how the director's cut/extended edition comes out, because I'm honestly wondering what didn't make it.
The Bad:
Whoever did the sound mixing. This movie is loud. Really loud. At times the music drowns out the lines being spoken, which is a pretty significant problem for any movie, let alone one that's as packed as this one.
The Ugly:
I'm not 100% sure that Cooper going back through the wormhole to find Brand was the best way to end the movie. That said, it was a movie about hope, and if in a movie about hope your protagonist is crushed into oblivion in a black hole that's not very hopeful, is it? The ending thematically fit, but I guess I just have a hard-on for dead protagonists.
Hans Zimmer is... well, Hans Zimmer. You could probably swap this soundtrack with Inception's soundtrack and still have a reasonably good soundtrack. It works for the movie, but I was not surprised in the slightest when his name came up in the credits because it was pretty obvious who'd written the score. Too predictable, but I can't fault the execution.
And now it's your turn! Anyone who has seen the movie, your thoughts? I'd give it a pretty high rating, call it 9.5/10. There's just a couple spots that keep it from being a 10, but they were noticeable enough for me to see them on the first viewing and wonder what was up, even if I can't remember them right now to post.
