Interstellar - Part 9

[dark_b]

you posted a good video. in the next 12 months this thread will get very interesting.

 

[Persona]

on DA's point about the planets being unique...

yes, visually the planets come across as very basic. which makes sense for pre-civ, pre-animalia worlds. what sets them apart, i think, is this versimilitude of realism that Nolan is able to achieve...partly because the basic design or concept of these planets allowed him and Hoyte to do a lot of beautiful location shooting to represent them, as opposed to having his actors just surrounded by stages or green screens the whole time, and also because the science behind both planets is really thought through and fully realized, which is something that very few sci-fi films bother doing because usually they're trying hard to show you something fantastical and funky and stuff like gravity, length of day/night, chemical compositions...that's just stuff that gets in the way of the design. but that science is incredibly important to the worlds shown in Interstellar and actually determines the action on those planets and the effects had on the characters that visit those worlds. it's crucial to the story. and this makes it more of a real experience for us, and we really do feel like we are seeing other planets, though we're not.

i enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy greatly, but it says something for Interstellar that i'd much rather visit more worlds in its universe, even though GotG's locales had all kinds of eye-popping color and spectacle.

 

[DA_Champion]

Director's cut coming?

http://www.esquire.com/_mobile/blogs/culture/interstellar-behind-the-scenes?click=feed

I wish.

Well for me, this film was a tedious and mind-numbing experience.

5/10

The set up was interesting but almost everything gets bogged down with exposition and a wide scope and those factors suck all the heart and most of the emotion directly out of the story. There’s one note at play throughout the film and it’s a grim, mock-cerebral note. Honestly, I do believe that both lead characters smiled exactly once during the entire three hour run time.

The pseudo-science and pure scientific conjecture just can’t gloss over the tedium and pure lack of any intrigue. At times, I had flashbacks to watching Star Trek the Motion Picture. Long sweeping shots of space vehicles and space itself were overused as if such spectacle alone was suppose to awe the audience. I can see why a 1979 audience may have been amazed but I can’t imagine too many people in this era will be moved or impressed. Conjecture and bizzaro science aside, the ending plays out like some bad DVD alternate ending of The Matrix sequels.

Like most of the critiques I’ve read, I agree this movie has ambition and style but severely lacks soul, proper intelligence and focus.

A line from early in the film goes something like this… “At least we’ve established your ‘if I told you to drive off a cliff’ parameter.” It appears that is Nolan’s message to his rabid fanbase. This movie proves who is loyal and who will drive off that cliff with him.

From a guy who's screen name is "Marvel" ... no surprise.

on DA's point about the planets being unique...

yes, visually the planets come across as very basic. which makes sense for pre-civ, pre-animalia worlds. what sets them apart, i think, is this versimilitude of realism that Nolan is able to achieve...partly because the basic design or concept of these planets allowed him and Hoyte to do a lot of beautiful location shooting to represent them, as opposed to having his actors just surrounded by stages or green screens the whole time, and also because the science behind both planets is really thought through and fully realized, which is something that very few sci-fi films bother doing because usually they're trying hard to show you something fantastical and funky and stuff like gravity, length of day/night, chemical compositions...that's just stuff that gets in the way of the design. but that science is incredibly important to the worlds shown in Interstellar and actually determines the action on those planets and the effects had on the characters that visit those worlds. it's crucial to the story. and this makes it more of a real experience for us, and we really do feel like we are seeing other planets, though we're not.

i enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy greatly, but it says something for Interstellar that i'd much rather visit more worlds in its universe, even though GotG's locales had all kinds of eye-popping color and spectacle.

GoTG's worlds, and the words of Star Trek and Star Wars, are like what you'd get from one of those street artists who look perpetually stoned. Which is well and good, it's one popular and legitimate way to do fiction. Avatar also had a fairly unique planet, I hadn't thought of a fauna before where all of the animals had USB drives and could communicate by direct neurological link.

However, fact is often stranger than fiction. The planet with the giant tides and the time dilation factor of 200,000 is awesome too, and totally unique in film. Over time you're going to see these Nolan planets pop up in other fiction. They will be transformed into different kinds of worlds, they will often be merged with other worlds, and the net contribution will be an expansion of the set of tropes available for settings.

 

[DA_Champion]

But did you have to put their lives in incredibly danger to do that? Cooper could have died like 10 times during all this, her daughter as well. Even better why didn't the Gods sent the message themselves through the binary? just because they needed the love connection between father and daughter? I mean that could be a limitation and they need 2 humans to establish a link, thats fine, but at the same time they can open freaking wormholes to another galaxys! they seem pretty powerful and able to do amazing things, so there was no other way to send a message to their past selves? they limitations and powers are pretty unclear/inconsistent

I dont know at least this movie has me thinking extra time, i have to admit that. Its a very positive thing from any movie

I'm not sure.

Yeah, but as you experienced even with your background, it's still easy to fall into the "I don't see any animals or plants, this planet can't be lived on!" way of thinking.

Statistically, if any planet is in any way capable of harboring life, we'd likely come across it when life was still at the cellular level. Vertebrates have only been on earth for a short time, and humans have only been on earth for a tiny blip.

Yeah, Neil DeGrasse Tyson said he'd personally stay as far away from black holes as possible, but technically, you won't fall in unless you pass the event horizon, I believe. (There was some kind of distinction between rotating and non-rotating black holes, but I think the event horizon applies for both.)

Who knows, maybe being so near a black hole might give them really interesting advantages! It's not like we know every possibility.

If intelligent life evolved near a black hole it would have a very long time to become the most advanced species in the universe.

Humans have been around for 100,000 years. Apply a time dilation factor of 200,000, and that makes 20 billion years of social evolution.

 

[jmc]

Just realised that inspite of Interstellar being the worst reviewed Nolan film his Rotten Tomatoes strike rate is an incredible 85 average with his film rating average being 7.7/10.

 

[DA_Champion]

What are you guys predicting for the second weekend drop for this movie?

Most movies this year have been in the 50-65% range.

 

[Marvel]

From a guy who's screen name is "Marvel" ... no surprise.

Well, I have TDK proudly displayed in my Blu-Ray collection right next to Avengers and Iron Man and gave Inception a huge thumbs up. Nolan does good work but I'm not a drooling slappy.

I'm able to judge work impartially and Interstellar is a mess of a movie any way you judge it. It's a one note brain fart pretending to be something complex. That may seem harsh but it's not biased.

It's a fact that Nolan diehards like to watch all his work through rose colored glasses but any other director that would have ended his film in the same manner (for one example) would be mocked out of the cinema. Put the words "m knight shyamalan" over this title or have Nolan use a pseudo name and release the exact same cut and most people would be blasting this thing unmercifully. There honestly can be no doubt about that.

 

[DA_Champion]

Nobody's impartial, and everybody's biased.

You, me, Nolan, Vladimir Putin, etc.

 

[Slushy]

Scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson fact-checked "Interstellar" because if there's one movie I expect to be believable, it's the one where Matthew McConaughey plays an astrophysicist.

 

[Persona]

Well, I have TDK proudly displayed in my Blu-Ray collection right next to Avengers and Iron Man and gave Inception a huge thumbs up. Nolan does good work but I'm not a drooling slappy.

I'm able to judge work impartially and Interstellar is a mess of a movie any way you judge it. It's a one note brain fart pretending to be something complex. That may seem harsh but it's not biased.

It's a fact that Nolan diehards like to watch all his work through rose colored glasses but any other director that would have ended his film in the same manner (for one example) would be mocked out of the cinema. Put the words "m knight shyamalan" over this title or have Nolan use a pseudo name and release the exact same cut and most people would be blasting this thing unmercifully. There honestly can be no doubt about that.

Laugh. Out. Loud.

 

[Persona]

joke falls a little flat since McConaughey's actually playing a pilot, not an astrophysicist.

 

[BatLobster]

It's a fact that Nolan diehards like to watch all his work through rose colored glasses but any other director that would have ended his film in the same manner (for one example) would be mocked out of the cinema. Put the words "m knight shyamalan" over this title or have Nolan use a pseudo name and release the exact same cut and most people would be blasting this thing unmercifully. There honestly can be no doubt about that.

Honestly...if M. Night had made Interstellar, you might have people people calling it a major comeback/return to form. If Spielberg had made this movie, the reception might be even better.

If anything, most of the bias I'm seeing towards this movie is more of a bias against Nolan.

Like DA Champion says, everyone brings a level of bias into the movie theater one way or another.

 

[Phallic]

Honestly...if M. Night had made Interstellar, you'd people have people calling it a major comeback/return to form. If Spielberg had made this movie, the reception might be even better.

If anything, most of the bias I'm seeing towards this movie is more of a bias against Nolan.

I'd agree. I remember walking out of the movie disagreeing with a vast majority of the negative reviews. Most of the complaints (not all, but most) IMO are very nitpicky and shallow. I agreed with Peter Travers when he wrote "What the neg-heads are missing about Interstellar is how enthralling it is, how gracefully it blends the cosmic and the intimate, how deftly it explores the infinite in the smallest human details." The movie isn't perfect, but it's more ambitious and achieves more because of that ambition than most "safe" films. I haven't seen many movies that can capture the raw intensity and awe inspiring moments that Interstellar manages to conjure up.

People tend to get very nitpicky with Nolan, perhaps because of higher expectations, but it still shows a certain bias against him. Many issues that are in the film are common in many critically acclaimed films, yet they are overlooked there. That being said, ambitious movies are what end up being remembered, not the safe ones. I believe that Interstellar will be one of the most memorable movies of the year, whether or not it wins any awards or ends up making ridiculous amounts of money in the box office.

 

[rnewbz]

Here's my review of the film : http://newbyfadeto.blogspot.com/2014/11/interstellar-review.html

 

[Slushy]

joke falls a little flat since McConaughey's actually playing a pilot, not an astrophysicist.

That's Coco for you.

 

[BigA]

Spoiler

I believe the only reason no one had yet used the wormhole again is that the people on the space stations had no reason to believe any of the planets were viable. Amelia had likely just arrived at her planet shortly before Cooper was found near Saturn. Given how humans can rarely agree on anything, even if they had received a signal from Amelia, it likely would have taken years for TPTB to make up their minds about traveling through the wormhole to the new planet... Cooper didn't want to wait that long and leave Amelia alone so he stole a ship and headed back through the wormhole.

Spoiler

That makes sense. I also wonder how long it took the station to get to Saturn. I would think it would take a bit longer than 2 years.

 

[redhawk23]

One thing I didn't get... they said that spending hours on the water planet would be years in our time, but I don't think it was the same on the other two planets. So why not investigate those two first?

Because the data coming back from that planet was the most promising. It ended up being an error though as it was just the initial readings playing on the beacon over and over again.

 

[Anita18]

joke falls a little flat since McConaughey's actually playing a pilot, not an astrophysicist.

He was also an engineer, don't forget.

 

[dark_b]

Honestly...if M. Night had made Interstellar, you might have people people calling it a major comeback/return to form. If Spielberg had made this movie, the reception might be even better.

If anything, most of the bias I'm seeing towards this movie is more of a bias against Nolan.

Like DA Champion says, everyone brings a level of bias into the movie theater one way or another.

if Interstellar was from Night movie fans and critics would destroy the movie.plus when Night has in every movie a predictable twist its bad. when Nolan has forced twist in the second or third acts movie after movie its no big deal.

Interstellar is a good movie. obvious . but to use M.Night as an example?

 

[dark_b]

on DA's point about the planets being unique...

yes, visually the planets come across as very basic. which makes sense for pre-civ, pre-animalia worlds. what sets them apart, i think, is this versimilitude of realism that Nolan is able to achieve...partly because the basic design or concept of these planets allowed him and Hoyte to do a lot of beautiful location shooting to represent them, as opposed to having his actors just surrounded by stages or green screens the whole time, and also because the science behind both planets is really thought through and fully realized, which is something that very few sci-fi films bother doing because usually they're trying hard to show you something fantastical and funky and stuff like gravity, length of day/night, chemical compositions...that's just stuff that gets in the way of the design. but that science is incredibly important to the worlds shown in Interstellar and actually determines the action on those planets and the effects had on the characters that visit those worlds. it's crucial to the story. and this makes it more of a real experience for us, and we really do feel like we are seeing other planets, though we're not.

i enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy greatly, but it says something for Interstellar that i'd much rather visit more worlds in its universe, even though GotG's locales had all kinds of eye-popping color and spectacle.

are the planets realistic or not? are frozen clouds in the air possible?

 

[Phallic]

are the planets realistic or not? are frozen clouds in the air possible?

They stretch the science a bit, but it's not impossible to have frozen clouds. It's plausible. The water planet and Edmunds' planet so far as I can see are realistic.

 

[dark_b]

every scifi movie streches the science. if it streches more it becomes a fantasy movie and not a scifi .

why cant Nolan just say that he is interested in whats realistic on our planet and than adding it in blockbuster movies where the whole movie is not realistic. no. he needs to repeat every time that everything is ultrarealistic.

 

[SmeQ]

I honestly don't know what ot think about this movie. So many paradoxes for my mind to keep up. I felt like the opportunity to go deeper and cover the subject of exoplanets, would've been interesting.

That being said, maybe Interstellar did not have its focus around that but the incredible dilemma: "What do we do when we can't stay on earth anymore".

 

[Phallic]

every scifi movie streches the science. if it streches more it becomes a fantasy movie and not a scifi .

why cant Nolan just say that he is interested in whats realistic on our planet and than adding it in blockbuster movies where the whole movie is not realistic. no. he needs to repeat every time that everything is ultrarealistic.

I don't recall Nolan ever saying his movies are ultra-realistic. IIRC, he merely said with regards to Interstellar that he liked using real science as a basis because he enjoys the idea of creating an interesting story from an already established set of rules. It's easier to be internally consistent when you are basing everything off the laws of nature.

 

[DA_Champion]

Aside from that, fact can be stranger than fiction.